The New Indentured Servitude

For the last 10-15 years Americans have been slowly drifting into a new form of indentured servitude. Wages have been flat, especially since the Great Recession. Many people are stuck in jobs that they don't really like because they're afraid that can't find something better, or because they'll lose their health care coverage, or because they're 50+ and nobody will hire someone at that age at the same salary.

And it's only getting worse. These days companies seem to think they own their employees. Here are three examples of the new indentured servitude.

"Unlimited" vacation: My wife used to work at Honeywell, the company that made the round thermostat that almost every house in the country had on their walls. She recently went to a party for a friend who was taking early retirement.

He was quitting because of the "unlimited" vacation policy the division was instituting for non-union employees. Under this policy, you can ostensibly take as much vacation as you like, as long as your manager says it's okay.

The problem is, if your manager thinks he needs you, you have zero vacation. You don't accrue any vacation. At all. Your time off is completely at the whim of your manager.

This guy's parents were in poor health and he needed to go out of state to help them. But because this division has been laying off workers for years and not replacing anyone, the only person who could work on a critical project for the military was this one guy. So they told him he couldn't take time off to help his sick parents.

High-performing  personnel are penalized for their competence, while less competent employees can take time off because they're not essential. It's completely backwards.

So he quit. He can afford to, because he's got a large pension coming. But most people can't do that.

Non-compete contracts: 20 years I wrote software for a company that got bought out by a competitor. The buyers were jerks and they were losing in the market place, but they had big backers. The investors who financed the company I worked for wanted to cash out and sold the company out from under the founders, who were good friends of mine. My friends went off to form another company in a related field that didn't interest me. A year later -- when their non-compete contracts expired -- they expanded back into the same business. They asked me to work for them. I said yes.

But my current employer said they'd sue if I went to work with my friends. I had signed a non-compete contract with my employer when they were getting ready to sell (which I didn't know was happening), long after I'd been hired. We should have guessed what was going on. The contract was one-sided: I couldn't work for anyone in the same field, but they offered me nothing in return. Executive non-competes always offer some kind of golden parachute to make up for not being unable to work.

This kind of contract -- where they prevent you from working but don't offer compensation -- is not enforceable in my state. But the new company didn't want to risk litigating it, so they said they'd hire me when my non-compete ran out.

So I quit my job and cooled my heels for several months. My friends hired me as promised. Incredibly, on my first day my new boss asked me if I would sign a non-compete agreement. I declined of course, and with a smile he said, "I can understand that. I just had to ask."

I worked for them for several years, and we became the leading company in the industry, edging out the guys who bought us out. But eventually my new company got bought out by a third company (they were fine) and then that company got bought out by a giant conglomerate headquartered in Britain. That company had a policy of not hiring Americans in favor of software contractors from sweatshops in India.

So I quit. I was tired of corporate nonsense. I could afford to. But most people can't do that.

You can argue that companies whose business depends on intellectual properties such as software should have a right to protect their IP. But they shouldn't be able to prevent employees from earning a living in their field of expertise.

After all, the right to work is the battle cry of conservatives. They use it to hammer uninons: when aren't stopping companies from preventing Americans from working? States like Minnesota and California protect the rights of workers to earn a living by banning non-competes that don't offer compensation (though as my case shows, the threat of litigation often hinders getting a new job).

But conservative states like Idaho give employees the shaft: they allow companies to enforce non-competes, making it all but impossible for workers to get jobs in their fields if they quit. Worse, companies with no intellectual property to protect, such as Jimmy John's, the sandwich maker, have forced employees to sign non-compete contracts. Jimmy John's was sued in New York and Illinois, where such contracts have since been nixed.

But Jimmy John's can prevent delivery drivers in Idaho from working for Domino's because they might have some secret knowledge that would damage Jimmy John's business model if Domino's got wind of it.

It's starting to get creepy: A lot of people are getting their pets chipped so they can be quickly identified if they get lost. A small RFID chip is implanted under the skin, which can be read by a scanner.

Now a company in Wisconsin is chipping their employees. They are literally treating their people like animals. There is a myriad of health and privacy concerns. The company pooh-poohs these:

Todd Westby, the chief executive of Three Square, emphasized that the chip’s capabilities were limited. “All it is is an RFID chip reader,” he said. “It’s not a GPS tracking device. It’s a passive device and can only give data when data’s requested.”

“Nobody can track you with it,” Mr. Westby added. “Your cellphone does 100 times more reporting of data than does an RFID chip.”

This guy is flat-out lying. Anyone can scan that RFID chip with a reader. Any time you walk into an office, or a store, or drive past a police station, you can be scanned. It doesn't constantly broadcast your location like a cell phone, but it can have a range of 20 or 30 feet, depending on the size of the antenna. And unlike your cell phone or your access card, you can't leave it at home.

The CEO say the RFID chip is "encrypted," but this is nonsense. Anyone can Google "spoofing RFID chips" for specific directions on how to hack these systems. This gives the company a totally false sense of security: implanted chips are passive, which means that they just spit out a number when they get pinged by a scanner. Since can read that number, with the right software and hardware they can clone that RFID tag and spit out that same number, impersonating that employee.

Why would a company even think of doing this? At my last job I had an access card with an RFID chip in it. Why isn't an access card sufficient? Why does this company think it has to literally get under their employees' skins?

Do they think they own their employees, in the same way a dog owner owns his pet? Do they think their employees are too stupid to remember their access cards, or don't they trust them to not lend them to others, or do they want to track how long they spend on the toilet?

Companies are increasingly firing employees for things not related to job performance. Companies have fired smokers for smoking at home. Companies have fired employees for using medical marijuana legally. Companies try to force their employees to lose weight, exercise and do other things for their health (so that they can get a better deal from the health insurance company).

Conservatives think that the government is evil when it tries to force Americans to do things that are "good for them." Why are they silent when multinational corporations do it?

It would be insult to African Americans to say that corporations are treating Americans like slaves. But it is completely apt to compare modern employees to the indentured servants who toiled in the fields of Colonial America alongside the slaves.

Indentured servants, at least, had the prospect of freedom after their term of servitude ended. Modern Americans only have the bleak prospect of greater corporate power further eroding their freedoms under the rubric of "productivity" and "corporate profitability."

A Better Deal

The Democrats rolled out their new brand yesterday in Berryville, Virginia in the hopes of wooing back those voters that flipped from Obama to Trump and cost Hillary Clinton the election. They are calling it "A Better Deal." I like the message. It's one most US citizens support. My issue is not with the policy but with the bearers of that message. Schumer is OK. Warren is fine but getting long in the tooth. Pelosi is a disaster and has to go.

Where are all the young Democrats out there? Heck, they don't even have to be young. Where is my age cohort, the Gen Xers? The Democrats keep rolling out these fossils to push policies that are going to affect millions of young people. Barack Obama was a very effective communicator because he was YOUNGER than previous nominees. I realize this can sound ageist but do we want to win or do we want to lose?

We Literally Had A War About This

Keep it up, Donald. Keep it up.

After Jeff Sessions lied about meetings with Russians on his security clearance forms, in his FBI interviews and in a Senate hearing -- all in service to Donald Trump and his election -- Trump threw him under the bus the other day, blasting Sessions for following the rule of law.

And today Trump tweeted this while out playing golf (again!):

It's very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President.

What a whining little baby. Trump is lucky Republicans aren't holding impeachment hearings this very moment.

With every passing day there's another major revelation about Trump and his cronies caught lying about their dealings with Russia, or some other skullduggery.

When are Republicans going to learn that he will never have their backs? He is going to shaft every last one of them in the end. With a man like him loyalty only flows up.

