Time to Repeal the NRA Lies

Every time there's a mass shootings the gun nuts tell us that now is not the time to discuss gun control. Almost in the same breath, they endlessly repeat their mantra: "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

This has always been a ludicrous lie, but the shooting in Las Vegas shows how utterly stupid it is:

A gunman in a high-rise hotel overlooking the Las Vegas Strip opened fire on a country music festival late Sunday, killing at least 58 people and injuring hundreds of others in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

The gunman, identified by police as Stephen Paddock, was later found dead by officers on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said during a news briefing Monday.

The shooter, a crazy old white man (who may have been motivated by gambling losses), sat 32 stories above a concert with 10 rifles, including some kind of submachine gun, and shot into the crowd. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Even if every person in that crowd was armed with a handgun and had returned fire, it's basically impossible for anyone to have hit him. In the dark, with all the echoes in the Vegas environment, it's difficult to even tell where the shots are coming from, much less see the assailant 300 feet above.

To demonstrate their complete insanity, the NRA and the Republican Party want to make silencers available to anyone by having the big bad federal government prevent states and cities from banning or even taxing sound suppressors. They are ramming a "Mass Murderer Protection Act" through Congress, though they have euphemistically called it the "Hearing Protection Act."

Are gun owners really too poor to afford to buy earplugs (50 cents a pair) or hearing protectors (10 to 20 bucks)? Don't they want to muss their hair with those big ear muffs? Or are they such bad shots that they need silencers to prevent deer from fleeing when they miss? What is the real point of this bill, other than to anger liberals and promote mass murder?

Think about it: Republicans and the NRA want to make it possible for madmen with submachine guns to sit on top of buildings and shoot hundreds of people with complete impunity. With loud music playing, the victims would not even hear the silenced report of a rifle a hundred yards away: people would just start dropping dead in a hail of lead.

Republicans delayed action on their Mass Murderer Protection Act in June after Republican congressmen and staffers were shot by another crazy old white man. If they have any sense of decency they'll drop it completely.

But it's only a matter of time before Trump starts bragging about how his mass shooting was the biggest, most spectacular, flashiest mass shooting in history, and how Obama's mass shootings were piddly, squalid, low-rated failures.

A Broken Record

Donald Trump is a broken record, pulling the same stupid Twitter stunt that he played on Jeff Sessions:

President Trump seemed to undercut his own secretary of state on Sunday as he belittled the prospect of a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear-edged crisis with North Korea even as the administration was seeking to open lines of communication.

In a fresh set of Twitter messages from his New Jersey golf club, where he was spending the weekend, Mr. Trump diminished Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson’s outreach to Pyongyang and its autocratic leader, Kim Jong-un, leaving the impression that he was focused on possible military action. On a visit to China, Mr. Tillerson acknowledged on Saturday that he was trying to open talks.

Here we have the supposed president of the United States sitting at his golf club hurling nasty tweets at his own secretary of state, who is trying to prevent an outbreak of nuclear war with a megalomaniac who thinks he's a god, while three and a half million Americans in Puerto Rico have no electricity, no water and no houses, and are at grave risk of typhoid.

By the way, this could be a political disaster for Republicans if Puerto Rico doesn't get help: since they're American citizens, they are free to move to the mainland, potentially putting heavily Hispanic Florida and Texas into the Democratic column. A few hundred thousand Puerto Rican transplants could turn several states that Trump won into wins for Democrats.

Not only is Trump physically, mentally and emotionally unfit to be president, he is too stupid to understand how much his the people who work for him hate him at this point. He thinks that because they praise him in cabinet meetings and laugh at his jokes they actually like him.

No one respects Trump. No one thinks he's smart. They think he's a big-mouthed dumbass who just watches Fox News and plays golf. His voters know that. That's why they like him. He's just like them. He validates their pathetic existence, sticking it to the "elites" and the blacks and Hispanics. They don't care that his tax cuts will all go to the billionaires and cost the middle class money, because Trump told off the North Koreans and the Puerto Ricans, by gum!

But the day is coming when his cabinet, and his staff, and the Republicans in the Senate and the House will all stab him in the back. It's not a question of if, but when we will see Shakespeare's Julius Caesar reenacted in the American Senate.

Because everyone knows this clown has got to go. Every day his divides the country further, intentionally fomenting race and class wars at every juncture. Except for a Supreme Court appointment (which was stolen from Obama by Senate Republicans), Trump has accomplished absolutely nothing.

And that is his plan. Trump is playing the Republican Party and his voters. They're all expecting him to deliver on his promises, waiting for those tax cuts, waiting for the Obamacare repeal, waiting for the wall. But all those things will never come.

