Contributors

Saturday, January 21, 2017

The Borscht Republic

The term "banana republic" refers to Caribbean and Latin American dictatorships that were dominated by American business interests. With the blessing of the US government, companies would essentially install puppet governments servile to them.

Now the United States itself has suffered the same fate with the election of Donald Trump. But since we don't export bananas, we'll need a new term. I suggest "borscht republic," in honor of Trump's patron and benefactor, Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The FBI, NSA and the CIA say that Russians created thousands of fake news stories that slammed Hillary Clinton, as well as hacking the Democrats emails, in order to get Trump elected.

Donald Trump and his surrogates deny it. The information the intelligence agencies has is covert, so they don't want to release it for fear of exposing sources, blah blah blah. So far, it's a "they said-he said" argument.

But here's some evidence that the Russians tried to get Trump elected, in full view for all the world to see (from the New York Times):

In Danilovgrad, a town in Montenegro, Serbian supporters
made their views known on a billboard in November.

This billboard in Montenegro, Serbia, looks like a Donald Trump campaign sign, except that Vladimir Putin is his vice president instead of Mike Pence. Are they running for co-dictators of the world?

Now, you say, this doesn't mean anything. This sign was put up by some dumb Serbs.

Except it wasn't. The sign is in Russian and English. You can see for yourself if you run "Let's make the world great again together!" through Google Translate:
Russian: Давайте сделаем мир здорово снова вместе!
Serbian: Хајде да се свет велики поново заједно!
Google Translate isn't perfect, which you can see by its use of the word здорово (healthy) instead of великим (great). And it got the ending of здорово wrong -- it should end in -ым, not о. The Google Russian translation also uses the exact English word order, while the sign uses a more natural Russian word order -- though it isn't wrong, because word order in Russian is pretty flexible.

I can't comment on the quality of the Serbian translation -- I can tell it's Serbian, and understand the last four words because they're Russian cognates.

But from this you can tell that Serbian and Russian, while they have many words in common (including велики, which it got right in Serbian), are significantly different: Russian doesn't even use the letter j.

The question is, why would Serbians put a Russian sign up in their own country? If this was their heartfelt endorsement of Trump and Putin, why wouldn't the sign be in Serbian?

The only plausible answer is that the sign was produced by the Russians. If Trump had put it up, it would have been in Serbian, because -- one supposes -- he wouldn't want to insult the locals by getting their language wrong. The Russians don't care about such niceties, because they plan on taking eastern Europe back again.

Since the Russians put campaign signs up all over Europe for Trump, they clearly wanted Trump to be president. Wouldn't they engage in a little old-style KGB dezinformat hacking to make that happen, as insurance?

The CIA, the FBI and the NSA got it right on the Russian hacking. Trump can't admit it because it makes him look like Putin's puppet -- or a Russian collaborator.

Welcome to the borscht republic.

Friday, January 20, 2017

"We Have To Do A Good Job"

In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump's victory last November, one of the first things he said was, "We have to do a good job." As he takes the oath of office today, I'm wondering if he will admit when he's not. I think that's the biggest concern on the mind of most Americans today. How long will his ego hold out in the face of reality? His words and actions up until now, as well as the words and actions of his supporters, say they are going to continue to ignore facts.

But he does have to do a good job, right? More than anything, he wants to be loved by everyone. He seems to have a deep need for affirmation. Being our first right wing blog commenter commander in chief, his insecurity runs as high as his bullying. He can't stand it when someone on the internet is wrong. He can't let things go. Perhaps he can turn that into doing a good job for the country. I'll be the first to admit when he does do a good job and would be happy to be wrong in my predictions for disaster.

Many of my liberal friends are feeling pretty hopeless right now. I share some of their feelings but the one thing I have that they don't right now is some relief. President Trump and his supporters have to be responsible now. They are in charge. Hillary Clinton lost. The Democrats, though gaining seats in both the House and the Senate, are not in charge of Congress. The onus is now on the GOP and their new leader to deliver. No longer can they blame liberals, progressives, Democrats, gun grabbers, the media, Barack Obama and all the other folks they say are destroying the US. It's on them. Are they up to the challenge? Can they govern without whining and blaming others?

