Pulling Out of Climate Accord Hurts American Industry

The Trump administration is pulling out of the Paris Climate Treaty. In addition, Trump's people are hamstringing the EPA and appear to be considering gutting emissions standards for automobiles and power plants:

The Trump administration gave notice it intends to relax the rules governing greenhouse gas emissions on new model cars Thursday, in its latest move to undo President Barack Obama’s climate policies.

In a notice on the federal register, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department announced they were considering rewriting emissions standards for cars and light trucks made between 2021 and 2025.

While other climate-change initiatives spearheaded by President Obama — like the EPA strategy for reducing emissions from power plants, called the Clean Power Plan — received more scrutiny from industry and conservative critics, emissions standards for cars are just as consequential for curbing the buildup of atmosphere-warming gases, analysts said.

The problem with this plan is that the rest of the world is going forward with clean energy and reduced emissions. Germany is planning to have only electric cars by 2030, and other countries are considering similar moves.

If the United States doesn't have a domestic market for such automobiles, American companies won't build them. They won't develop the technology. They will fall behind and be taken over by foreign companies, much like Chrysler was.

The same thing is true for power generation: Americans pioneered semiconductors and solar cell technology. But we've lost out to the Chinese in photovoltaic technology. We have a fairly robust wind power market, especially in Texas, but European companies have the upper hand in wind technology, and the Chinese have 70% of the market for rare earth magnets used in wind turbines and all manner of electronic devices.

American car companies and electrical utilities are famously short-sighted: they have no incentive to plan for the future. CEOs get compensated for daily and hourly stock increases. Note the GM's big bold announcement in 2017 wasn't about new technology or new production lines, it was a $5 billion stock buyback program aimed at jacking up share prices.

The US auto industry has historically been more interested in selling high-end, high-profit gas guzzlers to fat and lazy Americans than increasing their world market share. But this is a doomed strategy: as economic inequality continues to grow in the United States Americans will be less and less able to afford expensive cars.

Tesla's electric cars are cool and everything, but they're pricey. Unless the US government does something to address growing gap between rich and poor Americans, or encourage domestic production of inexpensive cars, foreign companies will step in to sell their cheaper and more efficient vehicles to Americans.

The downward spiral Trump voters are worried about will only get worse as his policies (and lack of them) turn the United States into just another third-world country.

Russian Engines Used in North Korean Missiles

The Times has another story about how Russia is screwing over the United States yet again:

North Korea’s success in testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears able to reach the United States was made possible by black-market purchases of powerful rocket engines probably from a Ukrainian factory with historical ties to Russia’s missile program, according to an expert analysis being published Monday and classified assessments by American intelligence agencies.

The studies may solve the mystery of how North Korea began succeeding so suddenly after a string of fiery missile failures, some of which may have been caused by American sabotage of its supply chains and cyberattacks on its launches. After those failures, the North changed designs and suppliers in the past two years, according to a new study by Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. 

It's not clear that Putin himself authorized the sale of the missiles to North Korea: the factory involved was a target of North Korean espionage several years ago.

But the factory is in dire economic straits because of cutbacks in Russian missile programs and is in the part of the Ukraine affected by the civil war instigated and backed by Putin and Russian troops.

The American rocket launch company, United Launch Alliance, also buys engines from Russia, though members of Congress have pushed to end this and use American sources. Which is probably putting further economic pressure on Russian rocket companies to sell to the North Koreans.

The chaos sown by Putin in Ukraine has now spilled over to the Korean peninsula, and has threatened the United States. The chaos in Syria, allowing the spread of ISIS, was sown by Putin with his continued propping up of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. That in turn caused a massive crisis, flooding Europe with millions of refugees, sparking several terrorist attacks in France, Belgium and elsewhere in Europe. The hysteria has also spread to the United States, helping spark the rise of neo-Nazis, the KKK and Confederate dead-enders, assisted by Russian fake news and social media trolling, helping power Trump to the presidency.

Putin's foreign adventures are now directly threatening the integrity of the United States and Europe. Russia is directly threatening America and American interests, and Trump is still making kissy-face with the Russian dictator.

It's long been assumed that North Korea got their nuclear technology from Pakistan, but I'm not so sure of that now. After the Cold War many Russian nuclear scientists were abandoned by their government and wound up in North Korea.

In a way this is good news: if the North Koreans are dependent on Russian engines, their capabilities will be reduced if the supply line is cut.

Now the question is: will Trump call Putin out for screwing us, or will Trump bend over for the Russians again?

Tribes+Trolls=Epic Fail

The last few days have seen me come to a stark realization about Trump and his supporters. They don't know what to do now that they are governing so they can't govern. How do you lead when your core ideology is to be contrarian?

I base this on two cold and rational facts. First, these are very tribal people. If you are in The Cult, you can do whatever you want. You can stand in the middle of the 5th Avenue and shoot someone and no one will care. Fareed Zakaria explores this in depth in the video below.



Take this information and couple it with this.



So, we have a very tribal people who exist only to troll. Where does that leave us? With this...

If you had told me six years ago that the American Left would be self-destructing as rapidly and violently as they appear to be today, I'd have had you committed. But bear in mind, their "long march through the institutions" has secured their (ever more tenuous) grasp on the reins of power. They own academia, the media, and the entertainment industry almost completely, and that's still a lot of power, power they won't surrender easily.

Before I get back to my original point...hmm...let's see...Donald Trump has been a successful member of the media and entertainment industry for several decades. And he's their champion? Wow, Just wow...talk about being conned...hook, line and sinker...

More importantly (and back to my original point), this proves that they can't fucking govern. It's still all the liberal elite's fault and all they know is plots, secret conspiracies, and being a whiny troll. Never in my life have I seen a group of people so incapable of reflection. They won. They run the entire government. And still, somehow, they take ZERO responsibility for their fuck up after fuck up.

When they lose next year (and it's going to be massive), the cognitive dissonance is going to be nuclear.

Trump's Chaos Spreads to Charlottesville

Nazis and Klan members are marching in the streets of Charlottesville. They beat up counterprotesters and rammed a car into a crowd.  They are protesting the removal of the statue of a traitor to the United States:

The turmoil began with a march Friday night and escalated Saturday morning as hundreds of white nationalists gathered. Waving Confederate flags, chanting Nazi-era slogans, wearing helmets and carrying shields, they converged on a statue of Robert E. Lee in the city’s Emancipation Park and began chanting phrases like “You will not replace us,” and “Jew will not replace us.” 

We all remember who Adolf Hitler was: the murderer of millions of Europeans, Americans and Jews. We don't have statues of him in the United States: instead we have a Holocaust Museum and WWII memorials to remember his victims. And why do these supporters of Trump, who professes such love for Israel, have so much hatred for Jews?

Robert E. Lee and the other Confederate leaders were traitors to the United States. We do not "erase history" by tearing down monuments to those traitors. I'm actually related to General Lee: it's not a point of shame, but neither is it a heritage to celebrate: his actions do not reflect poorly on his descendants unless they endorse his treachery by honoring him. Statues of Lincoln, Union generals and abolitionists serve as reminders of the heroes of the Civil War: we should not commemorate the calumny of the villains.

The Nazi sympathizers in Charlotte venerate Confederate traitors, Hitler, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump all in the same breath. Make no mistake what their intentions are:

“We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump” to “take our country back,” Mr. Duke told reporters Saturday. Many of the white nationalist protesters carried campaign signs for Mr. Trump.

This is what Donald Trump has turned the Republican Party into. A bunch of Nazis and Klan members who advocate race warfare and anarchy. Republicans have been tiptoeing up to this line for decades, with Nixon's and Reagan's dog whistles to racist Southerners. But Trump has completely obliterated it, winking and grinning as his followers pledge fealty to him with Nazi salutes and Nazi slogans.

