Trump's Law Firm Was Named Russia Law of the Year in 2016 (!)

Trump's lawyers, Morgan Lewis, just published a letter saying that Trump doesn't have any (well, hardly any -- well, at least $112 million worth) connections to Russia or Russians.

But just last May, that law firm, Morgan Lewis, was just named Russia Law of the Year. Here's the link to the press release announcing that award on Trump's law firm's website, which, insanely is still up as of this moment.

Man, are these people incompetent or what?

Trump Just Admitted a Impeachable Offense

Since James Comey was fired there's been a plethora of excuses floating by the Trump administration.

Trump surrogates at first pretended that Comey was fired for his unprofessional treatment of Hillary Clinton during the election -- which, I agree, was grounds for dismissal -- but Comey had been making up for it by pursuing the Russia investigation. Then they pretended that it was because the FBI was in disarray, and that FBI employees had lost faith in Comey.

But I had other suspicions: was it because in photos the 6'8" Comey makes Trump look like a fat midget? Or because Comey testified before Congress that the idea that he got Trump elected made him nauseous?

Then, in his interview with Lester Holt Donald Trump, Trump said he fired Comey because he was a "showboat" and a "grandstander." (If that's a firing offense, then that would be more than enough grounds for Congress to impeach Trump.)

But then Trump admitted to an impeachable offense: he said he fired Jim Comey because the FBI director was investigating him.

Later on Thursday, NBC aired its full interview with Trump. In it, Trump offered yet another reason for firing Comey: The FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. (Sanders had hinted at this earlier in the day, saying the White House believed that by removing Comey, it took steps to make sure the FBI’s Russia investigation would “come to its conclusion with integrity.”)

Trump: “When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won. … So everybody was thinking, they should have won the election. This was an excuse for having lost an election.”

Trump literally said he "decided to just do it" -- fire Comey -- because of "this Russia thing."

Now we find out that Trump had dinner with Comey and demanded he pledge an oath of fealty to Trump:

As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trump’s rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him.

Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not “reliable” in the conventional political sense. 

But actually, pledging loyalty to Rump [sorry, that was a typo, but I just had to let it stand] would be the real grounds for firing Comey: the FBI director had taken an oath to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Getting down on bended knee and kissing Trump's rump ring would be a violation of that oath, because the Russians and Trump are foreign and domestic enemies of the US Constitution.

Now Trump is launching preemptive strikes against Comey, tweeting that there might be tapes of that dinner conversation. He's also tweeting that he might eliminate press conferences, basically saying that his incompetent surrogates can't ever get anything right.

How can they? Trump is constantly changing his story. Is it because he's a compulsive liar? Because he's a pathological narcissist who has to be the center of attention, no matter how terrible his own behavior paints him? Or because his brain is so addled by Alzheimer's that he just can't remember what the hell he's doing?

Sadly, it's all of these in equal measure.

Lead Poisoning and Guns

If you've wondered why gun nuts are ... the way they are, there's an actual scientific reason: they're suffering from lead poisoning.

A review of lead exposure at shooting ranges [...] published last month found that nearly all participants in the 36 studies had blood lead levels above the 5 microgram ceiling recommended by the CDC; some had levels higher than 40. "You got to understand, the more bullets you shoot, the higher your blood lead level. The more visits you take to the range, then the higher your blood lead level."

Lead dust hangs in the air at shooting ranges, ejected from the ejection port and the muzzle when the bullet is scored by the rifling of the barrel -- the lands and grooves that make ballistics matching of bullets to guns possible.

Interestingly, high levels of lead (from leaded gasoline) led to an epidemic of violent crime in the 1960s. There's a direct correlation between lead levels and violent behavior.

Lead poisoning is not an insignificant problem, and it doesn't just affect shooters:

A 1-year-old boy in Connecticut was found to have high blood lead levels at a routine doctor's visit. There were no lead paint or pipes in the child's home. The exposure was traced to his father's job as a maintenance worker at an indoor shooting range; the father cared for his son after work in lead-contaminated clothing, according to a 2015 report from the state public health department.