Republicans are patiently putting up with all the crap Trump keeps puking out every day in the desperate hope that they'll get the things that they swallowed their pride and dignity for to justify their vote for an immoral, senile scumbag.

But Trump will never deliver on his promises. He can't. Not just because he's a terribly incompetent negotiator and manager, but because if he delivers on his promises the Republicans won't need him anymore and they'll twenty-five him.

Russia's ad buys on Facebook make it clear that they were fostering a divided America by pumping up Trump and Texas secession on one side (even sending Russian women to the United States to marry alt-right Americans), and Black Lives Matter and Jill Stein on the other. Trump is still following the Russian play book.

At this point it is irrelevant whether Trump actually communicated with the Russians to set this plan in motion. He is actively colluding with them, destroying the very fabric of this nation.

The worst thing about Trump is that he has turned the entire country into a broken record. His supporters keep reiterating their racist rants and the preposterous claim that Trump is so noble because he sacrificed "his beautiful life" to be president, while his opponents are turning blue in the face as they protest Trump's daily impeachable offenses.

This cannot continue for another 40 months. If Trump doesn't shut up or leave office, this country will either implode or stumble into a nuclear war.

Quote of the Day

A recent answer I gave on Quora elicited this comment.

This is… one of the best explanations I've seen regarding Trump supporters and fits the bill perfectly. Every Trump supporter I've met thus far is petty and miserable, and thinks nothing of making everyone around them miserable, including their own families.

Why they are petty and miserable is the key to understanding how to either win them over or beat them. We aren't anywhere near having all the answers yet but I think we are getting some idea. Economics matters, fear of change, insecurity, a sense of control loss...all of these drove them to be the trolls they are today.

Emotional Intelligence

Last night, one of the dads from my son’s baseball team said to me, “Hey, your wife is really hot.” I replied, “I know” and went on with my evening.

A little bit later another dad came up to me and asked me if I was OK. I was puzzled.

“Why?”
“Well, Jim (not his real name) said your wife was hot.”
“So? I know she’s hot.”
“That’s YOUR wife. He shouldn’t talk that way about another man’s wife.”

I laughed and told him it really didn’t bother me. He was then offended that I wasn’t more offended and walked away shaking his head.

Marriages are partnerships. People aren’t possessions. And, husbands, if you are so fucking insecure that you can’t take a compliment about the wives you love and adore, then you have some serious issues to deal with in terms of emotional intelligence.

Just Like Nixon

Like many millions of Americans, I have been enjoying Ken Burns' amazing 10 part documentary, The Vietnam War. Part 7 contains an historical fact that most folks likely do not know about.

Richard Nixon and his team told the South Vietnamese government that if he was elected president, they'd get a better deal with the North Vietnamese. This all took place in the weeks leading up to the election. Humprhey was actually up in the polls and likely would have won had it not been for the South Vietnamese refusing to show up to the peace talks in Paris in the fall of 1968. Nixon ended up winning by 0.7 of a percentage point with a few states falling his way in the last few days.

The Donald seems to be doing his best to emulate Nixon. He too has conspired with a foreign government to influence and election. Back in 1968, LBJ called what Nixon did "treason." It's time for us to recognize that our current president is guilty of the same thing.

We all know where this is going to end up. The facts speak for themselves.

Snowflake?

Yet Another Trump Appointee Bites the Dust

Another Trump administration flunky is out:

Tom Price, the health and human services secretary, resigned under pressure on Friday after racking up at least $400,000 in travel bills for chartered flights and undermining President Trump’s promise to drain the swamp of a corrupt and entitled capital.

Already in trouble with Mr. Trump for months of unsuccessful efforts to repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s health care program, Mr. Price failed to defuse the president’s anger over his high-priced travel by agreeing to pay a portion of the cost and expressing “regret” for his actions.

But Price isn't the only one to charter private jets for his own personal use:

Scott Pruitt has spent more than $58,000 in charter and military flights, according to The Washington Post. Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, used a charter airplane for several flights, including a $12,000 trip to deliver a speech celebrating a new professional hockey team in Las Vegas.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin asked about using a $25,000-an-hour military plane for his European honeymoon and later used government jet to fly to Fort Knox, in Kentucky, a trip that offered him a clear view of the solar eclipse in August, although he later disclaimed any interest in the event.

And Trump's VA secretary took his wife on a European vacation at taxpayers' expense:

Nearly three days into a trip to Europe this past July, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin had attended a Wimbledon championship tennis match, toured Westminster Abbey and taken a cruise on the Thames.