Will the fucking own it?

Something tells me the answer is going to be a great salve for current liberal woes:)

Thursday, January 19, 2017

The Earth Is Running a Bad Fever

NASA, NOAA and the British Met Office report that 2016 was the hottest year on record:
Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016, trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row.

The findings come two days before the inauguration of an American president who has called global warming a Chinese plot and vowed to roll back his predecessor’s efforts to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases.
What's particularly worrying is that the poles are heating up much faster than the rest of the world:
The heat extremes were especially pervasive in the Arctic, with temperatures in the fall running 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit above normal across large stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Sea ice in that region has been in precipitous decline for years, and Arctic communities are already wrestling with enormous problems, such as rapid coastal erosion, caused by the changing climate.
Because of CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, the planet is on track to warm by 1 to 3 degrees Celsius, or 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. You don't think that sounds bad? How long would you live if you were running a five-degree fever?

A five-degree temperature increase will endanger our food and water supplies, flood coastal and river cities, ravage the countryside with ever more powerful tornadoes, and kill our forests with insect infestation and drought.

Donald Trump famously tweeted that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by China. Yes, the same China that is constantly choking under thick clouds of smog, forcing people to wear face masks whenever they go outside. The same China where hundreds of thousands of people die each year from burning coal.

Consider these factors:

For years oil companies have been trying without success to tap oil reserves in the Arctic. They've abandoned this project because the weather is just too cold and unpredictable.

Russia is the largest country in the world, but most of its land is in Siberia, It's basically unusable because it's just too damn cold. Russia has huge oil and gas reserves in Siberia, but has similar difficulties extracting them.

Shipping between the east coast of America and Asia requires going south through the Panama Canal. The bigger ships can't even fit through the canal, and have to go all the way around Tierra del Fuego, almost to Antarctica. That's almost 10,000 miles out of the way! If the North Pole was free of ice, the Northwest Passage would be open. Shipping would be much faster and cheaper.

If you're into conspiracy theories, isn't it much more likely that the oil companies and Russia are conspiring to make global warming worse, so that Alaska and Siberia can be easily developed, and open the Northwest Passage so they can ship oil quickly and cheaply to China, Korea and Japan?

Trump's nominee for secretary of state is the former CEO of  Exxon Mobile, and a pal of Vladimir Putin. Given the trillions of dollars these men stand to gain from a warming planet, can you really believe anything they say about global warming?

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Republican Men Think Women Have a Better Deal than Men (!)

When Donald Trump was caught on camera talking about grabbing pussy, many thought it would end his campaign. They thought even solid Republicans would back away.

But I was doubtful. So many Republican men are filled with misogyny, and hearing Trump talk about women like they were merely objects of sexual gratification endeared Trump to them. These men are jealous that women are finally starting some headway in society (think Rush Limbaugh and his endless "feminazi" rants). They are afraid of women.

Now there's a study that quantifies this. Incredibly, Republican men think women today are better off than men. A typical Republican man thinks like this:
Dennis Halaszynski, 81, is a retired police captain in McKeesport, Pa., and a registered Democrat who voted for Mr. Trump. “It’s easier being a woman today than it is a man,” he said in an interview. “The white man is a low person on the totem pole. Everybody else is above the white man.”

Women “should be highly respected,” he said, but they are no longer unequal: “Everything in general is in favor of a woman. No matter what happens in life, it seems like the man’s always at fault.”
White men are the low person on the totem pole? What percentage of CEOs are women or minorities? Members of congress? Governors of states? President?

Everything this man says is nonsense: women get paid less than men for doing the same work. Women are not represented equally in management positions, government leadership, and generally in any kind of high-paying profession.

Women are constantly talked down to, belittled, objectified, solicited for sex, grabbed, sexually assaulted and raped. The vast majority of men will never suffer these indignities. When a woman walks to her car in a darkened parking lot it's like Russian roulette, but men never think twice about it.