What does lead do to you?

Many effects from lead can be subtle or nonspecific, says Mark Laidlaw, an environmental health scientist at RMIT University in Australia. "Memory and concentration problems, headache, abdominal pain, mood disorders – they can be attributed to a number of things unrelated to lead," he says. "You can have one of these health effects, but the shooters might not realize these are associated with their shooting. They just don't know they're being lead poisoned."

At levels slightly higher than 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, people may begin suffering spontaneous abortions or kidney dysfunction, according to the CDC. As the volume of lead in the body increases, the effects become more severe.

"At levels of 10 or less, there's definitely evidence of increased incidence of tremor. Some are more cognitive effects," says Catherine Beaucham, an industrial hygienist at NIOSH and author of a 2014 report that found that most people with elevated blood levels were exposed from working at recreational firing ranges. "With acute lead poisoning, you can get wrist drop, nerve problems, abdominal pain. If it gets high enough, you can get a coma and death."

 How much lead exposure is safe?

Currently, the OSHA standards for lead exposure decree that employees must stop working if they have a blood lead level of 60 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, and workers can return to the job if their blood lead level drops below 40 for two consecutive tests. But adverse effects on cardiovascular health, brain function and kidney function have been connected to blood lead levels as low as 5. "There's no amount of lead in your blood that's safe," Page says. 

This puts a whole new spin on that old gangster joke, "He had a bad case of lead poisoning."

Did Trump Bring a Russian Spy into the Oval Office on Orders of Vladimir Putin?

When Trump met with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, the American press was banned. But a photographer from ITAR-TASS, the official propaganda arm of the Russian Federation, was allowed into the oval office.

At a time of strain between the White House and the media over coverage of the new administration, reporters raised questions Wednesday as to why a photographer from the Russian media, but not the U.S. press, was apparently allowed into an Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Russian officials.

The issue surfaced after photos of the meeting, including Trump shaking hands with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and controversial Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, appeared in the Russian media.

Trump took the meeting on the orders of Vladimir Putin:

The chummy White House visit—photos of the president yukking it up with Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak were released by the Russian Foreign Ministry since no U.S. press was allowed to cover the visit—had been one of Putin’s asks in his recent phone call with Trump, and indeed the White House acknowledged this to me later Wednesday. “He chose to receive him because Putin asked him to,” a White House spokesman said of Trump’s Lavrov meeting. “Putin did specifically ask on the call when they last talked.”

Why did Trump agree to this? And on all days, the day after he fired Jim Comey in retribution for refusing to drop the investigation into Trump's Russian connections?

We all know that Trump pretends to hate all the media, except those fawning sexual predators at Fox News. He watches cable news incessantly to see what people are saying about him. So why was a TASS photographer there and no one from Fox?

There is now rampant speculation about whether the photographer was a spy who planted a recording device in the oval office.

For those of you who aren't Russian speakers, TASS is the anglicized abbreviation for Телеграфное Агентство Советского Союза, or Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union. Yes, the Russian propaganda agency still uses its Cold War name!

If Trump weren't the president, the FBI would never issue him a security clearance. With this dork move and the Flynn appointment, it is clear that the CIA should stop briefing Trump on matters of national security.

Especially in the oval office.

Follow the Money

The big news today is that Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey in an attempt to thwart the investigation into Trump's Russia connections, literally the day before Trump met with his Russian handlers, Sergei Kislyak and Sergei Lavrov.

It really seems like Trump fired Comey -- who had just requested additional resources to investigate Trump -- on orders from the Sergeis, and then met with them to receive further instruction. It's like an episode of The Americans.

But that isn't the really big news. That's the fact that the Senate committee investigating Trump's Russian connections has requested financial information from Treasury:

Senate Russia investigators have sent a request to the Treasury Department's criminal investigation division for any information related to President Donald Trump, his top officials and his campaign aides, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee told CNN Tuesday.