The 10-day trip was not entirely a vacation. Shulkin was in Europe for meetings with Danish and British officials about veterans’ health issues, so taxpayers picked up part of the tab.

Yet he and his wife spent about half their time sightseeing, including shopping and touring historic sites, according to an itinerary obtained by The Washington Post and confirmed by a U.S. official familiar with their activities.

Trump's administration is the richest and most corrupt in recent history. And even though they're rich, they all -- except for Betsy DeVos -- are cheapskates who want to charge their junkets to the American people.

And where's Trump this weekend?

“I’m not happy, O.K.?” Mr. Trump told reporters as he was about to head to his New Jersey golf club for the weekend, barely an hour before the resignation was announced. “I can tell you, I’m not happy.”

I'm not happy, either, Donnie boy. The American people aren't happy with the incompetent, greedy and lazy lunkheads Trump has hired. He is the worst judge of people -- probably because he'll hire anyone who sucks up to him. He seems to have set a national record for the highest turnover rate in an administration.


By this time next year I wouldn't be surprised if Trump has fired more people than he's hired. And that moron will think that's a good thing.

Lock Him Up!

Surprise, surprise: the Trump administration is filled with hypocrites:

President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has used a private email account to conduct and discuss official White House business dozens of times, his lawyer confirmed Sunday.

Kushner used the private account through his first nine months in government service, even as the president continued to criticize his opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Democrat Hillary Clinton, for her use of a private email account for government business. Kushner several times used his account to exchange news stories and minor reactions or updates with other administration officials.

Uh huh. Right. And I've got this office building at 666 Fifth Avenue with a great view of the Brooklyn Bridge for sale.

His lawyer also had this to say: "All non-personal emails were forwarded to his official address." Question: are the Russian collusion emails personal or non-personal?

So, is Trump going to call for Jeff Sessions to investigate and ultimately prosecute his son-in-law for doing the same thing Hillary Clinton did?

Son of a Bitch vs. Very Fine People

Trump Cozies Up To The City Mice

And I am going to LMAO re-attach it and laugh it off again when Trump supporters wonder WTF?

A Barber's Story

I've been going to the same barber for about 15 years. It's a classic, old style barber shop where I can get what little hair I have left cut for $16. I always pay $20 with the extra going to the gal that's been taking care of my mostly bald head for all that time. Her and her dad own the shop which they bought from her brother a few years back.

Their family is very well known in my town. So is the barber shop. People come in just to hang out, even if they don't need a hair cut. Most of the patrons are Trump fans as I pointed out recently. They all are really pissed off at the world and constantly complain about people who achieve success being "elites." They ALL believe that Trump is going to bring them great riches somehow and bring our country back to the good ol' days...whenever that was. Even though I live in a suburb of Minneapolis, it's still has a very small town attitude.

The dad is a consummate asshole. He verbally abuses his daughter constantly. He is always bitching about women, the blacks, and the people trying to bring this country down which is pretty much everyone who doesn't agree with him and do what he says. His an angry, hateful old man who is clearly afraid of the world moving on without him.

The dad doesn't get along with his son either. He bought the shop from him but there were a lot of bad feelings over that. The son developed some health problems and was living on assistance from the state. The son was always kind of an asshole too. It's not surprising, really, because of his father. The son actually cut my hair a few times. I stopped going to him because he too complained all the time. It was always someone else's fault that he had all the problems he had. The son bitched about freeloaders until he sort of became one and then he shut up about people living on welfare.

Oh yeah. One more thing. The son owned a lot of guns. I say "owned" because last week he shot himself in the head with one of them.

Most of the 33,000 gun deaths in this country are from suicides. Most of those suicides are older, white men who have very serious mental illnesses and do nothing about them. This family is so dysfunctional that any mention of mental health would have been met with howls of derision from dear ol' dad. The son just repressed everything for years until it became so bad that he wanted to end it all. I wonder how similar this story is to all the others. I wonder how many of these suicides could have been prevented if these folks weren't wrapped up in that culture of denial that exists in the Gun Cult. Somehow, suicides are OK because it's an individual making a choice. What about all the people they leave behind?

I got my hair cut today and saw his sister. She's basically a zombie. She misses her brother so much and is racking her brain to try to figure out if there was anything she could have done differently. Her dad has become more abusive. Clearly, he's blaming himself and is too much an asshole to admit how his behavior partly caused this.

Welcome to Trump's America. It's a nation filled with gun toting, abusive racists whose emotional intelligence level is so low that they can't figure out that they are their own worst enemies.

Definition Reminder

Internet Troll 

noun

In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion, often for the troll's amusement.

Good News Roundup

It's been a while since I pointed out some of the good news recently. Here are a few great ones.