Most women have to work the same number of hours as men, yet they have to do most of the cooking, cleaning and child care. When there's a divorce, women are stuck with the kids, making them the single head of the household. Republican men think this is because the courts treat men unfairly, but -- putting aside political correctness, which Republicans despise -- most men are simply not competent to raise children alone: they lack the patience, devotion, sense of responsibility and compassion to be primary caregivers.

This has been the case for at least the last 100 years, mostly because women had to enter the work force during the world wars and the Depression. There was a slight lull during the 1950s and 1960s, but as expectations for material things increased starting in the 1970s, a single bread winner could not pay for all the creature comforts that Americans think they need. Thus, most women in America need to work. And with marriage rates down overall, this is only accelerating the need for equal pay.

Over the last 50 years, the position of women has in fact improved: they're getting paid more than they used to (but still less than men). They're actually getting more education than men now. Women and girls are generally more temperamentally suited to class room situations, and that puts men and boys at a disadvantage, because well-paying jobs in the future will all require college degrees.

And that's the crux of the problem: Republican men see that women are making progress, and starting to catch up -- though women are still nowhere close to men in most things -- and it scares Republican men to death. They see everything in life as a zero-sum game: if the lot of women improves, men will lose.


Frankly, Republican men are deathly afraid that when women have equal pay and opportunities, women will no longer need to put up with the abysmal treatment that Republican men heap on them.

They will not be able to find girlfriends and wives who will put up with the sort of treatment that my father has dished out to my mother for the last sixty years, treating her like a servant.

And that really scares them. Because they can't even take care of themselves . . . .

The Functionalist Manifesto

In looking at the year 2017 and what lies ahead, it's painfully obvious that we need: leaders and policies that objectively function in reality. This also calls for a population of voters that allow more cold rational thought to drive reasoning. Easier said than done given the reality of neuroscience.  Nonetheless, I think it's important to give the effort anyway.

Choosing solutions requires examining the facts and picking the best path, even if that solution isn't perfect. Emotions shouldn't enter into to it. Most of the time, solutions offer choices of crappy, bad, terrible, or awful. Learning to live with this fact is, well, part of being an adult. It's also why I think people should give the president, of either party, a break. They have to choose what benefits the most people which means a substantial part of the population is going to be pissed off.

The key here is to set party ideology and tribal chest thumping aside. What actually works and what doesn't? As we kick off the new year with a new president, I thought I would compile a brief list of the challenges we face as a nation and a brief description of how to tackle them. This is by no means a complete list and I might add to it later on but I wanted to at least get a foundation started. As the year unfolds and policies are made with the new president and Congress, we can see if they are dealing with reality or not.

The Economy

Despite the promises of Donald Trump, jobs are not coming back to the manufacturing sector. The main reason for this is robotics. Technology has made manufacturing more efficient with less need for workers. Trump supporters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin need to understand that if they want to be employed again, they have to back to school. They need to retrain in advance uses of manufacturing technology or possibly consider a different field that speaks to 21st century skills. A bachelor's degree is bare minimum essential. A master's degree is preferred.

Globalization is here to say despite Trump's promises of global nationalism (what the heck is that anyway?). Tariffs never work and the corporate world will resist Trump on this every step of the way. Free trade is a good thing, despite the protestations of both Trump supporters and progressives who claim to want inequality eradicated but apparently only want that to apply to United States workers. Don't they care about laborers around the world? The data shows that standard of living around the world has risen massively in the age of globalization. Remember Gapminder?



The freer the trade, the more this continues.

This is also why liberals should take care to rip corporations at every turn. Mitt Romney was right when he said that corporations are people. They are made up of people who have families and contribute to the aggregate demand in the economy which means they improve the lives of our nation and, indeed, our planet.

The constant rag from liberals regarding corporations is almost as tiresome as the rag from conservatives about government. They both come from a place of complete ignorance. Both corporations and government are essential to our economic health. Governments can sometimes improve market efficiency. This is a fact. Further, government projects, like the Grand Coulee Dam or the more recent investments in renewable energy has improved the lives of millions of Americans.