"We've made a request, to FinCEN in the Treasury Department, to make sure, not just for example vis-a-vis the President, but just overall our effort to try to follow the intel no matter where it leads," Sen. Mark Warner told CNN. "You get materials that show if there have been, what level of financial ties between, I mean some of the stuff, some of the Trump-related officials, Trump campaign-related officials and other officials and where those dollars flow -- not necessarily from Russia."

Back in the Watergate days the phrase "follow the money" took on mythic significance. Nixon was taken down because Woodward and Bernstein followed the money.

It turns out that Deep Throat didn't actually use that phrase -- that was poetic license for the movie. But the Senate investigation could well be the beginning of the end of the road for Trump's presidency.

Trump has a long history of taking lots of money from Russian oligarchs. It now seems quite probable that Trump has been laundering money for Russian oligarchs for decades, taking payments for various pieces of real estate that far exceed their actual value -- like the mansion in Florida Trump sold to the Potash King, Dmitri Rybolovlev.

This is the real reason Trump has categorically refused to release his tax returns -- there's probably evidence of the quid pro quos that will reveal Trump's money laundering for the Russians.

It would normally take a very long time to tease this information out from the hundreds of shell corporations Trump created to obscure his shenanigans. But it seems likely that the investigation will find something sooner rather than later: Trump paid a $10 million fine in 2015 for not instituting money-laundering controls at his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City.

What a coincidence that the man who says he never settles settled for a $10 million fine just before starting his campaign for president!

Now that investigators know that the Russians are likely the people whose money Trump's casino laundered, we may have a whole bunch of congressional hearings into a president's criminal activities, making it seem like the summer of '73 all over again.

Flynn Was Just Following the Trump Business Plan

There's a lot of analysis going on in light of Sally Yates' testimony before Congress about how Michael Flynn lied about taking money from the Russians, opening himself up to blackmail by Russian spies.

Flynn also failed to report acting as a foreign agent -- a serious crime for a former high-ranking military official -- when he took half a million dollars from the Turks during Trump's presidential campaign. The Turks hoped to use Flynn to influence Trump to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania who has been fighting against Recep Erdoğan's creeping dictatorship.

The question is, why did Trump wait almost three weeks after finding out that Flynn had taken money from the Russians and then lied about it? After Yates told Trump's White House counsel, Donald McGahn, that Flynn had committed a crime by taking Russian money and lying about it, Trump fired Yates instead of Flynn.

The Times has a timeline of the affair. Here's a snippet:

A day after Mr. Flynn was fired, Mr. Spicer spent most of his daily briefing responding to questions about the 18-day delay. He described the warning from Ms. Yates as a “heads-up” and repeatedly said that the information she provided had been quickly relayed to the president.

“Immediately after the Department of Justice notified the White House counsel of the situation, the White House counsel briefed the president and a small group of his senior advisers.”

But Mr. Spicer added that Mr. Trump had doubts, believing Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong and ordering a review of the situation.

Get that? Trump knew that Flynn had lied to him and the vice president about taking Russian money, but Trump didn't think there was anything wrong with that. Why?

Because that's what Trump has done his entire life: taking people's money and lying.

That's the Trump business plan in a nutshell, from his bankrupt casinos to the infamous Trump University.

Donald Trump is so ineffably and irreversibly corrupt that he can't understand the basic concept of public officials being compromised by outside entanglements with foreign agents.

This is one of the many reasons Trump is not fit to be be president. Because Trump has so many foreign entanglements -- real estate in the Philippines, golf courses in the Middle East, hotels in Panama and Ireland -- he is open to extortion from the leaders of those countries, who could threaten his businesses unless he makes foreign policy decisions in their favor.

Any decision Trump makes as president will always be tainted by the possibility that he is feathering his own nest or bending to pressure by a foreigner who has compromised him, rather than working the best interests of the American people.

