Trump Doesn't Even Want the Travel Ban

Another appeals court handed Trump another failure today: 

The key part of the executive order suspended travel from six predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days to give the administration time to conduct a review. If that review can be completed, the justices may decide that the case is or will soon be moot. 

Like the Fourth Circuit, Judge Watson blocked major parts of the revised order on the ground that they violated the Constitution’s ban on a government establishment of religion. Judge Watson wrote that the statements of Mr. Trump and his advisers made clear that his executive order amounted to an attempt to disfavor Muslims.

“A reasonable, objective observer — enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance — would conclude that the executive order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion,” Judge Watson wrote.

Trump's second travel ban was supposed to be temporary, but was sabotaged by Trump's own anti-Muslim statements, causing the ban to be hung up in court for as long as it was supposed to last.

The thing is, Trump's guys had to know this would happen, because the first Muslim ban was smacked down fast and hard, and the rewrite was not substantially different.

Either these people are total idiots (a definite possibility), or they just don't care that the ban will never take effect. My guess is that they never really wanted it.

Trump and his cronies are just putting on a show for the rubes, pretending to be all anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant. Meanwhile Trump is selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, which has been supporting anti-American terrorists for decades, and cutting deals with Middle Eastern countries, opening a golf course in Dubai with his name on it just a month after his inauguration. And then Trump insulted Qatar, the Middle Eastern country with the largest American military base. (Remember, 9/11 happened because Osama bin Laden was insulted by the presence of American military bases in Saudi Arabia.)

The only apparent purpose of the travel ban is to create a pretext for Trump's continued attacks on the courts. He's rallying support among the Republican base to further undermine the standing of the entire judicial system.

To what end? Is Trump hoping to foment assassination attempts against federal judges in the same way he has sparked attacks on Indian engineers in a Kansas bar and girls on a Portland light rail train? Is Trump purposely sowing chaos and murder? Or is he so oblivious that he has no conception of the damage he is doing to this country?

Trump loves to say that the world is laughing at us -- he's said this literally hundreds of times.

But the truth is, they're laughing at Trump. They think he's a coarse, bumbling buffoon. The British don't even want Trump in their country.

Every day it becomes clearer that Trump isn't the president, he's a comic book villain -- the clown prince of the United States. In the comics Superman's Lex Luthor was elected president, but in this reality show world we got stuck with Batman's Joker.

No, the rest of the world isn't laughing at the United States -- they're shaking their heads in sorrow and disbelief that the people of the United States were conned by an incompetent racist, sexist provocateur who doesn't even want the job of running the country.

Putin's Seal

I used to really like Jesse Ventura. He started off as an OK governor, for the most part. But he ended up like all those other loud and rebellious libertarians out there...not knowing what the fuck he was doing. They can bitch and bitch but they don't know how to actually solve any problems.

So, it's not surprising to me that he now works for RT. After all, his ideology fits perfectly with the audience they have captured-angry, old white people who hate both parties and are all too willing to be co-opted by Russian intelligence.

What happened to these folks? Is there hatred for liberals so great that they let it blind them from what is happening?

Trump's Pick For FBI Works For Law Firm that Represents Russian Oil Interests

USA Today has a piece up regarding Trump's pick to run the FBI, Christopher Wray. Check out this part.

The most troubling issue that Wray may face is the fact that his law firm — King & Spalding — represents Rosneft and Gazprom, two of Russia’s largest state-controlled oil companies. 

Rosneft was prominently mentioned in the now infamous 35-page dossier prepared by former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele. The dossier claims that the CEO of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, offered candidate Donald Trump, through Trump’s campaign advisor Carter Page, a 19% stake in the company in exchange for lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia. The dossier claims that the offer was made in July while Page was in Moscow.

Troubling indeed. Here are my questions:

Why did Trump pick him?

Did he work for Rosneft and Gazprom while his firm represented both of these entities? If so, how?

Wray has a lot to answer if he is going to become Trumps pick for the FBI.

Follow the Lawyers...

You ever see one of those movies where the cops catch one of the little fish in a criminal conspiracy and stuff him in an interrogation room? He's the foot soldier who killed an FBI agent on orders from the big bad because he wouldn't stop the investigation. 