During the campaign Trump played dumb, pretending he didn't know who David Duke was, and what the Klan was. Now his followers are inciting race war at the same time he's threatening nuclear war with North Korea. He's apparently thinking of invading South America as well, saying that we have "many options for Venezuela."

Republicans in Congress, wise up: Trump is an incompetent, senile madman intent on destroying the United States out of sheer spite. He is filling his own pockets with money from the treasury, paid to his own businesses so the Secret Service and the Pentagon can provide "security" when he takes vacations at his own properties.

Trump has had more than a year to disavow these Nazi sympathizers, and he has never done so. These are "his voters." This is why they'll never turn their backs on him: they are died-in-the-wool racists and fascists, and they are convinced he is as well. Whether Trump himself is is irrelevant: he's happy to take their fealty and give them license to rain chaos down across the country while he rains chaos down in Washington, dismantling the rule of law.

At this point the Republican Party has to disavow Trump and impeach him. Unless Congress or the cabinet removes Trump from office, and soon, he will start to pull the same gimmicks that other dictators have in the past. If Congress doesn't act soon, it may well be too late.

Trump will continue to fuel strife between his supporters and everyone else, inciting more violence. He will attack his erstwhile allies in Congress, such as Mitch McConnell and John McCain, in an attempt to intimidate and silence them. He will purge government of officials who refuse to pledge personal loyalty to Donald Trump alone. He will sic the FBI and the Justice Department after his enemies, perhaps starting with Hillary Clinton. He will corrupt the military, firing any generals who will not follow illegal orders. He will use his voter fraud commission to take away the right to vote from Democrats and minorities. A majority of Republicans would even back Trump if he canceled the next presidential election. The next step would be to declare martial law.

Trump is using the standard dictator play book, drumming up fear and paranoia over foreigners (ISIS, immigrants), cozying up to the foreign country that vaulted him to power (Russia), alienating our democratic allies (Europe), then stoking a foreign war (North Korea, Venezuela) to terrorize Americans so they will acquiesce to his future despotic measures to shore up his power.

If Trump remains president the chaos in Charlottesville will spread across the entire country.

The Troll Party

I think Bill Maher reads our blog...:)

The Pajama Boy Wearing Mom Jeans

Entertainer Rush Limbaugh had an interesting quote the other day. In commenting on President Trump's stance on North Korea, he said,

“We don’t have a pajama boy who wears mom jeans who can barely throw a baseball, a first pitch, at a Nationals game, as president,” he said. “We have somebody out there who’s no-nonsense, and who’s not going to take this.”

First of all, both Trump and Limbaugh got draft deferments from Vietnam so they can take their "tough" talk and shove it up their chickenhawk asses. In addition, Limbaugh may have forgotten about this.

Trump won’t throw first pitch on Nationals opening day

At least Obama showed up!

And finally, what the fuck is a "pajama boy who wears mom jeans?" That sounds like an insult from the 1890s...

Trump: Thank You Sir, May I Have Another!

In retaliation for a sanctions bill passed by an overwhelming majority of Congress and reluctantly signed by Trump, Vladimir Putin has demanded that the United States reduce our diplomatic staff by 755.

Trump responded by thanking Putin:

“I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut down on payroll, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people, because now we have a smaller payroll,” Mr. Trump told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. “There’s no real reason for them to go back. So I greatly appreciate the fact that we’ve been able to cut our payroll of the United States. We’ll save a lot of money.” 

I am reminded of a scene from Animal House:

Trump is really baffling: he goes out of his way to insult allies like Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Jeff Flake, and Jeff Sessions. These are people whose support he needs to accomplish everything on his agenda.

Trump then makes crazy apocalyptic threats against a whack job in North Korea with nuclear weapons without consulting his staff.

Trump reportedly fired campaign manager Paul Manafort, who's under investigation for colluding with the Russians, because Manafort treated him like a child:

"You think you've gotta go on TV to talk to me? You treat me like a baby!” Trump said.

“Am I like a baby to you? I sit there like a little baby and watch TV and you talk to me? Am I a f--king baby, Paul?”

When enemies, friends and allies disrespect Trump he is full of piss and vinegar. But when Russia says "bend over!" Trump asks "how far?"

Does Trump think that looking like Putin's bitch is what his supporters want to see? Does he think he's being funny? If he doesn't want to avoid further diplomatic tussles he could simply say nothing. But instead he digs the hole he's in with Russia even deeper.

Clearly, Trump is afraid of Putin in a way that he's not afraid of anyone else. Which means that Trump either has a real hard-on for Volodya, or Putin has something on him that will totally destroy Trump.

The FBI raid on Paul Manafort's house in July is an indication that the Russia investigation is getting closer to home. It looks like Manafort was involved with money laundering at Russian-owned Cyprus banks, along with Russian oligarch Oleg Derepaska and American real estate, with some involvement by Trump.

Manafort has worked with Kremlin-backed Ukrainian puppets in Eastern Europe for years. What if Manafort himself is the vector of collusion between Russia and Trump? Manafort worked as Trump's campaign manager for free. This guy never does anything for free: someone was obviously paying him for the time he spent with Trump.

During the Republican national convention in 2016 Manafort did Russia's bidding by removing language from the Republican platform calling for support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. This looks like collusion.

Was Russian paying Manafort to be Trump's campaign manager, like they paid Manafort to run political operations for Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president backed by the Russians?

In the end, Trump will probably argue that the involvement with Russia was all Manafort, and the collusion ended when Manafort was fired. But Trump actually fired Manafort because he treated Trump like the child he is. Trump and surrogates like Flynn and Kushner continued to have questionable contacts with the Russians even after the election.

And Trump is still kowtowing to Putin to this day.

Stand Up For Science

Are Men Getting Dumber than Women?

The thesis of the fired Google employee's paper on diversity is that women are biologically destined to be poorer programmers than men. He gives a whole bunch of pseudo-scientific examples and issues a few caveats, but basically appears to want to rationalize why women make less money and justify the existence of the glass ceiling.

But here's the thing: this guy is totally ignoring one biological difference between males and females, one that completely contradicts the thesis that men make better programmers: boys are lousy students, and they're getting worse.

For many years now women have significantly outnumbered men in college, with women making up 56% of college students in 2017. In the 1970s that ratio was reversed. Does that mean men are getting dumber than women now?

This shouldn't be surprising, especially when you consider the behavior of grade-school boys and girls. Boys have more trouble sitting still. They can't focus. They're more physical. They're more aggressive. They act out more. At a young age girls are better at math and language skills, and they actually do their homework.

Some people have criticized the way school is taught, and have said that we should make accommodations for hyperactive boys. But a large part of the problem is that males appear to have less discipline and are less capable of delaying gratification than females: they don't want to go to college because they want to make money now, not in four years. All that testosterone makes them impatient.

When you come right down to it, being a programmer is just like going to college: you sit at a desk and you think and you type (and isn't typing for women?). It's a sedentary pursuit that requires a lot of patience, focus and self-discipline. Things that young men are bad at. If we use this data set, we could easily arrive at a completely different conclusion: males make bad programmers.

Of course these generalizations are false. And that's the point: now that conservatives can't justify discrimination against women on moral, social and religious grounds, they are trying to rationalize it with cherry-picked pseudo-scientific arguments in evolutionary biology and psychology.

When you throw out all the gobbledygook and straw man arguments, the real reason conservatives think men should do better than women is that men are bigger and stronger. In the end, it's all about force. Just listen to how Trump talks.