He thinks that he's the one who carried the Republicans? They created the base, kept it enthralled with anti-abortion rhetoric and pseudo-racist innuendo for decades: Trump didn't originate the tactics that gave him the win, he just picked up a fumble in the end zone. The Republican Party existed long before Trump was born, and it will exist long after he is gone -- unless they let him destroy it.

This incompetent, immature, whining dope has done nothing constructive in six months as president, even though he has total control over all three branches of government. His only accomplishments have been to play golf, sign pointless executive orders, play golf, pass a few useless bills revoking some regulations, play golf, go to Europe to escape all the negative publicity he himself constantly generates, play golf, pull one stupid stunt after another that makes him look guilty (fire Comey, meet with Russians in the White House, secret meeting with Putin), play golf, and bomb a Syrian airbase that was empty because Trump told the Russians he was going to attack it and play golf.

Trump thinks "his voters" are going to make "disloyal Republicans" pay for not doing enough to "protect their president."

Trump is not acting like their president. He's acting like a five-year-old having a temper tantrum because someone else broke open the pinata at his birthday party.

Trump has to remember that "his voters" are extremely fickle. They're tuned out now, ignoring all the dirt coming out on him, dismissing it as fake news. But if Trump makes one wrong move, they'll turn on him like a bitch, as Trump loves to say, so fast it'll make his head spin. His voters love to hate the elites. In the end, Trump is just another wealthy Russian-loving New York elitist, who scorns the religious Southern Republicans who make up the bulk of the "base" as ignorant white trash. When Trump is finally caught voicing his real opinion of "the base" the Republican Party will dump him for Pence, there will be so much head-spinning...

The congressmen Trump keeps insulting are the people who can impeach him, or doesn't Trump get that? Most of them never wanted him to be president, and he never helped the Republican Party before he staged a hostile takeover of it last summer. He's never shown them any loyalty, so why should they show him any? In the end the Never Trump Republicans and will be praised as heroes who were never fooled by Trump's bragging lies.

Keep this up, Donald. The same Republicans you keep bitching about will be swinging bats at that big fat orange pinata in the White House.

Beyond Paid Leave

Ethiopia's Drought Crisis

7 Absurd Arguments in Support of Climate Change Denial

“I can’t even remember why I opposed it,”

The Times has a great piece up about how the citizens of this country have finally embraced the fact that the government should provide health care to its people. My favorite part?

“I can’t even remember why I opposed it,” said Patrick Murphy, who owns Bagel Barrel, on a quaint and bustling street near Mr. Brahin’s law office here in Doylestown. 

He thought Democrats “jammed it down our throats,” and like Mr. Brahin, he worried about the growing deficit. But, he said, he has provided insurance for his own dozen or so employees since 1993. “Everybody needs some sort of health insurance,” 

Mr. Murphy said. “They’re trying to repeal Obamacare but they don’t have anything in place.”

Perhaps Mr. Murphy engaged the rational part of his brain and stop listening to conservative propaganda.

Time for Tillerson to Resign

Washington is abuzz with rumors that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going to resign, after Donald Trump criticized Sessions for recusing himself in the Russia investigation. In essence, Trump said, "I would never have hired Sessions if I had known he had a smidgeon of honesty. I thought he was rotten to the core!"

That's not to say that Sessions is a nice guy: his plan to ramp up civil forfeiture, allowing cops to literally steal money, cars and property from anyone they merely accuse of drug crimes without any kind of due process is as corrupt as any scam the Russian oligarchs are running.

But it's Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who should resign immediately (via the New York Times):

The Treasury Department has fined Exxon Mobil $2 million for violating sanctions that the United States imposed on Russia in 2014 while Rex W. Tillerson, now the secretary of state, was chief executive of the oil company.

“Exxon Mobil demonstrated reckless disregard for U.S. sanctions requirements,” the Treasury said in a report announcing the penalty.

According to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, Exxon Mobil violated the sanctions when the presidents of its American subsidiaries did business with an individual whose assets were blocked. They did so by signing legal documents related to oil and gas projects in Russia with Igor Sechin, the president of Rosneft OAO, and an another person.

Exxon did not voluntarily disclose the signings [emphasis added], according to the Treasury, which called the infractions “an egregious case.” 

Exxon has been secretly conspiring with the Russians to avoid sanctions for years. It is clear that collusion with Russia did not begin with the election: like Tillerson, Trump has been at it for years, making deals with Russian oligarchs, mobsters, and murderers who have been ripping the Russian people off in much the same way Trump is trying to rip off the American people.

This also explains why Trump made such a weird choice for secretary of state: the only qualification Trump was looking for was a deep and corrupt connection to Russia.

It's no wonder that Trump is upset that special prosecutor Robert Mueller might be looking into Trump's finances: Trump and his entire administration are up to their eyeballs in dirty Russian money.

Trump's Brand of Loyalty

Showing what a great guy he is, Donald Trump blasted his attorney general for recusing himself on matters dealing with Russia:

“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” he added. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the president.”

Trump is blaming Sessions for problems Trump himself created: why didn't Trump and his army of lawyers ask Sessions about his contacts with Russia before they nominated him? I'm sure they knew Sessions had talked to the Russians, and they didn't care. Because they never thought it was a problem. They still don't. This is all on Trump.

Trump's son, son-in-law and campaign manager were the ones who met with a Russian lawyer who represented a Russian charged with money laundering, a Russian spy and a representative for a Russian oligarch close to Putin. The same oligarch Trump was in bed with at the Miss Universe contest in Moscow.

Trump is the one who proudly stated on national television that he fired James Comey because of the Russia thing: he literally confessed to Lester Holt that he was obstructing the Russia investigation. In this latest interview Trump also accused Comey of using the Golden Shower dossier as some kind of leverage over the president. This is patent nonsense: the FBI got the dossier more than eight months ago and its contents were widely known to the public before the election, as this article from Oct. 31, 2016, shows.

Trump is the one held a private meeting attended only by Putin, Trump and Putin's translator. Doesn't Trump understand how incredibly bad this makes him look? It looks like he's receiving instructions from his KGB handler, getting rid of his translator so that there are no American witnesses.

Trump has no record of what was said (I'm sure Putin does -- it's one more bit of leverage over Trump), but Trump thinks they talked about adoption. "Adoption" being Russian code for removing sanctions on wealthy oligarchs who want to launder money in the United States through Trump real estate "investments."

This is all on Trump. If he hadn't fired Comey there wouldn't be a special investigator because there wouldn't be an investigation into his obstruction of justice. If Trump hadn't constantly sucked up to Putin and Russia for the last 30 years he wouldn't be in this predicament. If Trump had been an honest man and had taught his son ethical and moral behavior, Junior would have called the FBI when he got an email from a sketchy Brit with the subject line "Russia - Clinton - private and confidential," instead of taking the meeting and then announcing to the world that he had tried to collude with the Russians to win the election for his dad.

Trump's dishonesty, greed and lies are the cause of his problems. Not Jeff Sessions.

Republicans, take note of the kind of loyalty Donald Trump has to the Republican Party: Trump is throwing Sessions under the bus. Trump tried to blackmail fellow Republicans into supporting the suckiest health care bill ever conceived, a bill that even most Republican voters hate, by threatening to primary them. Trump ran attack ads against a fellow Republican, Senator Dean Heller of Nevada to force him to support the bill. Trump even accused Ted Cruz's dad of assassinating Kennedy.

Trump's crass behavior, sexual harassment, lies, backstabbing and disloyalty have been known this for years. Yet Republicans still support this turkey? Why would anyone ever make any kind of deal with this guy, or even more incredibly, why would anyone ever agree to work for this jerk?