The cops are badgering the guy to make a deal, and are starting to make some headway when all of a sudden the lieutenant walks in and stops the interrogation, saying, "Your lawyer is here."

And the foot soldiers says, "But I don't have a lawyer." And the lieutenant says, "Well, you do now."

We find out that the lawyer was hired by the big bad who ordered the hit. This lawyer isn't really representing the foot soldier. He's representing the big bad, making sure that everyone in the conspiracy stays on the same page, that the story is consistent and that no one turns on anyone else.

The same scenario is happening in the Trump-Russia investigation. The lawyer's name is Marc Kasowitz, and he represents Donald Trump and his Russian co-conspirators:

Marc E. Kasowitz’s clients include Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to President Vladimir Putin and has done business with Trump’s former campaign manager. Kasowitz also represents Sberbank, Russia’s largest state-owned bank, U.S. court records show.

Other juicy details:

In 2008, Forbes magazine listed Deripaska as the ninth-richest man in the world. In 2006, the United States revoked his visa to enter the country, citing possible ties to organized crime. He has denied those links, claiming the allegations are part of an effort to smear him.

Kasowitz represents Sberbank in a 2016 lawsuit that is still in its preliminary stages. An owner of a Russian granite-mining business accuses the bank of conspiring with competitors to dismantle his company and seize its assets. The bank has not responded in court filings.

Sberbank was one of the sponsors of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow produced by Trump, who owned the competition. The deputy head of the bank at the time was Sergey Gorkov, who met with [Jared] Kushner in December. Gorkov, a graduate of the academy of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic successor of the former Soviet KGB intelligence bureau, was named to head VEB in February 2016.

It's not clear who the big bad is in this movie. Is it Deripaska, the mob boss? Is it Gorkov, the banker? Is it Putin, the puppet master behind it all?

In all these scenarios Trump is the bumbling foot soldier who was caught red-handed murdering the FBI agent on the trail of the conspiracy.

In the movies, when it becomes clear that the lawyer is just setting up the foot soldier to take the fall, the fall guy gets his own lawyer and rats on the big bad in exchange for a lesser sentence. It rarely works out well for the foot soldier, who usually winds up with a shiv in the back while awaiting trial.

The Russians meddled in the US election to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming president, to sow chaos in American politics and to weaken this country. They have succeeded in all their goals.

Now Trump is under investigation, waiting to see if there's going to be an impeachment trial. He's scared out of his tiny mind, wondering who's holding the shiv and when they'll strike.

Republicans in congress, take note: do you want to be added to the list of the Trump's co-conspirators, or help get justice for the FBI agent?

Meanwhile...

Comey A Go Go

My first reaction to James Comey's testimony yesterday was not the remarks themselves but the reaction to them from various media.

CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post and most of the regular news media looked at the entirety of his testimony and gave fairly honest reporting. The right wing media (and President Trump) all cried vindication which I found to be quite at odds with reality. They also accused Comey of lying so I don't understand how Trump was vindicated if Comey was lying. How can it be both? The right wing media also went on about Hillary's emails and leakers which entirely avoids the core issue: Trump and his people colluding with the Russians.

There were no major revelations yesterday. Comey said what everyone thought he would say. The investigation with a special prosecutor (Robert Mueller) will continue and that's a good thing. Trump is not going to be able to avoid what's coming next. Honestly, I'm less worried about him these days because he's so fucking stupid. Clearly, he is his own worst enemy.

What concerns me is his legion of followers who now have all become willing receptacles of Russian propaganda. Here's a clue, assholes. Just because a link on your social media feed looks all hot and stuff with it's political porno words like "mainstream media" and "smug liberal elite" doesn't mean you should pay attention to it. They are trying to fucking brainwash you, morons. Ignore it!

Oh, and if you are offended by me calling you an asshole or a moron, you can take your precious snowflake attitude and juxtapose it with your dear leader. He won an election by doing the exact same thing.

Telling it like it is!

Entitled Consevatives

Conservatives think that liberals have the corner market on entitlement. They whine and foam at the mouth about how liberals, especially the ones on college campuses, are massively entitled, need their safe spaces and want to protest everything.

Yet, this recent piece in the Times shows that climate deniers on the right are the absolute worst when it comes to entitlement. Check this out.

When the teacher, James Sutter, ascribed the recent warming of the Earth to heat-trapping gases released by burning fossil fuels like the coal her father had once mined, she asserted that it could be a result of other, natural causes.