In today's information society, education and social skills are quickly becoming more important than brute strength. And that's what's really got these guys scared.

Teenagers...

Those Poor Picked-On Conservative Programmers

The Google employee who was recently fired for writing an anti-diversity polemic not only thinks women shouldn't be programmers, but thinks that everyone is picking on conservatives. Part of the screed:

Stop alienating conservatives.

Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things differently.

In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.

Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is require for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.

It's hilarious that in a diatribe against diversity, the author makes the argument for diversity. He doesn't think that companies should cater to women who have children to care for, but he wants poor downtrodden conservatives to be treated as special snowflakes whose feelings are hurt when people find out that they don't think women are qualified to be programmers.

Apparently conservatives in "progressive environments" think of themselves as gay men who have to hide in the closet and keep their true orientation secret. It's also intolerant of progressives to condemn conservative intolerance. It's wrong for progressives to say hostile things about conservatives who say hostile things about women, blacks, Muslims, and Mexicans.

The first thing any child should learn is: you don't say every stupid idea that pops into your head. Knowing when to hold one's tongue is the basis of a civil society. You don't have to agree with everything someone says, but you don't always have to voice your disagreements. That's only common decency, a virtue conservatives used to prize.

Finally, he returns to the "time served" idea, bringing up another false premise, that conservatives are more "conscientious" Than who? Women? Progressives?

This guy thinks that since conservative men are supposedly more willing to put up with long hours and the boring drudge work that occurs in large corporations, they should be accorded special treatment and their foibles should be ignored.

In my experience, conservative men are less conscientious than non-conservatives in general, and women in particular. Conservative men are notorious for cutting corners when it comes to paying taxes. They disobey environmental regulations. They disobey traffic laws. They think it's fine for  cops to violate people's civil rights. They don't think it's a problem for nitwits with guns to accidentally shoot people around them. They drink excessively. They sexually harass women. They disrespect minorities. They intentionally make rude and insulting jokes, taking pride in "political incorrectness." They shirk familial responsibilities.

Some conservatives might, on occasion, spend more time at work, and kowtow to their bosses. But it's because that's what they want to do, not out of conscientiousness. Many self-professed conservatives subscribe to some form of the Prosperity Gospel of Ayn Rand, where altruism is always suspect and selfishness -- or their sanitized euphemism, "enlightened self interest" -- is the noblest goal.

Who is more conscientious: the woman who stays home from work to care for a sick child, or the man who always makes his wife stay home from work to care for that child?

In the end, for most conservatives the only thing that matters is what they want.

Jobs, Not Jail Sentences

The Google employee who wrote a document opposing efforts within Google to increase diversity among the workforce has been fired.

His document was released in full on Gizmodo, a tech website:

In the memo, which is the personal opinion of a male Google employee and is titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” the author argues that women are underrepresented in tech not because they face bias and discrimination in the workplace, but because of inherent psychological differences between men and women. “We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism,” he writes, going on to argue that Google’s educational programs for young women may be misguided. 

I haven't read the whole thing, but it's clear this person is a typical conservative who has a ton of preconceptions about how the world works and is trying to justify the higher position of men by stating those preconceptions as facts, while falsely pigeonholing all women into the same stereotype.

This section, in particular, tries to justify why men should get paid more and have higher positions than women:

We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.

Yes, we do too ask why there are so many men in these jobs, and we know the answer: it's called "the good old boy network."

His premise is false on two fronts: first, most jobs do not require people to put in all those long hours, especially as programmers (more on this below). These are jobs, not jail sentences.

Second, there are women who are willing to work long hours. My wife put in more hours a week than I did because her company was filled with conservative men who had the same stupid preconceptions as this Google employee.

I worked as a programmer for more than 20 years. I worked with all kinds of people: American men, American women, Israeli men, Ukrainian men, Indian men, Dominican men, black men, white women, black women, Indian women, gay men, lesbian women, you name it. Most of them were regular people who just were doing a job for money. They would finish their work and go home to their spouses, kids, pets and hobbies.

Some programmers didn't work that way. They would spend all their time at work. They ate breakfast, lunch and dinner at work. Their only friends were at work. These people typically thought of themselves as the best coders simply because they spent the most time at work.

This has become the dominant mindset in Silicon Valley and among programmers in general.

It is a completely false premise. Number of hours spent on a task is not an indicator of competence. It is often inversely proportional: the longer it takes someone to do something, the less competent they are.

As a programmer I would work eight or nine hours a day. I wrote design documents, broke the project up into detailed tasks, then made time estimates for each one separately. When it was time to start coding I would work on the interfaces first, then on the hardest and most complex parts, getting them out of the way at the start. I would write code in small pieces, compile it repeatedly to find syntax errors, then test it immediately. Writing code and debugging code were the same task for me, a completely integrated process: I would find and eliminate most of my bugs within a few minutes.

The "stay at work all the time" guys operated differently. They would stay late into the night and sometimes pull all-nighters. They didn't like writing detailed design documents, or breaking down projects into small tasks, or making detailed time estimates: they would try estimate how long an entire project would take in one fell swoop, without segmenting it up, based on their vast "experience."

They were always "big picture guys." They would spend a lot of their time at work writing "tools" unrelated to the project at hand, investigating third-party libraries to "improve productivity," experimenting with other programming languages, and were always on the vanguard of the next big thing.

They coded differently too. They would write hundreds and hundreds of lines of code at a sitting, writing for several days before even trying to compile it. It would take them hours to fix the compilation errors alone. Debugging all that code could take weeks, with all the interactions between various parts.

These guys might have been work at 10 or 12 or 16 hours a day, but they weren't doing a full eight hours of work. They spent a lot of time reading email and in online "newsgroups" discussing programming languages, and asking and answering programming questions for the community at large.

Because these guys didn't get enough sleep, and they didn't have any change of scenery, they were never operating at peak efficiency.

Towards the end of projects, my modules would generally be done on time. I would go home at the normal time. The "work all the time" guys would be behind. They would stay late at night, maybe pull a couple of all-night marathons trying to find a bug hidden in thousands of lines of untested code.

The most important thing I found when writing code was avoiding distractions: when your attention wanders you get bugs. You want your programmers 100% focused on the job. The "work all the time" guys claimed they could only focus when no one else was around, and that's why they had to work late.

The upshot is that you might get four to six hours of real work a day out of a guy like this, with all the extracurricular activities and the roadblocks they'd run into because they were too distracted during the day to get their work done, and too tired after everyone else went home to think straight.

But the fact is you're only going to get six or eight or 10 hours of decent code out of a person a day: beyond that it's diminishing returns. Any more and you're introducing more problems than than you're solving.

Now, this type of behavior isn't peculiar to programmers: we all know men like this. The sales guys who are always on the road, taking clients out to dinner and golf, in the break room talking about football. Schmoozing with the boss.

These guys aren't particularly good at their jobs: they're not very bright, or very charismatic. But they just keep slogging away. They're always there, looking busy, always hanging around, always jostling the boss's elbow to let them know they're on board.

Because so many men in business are this kind of schmoozing hanger-on, they have all convinced themselves that this lifestyle -- not the actual work itself -- is the requirement for the job.

This is the false narrative that drives the idea that women can't be good programmers, or good CEOs for that matter.

At its core, the justification for why these men should be in charge is essentially this: I served my time.

But jobs -- especially in technical fields -- are supposed to be based on competence. Not time served.

Poll Numbers Falling

CNN has new polling out that has some pretty bad news for the president. Trump’s “strong approval” among Republicans has dropped from 73 percent in February, shortly after he took office, to 59 percent now. The poll shows a significant number of Americans don’t trust what they hear from the White House: 30 percent of respondents said they trust nothing the White House says; just 24 percent said they trust all or most of what the White House says. Even among Republicans, only about half say they can trust most of what they hear from the White House.