What works in reality with the economy and what does not...it's just that simple. Let's deal with the facts.

Health Care

We essentially have three choices for health care in this nation.

1. Go to a completely free market without insurance.

2. Go to Medicare for all with single payer.

3. Retain an insurance based system.

Let's take a look at the challenges of each one.

Free market-This would be great if demand in most health care markets was elastic like Lasik, for example. It isn't which means that suppliers can charge whatever they want and most people will pay
(remember the Epi-pen thing?) A few might leave but most will go into debt paying for health care otherwise they will be in pain and/or die. Prices won't go down. Demand is too great and too inelastic in most health care markets. This is just fundamental economics. Prices in most health care markets will remain high because people need the services and care.

Medicare for all-Taxes go up significantly. The economy takes a hit from all those unemployed medical insurance folks out of a job. How much of a hit would depend on where we are at in the business cycle so the impact would be unknown.

Retain insurance based system-That's what the ACA essentially is. It's a free market solution for insurance with government regulation. It was never meant to be perfect but to be changed and altered over the years. If our new president wants everyone to be covered and yet still not be compelled to have insurance if folks don't want it, someone is going to have to pay for this.

Rates can only be lowered if everyone has insurance. The pools of risk won't be large enough for insurance companies to stay afloat let alone pay out. This is the problem with the ACA right now. The penalties for not being insured are not significant enough. That'w why rates are going up. That and the bulge of baby boomers requiring more care. The distortion of the market due to people not actually paying what their care costs (insurance) makes things more expensive.

The free market choice isn't an option in reality so we need to look at either shifting to Medicare for all or fixing the issues with the ACA. The GOP is feeling the heat as they try to satisfy their childish urge to vanquish "Obamacare" once and for all. They have no plan to replace the ACA, other than some mentions of block grants and buying insurance across state lines. The latter certainly won't work because you'll get a state that offers just catastrophic coverage and then everyone will flock to that state, leaving their home state with a small risk pool and thus, insoluble.

Either choice #2 or choice #3 will work and function in reality.

Education

With 13,000 school districts and over 100,000 schools in the country, having a one size fits all policy is ludicrous. The federal government and even state level governing bodies should stay out of the way of local districts. Each district knows intimately well exactly the challenges they face. They should be the ones to decide policy and dictate any sort of regulations. The US Department of Education should exist only to dole out money and analyze data. The same goes for state level education departments.

Luckily, such a model for local control exists. It's called "Strive Together" and the data shows that if districts can pool resources and create a foundation for cradle to career support of each student, the achievement gap narrows and graduation rates rise.

In terms of collage, we have to figure out a way, as a nation to make college more affordable if not all together free. Everyone is going to have to pitch in whether it's in the form of higher taxes to make community college tuition free or universities cutting salaries and laying off their latest multi million dollar building project.

If we want to stay competitive in the world, we have to have a better educated people. It's just that simple.

Energy

Climate change is real and it's caused by CO2 emissions. The free market has essentially recognized this and we are now seeing cheaper renewable energy. Conservatives are going to have to give up on this one because that's where the money is going to be. Liberals are going to have to accept that the old energy companies that provided us with oil and coal will be the only ones who can successfully finance a broad, renewable energy push. Look for Exxon Wind or Koch Solar soon. It's honestly the best way to go if we want to address the threat of climate change. Liberals are also going to have to give up their hysteria over nuclear energy. It's clean and it will one day propel us to the stars.

Side note: here's a handy list of every single climate change denier's argument thoroughly blown apart by science.

Guns

If you want to own a gun in this country, you have to demonstrate that you have complied with regular training and mental health checks. This training should be just as intensive as those who dedicate their lives to public safety (armed forces, police, etc). In short, you have to be part of a trained militia.

Gun bans won't work because such a law would merely create a criminal enterprise. Other laws like ammo limits or smart guns are cumbersome and silly. Yet ongoing training and mental health checks would allow gun rights folks to play with their guns more often and actually support public safety.