When he described the flooding, droughts and fierce storms that scientists predict within the century if such carbon emissions are not sharply reduced, she challenged him to prove it. “Scientists are wrong all the time,” she said with a shrug, echoing those celebrating President Trump’s announcement last week that the United States would wit“It’s not about opinions,” he told her. “It’s about the evidence.”

“It’s like you can’t disagree with a scientist or you’re ‘denying science,”’ she sniffed to her friends.

Gwen, 17, could not put her finger on why she found Mr. Sutter, whose biology class she had enjoyed, suddenly so insufferable. Mr. Sutter, sensing that his facts and figures were not helping, was at a loss. And the day she grew so agitated by a documentary he was showing that she bolted out of the school left them both shaken.hdraw from the Paris climate accord.

When Mr. Sutter lamented that information about climate change had been removed from the White House website after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, she rolled her eyes.

“It’s his website,” she said.

What an entitled baby! I'm hearing information I don't like.....wah!!!!! Seriously, how is this any different from the folks that whine on campus about hearing words they don't like or that offend them. Like most climate deniers, they are in eternal, adolescent rebellion mode. Oh well...

At least some of the folks in the class recognize reality and changed their minds.

Trump Is Losing . . . Our Allies

The United States, after being the only superpower in the world for almost 30 years, is quickly losing influence around the world. All because Donald Trump is a stupid dickhead trying to impress stupid dickheads in the United States.

Trump attended a NATO meeting last month and refused to endorse the core tenet of the organization: the pledge that if one member state is attacked, all member states will come to its defense.

Trump has insulted Germany, our ally for over 70 years, over and over again. As a result, Chancellor Angel Merkel recently said that it's time for Europe to takes its fate into its own hands -- a clear rejection of Trump and the United States.

Trump has insulted the French, our ally since, well, before we were even a country, by pulling out of the Paris climate treaty and claiming that he was elected to represent Pittsburgh, not Paris. Yes, we know they both start with P, but alliteration won't help Trump: the citizens of Pittsburgh voted for Hillary Clinton by a landslide of 75%.

Trump's rejection of the climate accord has the effect of handing over our dominance in world affairs to the Chinese.

Trump has insulted the South Koreans by rushing to install a missile defense system before the newly elected president, Moon Jae-in, was in office. Moon has now suspended the installation of the missile system, and is talking about doing an environmental review to delay it even further.

Trump thinks he's protecting South Korea (and the American troops stationed there) from North Korean missile attacks, but all Trump is doing is driving South Korea into the arms of China.

Trump has insulted England, again and again. Most recently it was in the person of Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, whom Trump insulted in his typical mendacious fashion after seven Londoners were murdered by terrorists.

The UK is having an election tomorrow, and Theresa May, the conservative pro-Brexit prime minister, was a shoo-in just a month ago. But now the polls are neck-and-neck, in part because May is perceived as a Trump puppet who will never criticize the boorish American.

The United States used to be the most reliable and stable country in the world. Now we're run by a childish nutjob who makes Kim Jong-un look like an elder statesman.

Don't believe me? Just watch Trump's Twitter feed, where he undermines himself and his own administration's agenda every time he lays his fat fingers on his phone.

And that statement must be true because it used alliteration three times instead of just two!

Save Your Anger for Someone Other Than Bill Maher

Everyone is piling on Bill Maher for saying that word on live TV last week. But it shouldn't be all that surprising. He used to be on a show called "Politically Incorrect," which was canceled when Maher argued that the 9/11 hijackers weren't cowards because they were in the planes when they crashed.

Saying that word was stupid and insensitive and inexcusable, and he shouldn't have said it. He's admitted this himself in an apology, though people are blasting him because of an op-ed he wrote saying that such apologies are meaningless precisely because the offense is inexcusable.

That word has been used by whites for centuries in the most offensive way possible: to deny the very humanity of people who were abducted from their homelands and forced into slavery, treated like animals and worse.

Yet that word has gained currency in countless hip-hop songs. It is sometimes used almost as a term of endearment in some exchanges among African Americans.

Which makes some whites really angry. "Why do they get to use that word among themselves, and why can't I?" they moan.