This is only one reason why so many people think that Trump's impeachment is not a question of if, but when.

The Republican Zombie Lie about Health Care Just Won't Die

Republican Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho achieved notoriety recently when he repeated the Republican zombie lie that not having health care won't kill anyone:

At the May 5, 2017, event, questioners asked the congressman about the Republicans’ vote the previous day on a major health care overhaul that would roll back many aspects of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, including limits on expanding Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor.

"You are mandating people on Medicaid accept dying," one audience member said.

To which Labrador responded, "No no, you know that line is so indefensible. Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care."

Labrador isn't the first to say this. For years Republicans have fought against universal health care by saying that since emergency rooms can't turn people away, so no one will ever die because they didn't have health care.

For example, George Bush said this in 2007 and Mitt Romney said it in 2012.

But Labrador and the Republicans are the ones using the indefensible line.

Let's say you have a brain tumor, AIDS, leukemia, lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, clogged arteries, diabetes, hepatitis C, tuberculosis, or one of dozens of other diseases. The emergency room won't admit you if you have a lump in your breast, or you have pain urinating, or shortness of breath, or pounding headaches. Those aren't life-threatening circumstances.

They're going to turn you away, even if -- especially if -- they know these symptoms may be indicative of a deadly disease: as soon as they're sure you won't keel over dead in the waiting room, they're going to prescribe you an antibiotic or a pain killer (charging you $500 or $1,000), then tell you to see your regular doctor and send you on your way.

By the time these diseases will kill you and the emergency room has to take you, it will be far too late: your breast cancer will have metastasized into your lymph nodes. The brain tumor will be inoperable. Your arteries will be completely blocked and the heart attack you suffer will be instantly fatal, or worse, turn you into a mindless vegetable. Your diabetes will have blinded you and your leg will have become gangrenous and require amputation.

These diseases are hard enough to treat when people with health care get them. But if you don't catch these problems early on, going to the emergency room will be too late: the hospital will waste hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to save a patient who is just going to die. But if they had been treated properly years before, given the right drugs and advice, the problems would be far cheaper to treat and the people wouldn't die.

Then there's pregnancy: there are a zillion things that go go wrong with a human fetus. Many of these problems can be rectified if they are discovered early enough, but are fatal if ignored until the child is carried to term. Yet self-styled "pro-life" Republicans want to eliminate maternity care from the list of things that health insurance policies must cover.

The thing is, it's not just the people who lack health care that are in danger. If you're infected with hepatitis C, HIV or tuberculosis, you can infect other people. People without health care are likely to be in low-paying jobs -- fast-food workers, maids, child-care workers, teacher's aids, dish washers, cashiers -- where they're in constant contact with the public or their food. Not to mention things like measles epidemics.

It's in everyone's interest to have all people living in this country be well.

Republicans are always so nostalgic for the good old days and hot for the Founding Fathers, they should remember Ben Franklin's admonition: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Where Is Thy Enemy?

With Republicans controlling all branches of government, I have to wonder who the enemy is of the Gun Cult. Consider that they operate best when they have someone to foam at the mouth about. They also don't sit still so well being the paranoid lot they are. What now?

Worse for them is this.

Now that he's president, though, gun sales have flattened, and gun company stocks have dropped. Sturm Ruger (RGR) stock has dropped 8% since Election Day, while American Outdoor Brands (AOBC), which owns Smith & Wesson, has plunged 23%. 

Remington, a New York gun manufacturer, and SilencerCo, a silencer maker in Utah, have laid off workers. 

Background checks plunged after November, then showed signs of recovery in February and March, but they are still far behind last year, when the campaign was in full swing.

Is the gun industry falling apart without an enemy? Facts say that it is:)

Kushners Selling Green Cards in China

Jared Kushner's company -- to which he and Ivanka still have close ties -- is selling American residency permits to investors in China:

The Kushner Companies’ China roadshow, promoting $500,000 investments in New Jersey real estate as the path to a residency card in the United States, moved to Shanghai on Sunday after a similar pitch on Saturday in Beijing.

