Why Not Release All the Kennedy Documents?

Last week Donald Trump released a bunch of documents related to the investigation of the Kennedy assassination. After millions of people dug through the document dump, apparently there were no new revelations.

However, Trump did not release everything. He held back certain documents.

For the last 50 years most of the speculation about the assassination has been about the magic bullet theory, the number of shooters, and whether Oswald acted alone. That's less interesting than the real question: who ordered the shooting?

Various conspiracy theories have posited that the CIA, the Cubans, and the mob. However, let's look back on the assassination in light of what we know today.

Oswald, a US marine, had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959. In Minsk Oswald married a Russian woman. Oswald returned to the US in 1962. Oswald was an agitator for a pro-Cuba group. Oswald visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico days before killing Kennedy.

The most obvious and logical conclusion is that the Russians had been grooming Oswald as an assassin for years, and they gave the order to kill Kennedy.

Why would the Russians do that? Well, Kennedy had embarrassed them mightily the year before during the Cuban Missile crisis. He called the Russians' bluff. Kennedy had also plotted to assassinate their puppet Castro and was interfering with their machinations in southeast Asia.

The CIA and the FBI most likely came to this same conclusion, but getting hard evidence to prove it would be almost impossible. And what good would it do? If it got out that Oswald was a KGB assassin our only public recourse would be to go to war, which would result in nuclear Armageddon, which neither the US nor Russia wanted.

Fast forward to today. If the documents do in fact implicate the Russians it would be extremely embarrassing to Trump since he's being investigated for colluding with the Russians to win the election. Holding back these documents now makes him look complicit in the coverup of the assassination of Kennedy.

I'm not the only one to come to this conclusion. After thinking this through I did some Google searches, and the top hit was this story on, of all places, Fox News. The conclusion of the author, Douglas Schoen:

It is clear that the reason for this withholding is that these files must involve Russia and to this day, we do not know is the role that Soviet Russia played in President Kennedy’s assassination.

The reason this is important is that we're seeing the same pattern of Russian interference in American politics today. The Russians are manipulating popular opinion with their propaganda outlets, stretching their tentacles into Facebook and Twitter, spreading lies and sowing division.

They've even sent Russian women to the United States to infiltrate the alt-right movement. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, alt-right pioneer Richard Spencer married a Russian woman. Another Russian woman in the US is Lana Lokteff, who runs an alt-right propaganda mill with her Swedish husband.

Also, note that there are Russian connections to Islamic extremist attacks in the United States in the last few years: yesterday's attack in New York was committed by Sayfullo Saipov, a man from Uzbekistan, a former Soviet Republic. The Boston Marathon bombers, Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were Russian-speaking Chechens. Chechens have been convicted of numerous assassinations of politicians and journalists who were opposed to Putin. The Russians have assassinated Putin's enemies across the world, including the United States and Britain.

Russia's propping up of Assad in Syria escalated the number of refugees fleeing to Europe, giving cover to many ISIS terrorists who committed massive attacks in France, Britain and Belgium, destabilizing many European governments and precipitating the breakup of the EU.

Given how so many of Putin's enemies wind up dead, it's not surprising that Trump doesn't want to cross the Russians by releasing documents that implicate them in Kennedy's assassination. Trump's constant kowtowing to Putin clearly indicates he is afraid of the Russian's wrath.

The Russians are waging an all-out cyber and propaganda war on the United States, trying to divide and conquer us with race baiting and similar divisive issues. Are we going to let Trump's Russian puppet masters drive into another Civil War, or are going to unite against the real threat: the destruction of democracies across the world, riven by racial animosity fueled by Russian hate-mongering?

The Hillary Card

Speaking of Sinking Ships...

While researching the rat-infested sinking ship metaphor that is the Trump administration, I came across another tidbit that shows what a terrible deal maker Trump is.