This week's issue of the Christian Science Monitor (print edition) shows that US homelessness is on the decline. Since 2007, homelessness has dropped 15 percent, particularly among veterans. It has been a strategic goal for the federal government, starting under George W. Bush, that homelessness be reduced. Barack Obama continued this goal. Nonprofits have also greatly aided in this effort and heavy reductions have been seen in states like Connecticut, Delaware and even New York.

In Costa Rica...

Costa Rica Wants to Become World's First Country to Eliminate Single-Use Plastics

Yay, Costa Rica!!

In Senegal...



And in Australia...

Australia Produces Enough Renewable Energy to Power 70% of Homes

Canada's Leader and Our Leader

My Grandfather Would Have Viewed This As Unforgiveable

Fire Sale On Make America Great Again Hats-Literally!

As every single non Trump supporter predicted, fans of our dear leader have turned on him for not being pure. Check it out.

Trump Backers Burn MAGA Hats in DACA Protest

When it comes to betrayal, sometimes nothing is as therapeutic as fire and a trending hashtag. At least, that's what some supporters of President Donald Trump found as they processed and protested his apparent decision to work with Democratic leaders on border security and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has shielded nearly hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.

Awwww...such a shame...look at all those pissed off Twitter users. I wonder if they are real people or merely Russian trollbots

Is this the I Told You So Moment?

Well, we finally learned what it takes for Trump to alienate his base: a deal with Democrats on DACA, allowing people dragged into the US as kids and raised as Americans to stay here:

With chants of “build the wall,” warnings of rapists coming from Mexico and an unforgiving promise to deport millions, Donald Trump forged a fundamental bond with millions of frustrated Americans who helped him take over the Republican Party and win the White House.

But now the same issue of immigration is straining Trump’s ties to hard-line conservatives. Trump’s agreement this week with Democratic leaders on a more moderate approach to immigration legislation has sparked bitter talk of betrayal among some of his staunchest defenders on the right — and forced many of them to rethink their loyalties amid confusion over what the president favors.

Anne Coulter responded with this: "If we’re not getting a wall, I’d prefer President Pence." And this: "At this point, who DOESN'T want Trump impeached?"

Now, we don't know if Trump is actually going to go through with this deal with the Democrats. Because, face it: he's a lying hypocrite and con man who doesn't know what he's doing, and rarely does what he promises.

But if he does go back on his stupid wall promise (stupid because boats!) and restore DACA, no one should be surprised. Trump has been screwing over his fellow Republicans, like John McCain, Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions, etc., etc., since before he was elected.

This looks like the "I told you so moment" that so many pundits warned Trump supporters of when he started his run for president: his multiple bankruptcies showed what a bad businessman and incompetent deal maker he was. When he skated away from the bankruptcies and left investors and bankers holding the bag for his incompetence it showed what a backstabbing scumbag he was. He doesn't pay the people who build his hotels and golf courses. His bragging about his sexual assaults and voyeurism showed the man had no morals, no conscience and no self awareness. Or maybe it's the syphilis and senile dementia finally taking hold of Trump's addled brain.

Trump is in this for himself only: he doesn't give a damn about the wall, DACA, Islamic terrorism, hurricane victims in Florida and Texas, America, or anyone or anything other than himself and his money, his businesses and his "ratings."

If Trump thinks his "ratings" will be higher if he dumps the wall and makes DACA permanent, he'll do it. He'll stab all those white nationalists who love him so much in the back in a heartbeat and cozy up with fellow New Yorker Chuck Schumer.

Last month Roger Stone threatened civil war if Trump were impeached:

One of Donald Trump's closest advisers has warned a bloody civil war would erupt if the US President was impeached.

Roger Stone predicted "an insurrection like you've never seen" if politicians sought to remove the US leader from the White House and claimed any politician who voted to topple him "would be endangering their own life".

That was before Trump got cozy with the Democrats, angering people like Anne Coulter.

What does Stone think Trump's murderous supporters (Stone's very own assessment) will do if Trump goes back on his promises? Will they, like Anne Coulter, settle for impeachment and Mike Pence? Or will they endanger Trump's life, as Stone threatened? Or are we to believe that they'll always love Trump, even if he blows off the white nationalist agenda and signs a DACA amnesty?

So, alt-right: do you now believe that Donald Trump is a lying, scum-sucking, backstabbing, senile weasel who can't be trusted further than you can throw him? Which ain't far, considering what a porker he is.

This Seems Like a Bribe...