Perhaps he needs to do some reflection and change:)

The Report The Trump Administration Is Supressing

Scientists from 13 different federal agencies have a draft of a report on climate change ready for release. It contains information (facts, evidence, reality) that illustrates the danger of man made carbon emissions and how they are having an effect now on the lives of US citizens.

The report concludes that even if humans immediately stopped emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world would still feel at least an additional 0.50 degrees Fahrenheit (0.30 degrees Celsius) of warming over this century compared with today. The projected actual rise, scientists say, will be as much as 2 degrees Celsius. 

A small difference in global temperatures can make a big difference in the climate: The difference between a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and one of 2 degrees Celsius, for example, could mean longer heat waves, more intense rainstorms and the faster disintegration of coral reefs. 

Among the more significant of the study’s findings is that it is possible to attribute some extreme weather to climate change. The field known as “attribution science” has advanced rapidly in response to increasing risks from climate change.

As of today, the Trump administration is suppressing the report. Considering the danger that climate change presents to our national security, President Trump is clearly failing to do his duty to protect our country.

So Much Losing On Trade

Donald Trump promised that we'd all be sick of winning at this point. Instead, there are an awful lot of people in the business world that are sick of losing.

The agricultural sector of our country saw TPP (the Trans Pacific Trade Partnership) as a lifeline. But now...

The decision to pull out of the trade deal has become a double hit on places like Eagle Grove. The promised bump of $10 billion in agricultural output over 15 years, based on estimates by the U.S. International Trade Commission, won’t materialize. But Trump’s decision to withdraw from the pact also cleared the way for rival exporters such as Australia, New Zealand and the European Union to negotiate even lower tariffs with importing nations, creating potentially greater competitive advantages over U.S. exports.

What Trump essentially did by pulling out of TPP was fuck over a whole sector of our economy. Worse, he has left other sectors wondering exactly WTF is going on with trade.

America’s steelworkers are on edge as they wait for Mr. Trump to fulfill his promise to place tariffs on steel imports. Home builders are desperate for the president to cut a deal with Canada to end a dispute over its softwood lumber exports. And cattle ranchers are longing for a bilateral pact with Japan to ease the flow of beef exports.

Where is all the winning, Mr. President?

Lazy Boy

Check out the cover of this week's Newsweek.

I can't think of a better description of our current president or the right wing bloggers/commenters that support him.

The Most Awesome Negotiator Ever!

The Washington Post published full transcripts of Trump's conversations with the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Australia, revealing what an awesome negotiator Trump is. And by "awesome" I mean awesomely bad. Here are some sample quotes from Trump:

• This is going to kill me.
• Boy that will make us look awfully bad.
• That puts me in a bad position.
• It makes me look so bad and I have only been here a week.
• This deal will make me look terrible.
• This shows me to be a dope.
• I look like a dope.
• It is horrible for me.
• This is a killer.
• I am going to killed on this thing.
• It is embarrassing to me.

Have you ever heard such whining, wheedling and cajoling from a grown man?

Trump also seems to hate the New United States, especially New Hampshire, running it down in front of the Mexican president:

“We have a massive drug problem, where kids are becoming addicted to drugs because the drugs are being sold for less money than candy,” Trump said. “I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den.”

First, Clinton won New Hampshire. Not Trump. Second, drugs cost a lot more than candy. If drugs sold for more than candy, you can be sure drug dealers would be pushing Snickers bars. Third, it's not so much kids getting addicted to drugs, but adults getting hooked on prescription drugs who then turn to fentanyl, which is a problem across the country.

When the president of Mexico said he wasn't going to pay for the wall, Trump had this exchange:

“You cannot say that to the press,” Trump said repeatedly, according to a transcript of the Jan. 27 call obtained by The Washington Post. Trump made clear that he realized the funding would have to come from other sources but threatened to cut off contact if Mexican President ­Enrique Peña Nieto continued to make defiant statements.

The funding “will work out in the formula somehow,” Trump said, adding later that “it will come out in the wash, and that is okay.” But “if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that.”

He described the wall as “the least important thing we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important.”

Trump's defenders will claim that we should give the guy a break, he's new at this. Which is a total crock: the entire reason we were supposed to trust this clown was because he was such an experienced negotiator and master manipulator.

It turns Trump's terrible and has to beg for pity from Turnbull and Peña Nieto. This is exactly why Trump had six bankruptcies in his various casinos and hotel businesses.

But the most important takeaway is that Trump fully understands he's been feeding his supporters a line of bull about the wall. The wall for Trump was always just a political gimmick, a prop he trots out at speeches. Have Trump supporters always known he was lying about it and just didn't care, or were they really taken in by the lies?

At least these transcripts show that Trump tells the truth at least some of the time: "I look like a dope." "Boy that will make us look awfully bad." "It is embarrassing to me."

That last goes for us all.

A New Presidential Fitness Test

When I was a kid in the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a thing called the Presidential Physical Fitness Test for school children. My friends and I could reach the 100th percentile in situps, but had trouble with pullups. It was started in the 60s when with concerns that Americans were getting soft:

In the 1950s, research showed Americans were out of shape and in poor health compared with their counterparts in Europe. In response, President Eisenhower formed the President's Council on Youth Fitness — to investigate the findings and mount a national response.

When President Kennedy took office, he made improving the nation's fitness a top priority of his administration. In 1960, he wrote an op-ed in Sports Illustrated, declaring, "in a very real and immediate sense, our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security."

The remedy — or the attempt at a remedy — came in 1966, with the Presidential Physical Fitness Award. The original test was designed to encourage and prepare young Americans for the physical demands of military service. It included a softball throw — said to mimic throwing a grenade; a broad jump — later renamed the long jump; a shuttle run — to test agility; and pull-ups — designed to imitate a sailor climbing a ladder.

To receive the award, a student needed to place in the top 85th percentile based on national standards. In, say, 2008, that meant an 11-year-old girl had to run a mile in under 9 minutes, do three pull-ups and complete 42 curl-ups in 60 seconds.

Similar concerns are being raised now, with so many obese adults and children.

I propose a new President Fitness Test: not for kids, but for the president himself. For the last several years Trump has been acting, well, crazy. He seems incapable of distinguishing reality from fantasy. He lies constantly. He suffers from grandiosity. He blurts out inappropriate comments and lacks any apparent self control.

There's been a lot of discussion about psychiatric professionals evaluating Trump's mental state without a direct examination -- something the profession swore off after Barry Goldwater's run for president.

But recently the American Psychoanalytic Association said its members don't have to abide by the Goldwater rule any longer (though the American Psychoatric Association still recommends it): they are free to comment on Trump's mental state.

Several articles have appeared recently questioning Trump's mental and physical health. An article in STAT documents a marked decline in his ability to speak in coherent, grammatical sentences over the last 30 years. Trump seems easily confused and unstable on his feet, as shown in this video of him not knowing where he's going when getting off Air Force One, and this one showing him needing help walking from an old lady (Teresa May) walking down a slope.

Trump's not the first president to suffer mental disability in office. A study showed that Ronald Reagan was almost certainly suffering from Alzheimers in the last half on his presidency, while George H.W. Bush was not. Woodrow Wilson suffered strokes and 1919 and his wife basically assumed the presidency. FDR was ill with heart disease for years, and probably died from skin cancer that spread to his brain, killing him in 1945. John F. Kennedy had a number of health issues.

Most of those presidents' mental deterioration began after they assumed office. But based on Trump's behavior and speech patterns, it's clear something has been wrong with him for the last ten or fifteen years. No previous president has been so obviously and publicly unfit for office.