Trump's big pitch for the election was that the United States was being sold out to the Chinese, to the Mexicans, to the Canadians, to ISIS. He won largely on the strength of the idea that foreigners are taking over this country.

And here's Jared Kushner's company, literally selling out pieces of the United States to wealthy Chinese investors so they can come live in the United States.

It's a huge conflict of interest. Trump and his cronies say it isn't, but the Chinese who are buying into it think otherwise:

But for Bi Ting, who attended the event, part of the appeal was political: Jared Kushner is the son-in-law of — and a powerful adviser to — President Trump. Virtually unheard-of in China just months ago, he is now known here as a deeply influential figure in American politics. ... “The Trump relationship is an extra point for me,” Ms. Bi said, adding that she and her husband had not decided whether to invest.

Trump himself has been profiting for decades by selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate to Russian oligarchs and their children who wish to shelter their ill-gotten gains in American real estate.

Trump is on the warpath kicking out immigrants who do the grunt work that Americans simply refuse to do -- clean our hotel rooms, cook our food, pick our tomatoes, and chop up chickens in slaughterhouses. But he and is cronies are using their positions of power to bring wealthy foreigners in to buy up the country.

Trump has conned middle America into thinking that this billionaire-on-paper is one of them. But he's really just another one of these stateless international oligarchs who have no loyalty to any country but themselves.

Complete Cognitive Disconnect

The father of my son's baseball coach is a die hard Trump fan. We had a lot of great discussions last year and this year looks to top that. What amazes me the most about Coach Dad (that's what the kids call him...which is awesome) is how little regard for reality he has, especially when he starts spouting
virulent and irrational wordy squirts about communism.

With May Day just passed, he was going on about how we all dodged a bullet with Bernie Sanders. I informed him that Sanders was a democratic socialist, not a communist. His response?

"Same difference."

I then proceeded to inform him that many countries in Europe (Denmark. Finland. Netherlands. Sweden. Norway. Ireland.) and Canada were largely democratic socialist in nature. I wondered why all of them never had this problem.

He just laughed and had no response.

I continued to press him on Trump's connection to Russia. He said it was "fake news." Finally, I asked him if he saw the irony in supporting a Russian puppet on the one hand while foaming at the mouth and lying about Senator Sanders. He told me stop watching CNN.

My first thought after this exchange was how prevalent his views were. Was it fringe? The best place to check that was Kevin Baker's site, The Smallest Minority. Not surprisingly, I found this.

I intend to repeat this post each May 1 that I continue to run this blog. This is the seventh time I have put it up. Since Bernie Sanders made a credible run for the Presidency last year, obviously we've not learned a fucking thing from history.

Seriously. What a fucking moron. Bernie Sanders=Communist. Donald Trump=Victim of Fake News. This, despite EVERY intelligence agency stating that Russia interfered in our election and tipped the scales, via propaganda, to Trump. The same fucking intelligence agencies that Kevin believes were accurate on WMDs in Iraq. Now, of course, it's all some sort of liberal plot...

But Kevin and his fellow intransigent adolescents are invariably in the minority. What about the rest of the country? Here's an interesting graphic.

Most Americans don't hold the same rosy view of Russia that our current president does.

Interestingly, all the right wing news sites offer breathless examples of how Americans are more approving of communism these days. Move outside of that nonsense (while noting that they are so irrational that they think that socialism and communism are the same thing) and we see that most Americans overwhelmingly like capitalism more, even when compared to mere socialism.

So, what do we do with the Coach Dads and Kevins of the world? Their views are so incredibly driven by irrationality and the need to be right all the time that they aren't thinking clearly. People that don't think clearly make bad decisions that those of us who are rational have to then clean up.