If such training and mental health checks were required, they would not eliminate gun violence. But they would drastically reduce the amount of suicides, gang violence, spree shootings, and accidents every year. Universal background checks should also be law.

Here are the numbers from the past few years. We can no longer afford to continue like this. People are dying every day. Let's face reality. Too many irresponsible people with far too many guns.

Race

When it comes this issue, identifying the challenge is simple. We are still feeling the socio-economic fallout from slavery. Anyone out there want to voluntarily be treated like a black person in this country? Anyone? Go ahead and stand up.

The first step in addressing the problem of race is admit that we even have a problem. We still have a large segment of the population that is racist or, at best, prejudiced. We also have a fairly significant portion of the population that throws tantrums and has hissy fits over attention to cultural diversity and/or calling out racism when it's apparent. These folks (mostly conservatives and right wing bloggers and commenters) are not necessarily racist. They are more adolescent in the sense that they don't want to take responsibility for the problem of racism nor do they want to lose their privilege.

Rather than talk about civil rights or Black Lives Matter with folks like this, try talking to them about Constitutional rights being violated or people's freedom and liberty being under siege by the government (e.g. our criminal justice system). This is much more effective way of getting people to admit that there is a problem.

After we all admit there is a problem with race, the next step is to engage at the community level. The most successful diverse communities in terms of zero issues with law enforcement are in areas where the police engage with community leaders and their people.

This isn't going to go away over night. Having a black president for 8 years doesn't really mean shit compared to 400 years of institutional sedimentation. We have to, at least, be pointed in the right direction, though, and we are not there yet.

Abortion

Abortion rates have fallen to their lowest rates since Roe V Wade passed. That's nice and all but there are still young women getting abortions. Both sides in this argument really piss me off. The pro choice crowd utterly fail to recognize that we have a heartbeat in a fetus after just a few weeks. Brain development occurs shortly thereafter so we are killing living beings. No wonder people are upset. Yet the pro life crowd utterly fails to recognize that this living being is attached to another living being who has rights. If abortion were outlawed, would her womb then become the ward of the state? Why conservatives support this, given their stated beliefs on government out of people's lives, makes no sense to me. In fact, when it comes to the abortion issue, both sides are antithetical to their overall ideologies. Suddenly liberals want the government out of people's lives. WTF?

The solution to abortion lies with the data. Most women who get abortions are single, white women in their 20s. Why? Are they stupid? Do they not know about birth control? Think about this from an economic standpoint. How do we decrease the demand for abortion? If we cut off the supply, then we just create a criminal enterprise when there is such high demand. We need to focus on this larger group of abortion demanders and find out what tools we can put in place to reduce their need for abortions. We mitigate it here first and we can really make a serious dent in abortion demand.

If we want to save the lives of the unborn, this is the best route. Roe V Wade will not be overturned, Abortions are going to continue to happen. Let's get rid of the demand and then suppliers will go away because they won't make any money from it.

Drugs

The answer here is simple. We need to legalize all drugs and regulate them through the health care industry. Violence will go down and tax dollars will go up. We also have to be careful about how these drugs are dispensed. Life expectancy for white people has declined over the past few years because of drugs and alcohol. There is a deep malaise in white culture that needs to be addressed.

The best way to deal with this is to destigmatize mental health. People should go to their therapists at least as often as they go to the dentists and treat it with the same level of nonchalance. The brain is the most complex organ in your body. Pretending that stuff is "all in your mind" is pure nonsense. Your brain doesn't float next to your body as some sort of ghostly object. It's a part of you that needs to be treated with great care. Doing so will result in less problems with drugs in our country.

Final Thoughts

I'm only interested in solutions that speak to functionally working in reality. I have zero interest in folks who allow emotion to cloud their judgement. So, let's think about functionalism. What actually works in our society in terms of solutions and what does not? In looking at the challenges we face above, I no longer think of myself as fully embracing liberalism or conservatism. I embrace functionalism and will do so every single day in the future. You should too.