For this reason, Congress should pass a new Presidential Physical and Mental Fitness Test. One that requires presidents and vice presidents to be examined by a panel of doctors and psychiatrists to issue a report to congress on the health of the executive branch. This should include an MRI to look for atrophy in Trump's brain.

The FAA requires that pilots undergo physical and mental examinations before flying. The pilot is a single point of failure: if a pilot goes bonkers hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people can die.

The president's job is even more delicate: if he makes the wrong decision -- or worse, takes impetuous and spiteful action -- millions of people can die. We could go to war over a perceived insult.

A mandated presidential physical and mental examination is a common-sense precaution that could allow Republicans to save face. Once presented with the results of his such an examination, Trump might be talked into resigning instead of going through an embarrassing impeachment trial that would damage the country and the Republican Party.

Trump's Hypocritical Immigration Law Would Backfire Bigly

An article in the Washington Post documents that many in the Trump administration, including Trump himself, would never have been born if Trump's new immigration proposal had been the law of the land. The law would allow only immigrants who speak English and have skills that are in demand.

Friedrich Trumpf, Donald's grandfather, had no skills and couldn't speak English. Trump's own mother came from Scotland, speaking Gaelic and some English, but had no skills: she was listed on the immigration forms as a maid.

Stephen Miller, the Trump adviser pushing the bill, had a great grandmother who could only speak Yiddish. Kellyanne Conway's great grandfather only spoke Italian.

And when Elaine Chao, wife of Mitch McConnell and a member of Trump's cabinet, came to the US in 1961, she couldn't speak a word of English.

This is not to denigrate these people or their ancestors. My grandfather came to America from Norway as a child in 1905, without knowing a single word of English. He married a Norwegian woman, and they spoke Norwegian exclusively at home. They refused to integrate: my father didn't learn English until he went to grade school.

This is the story of the vast majority of Americans: most everybody who came here in the last 200 years did so because they were poor or to escape war or racial or religious intolerance.

Millions of Irish, Italians, Germans, Poles, Norwegians, Swedes, Hungarians, Czechs, Russians and countless others came here in the 1800s and early 1900s and were considered "inferior races" by the dominant Anglo-Saxon power structure. And now their descendants have forgotten the prejudice and hatred their ancestors faced, wishing instead to inflict it on others.

Even as recently as 1960 some people seriously believed that Catholics couldn't be "real" Americans, forcing John F. Kennedy to make a speech about religion in which he said:

But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected president, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured — perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in — for that should be important only to me — but what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

These comments resonate to this day, with so many questioning Muslim Americans' ability to show loyalty to this country.

I agree that the United States cannot accept every person who wants to enter. There has to be some kind of minimum criteria for admittance, criteria of the sort that let Trump's grandfather and mine into the country. Beyond that it should be a lottery: we need all types of workers, as shown by Trump's recent expansion of the H2-B visa program and Trump's own application for 76 visas for housekeepers, cooks and waiters to work at his resorts and clubs.

The fact is, Trump's proposed law will hurt native-born Americans, reducing the quality of living for all. Since it would give preference to people who have marketable skills and speak English, most immigrants would be Chinese, Indian and Pakistani financiers, entrepreneurs, programmers and engineers.

Trump's law would allow a flood of highly-educated foreigners to take well-paying jobs from American college graduates, depressing wages in the tech and financial sectors. Preventing low-skill immigrants from entering the country will either accelerate automation or push Americans into those tedious, back-breaking, dangerous and low-paying jobs in food service, housekeeping, agriculture and meat packing that have been filled by immigrants in recent years.

As the recently revealed telephone conversations between Trump and the leaders of Mexico and Australia showed, Trump has knowingly punked his voters on everything from the border wall to refugees: he's only concerned about his own appearance and doesn't give a damn about the well-being of Americans.

The Russians Are Still Playing Trump

Yesterday Donald Trump was forced to sign a veto-proof Russia sanctions bill, which rebuked him personally by preventing him from lifting the sanctions. He responded on Twitter with his typical ignorance, hyperbole, bluster and stupidity.

Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Aug. 3, 2017

Donald, you ignorant slut: health care failed because you know nothing about it, put all the responsibility on congress, and did nothing to help pass it. Instead you chose to insult and threaten fellow Republicans, telling them that you were just sitting around waiting in your office with your "pen" in hand, waiting for them to pass something, anything -- you didn't care what -- that you could scribble your name on.

Donald, you ignorant slut: Relations are at an "all-time low?" The situation now is nothing compared to the Cuban missile crisis, when American and Russian warships were on a collision course and we were on the verge of nuclear war.

Donald, you ignorant slut: Vladimir Putin is completely responsible for the poor state of relations between the US and Russia. He has invaded other countries, stoking civil war and interfering with the internal politics in United States and Europe.

In 2008, during the Olympics, Putin invaded a part of Georgia. John McCain demanded we go to war over this, but cooler heads prevailed. A few years later Putin invaded Crimea. His troops are fighting in eastern Ukraine right now. His troops shot down a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine.

Putin has been backing Bashar al-Assad's tyrannical reign in Syria, prolonging a civil war that has been a magnet for wanna-be terrorists around the world, and sending millions of refugees into the Middle East and Europe. These refugees have caused chaos and destabilized Europe. Putin ignored ISIS positions in Syria, instead attacking Syrian rebels who had the backing of the United States. ISIS terrorists have been streaming out of Syria and Iraq and have killed and maimed hundreds of people in Europe.

And, of course, Putin interfered with the American election, hacking Democrats' email and filling the Internet with fake news targeted at weak-minded Trumpkins. It's also looking more and more likely -- in light of the Donald Jr. meeting with a Russian lawyer, a Russian spy, and a Russian hacker go-between -- that the Trump campaign was at a minimum trying to collude with the Russians, and that Trump personally tried -- and failed -- to cover up that collusion.

Even if it turns out the Trump campaign didn't directly collude with the Russians, the Russians played Trump and and his people -- Junior, Kushner, Sessions, Flynn, etc. -- over and over and over again. Trump and his people are either in bed with the Russians or they're so utterly incompetent that they are a clear and present danger to the United States.

The prime minister of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, has taken to Facebook to insult Trump in the worst possible terms:

First, it ends hopes for improving our relations with the new US administration.

Second, it is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia.

Third, the Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way.

The US establishment fully outwitted Trump; the President is not happy about the new sanctions, yet he could not but sign the bill.

The issue of new sanctions came about, primarily, as another way to knock Trump down a peg.

New steps are to come, and they will ultimately aim to remove him from power.

A non-systemic player has to be removed.

Notice how, even when delivering the most cutting insults, Medvedev is still playing to Trump's vanity by casting him as the outsider (he's not -- he stocked his administration with dozens of wealthy Wall Street insiders and generals). The Russians are trying to to goad Trump into defying congress, playing up his fears that they'll impeach him.

Putin and Medvedev are disappointed that their puppet is so utterly incompetent, neutered and exposed. Now they are trying to get into Trump's head, feeding him the lie that executive power is unlimited and that congress has no right to stop him.

Why does Trump just take all these insults from the Russians? You'd think a "tough guy" like Trump would strike back at Russia for humiliating him over and over and over, for making him look like Putin's bitch. Trump attacks his own attorney general, and backstabs and fires the people who put him in the Oval, but doesn't say boo when the Russians say he has no balls.

What do the Russians have on Trump?

One Republican That Owns It

Jeff Flake is one Republican who is owning the Trump Era. While the rest of the conservatives out there continue to blame Hillary Clinton, the media and smug liberals for what is clearly the complete and total incompetence of their dear leader, Flake is calling it like it is. And he has some advice.