It's a difference of quality: when African Americans use it, it can be self-deprecating, and almost humorous in certain contexts -- but not all contexts. When whites use it against blacks, it is always an insult, even if it's intended as a jest.

Hearing a white person say that word pours salt in an open wound that has festered for more than four centuries.

Which brings us back to Bill Maher. He was attempting to use that word as a self-deprecating joke. He was intending to insult himself, not black people: he's a wimpy New Yorker who hates the outdoors and always stays inside.

A lot of white people in the audience thought it was funny too. But descendants of slaves didn't get a chuckle out of it, though they probably grimaced in a sorrowful sort of smile that people do when they see someone who should know better do something very stupid.

However, there's different in quality between what Maher did and Klansman are doing when they use that word. When whites use it against African Americans it they're committing verbal homicide. Maher's use was merely verbal manslaughter. The victim is just as dead, but the penalty for the infraction is different.

People should instead direct their outrage at the Orangutan from New York who ran an election campaign that emboldened racists around the country, instead of at the comedian who has been fighting the good fight against that clown in the White House for more than a decade.

Bill Whittle Wordy Squirts Some Tired Old Shit

Bill Whittle is a hero to many in the right wing blogger sphere and now that he's officially a commentator for NRA TV, he can officially order his big boy pants. Yet Media Matters points out that he's resurrecting some very old and familiar lines about race.

During a 2016 appearance on libertarian-turned-“alt-right”-commentator Stefan Molyneux’s webshow, Whittle revealed his acceptance of theories commonly called “academic” or “scientific” racism that tie together IQ scores, race, and crime. He also positively cited a white nationalist to claim people in inner cities “don't have access to cognition.” 

 In the February 12 broadcast, which was released with the title “Why Liberals Are Wrong About Inequality,” Molyneux premised his discussion with Whittle with claims that in terms of average IQ scores, Ashkenazi Jews “clock in at about 115” and “after the Jews come the East Asians, right, the Koreans, the Chinese, the Japanese, and so on. They clock in at 105, 106, but very good on visual-spacial skills and very, very fast reaction times, which is another way that they measure intelligence. Caucasians come in at about 100 and then below that are Hispanics, clocking in at around 90, and then American blacks, clocking in at around 85 -- partly because they have 20 percent European mixture in their gene pool -- and then sub-Saharan Africans, clocking in at around 70, which is obviously very tragic, but this is the reality of what's happened. And slightly below that are the aboriginals in Australia, clocking in around 67 or whatever.”

Wow. Hey, right wing blogger and commenter dudes, hitch your wagon to this star. He's a winner!

Why They Win And We Lose

Leading From Way Behind

Putin Admits Russians Hacked US Election

It looks like the investigation into Russian hacking of the US election is starting to uncover solid evidence. Vladimir Putin has basically admitted the hacking:

Shifting from his previous blanket denials, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia suggested on Thursday that “patriotically minded” private Russian hackers could have been involved in cyberattacks last year that meddled in the United States presidential election.

Putin ultimately said similar things about patriotic Russians fighting in Crimea, after denying that there were any Russian troops there. But Russian troops were constantly fighting in Crimea, indiscriminately killing civilians -- including those from the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Great Britain:

A Dutch-led investigation has concluded that the powerful surface-to-air missile system used to shoot down a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine two years ago, killing all 298 on board, was trucked in from Russia at the request of Russian-backed separatists and returned to Russia the same night.

And how does Trump respond to Putin's admission of hacking? The Donald is going to let the Russians reopen their den of spies:

The Trump administration is moving toward handing back to Russia two diplomatic compounds, near New York City and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, that its officials were ejected from in late December as punishment for Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

President Barack Obama said Dec. 29 that the compounds were being “used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes” and gave Russia 24 hours to vacate them. Separately, Obama expelled from the United States what he said were 35 Russian “intelligence operatives.”

This is particularly disturbing in light of this news:

In the throes of the 2016 campaign, the FBI found itself with an escalating problem: Russian diplomats, whose travel was supposed to be tracked by the State Department, were going missing. The diplomats, widely assumed to be intelligence operatives, would eventually turn up in odd places, often in middle-of-nowhere USA.

One was found on a beach, nowhere near where he was supposed to be. In one particularly bizarre case, relayed by a U.S. intelligence official, another turned up wandering around in the middle of the desert. Interestingly, both seemed to be lingering where underground fiber-optic cables tend to run.