When are Republicans going to realize that Trump is lower than the brown scum you find on the inside of a toilet in a crack house?

Crickets From The Blue Lives Matter Crowd

Last Saturday night, two Minneapolis police officers responded to a 911 call about domestic violence in the Fulton neighborhood. Several minutes later, Justine Damond was dead...killed b;y a gunshot from one of the officers. My first reaction when I heard the details of this case was this: here we go again. It's yet another example of  "act first, think later and justify with fear" that we've seen far too often from police in the last few years.

Of course, this case is a little different. Why? The victim looks like this.

And the cop looked like this...

...which explains why we are hearing the sound of fucking crickets from the Blue Lives Matter brigade. It's these same folks that are probably wondering why Trump hasn't deported Officer Noor yet. Their hypocrisy is sickening.

So, we have another candlelight vigil in a devastated neighborhood, more nonsense from public officials, and shattered family members wondering why the police have so many laws that allow them to do shit like this.

The Cast of Characters is Complete

Because the Trumps never tell the truth, we only now have found out who the eighth person in the meeting Donald Junior took to get dirt on Clinton from Russians spies (via the Washington Post):

An American-based employee of a Russian real estate company took part in a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., bringing to eight the number of known participants at the session that has emerged as a key focus of the investigation of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians.

Ike Kaveladze’s presence was confirmed by Scott Balber, an attorney for Emin and Aras Agalarov, the Russian developers who hosted the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in 2013. Balber said Kaveladze works for the Agalarovs’ company and attended as their representative.

Here's how it shakes out:

Ike Kaveladze: personal representative of Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov, Putin crony.

Rinat Akhmetshin: a former Russian spy, who traffics in information stolen by Russian hackers.

Natalia Veselnitskaya: a Russian lawyer who represented a company called Prevezon that was charged with fraud and money laundering by former US attorney Preet Bharara, who was fired by Trump after initially being asked to stay on. The Prevezon case was settled for a paltry $6 million two days before trial.

Rob Goldstone: publicist for Emin Agalarov and go-between for Trump Junior.
Anatoli Samochornov: a Russian-born American translator, who apparently doesn't like Republicans.

Not at the meeting were Aras and Emin Agalorov: a Russian oligarch and his pop-star son. Trump has a long history of dealings with the Agalarovs, most notably with the Miss Universe contest.

The theory of the crime now looks like this: the Russians promised dirt on Clinton that they had or would obtain from Russian spies/hackers (Akhmetshin's area of expertise). In exchange, the Russians wanted the Magnitsky Act to be repealed (which Veselnitskaya had been working on for years), allowing oligarchs like those charged in the Prevezon case to freely launder their dirty Russian money in American real estate and casinos (things the Trumps know all about).

The subject of adoption came up because Veselnitskaya would have told the Trump campaign a future Trump administration could justify the repeal of the Magnitsky Act as a humanitarian action,  allowing Americans to adopt Russian orphans once more. Putin instituted the adoption ban in retaliation for the Magnitsky Act.

Getting rid of sanctions on Russia was one of Trump's constant themes throughout the 2016 campaign. Trump frequently talked about removing sanctions on Russia, and recognizing Russia's annexation of Crimea. Why? Trump voters didn't give a damn about Russia, but this was always a top priority for Trump because he has lots of ties to Russian money.

The Trump Justice Department settled the Prevezon case in May, for $6 million even though their own brief claimed the scheme involved $230 million. This was two months after Preet Bharara, who brought the original charges, was fired by Trump. Did this come up in discussions that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had with Sergei Kislyak?

Trump's Justice department claimed the case was too complicated for a jury to understand, and there were no longer any witnesses willing to testify. The main witness, lawyer Nikolai Gorokhov, "fell out a window" in Moscow and nearly died in March. I.e., the Kremlin tried to kill him.

Or was the Prevezon case settled because Trump shell companies were involved with the money laundering? Trump tax forms may answer this question, which is probably why he doesn't want to release them.

Or was the Prevezon case settled for pennies on the dollar because the Russians have dirt on the Trumps and Jeff Sessions?  There is a very real possibility that the entire Trump administration has been compromised by Russia, and vulnerable to Russian blackmail and extortion.

The whole scheme is a classic quid pro quo: the Russians offered to help Trump get elected, and in exchange he would help Russian oligarchs launder money in the United States, quite possibly as "investments" in Trump real estate ventures (something Don Jr. bragged about, saying that he didn't need American banks because he could get money from Russia).
The Trumps now claim that "anybody" would have met with the Russians to get opposition research, but even before the meeting it was self-evident that this "research" was the fruit of Russian espionage and therefore illegal and likely treasonous. 

Trump Junior claims he was ignorant and naive and didn't know what the hell he was doing (his father calls this 39-year-old man a "boy"). For once Junior is telling the truth: he is ignorant, naive and doesn't know what he's doing. But he knew he was dealing with Russian spies and criminals, because he had been doing business with these criminals for years.

Some experts think that this has little to do with the election, and everything to do with good old-fashioned corruption and money laundering.

Here's hoping that Mueller can get the straight dope on all this before witnesses like Goldstone, Akhmetshin, Samachornov and Veselnitskaya start falling out of windows.

Neutered!

Well, well, well. It looks ol' Donny Boy isn't quiet the deal maker he made himself out to be. He has officially failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act. What happened to all that draining of the swamp stuff? Looks like the swamp got him.

And it got the GOP as well. Remember back when the Democrats had both chambers and the presidency and they really couldn't get much done (except saving tens of thousands of lives with health care, of course)? I distinctly remember being chided for my party being ineffective. Where is the taunting now?

Even more hilarious is just how popular the ACA is right now (over 50% approve). I guess Nancy Pelosi was right. Once it passed, people saw what was in it, experienced it and turns out, they love it!

The president says he's just going to let the ACA fail. That might be a problem.

Despite doomsday rhetoric, Obamacare markets are stabilizing

Fake News!!

Good Words

She’s the most royally screwed-over person in the history of American politics. She should be in the White House, right now. And she’d have been good. Maybe not great. They wouldn’t allow that. We’d be having impeachment hearings underway already, I assure you, over far smaller matters than the things we know the Trump family has done. 

That would be rough, but I know this much: She wouldn’t be suddenly discovering that health care is complicated, she wouldn’t have her son-in-law on the White House staff and in charge of Middle East peace, and she wouldn’t be an international embarrassment. The free nations of the world wouldn’t be trying to find ways to work around the United States of America.



---Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast. 

Cognitive Dissonance of ETSIK

Me: Hey, did you read the emails from Trump Jr?

Every Trump Supporter I Know (ETSIK): No. It's all a witch hunt by the liberal elites and the media. It's all lies.

Me: But it was his email with Russian contacts. Here's part of it.

---On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:36 AM, Rob Goldstone wrote:
Good morning
Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.
What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?
I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.
Best
Rob Goldstone

On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:53, Donald Trump Jr. wrote:
Thanks Rob I appreciate that. I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?
Best,
Don
Sent from my iPhone--

ETSIK: Witch hunt. Liberal media. Don't believe it. Hillary is probably behind it. Fake news. Deep state nazism.

Welcome to the United States in 2017.

Seriously? Now Cops are Shooting Blonde 40-year-old Women

There's been a lot of outrage over the deaths of black men like Philando Castile who have been shot by police while obeying their commands.

Now two cops in Minneapolis, just a few miles from where Castile was killed, have shot and killed a 40-year-old blonde white woman:

An Australian woman was fatally shot overnight Saturday by Minneapolis police officers who did not have their body cameras turned on, officials said.