So, where should Republicans go from here? First, we shouldn’t hesitate to speak out if the president “plays to the base” in ways that damage the Republican Party’s ability to grow and speak to a larger audience. Second, Republicans need to take the long view when it comes to issues like free trade: Populist and protectionist policies might play well in the short term, but they handicap the country in the long term. Third, Republicans need to stand up for institutions and prerogatives, like the Senate filibuster, that have served us well for more than two centuries.

Will they listen?

Justice Department To Investigate Racism...Against White People

Ah, those poor white people. Every day is another cut to their privilege in the world. What's a poor cracker to do? Call Jeff Sessions!!

The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants.

Given all the challenges we face in terms of criminal justice in this country, thank GOD that we are putting this one on the top of the list. White College Applicant Lives Matter!!

Trump: "White House A Real Dump"

A recent piece from golf.com has our current president saying the White House is "a real dump." I'm thinking he can leave anytime he wants and have someone who respects one of our greatest national monuments work there.

Cops Record Themselves Planting Evidence

Police in America are having a tough time: they keep shooting people, many of them totally innocent, then justifying it by claiming that they were afraid of getting shot themselves.

Even when these incidents have been caught on video, juries have let the killers off the hook, letting themselves be suckered by sob stories of scared cops that are actually admissions of incompetence and a lack of professionalism.

But lately there's been another kind of video evidence of police malfeasance: there have been several cases of cops recording themselves planting fake evidence to incriminate suspects:

The Maryland Office of the Public Defender said that charges against at least one suspect were dropped on Monday in light of the new video that they said shows officers "working together to manufacture evidence." The development comes days after the state's top prosecutor announced Friday that 34 prosecuted or pending drug or weapons cases were dropped or dismissed because they were connected to three officers seen in a different body cam video showing one officer planting drugs. 

The brouhaha is part of the aftermath of the Maryland public defender's office releasing a body cam video last week that showed one officer planting drugs in a trash-strewn alley. That officer, Richard Pinheiro, has been suspended while two others depicted in the video have been placed on administrative duty. That first video was turned over to defense attorneys as part of the usual discovery process. Pinheiro apparently did not realize that the agency's body cams retain footage 30 seconds before an officer presses the record button.

This is not an indictment of all cops: clearly there are a few bad eggs.

But what it proves is that cops are just people. They can lie. They can cheat. They can steal. Their testimony should not automatically be given greater weight than civilians.

More importantly, they should never be given the benefit of the doubt in a shooting just because they're wearing a badge. If cops are planting evidence to falsely incriminate people of drug crimes, then they are capable of lying about the circumstances of a shooting.

This is not a one-time problem: crime scene investigators offer courtroom testimony on bite and tool marks, blood spatter, ballistics, hair and fiber analysis, fingerprints, footprints, tire tracks, telling juries that "science" proves such circumstantial evidence is far more conclusive than it really is. Most of this evidence is not actual "scientific proof" -- it's just the personal opinion of the CSI arrived at by eyeballing it under a microscope. Different CSIs can -- and do -- arrive at opposite conclusions for evidence as straightforward as fingerprints.

And then there's the outright fraud by lab techs who analyze DNA and perform chemical analysis:

A mass dismissal of wrongful convictions ─ perhaps the biggest ever ─ unfolded in a Boston courthouse on Tuesday, as prosecutors in seven Massachusetts counties dropped more than 21,000 low-level drug cases tainted by the work of a rogue lab chemist.

The number of corrupted convictions was so unwieldy that the district attorneys used compact discs to deliver lists of cases they were dropping and those they believed they could successfully re-prosecute.

By day's end, just a few hundred cases involving the disgraced chemist, Annie Dookhan, remained. The exact number may not be clear until Wednesday, when the court finishes processing the lists. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which fought for the dismissals, did its own tally and came up with 320 cases dropped from a total 21,907.

Prosecutors aren't blameless either: they frequently withhold evidence from the defense, either intentionally or through incompetence, and all too often solicit perjured testimony.

The public -- and juries in particular -- need to be skeptical of all pronouncements made by prosecutors, police and crime scene investigators. They have their own agendas, which have nothing to do with justice, and more to so with self-promotion and -protection.

The more "scientific certainty" an expert witness claims to have in a piece of evidence that they eyeballed themselves, the more skeptical we should be of its validity.

Real science involves conducting experiments and making measurements that can be reproduced over and over again, producing the same results. By its very nature, most of the techniques of crime scene investigation are not science.

If the evidence in a crime consists of one bite mark on a woman's arm, one smudged fingerprint on a gun, or one mashed bullet in a corpse, it's impossible to perform that experiment 20 more times to see if the same result is achieved.

Since they frequently cannot repeat and reproduce their results, CSIs are not scientists, but are professional observers who use scientific tools to assist in their judgments.

And as these recent videos of planted evidence shows, even video evidence cannot always be trusted: selective editing can create misleading conclusions.

The Real Reason the Mooch Had to Go

The Mooch is out:

President Trump on Monday removed Anthony Scaramucci from his position as communications director, the White House announced, ousting him just days after Mr. Scaramucci unloaded a crude verbal tirade against other senior members of the president’s senior staff.

“Anthony Scaramucci will be leaving his role as White House Communications Director,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “Mr. Scaramucci felt it was best to give Chief of Staff John Kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team. We wish him all the best.”

Mr. Scaramucci’s abrupt removal came just 10 days after the wealthy New York financier was brought on to the West Wing staff, a move that convulsed an already chaotic White House and led to the departures of Sean Spicer, the former press secretary, and Reince Priebus, the president’s first chief of staff.

Just this morning Trump tweeted: "Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages raising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos!"

This looks pretty chaotic to me. By all accounts Trump loved the Mooch just last week: Scaramucci did everything the Trump way. The Mooch was so good at being Trump that many had already started calling the Mooch Trump's "Mini Me." He even had Trump's gesticulations down cold. So why was he fired?

Mr. Trump was initially pleased by Mr. Scaramucci’s harsh remarks, directed at Mr. Priebus and Steve Bannon, the chief White House strategist. But over the weekend, after speaking with his family and Mr. Kelly, the president began to see the brash actions of his subordinate as a political liability and potential embarrassment, according to two people familiar with his thinking.

This makes Trump look crazy for inciting a food fight between his employees. Even worse, he appears ridiculously stupid and weak: his short attention span and renders him incapable of making decisions that stick for more than a few days. Picking the Mooch was always a catastrophically bad choice. The entire episode makes Trump look irrational and senile, like some doddering old man who spent a thousand bucks on miracle hair restorer he saw advertised on Fox News, who then has to enlist his children to call Mastercard to get his money back.

But I would venture that the real reason Trump fired the Mooch was that they pointed out to Trump that Scaramucci is better at being Trump than Trump himself. The Mooch is slicker, more eloquent and a better public speaker than Trump. He is more coherent and less repetitive. (In case the Donald is reading this, that means the Mooch has better words.) He is younger, thinner, better-looking and he has real hair.

That was great when the Mooch was a talking head kissing Trump's ass on Fox Business News. But that cannot stand for a spokesman that works for Trump directly. Spicey and Huckabee Sanders were much less threatening to Trump than the Mooch because they are both overweight and Trump considers them unattractive. [You can just hear Trump saying, "I would give the Huckabee woman a two, two point five tops. And then only if there's a bag on her head."]

Trump told us himself that he fired Comey because Comey was a showboat and a grandstander. But Comey was a piker compared to the Mooch, who even ended his press conferences with air kisses. And everyone knows the worst offense any employee can commit is to outshine Donald Trump.