Yes, it appears that the Russians are not satisfied with sabotaging our elections via the Internet, they appear to be planning to sabotage our Internet hardware infrastructure as well.

Trump keeps claiming that he's not colluding with the Russians. But every time Vladimir Putin says "bend over" Trump asks "how far?"

Whining Wonder Woman Wankers

After a couple of theaters announced they were going to have women-only screenings the new Wonder Woman film, a flock of insecure little bitches had to whine about it. 

One childish wanker apparently wrote a letter to the mayor of Austin threatening to boycott the city if they didn't host a men-only event:

"I hope every man will boycott Austin and do what he can to diminish Austin and to cause damage to the city's image. The theater that pandered to the sexism typical of women will, I hope, regret it's decision. The notion of a woman hero is a fine example of women's eagerness to accept the appearance of achievement without actual achievement. Women learn from an early age to value make-up, that it's OK to pretend that you are greater than you actually are. Women pretend they do not know that only men serve in combat because they are content to have an easier ride. Women gladly accept gold medals at the Olympics for coming in 10th and competing only against the second class of athletes. Name something invented by a woman! Achievements by the second rate gender pale in comparison to virtually everything great in human history was accomplished by men, not women. If Austin does not host a men only counter event, I will never visit Austin and will welcome it's deterioration. And I will not forget that Austin is best known for Charles Whitman. Does Austin stand for gender equality or for kissing up to women? Don't bother to respond. I already know the answer. I do not hate women. I hate their rampant hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of the 'women's movement.' Women do not want gender equality; they want more for women. Don't bother to respond because I am sure your cowardice will generate nothing worth reading.

"Richard A. Ameduri"

The mayor gamely responded by alerting the writer to the fact that his email had been hacked. And then he proceeded to list several things that women did invent, including a system for torpedo control that actress Hedy Lamarr patented in 1941, which just happened to become the basis of spread-spectrum communications systems like wi-fi and cell-phone service.  But that's not important.

The mayor didn't mention Marie Curie, but she won the Nobel Prize in physics for her work on radiation in 1903 and then went on to win another Nobel in chemistry in 1911, after the death of her husband, becoming the first person of any gender to win Nobels in two different disciplines. And those "10th place" women Olympic martial artists would wipe the floor with Mr. Ameduri.

Speaking of the martial arts, Gal Gadot, the star of Wonder Woman, was a combat trainer in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), where she served for two years. Why? Because Israel requires women to serve two years in the military -- though, yes, Israeli women get an easy ride: the men have to serve for three years. Except for ultra-Orthodox conservative Haredi men, who don't have to serve in the military, or even work at all. But their wives do.

In any case, a private theater chain is hosting this special one-shot screening. All the other showings of the film will be to mixed gender audiences. The mayor can't demand the theater schedule a men-only screening any more than the mayor of Houston can demand that the Astros hire a female pitcher.

On average men make 25% more than women doing the same job. Men constitute 95% of all Fortune 500 CEOs. Men like Donald Trump think they can just do whatever the hell they want with women's bodies. 47% of the workforce is women, yet women still do the vast majority of housework, cooking and child care. Men are not the oppressed victims of estrogen-stoked rapine and plunder.

But back to the movie. The guys whining about it are oblivious: the film is about an island full of Amazons. That means that it only has women on it. The whole conceit of the movie is that there's a place where there are only women, with no petty little wankers constantly spewing misogynistic hatred about how mean women are to them.

Screening this film to a female audience is a tip of the hat to its basic conceit.

If these guys want to go see a movie with just men, they can go to any theater showing gay porn.

Oh, wait. That would mean...

Joining Syria and Nicaragua

President Trump officially announced today that the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords. This agreement was signed on to by every other country in the world except Syria and Nicaragua. What great company to be in! Actually, considering who we have as president and how he is trying real hard to turn this country into a banana republic, I guess we fit right in.

Trump is a total fucking moron. Whether you "believe" in climate change or not, by pulling out of this agreement, we are essentially handing the keys to the renewable energy market over to the Chinese. We are saying to the world that we don't want to get into the business of renewable energy because our leader and his followers want to win a blog argument about global warming (hint: they already lost.)