The more we hear about Michael Flynn, the more corrupt he seems. He took $25,000 as a "consulting fee" from a company that was trying to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East with Russian involvement:

As a top official on President Donald Trump’s transition team, former Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn actively promoted a private-sector scheme to build dozens of nuclear reactors across the Middle East known informally in the transition as the “Marshall Plan.” But he did not publicly disclose that backers of the plan had paid him at least $25,000.

Flynn communicated during the transition with the backers of the for-profit plan, billed as a way of strengthening ties between the U.S. and Arab allies looking to develop nuclear power capability. Meanwhile, the Trump adviser expressed his support for the plan with people inside the transition — and discussed its merits with others beyond Trump Tower, according to sources within and close to the Trump team at that time.

The Trump administration is constantly rattling sabers over North Korea's and Iran's nuclear programs, and Flynn was advocating putting more nuclear plants over there?

Flynn disclosed the payment two days before he was fired. During that same period he "consulted" for the Turkish government, publishing an op-ed against a Turkish cleric living in the United States whom the dictator of Turkey wants extradited. He also took money from the Russians before he signed up with Trump.

In Trump's age of political incorrectness, let's call a spade a spade: those weren't consulting fees. Those were bribes. As a public official working for the Republican candidate and then the president-elect, Flynn took money from multiple foreign governments and companies involved in foreign countries in exchange for exerting influence on Donald Trump and the United States government.

These payments represent a clear conflict of interest for any public official, especially for a national security advisor who is privy to very sensitive information. How did Flynn get appointed with so many inappropriate foreign entanglements?

The Trump administration looks more and more crooked with each passing day.

Fighting Populism With Populism

In a recent interview, Steve Bannon spoke of how he "gets" liberals.

“The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

Well, that all depends. If the Democrats get a populist candidate of color, there are far more people of color now than white people in this country. But Bannon isn't all wrong and, since he has so graciously given us his strategy, we should take advantage of that.

Rather than talk about the immigration issue in terms of race, for example, Democrats should talk as straight as Trump to those swing state voters who voted twice for Obama and then pulled the lever for Trump. I'd begin by asking them why they are too lazy to work jobs that only the undocumented workers want. Then, I'd tell them quite plainly that any jobs they thought they might have aren't coming back because of robotics. So, if they want to get a decent paying job, they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and go back to technical school. The job they should aim for is fixing the self serve check out lanes at Wal Mart and Target. I'd probably throw in the fact that coal is dead and they should look to getting into renewables.

Plain and straight talk. Just like the guy they voted for...

Climate Change Has Already Made Florida Uninhabitable

Millions of people have flocked to Florida for retirement. They are drawn to the warm winters. In 2015 19.1% of the population was 65 or older.

The problem is that summer in Florida is hell. Without air conditioning people die, especially the elderly. After Hurricane Irma millions of people were (and some still are) without electricity. And now they are dying from the heat:

Six people are dead and more than 100 have been evacuated to hospitals from a nursing home that had no air conditioning following Hurricane Irma, the police said Wednesday.

The nursing home, the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, had electricity but suffered a “prolonged power failure” to the transformer that powered the air conditioning, the administrator said in a statement provided to NBC 6, a local television station. “Unfortunately, early this morning several patients experienced distress and there were three fatalities,” the statement said.

Two more died during the evacuation to a nearby hospital, city officials said. A sixth person also died, officials said, though it was not immediately clear when that happened.

You need artificial life support to survive Florida summers. Climate change is turning Florida into Venus lite, with crazily strong wind storms and unbearable temperatures. And it's only going to get worse.

As greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels continues to warm the planet, temperatures are only going to rise further. Hurricanes and tornadoes are going to be more severe as the ocean gets hotter and the capacity of the atmosphere to hold water vapor increases.

It also appears that the operators of the nursing home are guilty of malfeasance: they're required to have emergency power for their air conditioners. And instead of evacuating residents when they were clearly in distress (the home is right next to a hospital with air conditioning), they let them die.

Like the nursing home operators, the Trump administration is guilty of malfeasance for pulling out of the Paris climate accord and rolling back Obama-era pollution rules.

Scott Pruitt, Trump's EPA administrator, says it's insensitive to talk about climate change during a hurricane season that climate change has intensified to catastrophic levels, giving us Harvey and Irma. That's like saying it's insensitive to talk about radical Islam after an ISIS terrorist attack.

The oil industry has convinced themselves and their Republican toadies that climate change is a good thing: all that oil in northern Alaska and Russia can finally be drilled and the Northwest Passage will be opened up, making shipping oil to Asia so much more profitable. Ever notice how everything the Trump administration does seems to benefit Russia one way or another?

Trump better be careful. If the heat kills all the geezers in the South the Republicans will lose control of Southern legislatures, Congress and the presidency.