Medication? Maybe. A padded cell? Getting there. Many more of us registered to vote and running in every election no matter how local? That's the ticket. In fact, let's do that to such a degree that we end up with more people who want drastically alter our nation's gun laws.

They only win because more of them turn out to vote.

Dedicated To Liberal Purists Everywhere....

The Sivil War

Andrew Jackson Was Not Alive During The Civil War

Andrew Jackson died in 1845, 16 years before the Civil War started. This is a fact. Yet, Donald Donald Trump on Monday once again defied the history books, this time claiming that Andrew Jackson was “really angry” about the Civil War and puzzled why a deal wasn’t cut to avoid the war altogether. Let's set aside yet another historical mistake by our president and look at the real problem.

Trump's base is as dumb as he is about history. They make up whatever shit suits their mouth foaming and pass it off as fact. Call them on it and you are a smug elite liberal who needs to be taught a lesson. Most hypocritically, you aren't even allowed to call them a dumb ass...just as they or their dear leader would say so bluntly. Only they can "tell it like it is." Because when librals do it they are all mean and stuff!!

Such precious little snowflakes...no wonder they get all pissed off about PC shit and people being offended all the time. It's really themselves they are angry at!

So, how many mistakes does this make? Let's see...Frederick Douglas is still alive...Abraham Lincoln was not a Republican...and a plaque that is dedicated to a Civil War battle that never happened.

Wow...

Shed A Little Sunlight

The cartoon above illustrates a major problem with liberals and progressives today. Similar to the fake news of Drudge, Zerohedge and other right wing blogs, the left on college campuses are going about this all wrong. Don't pretend that reality isn't reality. If you want to shut down people like...well...our current president, give them a microphone and let them speak. The court of public opinion usually sorts things out. How is Milo Yiannopoulis doing these days? Hee hee....

Take your protests and turn that energy into registered voters who vote every single year. Rather than marching, become a candidate in a purple district or, even better, a red one. Sit down and talk with the locals. You'll be surprised to find that they agree with you on things like the minimum wage and inequality.

Practice some interest convergence.

Change Anxiety

Get 'Er Done

Over the next day or two, much will be written about President Trump's first 100 days in office. Many will say that he hasn't done anything really and they would be correct. But that doesn't matter to the GOP voter. Why?

Neil Gorsuch.

If there was ever a campaign that was single issue, 2016 was it. Conservatives held their nose and voted for a guy that is repugnant for one simple reason. They wanted a conservative, not a liberal, on SCOTUS and they got it. Anything else he does can be explained away and/or stymied (e.g. health care repeal/replace). Trump "got 'er done"

What Democrats need to understand is that even though Republicans are a dying party, they are a dying party that votes. They don't stay home because of single issues like Supreme Court nominees. So, this begs the question...what turns out Democrats? Solid candidates with populist streaks and connections to ordinary citizens. This is why Bill Clinton and Barack Obama won by such large margins.

Get people out to vote. Get local candidates to run. It's just that simple.

The Airlines Think They Own Your Ass

After several weeks of catastrophically bad PR, United Airlines has announced a new policy for passengers who are kicked off overbooked flights:

United Airlines says it will raise the limit — to $10,000 — on payments to customers who give up seats on oversold flights and will increase training for employees as it deals with fallout from the video of a passenger being violently dragged from his seat.

United is also vowing to reduce, but not eliminate, overbooking — the selling of more tickets than there are seats on the plane.

This announcement is totally worthless: it doesn't mean anyone will ever get that money. It's just a press announcement. There's no regulation or law that requires this payment. It'll only happen if they get caught beating up another passenger.

Since there's no FAA requirement, United is completely free to change this policy at any time. And they will change it, once the hysteria is over. In three years, unless Congress takes action, United will go right back to treating their customers like punching bags.

In the "bad old days" when airlines were regulated by the federal government, I flew fairly infrequently, maybe a few times a year. I flew first class like once, on an upgrade. Back then it was just coach and first class. But even in coach, if an airline couldn't get me on my scheduled flight, they would put me on a plane home, any plane, even if they had to use another airline.