Again, we see the Trump brand of loyalty at work: the Mooch sold his hedge fund to work for Trump, to avoid a conflict of interest. Now Trump has stabbed him in the back, kicked him in the curb, and threw him under the bus after the Mooch publicly humiliated himself with profuse declarations of undying love for Trump. Trump even destroyed the Mooch's marriage: his wife filed for divorce just after giving birth last week.

Tell me again why would anyone voluntarily go work as a zookeeper in the monkey house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and let Donald Trump fling poo at them?

Defining Critical Thinking

Here's a recent post from my local paper about critical thinking. I thought it very appropriate in the Age of Trump and the Right Wing Blogger/Commenter, specifically...

Q: How do you define critical thinking? 

A: Let’s focus on two ideas: Is your claim supported with evidence? And, are the sources you’re using for your evidence valid? A lot of our debate today is just hurling claims at each other without any effort to support them. It’s claims of fake news and “gotcha” journalism and false balances and the non-reply reply. As for sources, one of the effects of the internet is that it allows you to live in a much narrower world. If I don’t like what someone is saying on Facebook, for example, I’ll unfriend them and I don’t have to think about them anymore. 

Q: This sounds like confirmation bias. 

A: The extreme version in academic circles is called “epistemic closure.” That means that your only criteria for deciding what someone is saying is true is if you already believe it to be true. This is dangerous because now you’ve become insulated from any argument that might challenge your point of view.

Right. Today's conservative supports nothing withe evidence, hurls claims, bitches about fake news, espouses false balances, and is a master of the non reply reply. They live in a narrow world and shut out (defriend) the world because facts that they don't believe in hurt their head.

I challenge all of you to find arguments that are supported by evidence and have valid sources that challenge your point of view.

Here's a great example.

Here is another one.

Here is another one.

A Democratic Senate Majority in 2017?

This article in Politico poses a very interesting question: could Democrats get a majority in the Senate this year, and not in 2019 after the next congressional election?

Apparently John McCain was considering switching to the Democrats in 2001, after Republicans screwed him over in the 2000 primary. After his vote against the Republicans' health care bill and his speech about bipartisanship, people are wondering whether McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski might leave the dumpster fire that the Republican Party has become under Donald Trump.

It seems unlikely that they would actually join the Democratic Party. Instead, they might become independents, like Bernie Sanders, and caucus with the Democrats. They could call themselves "Independent Republicans," which is what Republicans in Minnesota started calling themselves in 1975, after Nixon trashed the Republican Party's name.

McCain, Collins and Murkowski could quite legitimately claim that they are not leaving the Republican Party, but that Trump staged a hostile takeover and has been threatening and holding the Senate hostage to his ever-changing whims.

Trump has tried to blackmail several Republicans in the Senate who object to his misogyny and bullying rants, including Jeff Flake and Dean Heller. They are Mormons, like Mitt Romney, and many Republicans have never liked Trump's immorality, mendacity and mockery of religion.

The so-called president claims that his coat tails are what gave the Republicans the last election, but that is -- like so many things that spew from Trump's contorted lips -- a lie. Republicans lost seats in both the Senate and the House in 2016, because of Trump. Additionally, among the Republicans who voted no against various versions of this year's health care repeal efforts, all but two received more votes than Trump. Which means the approval ratings of those congressmen would go up even more if if they turned against Trump.

Because he's president, Trump thinks he holds all the cards. He thinks the president is a king, answerable to no one. But he can be removed by the vice president and a simple majority of his own cabinet. Had Trump ever served as CEO of a public corporation with a board he would understand this: but he's always headed up private companies, answerable to no one except his own vanity and greed. He thinks he can lead with bluster and intimidation, while betraying his own people every step of the way.

Stupidly, Trump has spent the last six months making the lives of at least three cabinet members a living hell: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Health Secretary Tom Price. The rest of the cabinet have surely taken notice: does Trump even know that the 25th Amendment allows the cabinet to dump him?

Trump has shown a complete lack of loyalty to the people and the Party that supported him and got him where he is today. Since Trump appointed them, it seems unlikely the cabinet would sack him.

But it's not so far-fetched that three to five moderate Republican senators and 20 to 30 moderate Republican representatives would form a new Independent Republican caucus that aligns with the Democrats to oust Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, putting a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats in the leadership of both houses of Congress.

If John McCain was truly serious about going forward in a bipartisan fashion on health care legislation, it is clearly impossible with the power-hungry Mitch McConnell as leader of the Senate.

McCain would be another Abraham Lincoln if he could lead Republicans and Democrats on a bipartisan path out of the mess that Trump and the cowards of the Republican Party have led us into.

The World Of Predators Is Watching

Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal has just written the ultimate characterization of our president. The first paragraph sets the tone.

The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive. It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity.

And then, the dagger...

He’s not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and determined; he’s whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen.

Yep. But this is what you get when you elect a right wing blogger/commenter for president. His actions remind me EXACTLY of all those discussion on Kevin Baker's blog over the years. And the ones here that saw some of those commenters migrating here with their hysterical nonsense. Reading the rest of Noonan's piece makes me wonder if they can possibly see themselves and their dear leader for what they are. They are completely incapable of leading and should not be allowed out of their little bubble. Consider Noonan's last paragraph.

Meanwhile the whole world is watching, a world that contains predators. How could they not be seeing this weakness, confusion and chaos and thinking it’s a good time to cause some trouble?

Noonan wrote this piece a couple of days ago. Look what just happened today.

Well, assholes? Are you willing to admit error yet? Or are you going to stick with your dear leader as he continues to fuck up our country and its standing in the world?

Trump's Insults Are Coming Home to Roost

The Senate bill to repeal Obamacare was defeated last night by a vote of 51 to 49, with three Republicans voting against it. Those three were Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John McCain of Arizona.

The bill deserved to fail on its lack of merit: its express purpose was to cause the Obamacare exchanges to fail. It would immediately cause rates to go up at least 20%, causing millions of people to lose their insurance. Many Republicans wanted it to fail, saying they would vote for it only if the House promised to reject it.

But the real reason the bill failed may be Trump's incorrigible habit of insults and boorish, vulgar behavior.

Just last week John McCain found out he has a malignant form of brain cancer. Many have speculated that the diagnosis caused a sudden surge of empathy and bipartisanship in McCain. That may certainly be the case.

In the past McCain has cooperated with Democrats after undergoing a personal shock. The most glaring example was the shoddy treatment McCain received during the 2000 Republican primary at the hands of George W. Bush's campaign, when they insinuated McCain fathered a black child. McCain subsequently cosponsored the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, which has since been gutted by a deluded Supreme Court.

McCain knows it would be the height of hypocrisy for him to vote for a health care bill that would take away coverage from 16 million Americans while he himself is undergoing treatment for brain cancer on the government's dime.

But McCain is a good soldier, doing whatever he thinks is best for the Republican Party. The accepted wisdom is that the Republicans have to repeal Obamacare, otherwise the base will desert them in the next election for failing to deliver on their promise.

But the reality is that Donald Trump needs the repeal far more than the Republican Party does. He needs to show that he has accomplished something, anything. Trump has been in office for half a year and has nothing to show for it, except a seat on the Supreme Court that Mitch McConnell stole from Obama.

You can sense Trump's desperation for Congress to pass some kind of health care bill, any bill, no matter how petty or useless. Trump needs a win, right now, especially after months of self-inflicted wounds. He just got walloped by the Senate and the House with the Russia sanctions bill, which was passed by a veto-proof 99% majority, with only five total votes against it.

But Trump has been sabotaging relations with fellow Republicans for the last two years. These insults and lack of loyalty are finally coming home to roost.