The woman, Justine Damond, was shot as the officers were responding to her 911 call of an assault near her home in the suburb of Fulton [Note to the Times: Fulton is not a suburb -- it's an upscale neighborhood of Minneapolis]. Ms. Damond, 40, who is from Sydney and who also went by the name Justine Ruszczyk, was engaged to be married to an American man, according to Australian news media reports.

Police officials said they were looking into the circumstances of the shooting, and why the officers were not using their body cameras.

What the hell? Did they shoot her because they thought she was some dangerous illegal alien, with a suspicious Australian accent?

What is wrong with these cops? And what's wrong with the police department? The killer has been put on paid administrative leave, instead of being fired on the spot.

I know being a cop is dangerous. I know cops are deathly afraid of being shot any time they venture out. That fear is almost completely due to the fact that there are too many guns on the streets, thanks to the NRA and the Republican Party.

This shooting is no more and no less outrageous than the shooting of Castile. It shows what a load of crap the cops are spewing when they try to justify shooting black men. It's clear that cops who shoot innocent civilians are cowering ninny who pull their guns and fire at the slightest thing that spooks them before properly assessing the situation.

This is criminally negligent homicide. Which is also what Castile's killer, Jeronimo Yanez, should have been found guilty of.

Yanez excused the killing by claiming he smelled marijuana smoke and was afraid for his life because Castile was slowly killing a child with second-hand smoke (Yanez really said that!). What excuse will these guys use? "When I saw her hair I thought she was the Atomic Blonde and I would get radiation poisoning!"  "When I heard that Australian accent I immediately thought of Crocodile Dundee and was afraid she had a really big knife! Or maybe a crocodile!"

Can we stop making excuses for bad cops? When they shoot innocent people they are committing crimes. It is the worst possible dereliction of duty for a police officer to kill the person who just called them for help.

Yet this happens all the time: in Seattle, in Indianapolis, in Chicago, and so on. To be fair, cops have also been shot by people who called 911: in Georgia, for example. So, yeah, I get why cops are trigger happy. But that's no god-damned excuse for killing innocent people!

The real problem, again, is that there are too many guns on the street. Police are rightly paranoid that they could be shot by some nut job. But these people are supposed to be trained professionals paid to protect the public, not kill them because their panties get in a bunch.

These killings are not "tragic accidents." They are catastrophically stupid blunders of sheer incompetence. We have got to find a way to train cops to handle these situations and weed out trigger-happy cops who are not up to the job.

But the real questions is why these cops are so trigger happy?

The sheer quantity of guns in the United States has put the entire nation under a pall of fear and paranoia, with the NRA, gun manufacturers and the Republican Party constantly stoking that fear with lies and hatred, all the time pumping more and more guns into our communities. All those guns are making it harder and more dangerous for the competent cops to do their jobs. All these guns do not make us safer -- Castile's gun got him killed.

In the final analysis, Justine died so the NRA could have their toys.

Target. Manipulate. Brainwash.

I wonder how all the right wing bloggers and commenters feel now that the truth has come to light regarding how they were microtargeted by members of the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Congressional and Justice Department investigators are focusing on whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states – areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton, according to several people familiar with the parallel inquiries.

Boom, son!

Also under scrutiny is the question of whether Trump associates or campaign aides had any role in assisting the Russians in publicly releasing thousands of emails, hacked from the accounts of top Democrats, at turning points in the presidential race, mainly through the London-based transparency web site WikiLeaks.

Double boom, son!

I posted this the other day but it's worth repeating. Several times.

A Second Look At Russians Officials

US Intelligence officials are taking a second look at conversations that took place among members of the Russian government in the run up to the 2016 election, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. In some cases, the Russians in the overheard conversations talked about meetings held outside the U.S. involving Russian government officials and Trump business associates or advisers, these people said.

According to the report, it looks like a lot of this began at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant. The players are starting to come out of the woodwork and it's only a matter of time before all the pieces fall into place. The more Trump denies collusion the more he reveals himself to be more of an idiot than I thought he was.

Good Words

Donald Trump is an American who ran for office under a slogan of patriotic pride and love of country. People who love their country do not help rival powers intervene in their country’s elections, even if that intervention might have the lovely side effect of getting them elected.

--Megan McArdle, Bloomberg View

But, hey, as long as those liberals are squirming, who gives a fuck about our country?

Criminals or Morons?

Donald Trump formed a commission formed to investigate "electoral fraud" early in his presidency. Of course, there's no evidence whatsoever that there's any serious amount of in-person voter fraud (of the few cases found most involved Republicans). But Trump says there has to be because he lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.

A couple of weeks ago the commission asked all the states for confidential information on all voters, including names, party affiliation, addresses, birth dates, and even the last four digits of the Social Security number.

This is exactly the information that Russian hackers need to commit identity theft, allowing them to empty out your bank account. Or screw with the voter registration system in the states, preventing Americans from voting in the next election.

Did Jared Kushner want that secret back channel to the Russians so he could send them this data?

The Trump administration's plan for this data was to have the states upload the data to a server and then store it on "someone's" computer in the White House. Apparently, no consideration was made for the security of the data.

Just recently it was discovered that a Republican operative had left voter data for 200 million Americans on an unsecured server. Was he just incompetent, or was this the cyber equivalent of a dead drop for Russian hackers?

Trump's commission insisted they could be trusted to keep the data safe. They then showed exactly how incompetent they are at keeping people's personal details confidential:

The White House on Thursday made public a trove of emails it received from voters offering comment on its Election Integrity Commission. The commission drew widespread criticism when it emerged into public view by asking for personal information, including addresses, partial social security numbers and party affiliation, on every voter in the country.

It further outraged voters by planning to post that information publicly.

Unfortunately for these voters and others who wrote in, the Trump administration did not redact any of their personal information from the emails before releasing them to the public. In some cases, the emails contain not only names, but email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers and places of employment of people worried about such information being made available to the public.

Rule #1: if you want people to trust you, don't do the very thing they're telling you not to do.

Most states -- even the Republican ones -- have refused outright to comply with Trump's dictates, so our data should be safe for now.

But the question is: did these clowns intentionally release these details to get even with their critics, letting the Russians and Republican doxxers know who they should target? Or are they complete idiots, oblivious to the harm they can cause with this kind of information, and especially, how bad this makes them look?

In the Bush administration, it was always a question of whether Bush and his people were lying or incompetent -- about the WMDs, the war in Iraq, Katrina, etc.

But with the Trump administration, the lies are a given. They always lie. Over and over. They never tell the truth. For them truth does not exist: everything they say is just another scam crafted to sell some swamp land on a Florida sinkhole. As Junior's meeting with the Russians shows, their story changes five times in two days, and in the end they will still never tell the truth. Because, in the end, they're covering up intertwined crimes and conspiracies that go back decades.

So now you've gotta ask: is the Trump administration filled with criminals or morons? No -- why choose? Criminal morons it is.

Good News on Cancer

Nearly everyone I know has had their lives adversely affected because of cancer. Today's news about the FDA universally recommending a new treatment that attacks the disease with the bodies own living organisms is amazing and most welcome.

To use the technique, a separate treatment must be created for each patient — their cells removed at an approved medical center, frozen, shipped to a Novartis plant for thawing and processing, frozen again and shipped back to the treatment center. 

A single dose of the resulting product has brought long remissions, and possibly cures, to scores of patients in studies who were facing death because every other treatment had failed. The panel recommended approving the treatment for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia that has resisted treatment, or relapsed, in children and young adults aged 3 to 25.