We had 8 years of a great president moving us forward in the world. Now, we have a reality show buffoon whose only conviction is vanity moving us backwards. Worse, his followers are likely cheering this right now in one giant mouth foam at how they are sticking it to those smug liberal elites who think they know so much. Again, why is our country having to pay for their personal problems in life?

If we truly want US values in the world, we can't allow countries like China to lead on anything. This withdrawal means they get to run the table on us in countries that will be hit the hardest on climate change. China, not us, will be allowed to instill their values on these countries.

What a fucking disaster.

The US has a Trade Deficit Because We're Rich -- At Least Some of Us

Donald Trump has a serious Twitter problem. No, I'm not talking about "covfefe". (Trump seriously needs to get more sleep.)

I'm talking about him using Twitter to sabotage our relationship with our NATO allies.

“We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military,” an angry Mr. Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday morning. “Very bad for U.S. This will change.”

Has Vladimir Putin stolen Trump's Twitter password, or is Trump just following the orders Sergei Kislyak gave him when the Russian ambassador visited the White House?

No, it's not that: Trump is just being dense again. As has been pointed out in numerous places, German companies build a lot of their cars in the United States:

German companies employ roughly 700,000 people in the United States. Carmakers like BMW and Mercedes-Benz have huge American assembly plants, which export vehicles to China and Latin America. BMW’s factory in Spartanburg, S.C., is the largest single exporter, by dollar value, in the American automotive industry. 

Yeah, the trade deficit can be a problem. But the real reason that we have a trade deficit with most (though not all) of the rest of the world is that the United States is the richest and most successful country in the world.

Being the richest country in the world means we have the most disposable wealth. In 2015 the average American salary was higher than every other country in the world except Luxembourg, which also has a trade deficit.

Luxembourg's banking sector is a huge part of its economy, just as finance is in the United States and Switzerland, which has the third highest average salary. Banks don't build a lot of cars.

Since we're so rich, other countries step up to sell us things. We don't have to buy those things, but a lot of rich Americans like to buy expensive things from foreign countries. Things like Italian marble:

Trump himself, after riding down an escalator through the tower’s six-story atrium, announced his candidacy from the sky-lit basement level, perched on a temporary platform rigged over the basin of a sixty-foot waterfall that—along with twenty-four hundred tons of rose-colored Italian Breccia Pernice marble—is the atrium’s signature feature.

Donald Trump bought 2400 tons of rock from Italy. Wasn't American rock good enough for Trump?

Trump bitches about German manufacturers who have invested billions of dollars in the United States to build factories in states like South Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama. Japanese car manufacturers have plants in Ohio, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Indiana. Korean companies have factories in Georgia and Alabama.

Not only does Donald Trump import Italian marble, Trump and his offspring import foreign workers using the H-2A program. Two months ago this happened:

Trump Vineyard Estates, owned by Eric Trump, is seeking permission to hire 29 foreign workers through the federal H-2A visa program to cultivate grapes at its Virginia winery, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. The immigration program lets agricultural employees temporarily hire foreign workers to do the jobs Americans don't want or can't do.

This is an ongoing thing:

This isn't the first time a Trump business has looked to hire outside the U.S. Trump's older daughter and close adviser, Ivanka Trump, has also shown a preference for foreign workers. Her jewelry line applied for five guest worker visas to hire foreigners from 2008 and 2013 at salaries from $41,370 to $45,000, a Huffington Post investigation found last year.

And while Trump promised on the campaign trail to create new jobs for American workers and vowed to come down hard on trade deals that benefit foreign labor markets, companies owned by the New York business mogul requested 1,100 foreign worker visas between 2000 and the time he entered the presidential race in 2015, according to a Reuters analysis of Department of Labor data. Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, sought the most foreign workers, with applications for 787 workers such as maids, cooks and servers since 2006 under a H-2B visa program that tends to benefit Mexicans.

"You cannot get help during the season. The season goes from like October to March. It's almost impossible to get help," Trump explained at one point during his campaign. "And part of the reason you can't get American people is they want full time jobs."

Maybe Trump could find Americans who would work part time if he would pay them enough money, instead of hiring Mexicans and Romanians.

The United States used to be the biggest exporter in the world. Our workers got great salaries. But then the rest of the world started to catch up to us. American CEOs started building factories in countries with lower wages.