Blow the horn for functionalism!!



Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Russia Has Suckered American Conservatives

When I was in college in the late 1970s I studied Russian, along with, coincidentally, my future sister- and brother-in-law, who went to work at the CIA, where they monitored Russian nuclear weapons.

Back then, during the cold war, the Russians projected an image of progressivism. They were the vanguard of social justice. They were for the workers, for women, for minorities.

The Russians claimed to be against sexism -- women could do anything men could. In 1963 they launched Valentina Tereshkova into space, where she logged three days in orbit -- more time than all Americans who had flown up till that point.

The Russians were against racism -- after all, they had a university named after an African, Patrice Lamumba!

The Russian department had a subscription to Pravda, the official news organ of the Communist Party. I remember one cartoon from the front page: a man in a Ku Klux Klan robe was decorated like a Christmas tree, carrying a noose, with the caption "ёлка только для чёрных," (Christmas tree only for blacks).

The United States was portrayed as corrupt, backward, racist, sexist and hypocritical.

It was, of course, all just KGB propaganda to sucker liberals in the West. Workers in communist Russia had no rights -- they did what they were told or they were sent to the gulag. Women didn't have equal rights -- women had no political power, they had to work the same hours as men, but then they had to come home, take care of the kids and do all the housework while their husbands drank vodka. People of other ethnicities had no political power: ethnic Russians ran every Soviet republic and non-Russian citizens endured racist harassment by "real" Russians. Russia helped African and Middle Eastern countries only as tools to attack Western interests.

The communist government is long gone, but the Russians are playing the same tricks today. This time they are suckering American conservatives instead of liberals.

The Russians portray themselves as the defenders of Christianity against Islam, while employing Muslim Chechen hitmen against reporters (Anna Politkovskaya) and opposition politicians (Boris Nemtsov). The Russian government actively harasses gays and lesbians, pretending that they are defending children and traditional values. Women have been put back in their place, and when they speak out, as Pussy Riot did, they are imprisoned.

America is portrayed as corrupt, sickeningly liberal, irreligious, and dominated by homosexuals and feminists.

Now, instead of being the cartoon villain on the front page of Pravda, the Ku Klux Klan is celebrating Trump's electoral victory along with Russia.

Russia's new conservative-friendly propaganda campaign is working. Since the election and the hacking revelations 38% of Democrats view Russia as an adversary and 42% as a serious problem, while only 20% of Republicans view Russia as an adversary and 45% as a serious problem. A third of Republicans don't see Russia as a problem at all.

This is a total flip-flop by Republicans: during the 2012 election Mitt Romney said Russia was our biggest geopolitical foe.

Michael Flynn, Trump's national security advisor, called the Russian ambassador the day sanctions were announced against Russia for the hacking. Since Flynn is still a private citizen, such interference in foreign policy is a violation of the Logan Act. Flynn has been to Russia several times, has been paid by the Russian propaganda network, and has dined with Putin.

Contacts between the Trump campaign surrogate Carter Page and Russia occurred before the election and have continued ever since. What the hell was that guy doing there?

Donald Trump himself has never said a bad word about Vladimir Putin, but constantly trashes American allies. Just yesterday Trump appeared to call for the dissolution of NATO, calling it obsolete and again demanding more money from other NATO members. In the same interview Trump called German Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee policies catastrophic.

But the reason Germany has a refugee problem is that Russia has been propping up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war. Russia has been bombing Aleppo and other Syrian cities where legitimate opposition to Assad was concentrated, forcing refugees out of Syria, causing the crisis in Europe.

Meanwhile, Putin has mostly ignored ISIS in Syria, allowing them to keep their supply lines open and prolong the agony in Iraq.

Lest you think this is all President Obama's fault, in 2013 Obama asked Congress for authorization to launch attacks against Assad for using poison gas on his own people. Congress declined to do so. Republicans have blamed Obama for not doing more against Assad, but when they had their chance to do something to stem the tide of refugees out of Syria it was the Republicans who blinked.