Good news is hard to come by these days. It points to something I have predicting for years. People are going to start living longer thanks to advances in medical technology and it's going to happen exponentially.

But Her Emails...

Irony 101: a single email may seal Trump's fate

After years of yapping about thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails, it turns out that a single email may tear down the entire Trump administration.

On Saturday the New York Times published an article about a meeting the Trump's son, son-in-law and campaign manager had with a Russian lawyer.

The first excuse Donald Trump Jr. had was that they didn't know who they were meeting and they talked about adoption. Then he said that he had been promised some unspecified dirt on Clinton, but that the Russian lawyer had lied to him and had nothing, and was talking nonsense!

Nonsense? Nonsense like "DNC's emails that criticize Bernie Sanders," "Wikileaks," "Julian Assange," "Guccifer?" perhaps? The same stuff that was leaked a few days later and probably caused millions of Bernie supporters to stay home on election day instead of voting for Clinton?

Now Donnie Jr. said he had gone to the meeting intending to collude with the Russians, but got mad when they punked him and just wanted to talk about letting wealthy Russian fatcats buy up New York real estate again.

Then, finally the truth came out: Donnie Jr. had a Russian friend whose dad is in Putin's inner circle. This guy sent Donnie an email saying that the Russians wanted to help Trump win, and that they had evidence of foreign contributions to the DNC.

That's what convinced Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort to take a meeting with an agent of the Russian government. Of course, there was no collusion between the DNC and the Russians, because the Russians wanted Trump to win. The email, though false, baited the hook and the Trump campaign swallowed it, the line and the sinker.

Now everything makes a lot more sense. The reason Kushner was so intent on getting FBI Director James Comey fired was that he knew this meeting would eventually come to light if Comey kept looking at Kushner's meetings with Russians.

Trump Sr. didn't want his son to go to jail for soliciting in-kind campaign contributions from an agent of the Russian government, so he went along with Comey's firing. Besides, he was almost certainly in the loop -- he would have been pleased to learn that his best friend, Vladimir Putin, wanted to help him win the election.

The interesting thing is that all this information is being leaked directly out of the White House. It looks like Steve Bannon is stabbing Jared Kushner in the back.

Trump Was Right!

Trump Proudly Announces He Will Collude with Russia

During the presidential campaign Donald Trump called for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's email, which has ultimately lead to an investigation of whether his campaign colluded with the Russians to win the election for him.

Always tone deaf, after meeting with Putin at the G-20 Trump proudly announced that he will collude with Russia once again on hacking (calling it "cybersecurity" this time around).

This was met with ridicule in most quarters, many of them Republican:

[Sen. Marco] Rubio suggests that partnering with Putin on cybersecurity would be like partnering with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on a “Chemical Weapons Unit” (Assad is widely believed to have carried out chemical weapons attacks on his own people).

Other Republicans were equally derisive:

When asked for his response on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) chuckled.

“It’s not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, but it’s pretty close,” he said of the cybersecurity proposal.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) similarly scoffed at the suggestion.

“I am sure that Vladimir Putin could be of enormous assistance in that effort ― since he’s doing the hacking,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, equated Putin’s involvement in a joint cybersecurity venture to “letting the fox guard the henhouse.” He tweeted a clip of a fox from a Discovery Channel documentary.

Democrat Adam Schiff tweeted that Americans “might as well just mail our ballots to Moscow.”

After Trump's meeting with Putin Russian media claimed that Putin denied he had interfered with the US election, and that Trump had accepted his denial. Trump's comments afterwards suggested that he accepted the denial, repeating the same sort of weasel words he has since the election ("I think it was Russia, and it could have been other people in other countries.").

Other members of the Trump administration basically said that Russia hacked the election and Trump didn't know what he was talking about.

All in all, Trump's performance at the G-20 was an embarrassment: a video from an Australian reporter illustrated how isolated and clueless the American president was at a meeting that the United States has historically dominated.

Despite his speech in Poland about defending "the West," Trump has completely abdicated America's leadership position in the free world to Germany and France, choosing instead to enroll in the Putin University for Third-World Dictators.

An Excellent Summation of President Trump

Oops! Trump's Guys "Forget" Another Meeting with the Russians

It's a crime to hide meetings with hostile foreign nationals when applying for a security clearance. But Jared Kushner has done it over and over again. This time it was with a Russian lawyer who defends Russia's policy of holding babies hostage:

Two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination last year, his eldest son arranged a meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan with a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin, according to confidential government records described to The New York Times.

The previously unreported meeting was also attended by Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, as well as the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to interviews and the documents, which were outlined by people familiar with them.

While President Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed meetings between his associates and Russians, this episode at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, is the first confirmed private meeting between a Russian national and members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle during the campaign. It is also the first time that his son Donald Trump Jr. is known to have been involved in such a meeting.

The Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, has waged Russia's attack on the Magnitsky Act, passed by Congress after Russian accountant Sergei Magnitsky died (probably murdered) in a Russian prison. Magnitsky had exposed a huge corruption scandal in the Putin administration.

In retaliation for the passage of the Magnitsky Act (which sanctioned Putin's oligarch pals), Russia banned adoptions of Russian orphans by Americans. Yes, Putin is trying to blackmail Americans who desperately want to save Russian children from a grim and hopeless future by taking them into their homes at great expense to themselves.

Kushner's story is that the meeting was about adoption, though it was really about getting Trump to repeal the Magnitsky Act so Russian oligarchs could go back to snapping up New York real estate.

And then there's this:

One of Ms. Veselnitskaya’s clients is Denis Katsyv, the Russian owner of a Cyprus-based investment company called Prevezon Holdings. He is the son of Petr Katsyv, the vice president of the state-owned Russian Railways and a former deputy governor of the Moscow region. In a civil forfeiture case prosecuted by Mr. Bharara’s office, the Justice Department alleged that Prevezon had helped launder money tied to a $230 million corruption scheme exposed by Mr. Magnitsky by parking it in New York real estate [emphasis added] and bank accounts. As a result, the government froze $14 million of its assets. Prevezon recently settled the case for $6 million without admitting wrongdoing.

This story hits the trifecta: Russians, Trump and real estate money laundering. Robert Mueller, take note.

Trump's conspiracy theory cronies fabricated a story about child sex slaves in the non-existent basement of pizza joint out of an obscure reference in an email from John Podesta. They were so convinced something terrible was happening that one nutjob shot up Comet Ping Pong Pizza to "rescue" the nonexistent children.

Here we have Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner meeting secretly with the lawyer of man who laundered hundreds of millions of corrupt Russian dollars through New York real estate. Yet Trump supporters obliviously insist that there was absolutely nothing going on in the dozens of meetings Trump campaign operatives and associates had with Putin, Russian bankers, Russian lawyers, Russian diplomats, and Russian spies.

Why so many meetings with Russians? And why are these secret meetings constantly being uncovered, one after another, six months after Trump took office? The "I forgot" excuse is wearing thin.

The next time Kushner remembers one of these "forgotten" meetings he should be fired, lose his security clearance, and charged for lying to the FBI.

No, scratch that: Kushner's security clearance should be revoked and he should be fired today. His credibility is damaged beyond repair. There are so many questions swirling around Kushner that he is completely exposed to Russian blackmail: he's lied so many times about the Russians that there's almost certainly another bombshell out there waiting to explode.

Worse, even if there aren't any other secret meetings forthcoming, there may be "tapes" of Kushner's contacts with the Russians, they could blackmail the Trump administration by threatening to release recordings of Kushner saying any number of incriminating things.

No wonder Trump is always so complimentary to Vladimir Putin...

No More Fire Pits, Please!!