People like Donald Trump shipped manufacturing off to China:

[V]isitors to the Trump Store in the lobby of the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City, or to the displays of Trump clothing at Macy's in New York's Herald Square, would be hard-pressed to find much labeled "Made in the U.S.A."

At the same time Trump was speaking in New Hampshire, his Trump Store was contributing to the growth of Chinese manufacturing, arguably at the expense of American workers, selling $80 Trump-branded cotton sweaters and $70 Trump-branded warm-up tops, all made in China. Also available with the made in China tag: golf hats stamped with the Trump crest and stuffed animals.

Trump claims he had to do this because China was manipulating their currency. Nonsense. Trump can't find an American supplier for an $80 cotton sweater? That's 10 cents worth of raw materials and a dollar worth of labor, even in America -- sweaters are made on automated looms these days. The only reason that $20 sweater cost $80 was because it said Trump on it.

Like all the other corporate shills, Trump just wants more profit for himself. He could have put more money in the pockets of working Americans, but he wanted more. So he sold America out.

Trump Literally Unfit to Be President

At the G7 conference in Italy Donald Trump proved he was physically unfit to be president:

President Trump chose to ride in a golf cart while his foreign counterparts took a walk through Taormina, Sicily, on Saturday during the Group of Seven summit.

The Times of London reported the six other world leaders — from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan — walked 700 yards to take a group photo at a piazza in a hilltop town. The U.S. leader decided to wait until he could get a golf cart.

Trump is so fat and lazy that he cannot walk 700 yards up a hill. He is the most infirm president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had polio. What's Donald "Two Scoops" Trump's excuse? Gluttony?

Barack Obama played basketball while president. George W. Bush used to run but switched to mountain biking when his knees gave out. Donald Trump plays golf, but has to use a golf cart between holes.

Being 70 years old is no excuse. I know 60-, 70- and 80-year-old women who rode bicycles 332 miles in six days from St. Paul, MN, to the Canadian border, going 60 and 70 miles some days, through cold and driving rain. Trump would be dead like a beached whale on the side of the road after one day.

Trump used to play sports in high school but gave up physical activity because he holds this idiotic idea that exercise uses up the body's "finite" energy. He might have more stamina if he actually got enough sleep every night, instead of deluding himself that he only needs four hours. And what's he doing when he should be sleeping? Watching TV. And tapping out Twitter rants that make him look like a moron.

Research has shown over and over that physical activity -- even modest exercise such as walking -- increases mental acuity and improves memory. It's no wonder that the weakest and laziest president in decades is also the dumbest and least coherent. Trump makes W. look like a genius.

Republicans are celebrating the victory of a man who bodyslammed a reporter for asking a health care question. This happened right in front of Fox News reporters. Yet Greg Gianforte, the congressman-elect from Montana, was elected anyway, even though he was charged with assault.

Republicans used to pretend to be the party of moral values: truth, faithfulness, chastity, honor. But in a heartbeat they threw all that away and elected a lying, cheating, womanizing sexual predator and admitted fraud. Yes, fraud: settling the Trump University lawsuit for $25 million was an explicit admission of fraud, no matter how much Trump whines it ain't so.

This is how low Republicans have sunk. Their president ripped off thousands of people who were trying to make a better life for themselves. Their politicians beat up reporters. They sucker-punch protesters at rallies. Their politicians brag about how rough and tough they are, how violent they'll be, how much they'll kill and torture their enemies. How they can grab women's vaginas.

Republicans are constantly railing against political correctness and demand they have the right to call it like it is. Okay, then: this is how it is.

Donald Trump is a weak, old, pansy-assed, fat slug who can't even walk a third of a mile up a hill because he's afraid he'll stroke out or keel over from a heart attack. How in hell is he going to survive four years of the most stressful job on the planet?

Trump likes to brag about grabbing pussy, but he is a pussy.

Honoring the Fallen

Today, our nation honors those who have fallen in our country's history. It's especially important to be there for our veterans, many of whom have lost fellow sisters and brothers over the years. Make some time today to support them.

And remember...

Autocracy!

Refugees Welcome Back!

Flying very low under the radar, news came this week that the US State Department, overseen by Donald Trump, is now doubling the amount of refugees allowed in the country. It looks like we will be back up to the Obama-era levels of 1500 refugees allowed in a week.

I'm wondering how this sits with Trump's supporters...