Back then, if a plane was half empty, I could change seats and spread out anywhere I liked in coach. These days if you change seats United will kick you off the plane.

Airlines view passengers not just as cattle, but as chattle: they think they own their customers. With their frequent flyer programs they think they have people locked in to their airline, and they can do whatever the hell they want to customers because they control their miles.

But at the same time, frequent flyer miles have become basically worthless. You can only use them for certain flights at certain times, and they force you to stay over a Saturday. There are only a small number of frequent-flyer seats available on any flight. Unless you book six months or a year in advance, you just can't use miles to fly for free.

The only thing miles are good for is "upgrades," which means spending your miles to get better treatment from the airline -- picking your seat ahead of time, checking your baggage, bringing a carry-on, getting an aisle seat.

All those things were just free back in the "bad old days" of airline regulation. They didn't cost the airline anything extra, so they never thought to charge for them.

Now the airlines are trying to extort every nickel and dime from their customers, by cramming them with seats size for scrawny six-year-olds, splitting up couples traveling together, obnoxious boarding procedures and all manner of intentional psychological torture designed to get you to pony up extra cash.

It's not just the airlines who are in on the scam. Credit card companies and hotels try to lock you in by giving you oodles of worthless airline miles.

It's everywhere: pretty much every pharmacy, grocery store, restaurant, and online shop (I'm talking about you, Amazon) has some kind of loyalty program to coerce you into buying from them.

And it's not just the sale they care about. They're collecting data on you: your phone number, your email, your habits, your preferences, when you shop, where you shop. And then they sell that data.

You ever wonder how these spammers get your email address and phone number so fast, even though you only gave it out to friends and companies you thought you could trust?

Financial advisors lobbied the Trump administration to eliminate the regulation that required they act in the best interests of the people who are paying them money for their advice. Donald Trump proudly touts the executive order that lets these guys rip off their customers as an accomplishment!

Pharmaceutical companies are the worst: charging outrageous prices for epi-pens and other off-patent drugs that patients will die without. They knowingly hook people on opioids to cash in on drug addicts.

Corporate America thinks they own you.

The crazy thing is, people who voted for Trump thought that he was out to help the little guy, when it has always been crystal clear that he's just another one of these corporate weasels out to screw little guys, like the hundreds of small businesses that Trump has repeatedly stiffed.

Americans should stop thinking that if they only bend over, the big boys will let them into first class. This is a democracy. Everyone should be treated fairly and decently, regardless of how much money they have.

Yugeist Ever?

Donald Trump's Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said today that the tax plan put forward by his boss will "the biggest tax cut and largest tax reform in history of this country." My question is this....

Who is going to pay for it?

Suddenly all talk of deficits and debt has mysteriously vanished...at least until the CBO scores Trump's plan. I'm predicting that his tax plan won't pass the House or the Senate will end up much in the same way as ACA repeal.

Making His Mark

Here's a pretty sobering piece from Politico regarding Trump's climate policies. I think that this is the one area where he pissed me off the most. It's the whole "fuck you, we can do what we want and you can't make us do nothing!" adolescent attitude of him and his followers that is potentially going to add billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

Unless, of course, the free market stops them.

Not wanting smug liberal elites and smart people telling you what to do isn't a policy. Neither is pretending that this stuff isn't real.

Grow the fuck up and let's deal with this challenge.

Not Dead Yet

The Monitor has a great piece up about the very much premature obituaries of populism. Trump has fallen in line with reality on a few things but that should not mean that the Democrats can go back to more of the same ignorance. It's still clear what they have to do.

First, get more people to vote in the districts that matter.

Second, get new candidates to run for office from those districts. These candidates should deeply understand the district in which they are running and be the most local possible.

Take all the energy from protests and marches and put them into these two action items. Victory will then come quickly.