Folks, I have a confession to make. I hate fire pits with all of my heart and soul.

I realize this will cost me in MN street cred because just about everyone in this state absolutely loves fire pits to the point of insanity, obsession and OMG why don't you have one??!! But I hate them. HATE them!! Why?



1. I deplore obsessive, keep up with the Joneses trendy crap. Only in Minnesota could a campfire be a hipster thing to do.

2. The smell. I hang out by a fire pit for more than three seconds and I stink to high heaven. I have to shower twice and do an extra load of laundry just to smell normal again.

3. The lack of fresh air. I like to have fresh air in my house but I rarely can open my windows because all my neighbors have fire pits blazing 24-7. I live in the beautiful North Woods where the air would normally be immensely fresh if it weren't for the fucking fire pit festival every year.

4. With fire pits come drum circles and I really can't stand those dumb ass things. Join a band (rock or pep) and put all that energy into something creative rather than being a wanker trying to impress some hippie chick with how in touch you are with your "soul."

Most of you who know me recognize that I'm not an outdoors-y guy. Fire pits represent an intrusion of camping into my suburban bliss that I find deeply offensive on a number of levels.

Here's to hoping I can bring more anti fire pitters out with this message and give them the courage to join me in saying enough of this! I want to smell fresh air again!!

A Tale of Two Children

A couple of days ago Donald Trump made news by offering help to the parents of Charlie Gard, a British baby with a terminal genetic disease that is turning his DNA into mush. Trump supporters are spinning it as "The evil doctors in the British National Health Service want to pull the plug on the kid. But Donald Trump has a heart!"

But there are thousands of kids like Charlie Gard here in the United States. Kids whose parents can't afford to pay for their medical treatments and would go bankrupt without Obamacare, which is literally giving them a lifeline.

One such parent is Alison Chandra, a pediatric nurse whose son Ethan was born with heterotaxy, a condition that leaves a child's insides a jumble of organs: two left lungs, five spleens, and nine congenital heart defects.

Chandra posted a picture of her son's medical bill on the Internet with the following tweet: "It seems fitting that, with the #TrumpCare debate raging, I got this bill in the mail today from Ethan's most recent open heart surgery."

Some of the responses were supportive, but others were vile, hitting back at Chandra for daring to criticize Trump and the Republicans' repeal of Obamacare:

They came at me swinging, picking fights I’d never asked for. They called me ungrateful, a thief, a lazy mooch, an attention whore.

The attacks became increasingly personal and increasingly violent. Strangers were telling me it would have been cheaper to make a new kid.

I was offered a .22 bullet, although I’m still not sure whom he meant it for, me or my child. One man took me up on the challenge I’d posed in the thread and declared that my son just wasn’t worth keeping alive anymore. There was even a percentage of the comments dedicated to the belief that I was a foreigner or, worse, a terrorist, which is when I started asking news outlets to use my full name: Alison, not Ali, since people seemed unable to believe that I was, in fact, a white chick from New Jersey. 

Why do Trump supporters swoon when he feigns interest in the fate of some foreign child who is almost certainly doomed (Charlie's very DNA is kaput), yet send death threats to an American citizen whose child actually has a shot at life when she graphically expresses an opinion on the what the effects of the Republican health care plan will be for American kids?

Mike Pence Can't Read

This is the guy Trump appointed to head the reinstated National Space Council (via Vox):

"Christian" Hobby Lobby May Have Funded Al Qaeda and ISIS

The so-called “Christian” company Hobby Lobby, infamous for denying women employees access to birth control, has been caught red-handed smuggling ancient artifacts out of the Middle East:

The packages that made their way from Israel and the United Arab Emirates to retail outlets owned by Hobby Lobby, the seller of arts and craft supplies, were clearly marked as tile samples.

But according to a civil complaint filed on Wednesday by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, they held something far rarer and more valuable: ancient clay cuneiform tablets that had been smuggled into the United States from Iraq

Ever since George W. Bush invaded Iraq, it has been known that Al Qaeda (and more recently ISIS) have been profiting from illicit trade in cultural artifacts. This has been widely reported for at least a decade, such as in this article from Fox News in 2008:

The smuggling of stolen antiquities from Iraq's rich cultural heritage is allegedly helping finance Iraqi extremist groups, according to the U.S. investigator who led the initial probe into the looting of Baghdad's National Museum.

Last month, Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos claimed both Sunni insurgents such as Al Qaeda in Iraq and Shiite militias were receiving funding from the trafficking.

Or this article from 2014:

The Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) — the Islamic extremist group that swept through Northern Iraq last month — is now considered to be the wealthiest terrorist organization in the world, with $2.2 billion in assets. While bank heists have recently gained the group millions, they have also raked in massive profits from a less conventional source: the billion-dollar black market in ancient artifacts. 

Or this article about ISIS smuggling artifacts out of Iraq through Israel from Haaretz in 2016:

About six months ago, Interpol and UNESCO announced a worldwide operation to seize antiquities looted from Iraq. Israel participated in this effort, and IAA inspectors searched antiquities shops in Jerusalem’s Old City and elsewhere.

Hundreds of items were seized in these searches, including clay tablets with cuneiform writing, figurines and incantation bowls (inscribed with curses or oaths that were used in certain rituals). The courts recently approved their confiscation by the state, and Klein said the goal is eventually to return them to the Iraqi government via an international agency.

The New York Times headline reads “Hobby Lobby Agrees to Forfeit 5,500 Artifacts Smuggled Out of Iraq” and it doesn't mention that extremist terrorist groups are the most likely source of illicit artifacts. That's because they can't document a direct line from the terrorists to Israel to Hobby Lobby, and they're a reputable news organization that doesn't traffic in speculation.

Fox News didn't mention the terrorist connection either, instead making this misleading claim to whitewash the crime:

Beginning in the summer of 2010, Hobby Lobby President Steve Green allegedly expressed interest in buying thousands of artifacts — including tablets written in cuneiform, one of the earliest systems of writing — from Israeli antiquities dealers based in the United Arab Emirates.

But even if Hobby Lobby bought from Israeli brokers, the Israelis almost certainly got them from Al Qaeda in Iraq or some other extremist group, as indicated in the Haaretz story and as Fox News themselves noted in 2008. But you can be sure they would mention extremists if George Soros had bought the stolen artifacts.

The Fox News article concludes with this:

"Our passion for the Bible continues, and we will do all that we can to support the efforts to conserve items that will help illuminate and enhance our understanding of this Great Book," [Hobby Lobby president Steve] Green said.

In other words, committing crimes and financing terrorists is fine if you're a Christian.

But the thing is, cuneiform tablets are not Christian artifacts -- most predate Christianity by thousands of years. Most of them are records of business transactions or granary inventories: Christians typically want them to search for places or names of biblical figures in an attempt to "prove" the stories in the Old Testament are "real."

Hobby Lobby was fined $3 million dollars and must forfeit the artifacts. But this was just a civil case, even though a New York gallery owner was arrested and charged for trafficking in stolen antiquities just last December. A smuggler in New Mexico faces a 20-year prison sentence for taking artifacts out of Pakistan. But he was a Muslim named Ijaz Khan.

You can see the bias in Fox News reporting in the following headline: "Dem rep calls for criminal prosecution of Hobby Lobby boss over smuggled ancient tablets". This is false.

Democrat Joaquin Castro had issued the following tweet: "Extraordinary. Hobby Lobby's president illegally smuggled 144 artifacts into the U.S. and yet no hint of criminal prosecution."

Castro didn't call for prosecution: he knows there isn't a chance in hell that Trump-controlled ICE will prosecute their big donors. But a headline that reads "Dem rep expresses exasperation that wealthy right-wing business owners can break the law with impunity and get away with a slap on the wrist" just doesn't play well on Fox News.