Now, Serbia -- a Russian client state -- is moving to annex Kosovo, using Russia's annexation of Crimea as a pretext. You may recall that the United States and NATO bombed Serbia in 1999 for their invasion of Kosovo. This was just after the horrible civil war in Bosnia, where Orthodox Bosnian Serbs backed by Russia murdered thousands of Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians. Several Bosnian Serbs were tried for war crimes, including Slobodan Milošević, who died in prison while still on trial.

Donald Trump is still not president, yet he seems to have already destroyed NATO and, by endorsing Russia's invasion of Crimea, planted the seeds for another bloody war in the Balkans. Once inaugurated he is apparently ready to hand over the rest of Ukraine and the Baltic states to Putin so Russia can be restored to its Soviet glory days.

Whether Trump is Putin's chump or actively colluding with the Russian dictator is irrelevant. Trump is sowing chaos and uncertainty. His actions will quickly envelop Europe in war and cause even greater refugee crises.

But chaos and uncertainty are Trump's signature style.

On the bright side, people are already getting tired of his antics. Trump is the least popular president-elect in history. At a mere 37%, his approval rating is almost 20 points less than Obama's.

Sad.

Monday, January 16, 2017

What Are You Doing For Others?

































(1963, Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr., Sermon: Three Dimensions of a Complete Life, Start Page 67, Quote Page 72, Published by Harper & Row, New York. (Verified on paper))

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Supporting Our New Presdient

As I listened to the testimony of Donald Trump's nominees for his cabinet this week, it struck me how opposite they are in terms of policy from the man that is hiring them. Trump tweeted that he likes people that disagree with him and challenge his ideas. Well, Mr. Future President, that's going to be me as well.

There are many liberals out there who are hiding their heads in the sand and pretending this isn't going to be real. Others have started support groups and the like on social media. Hey, whatever folks need. Me? I don't need any of that because, while I think the next four years are going to be a disaster, we still have to figure out a way to work together and here's the main reason why.

Russia has carried out the best propaganda campaign and psi-op in the history of the world. They have installed a man who they have dirt on in the White House. Donald Trump is going to start off, anyway, as their pawn. The Russians have also successfully used conservatives, especially right wing bloggers and commenters, as conduits in their propaganda campaign. They knew full well that these folks hated liberals more than anything and would easily allow their irrational feelings consume them to the point of voting for a man who is immensely unqualified to be president on a myriad of levels.

Yet, the Russians also knew that our country would be pissed about this. They knew that if they were successful, we'd be split and angry at each other. Considering they are already going to erode our power in the world with what they have done so far, why help them anymore?

I'm not saying we have to support everything that Trump does. Nor am I saying we can't be critical. What I am saying is that we can't give up and hide. We have to hold him and the GOP in Congress accountable. There are still many good people on both sides of the aisle that are going to fight hard for our country's place in the world. Let's help them do it!

The Russians are counting on us being fractured. Let's dispel that shit right now. One of the best things about this county is that we evolve out of our disagreements and thrive on our antagonism towards one another. Let's use that positively by, say, getting more people to the ballot box in 2017 as well as 2018. Pissed of at Trump? Go vote. And then get your representatives on a local, state and federal level to offer something better.

All indications are that Trump's presidency may not even last the whole four years. The investigations into Russian hacking and connections to the Trump campaign will continue. If he is booted out, Mike Pence would at least be a more qualified and experienced leader. Pence definitely has a better temperament and I say this disagreeing with him ideologically in just about every way. Until that time, however, we have to figure out a way to be more united. We have to figure out ways to help out our future president.

The Russians may have won this round but we can't let them win the next.

Saturday, January 14, 2017

Solar Energy is Cheaper!

Image result for solar energyAh, 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.

Friday, January 13, 2017

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?

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

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.

Monday, January 09, 2017

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.

      Sunday, January 08, 2017

      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.

      Saturday, January 07, 2017

      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.

      Thursday, January 05, 2017

      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.

      Monday, January 02, 2017

      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.