During the election Trump insulted John McCain by denigrating the war hero for being captured by the Viet Cong. It is something Trump has never apologized for: Trump doesn't do apologies. It may not be the reason for McCain's vote, but Trump certainly made it easier for McCain.

Trump insulted Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and all Republican women with his constant sexism against not just Hillary Clinton and Rosie O'Donnell, but Carly Fiorina, Megyn Kelly, and Mika Brzezinski. He has bragged about sexually assaulting women and watching them undress at a beauty pageant. And he still hasn't learned: his demeaning remarks about Brigitte Macron, the wife of France's president, were an international embarrassment.

And earlier this week Trump tried to blackmail Murkowski into voting for the health care bill. Trump had Ryan Zinke, interior secretary, threaten to cancel Alaska energy projects unless she toed the line.

Why would Collins and Murkowski stick their necks out for Trump after this behavior?

Finally, Trump's constant badgering of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who resigned from the Senate to serve Trump, has shown Republican senators that he has no concept of loyalty. Trump is filled with petty anger at people who have tried, but can't save him from his own easily avoidable mistakes.

After all the insults and boorish vulgarities Trump has showered upon fellow Republicans, why should any of them show him loyalty?

Trump is looking weaker and weaker. He's trying to oust real Republicans like Sean Spicer, Jeff Sessions and Reince Priebus, and hiring Trump-fluffing clowns like Anthony Scaramucci who think, act and swear just like Trump does. People whose proclamations of love for Donald Trump are simply too far over the top to be at all genuine.

Is this what Trump meant when he said we'll win so much that we'll get tired of winning?

The Mooch Is Already Losing It

After just one week, Anthony Scaramucci, Donald Trump's new communications director, is already losing his mind. He called New Yorker columnist Ryan Lizza in an attempt to find out who leaked the story of Trump's dinner with the Mooch, Melania, Sean Hannity and Bill Shine, one of the several sexual predators who were fired from Fox News in the past few months.

Here's a sample of the Mooch's insanity:

“They’ll all be fired by me,” he said. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.” The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn’t been invited. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ” (Priebus did not respond to a request for comment.)

The Mooch really has it in for Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus, accusing him of a felony on Twitter:

Scaramucci was particularly incensed by a Politico report about his financial-disclosure form, which he viewed as an illegal act of retaliation by Priebus. The reporter said Thursday morning that the document was publicly available and she had obtained it from the Export-Import Bank. Scaramucci didn’t know this at the time, and he insisted to me that Priebus had leaked the document, and that the act was “a felony.”

“I’ve called the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice,” he told me.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“The swamp will not defeat him,” he said, breaking into the third person. “They’re trying to resist me, but it’s not going to work. I’ve done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they’re going to have to go fuck themselves.”

I imagine that this is how every meeting in the Oval Office is conducted, with Trump whining incessantly about Sessions, Mueller and Comey, punctuating every sentence with "fuck," "shit," and "cocksucker," with an occasional "pussy" thrown in for good measure.

These are the people who are supposed to be running our country, but instead of doing their jobs they're spending their every waking moment backstabbing each other. They sound like a bunch of middle-school mean girls trying out the new cuss words they just learned.

Congress: please get your act together and dump these guys. End this embarrassing national nightmare before these clowns do permanent damage to the country.

It's 2004 All Over Again

Remember the 2004 election? The second election that George Bush barely won by the skin of his teeth, mostly due to the hysteria generated by the anti-gay marriage fervor that swept the nation? 

As it turns out, Republicans weren't really all that much against gay marriage. Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, was gay and came out in 2010. Dick Cheney, Bush's vice president, has a gay daughter, who married a woman in 2012. In 2016 Pope Francis said that Christians should apologize to gays for marginalizing them.

Gay marriage is now the law of the land, and while there are still some homophobic dead-enders, for the vast majority of Americans gay marriage is a non-issue.

Now Donald Trump is trying to pull the same gimmick again, but this time with transsexuals.

Trump is being investigated by the FBI for colluding with the Russians, and -- mostly likely -- for laundering the ill-gotten gains of Russian oligarchs through real estate transactions. He really wants to change the subject.

So today he announced via Twitter that he's going to ban transsexuals in the military, completely surprising the Pentagon. But just last year Trump said this:

"North Carolina, what they're going through with all of the business that's leaving and all of the strife, and that's on both sides — you leave it the way it is," Trump said. "People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble."

Several states are fighting over bathroom bills. But, just as with gay marriage, this issue will eventually fade away. Who cares which pot you piss in? If it's that big a deal, make all lavatories more private so no one has to endure the stares of others in their vulnerable moments.

And, just as Bush and Cheney weren't really against gay marriage, Trump doesn't give a damn whether you're transsexual. For him the only currency that matters is notoriety -- positive or negative. By that measure Caitlin Jenner and other high-profile transsexuals are killing it, as Trump loves to say.

The question isn't really about transsexuals in the military: it's about whether Christians will sell their souls by supporting the entire agenda of self-aggrandizing lying demons like Donald Trump who don't give a damn about Christianity, or Christians.

Look how Trump is treating Jeff Sessions, the lion of the Christian right. Trump is on Twitter trying to badger Sessions into resigning because he won't break the law to cover Trump's ass.

Christians should stop letting immoral scumbags like Trump play them for fools. As his "Two Corinthians" and "I never asked God for forgiveness" fiascoes showed, he knows nothing about Christianity and cares nothing about it.  Look how he ridicules the eucharist as "his little cracker:"

"When I drink my little wine -- which is about the only wine I drink -- and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed," he said. "I think in terms of 'let's go on and let's make it right.'"

Trump's not the ally of evangelicals. As his disgusting speech in front of the Boy Scouts showed, he's leading this country into moral rot: he has normalized lying, cheating, bullying, fornication and sexual molestation.

By continuing to support Trump and his phony agenda evangelicals are tarnishing whatever moral high ground they ever had.

One of the main reasons so many millennials are abandoning religion and declaring themselves
"nones" is the sheer hypocrisy they see in Christians who preach chasteness, forgiveness and humility, yet support politicians like Trump and commentators like Rush Limbaugh.

These men are corrupt, arrogant, womanizing blowhards who with every breath and action betray the very essence of Christianity.

Pardons?

This Is What the Republican Party Has Become Under Donald Trump

Meet Blake Farenthold of Texas, Republican congressman from Texas:

This creepy leering fat guy wants to shoot an old lady because she's standing up for the right of Americans to have affordable health care:

Rep. Blake Farenthold, a Republican from Corpus Christi, Tex., on Friday criticized some Republican “female senators from the Northeast” for their opposition to efforts to pass a health care overhaul.

Then, he said, “if it was a guy from south Texas I might ask him to step outside and settle this Aaron Burr-style.”

Speaking to local radio host Bob Jones, Farenthold was referring to the 1804 duel in which Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, former treasury secretary and Burr’s long-standing political rival and personal enemy.

Farenthold was just joking, he says. But casually threatening to murder fellow Republicans is par for the course in Trump's Republican Party. Trump himself continues to insult his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, because Sessions considers following the Constitution a higher duty than serving as Trump's lackey.

Susan Collins, the "female senator from the Northeast" that Farenthold wants to kill, hit Farenthold back:

First, she asked Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), “Did you see the one who challenged me to a duel?”

Reed said, “You could beat the shit out of him.”

Collins responded: “He’s so unattractive. It’s unbelievable. … Did you see the picture of him in his pajamas next to this bunny?”

Collins should accept the challenge, and propose that the duel take place at the top of the Washington Monument, which is currently closed because the elevator is being updated. Which means Farenthold will have to take the stairs.

He'll be dead of a heart attack half way up.