The Issue of North Korea

I don't envy the president in his consideration regarding North Korea's latest missile test. It's a giant cluster for any president to have to tackle. The good news for Donald Trump is that even though he is massively incompetent he was at least diligent enough to surround himself with good people in both the defense and security sectors. He seems, for now, to letting them run the show and that's a good thing.

The first instinct would be to launch a preemptive strike in the next year to 18 months that it's going to take for North Korea to enable their new missile with nuclear capabilities. The problem there is that it would likely result in tens of thousands of lives lost, mostly Korean. In addition, China has no desire to see a unified Korea that is more friendly to the US. So, we end up back at sanctions which have largely been ineffective in curbing Kim Jong Un's desire to be a nuclear power. We have to decide if we can live in a world where North Korea can bomb California with nuclear missiles. I'm not sure we can.

Thus, we seem to be left with the inevitability of war.

Trump Supporters Apparently Don't Know the Declaration of Independence

For the Fourth of July NPR tweeted the Declaration of Independence. Trump supporters did not like it at all, demanding NPR be defunded. They said NPR was inciting revolution. They called the Declaration quotes trash and elitist Hollywood propaganda.

Now, why would Trump supporters mistake statements accusing King George III of abuses, usurpations and Despotism for criticisms against Donald Trump? They protest too much; clearly, they see the parallels all too well.

The reason they feel NPR is criticizing Trump is that they recognize his behavior is the same as that of the imperious despot America broke away from during the American Revolution.
These are the same people who refer to Trump as "god emperor." These are the same "evangelicals" who somehow think a foul-mouthed sexual predator was anointed by god to be president of the United States. The same people who don't trust government. Yet somehow they put a rich, elitist, vulgar, selfish, emolument-grubbing, vain and incompetent boob at the head of that government.

It's ironic that the people who hate, hate, hate those Hollywood elites support a president whose popularity is the direct outcome of a reality TV show promulgated by the mainstream media and the Hollywood elites that run it.

Trump and his surrogates always rail against the mainstream media. Despite what Fox News would have you think, it is also part of the mainstream media. If you watch programs on sister networks Fox or FX you'll notice a decidedly mainstream to liberal bent in many of the programs -- The Simpsons, Fargo, 24, for example. Fox News just happens to be the niche that Rupert Murdoch found for his news channel -- conservative political pornography -- that had not yet been filled by other networks, who thought that news consisted of truth and facts instead of right-wing opinionation.

And not that many people even watch Fox News: their average audience is 2.4 million, while ABC, NBC and CBS nightly news programs have more than 21 million total viewers, almost ten times as many as Fox News. Even shows like The Flash pull in more viewers, with 2.8 million.

The fact is, without that "lamestream media" network NBC -- which employs Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski, the latest media figures to raise Trump's ire -- Trump would never have had the Apprentice show. He would never have uttered his "You're fired" catch phrase on a regular TV show.

Without NBC Trump would not be president today.

Trump knows that. That's why he's so angry at NBC: he feels they betrayed him.

But Trump does not get it: loyalty has to go both ways. If you expect people to be loyal to you, you have to be loyal to them. You have to remain true to shared values. When Trump careened off the rails with racist and sexist insults and rants he betrayed common decency.

He can't expect decent people to rush into the abyss with him.

Those that follow Trump and excuse his vile behavior with tirades against political correctness are descending into the pit. How long will it take them to realize this and save their souls?

Where Chris Christie Goes, So Goes the Donald

Governor Chris Christie was the prototype for Donald Trump. Brash and unfiltered, he said what he thought and didn't care if hurt people's feelings. He was abrupt, impolite, arrogant, self-assured, and loud-mouthed. And the people loved it. For a while.

But when it became obvious that he was just another self-serving dickhead who didn't give a damn about who he hurt to get what he wanted (Bridgegate, for example), the luster wore off and his standing in the polls plummeted.

Now, with photos of Christie sunning himself on the same beach he closed to the rest of New Jersey's citizens, his popularity has fallen to new lows. He shut down the government -- and all state parks -- to force Democrats to pass a bill that would let him skim "excess" reserve funds from the state's largest health insurance company.

Donald Trump is following the same arc as Christie. His approval rating is deeply negative, though he still holds great appeal to the racist and misogynist elements of the American public. After Trump's sincerely stupid comments about Mika Brzezinski many Republican politicians have stopped defending him. Each time Trump shows what a total jerk he is, it becomes easier and easier for Republican politicians to defect from the Trump camp without fear of repercussions.

Trump likes to think that his followers would never desert him, not even if he shoots someone on Fifth Avenue. But that's false.

The thing that Trump voters really hate is that liberals think they're stupid. They hate politicians who think they know more than the voters. This was the big knock against Hillary: she thinks she knows so much.

But Hillary never said she knew more than they did. It's just that when she talks, they hated her voice. She just seems to know too much. She's got a lot of experience and knows there's more to health care policy and international affairs than jingoistic soundbites.

But Trump loves soundbites. They're easy for him to remember. And they get applause from Republican crowds that just want to hear their preconceptions reinforced.

While Hillary never said she was so smart, Donald Trump did. He constantly praised himself, saying he has a very good brain, he has the best words, and how stupid the other politicians are. He bragged about his uncle, as if had could inherit intelligence from his father's brother (maybe Trump knew something his father didn't?). “My uncle used to tell me about nuclear before nuclear was nuclear,” Trump said, clearly illustrating that he remembered nothing "nuclear" that his uncle told him.

To see what Trump really thinks about the people who support him, look at Trump University. Trump U depended on the fact that people who like the Trump brand are suckers. They were losers who had been conned by scam that gave them absolutely nothing for tens of thousands of dollars. They were lectured by phonies who knew zero about real estate and who had never even met Trump.

By settling with his victims, Trump admitted that the whole thing was a con. The settlement was an explicit acknowledgment that the people who attended his "university" were suckers and losers who would pay for any piece of crap that had "Trump" stamped on it.

Trump's fatal flaw is that he inevitably turns on everyone who has anything to do with him, because they will inevitably disappoint him by not stroking his ego hard enough.

It's hard to know when or how this will happen, but it'll probably start when Trump voters begin feeling the pain that Trump's reckless style of governing will inevitably inflict upon them.
Trump's voters will realize his promises to keep jobs in the United States are hollow, and his health plan will cost Trump voters much more and deliver much less than Obamacare does, while giving giant tax cuts to millionaires.

His poll numbers among core Republican constituencies will start to falter, and he'll lash out at them, the way he always lashes out when he thinks someone is being disloyal.

At that point Trump will write a Tweet that reveals what he really thinks about the suckers and losers that voted for him.

Or he might characterize coal miners in West Virginia and Kentucky as lazy, inbred heroin addicts sitting around watching TV while on disability.

Or he might run over some kid asking for an autograph with a golf cart, yelling, "Get off my lawn, you stinking little runt!"

Or he might get caught on video bragging to fellow billionaires at Mar-a-Lago about the idiots sending $10 checks to his 2020 presidential campaign: "I'm just using the money to pay back the loans I made to my 2016 campaign. And I made so much money -- so very, very much money -- off that election, just like I said I would!"

Whatever Trump does, he will blame it on someone else -- Jared, Ivanka, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Chris Christie, Pope Francis -- and then bitch about how terrible the media are for repeating everything he says verbatim.

Mission Accomplished, Conservatives Rejoice!

Check out this headline from NPR.

Americans Say Civility Has Worsened Under Trump; Trust In Institutions Down

From the article...

Seven in 10 Americans say the level of civility in Washington has gotten worse since President Trump was elected, while just 6 percent say the overall tone has improved. Twenty percent say it's stayed the same. For comparison, 35 percent in 2009 said civility in the country had declined in the U.S. following President Obama's election, per a Gallup survey. Eight years ago, 21 percent of Americans in that poll thought civility and the tone of discourse in the country had improved.

And few people have a high level of trust in many of the institutions that are the backbone of American democracy. Only intelligence and law enforcement agencies like the CIA and the FBI engender much goodwill, with 60 percent saying they have some degree of trust in them.

I can practically hear the cheers from conservatives. They want people arguing and they want faith in the government low. Mission Accomplished!

Why No State Should Send Trump Voter Data

Trump's "election fraud" commission recently sent a request to all the states for detailed information on voters, including birthdates and partial Social Security numbers. This is a terrible idea, precisely because this information could be used to commit fraud on a massive scale:

Digital security experts say the commission’s request would centralize and lay bare a valuable cache of information that cyber criminals could use for identity theft scams — or that foreign spies could leverage for disinformation schemes.

“It is beyond stupid,” said Nicholas Weaver, a computer science professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

And don't belittle the idea that the Republicans in charge of this would let hackers get at this information. Because Republicans already have done exactly that:

Detailed information on nearly every U.S. voter — including in some cases their ethnicity, religion and views on political issues — was left exposed online for two weeks by a political consultancy that works for the Republican National Committee and other GOP clients.

The data offered a strikingly complete picture of the voting histories and political leanings of the American electorate laid out in an easily downloadable format, said cybersecurity researcher Chris Vickery. He discovered the unprotected files of 198 million voters in a routine scan of the Internet last week and alerted law enforcement officials.

Trump's commission is itself based on a fraudulent premise: in-person voter fraud is nearly nonexistent. The Republicans want this data so they can cherry-pick a few egregious cases to make the case for even more voter suppression.

And the craziest thing about the commission's request: the secretary of state for Kansas, the man who made the request, won't honor it:

Multiple states plan to buck Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s request for personal information on voters on behalf of a presidential commission.

Kobach said Friday that Kansas, at least for now, also won’t be sharing Social Security information with the commission, on which he serves as vice chairman. The state will share other information about the state’s registered voters, including names and addresses, which are subject to the state’s open records laws.

It looks like most states will refuse to fully comply with the request, though some will furnish information that's already publicly available.

This will royally piss Trump off. Do you think he'll ask the Russians to get the information for him?

Jordan Klepper Solves Gun

Here are my takeaways from Jordan Klepper's amazing special on guns.

1. Gun right activists use fear to keep the status quo which includes the insane law that states that the federal government can't use computers to track guns, even homicides. They have to do it by paper!!

2. In addition to being batshit nuts, militia members aren't going to defend anything in a forest. Worse, they are horrible shots.

3. The Michigan gun owners in this segment are the ones that Democrats have to focus their message on. Great, honest people who seem very open minded!

4. Finding common ground can be hard...especially when you can't speak the language.

5. Contrary to what gun bloggers/commenters will tell you, we have much more in common than we think. This includes a majority of support for universal background checks, waiting periods, and updating federal law in terms of tracking guns.

6. More dedicated people! More America!!

Check out the show!

Earn Big Bucks at Home Retweeting Garbage Spewed by Nincompoops!

They call Twitter and Facebook "social media," but they have become increasingly anti-social. Online harassment is rampant. One guy was murdered for writing "damm" in response to a woman who posted a photo of herself in a swimsuit.

The Internet is packed with fake accounts and bots (half of Donald Trump's Twitter followers are fake), paid Russian trolls who create fake news and web brigades that fill comment sections with state-sponsored propaganda.

Now Politico reports that pro-Trump political operatives are trying to cash in:

From the moment he declared his candidacy, President Trump commanded legions of online followers. Now, having helped win the White House, factions of self-made social media operatives are redirecting their skills and infrastructure to promote other candidates nationwide.

Some are even vying to spin their experiences from the presidential race into new business models, seeking to promote other candidates by paying pro-Trump Twitter users to tweet and retweet scripted messages.

One of these operatives, Robert Shelton, has already suckered someone into his scam, but it doesn't seem to be working:

Chris Chamberlin, a gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota, was not impressed with his test run, particularly not given Shelton’s proposed fee of $6,000. Shelton did not remember if that was the figure, but Leigh, who was working as press secretary for Chamberlin at the time, confirmed it.

For a couple weeks in April, the @RobertsRooms network coordinated retweets of Chamberlin’s posts and distributed memes, including one claiming a Minnesota state legislator is “pro-jihad.” None of this material took off in the way Chamberlin expected.

“That’s kind of a concern if you’re boasting as part of the reason Trump got elected,” Chamberlin said in an interview.

“Not to say Robert isn’t talented,” he added. “But being charged dollars for a service that may or may not work is at best a risky option.”

Part of the reason this may fail is that, ultimately, real people will get bored with this crap. Getting paid nickels and dimes to retweet garbage some nincompoop in Minnesota is spewing out is just tedious. It worked for Trump because he was famous and was such a dickhead that he really stood out. But if everyone is a dickhead echoing other dickheads, all the dickheads will just drown each other out.

Americans claim that there are way too busy and there are never enough hours in the day.  Yet. Americans spend over two hours a day on social media. Worse, social media makes people unhappy. And it makes them feel isolated.

Sooner or later real people will tire of the moral cesspit that anti-social media has become, and the only users left will be bots and stiffs getting paid to be there.

Get out before some whack-job kills you for commenting on his girlfriend's swim suit! Plus, you'll get 12.5% of your life back.

Buzz Aldrin Is the Man

On Friday Donald Trump signed an executive order reinstating the National Space Council at a ceremony that had Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, in attendance.

In his comments Trump said the same sort of nonsensical gobbledygook that he always does:

It’s a little hard to make out what Trump says right as he opens up the folder containing the E.O. (and the White House transcript left those words out), but it sounded like, “We know what this is, space. That’s all it has to say, space.” Then, to Aldrin, he joked, “There’s a lot of room out there, right?”

Buzz Aldrin: Infinity and beyond. (Laughter)

Donald Trump: This is infinity here. It could be infinity. We don’t really don’t know. But it could be. It has to be something, but it could be infinity, right?

Space has one thing in common with Trump: the vacuum between his ears.

Aldrin's reaction to Trump's burbling babble is hilarious, speaking volumes about what a nimrod the American president is:

The Trump administration also emphasized how little they respect women, yet again:

Vice President Pence, who will chair the new space council, introduced the president and others gathered in the Roosevelt Room.

“Especially the three American astronauts,” he said, listing NASA's Alvin Drew, former astronaut David Wolf, and “the second man on the moon: the legendary Buzz Aldrin.”

“Welcome to the White House,” Pence said.

But he didn't mention [the fourth astronaut present, a woman], former astronaut Sandy Magnus, standing about five feet away.

Trump would also name the three male astronauts without mentioning Magnus — an omission quickly noticed in the wider space community.

I'm not sure why Trump is doing this. He put Mike Pence in charge of the council. Pence was the guy who chaired a 2005 Republican study group that recommended that NASA end all space exploration.

I like the space program, but it's going to get nothing but bad PR with Trump pushing it. The story will be that Trump wants to cut everyone's health care so he can send men (and it has to be men, because women are so bloody) to Mars to open the Trump Interplanetary Hotel.

How Does It Feel To Be Played?

To Facebook Users in Swing Districts Across the United States,



How does it feel to be fucking played by the Russians?