In 1987 Trump bought a yacht from the Sultan of Brunei for $29 million. The next year Trump bragged that he got $1 million off for changing the name, to the Trump Princess, naming the boat after himself (yes, he is a little princess).

Trump paid $10 million to refit the yacht, putting a T on the helipad instead of the standard H. Trump started construction on an even bigger yacht, then bought the shipbuilder Amels. Trump sold the company a couple of months later due to financial problems.

Trump sold the Trump Princess in 1991 for $19 million, for a total $20 million loss. What a smart businessman!

The Dominos Begin to Fall

Three people associated with the Trump campaign have been arrested or pleaded guilty to crimes involving the Russians and money laundering:

President Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was indicted Monday on charges that he funneled millions of dollars through overseas shell companies and used the money to buy luxury cars, real estate, antiques and expensive suits.

The charges against Mr. Manafort and his longtime associate Rick Gates represent a significant escalation in a special counsel investigation that has cast a shadow over Mr. Trump’s first year in office.

Separately, one of the early foreign policy advisers to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about a contact with a professor with ties to Kremlin officials, prosecutors said on Monday.

Trump invoked the standard Republican ploy of accusing Democrats of doing the thing that he did, claiming that Clinton was involved with the Russians, bogus charges that were dismissed years ago.

These charges were long anticipated -- after all, Manafort was forced out of the Trump campaign because of his Russian connections. The FBI raid on Manafort's house during the summer was a clear indication that he was going to be charged.

Republicans like Bob Corker, Jeff Flake and John McCain, who have openly condemned Trump's behavior, will certainly feel vindicated.

Let us hope that these developments give other honorable men to desert Trump's sinking ship, leaving only the rats aboard his foundering administration.

How on EARTH are they called racists?

It always cracks me up when the right can't figure out why people are always calling them racist. They immediately go to being super offended and foam at the mouth about race baiting. Perhaps directing the FBI to label black identity groups as domestic terrorists might be a good indicator why they are perceived as being racist.

In the FBI’s report, BIE is described as a conglomeration of black nationalists, black supremacists, and black separatists, among other disaffiliated racist individuals who are anti-police, anti-white, and/or seeking to rectify perceived social injustices against blacks. The FBI essentially merged these various black hate groups under one umbrella, giving it a new name, in the hopes of classifying these groups as an organized extremist movement.

I guess that would include the Black Lives Matter movement as well.

As is usually the case, we have an enormous amount of projection. The domestic terrorists are on the right, not the left. The ones we should be worried about are the NRA, Spencer's band of white nationalists and nearly all of the supporters of Donald Trump.

Conservative Website First Funded Anti-Trump Research by Firm That Later Produced Dossier

Whenever conservatives start foaming at the mouth about Hillary Clinton did, give it about 48 hours and it will eventually come out that it was really them that started it all.

They Are All Dropping Like Flies...Except Trump

United States culture is changing. No longer are we going to tolerate men treating women like they are second class citizens, property, and objects for their childish, sexual desires. Over the course of the last several months we've seen Roger Ailes, Bill O' Reilly, and Harvey Weinstein all go away because they harassed and sexually assaulted/abused various women. The most recent harasser is MSNBC's Mark Halperin. I've been a pretty big fan of his over the last decade and was pretty shocked when the revelations about him came out.

In contrast, we still see the Misogynist in Chief in the Oval Office and I find that interesting for a number of reasons. It's very likely that there are many women out there who have been harassed, assaulted and abused by Donald Trump. Why haven't they come forward? Are these other guys merely low hanging fruit?

Perhaps they are afraid given that he is the president and maybe they are concerned over what it might do to the country. Regardless, I think it's only a mater of time before someone or several someones come forward. My hope is that it's right around the time we find out Trump and his team worked with the Russians to win the election.

Yet even if no one comes forward, Trump's world of being able to grab women by the pussy is shrinking rapidly. Men exhibiting similar behavior to what he has done over the years have been fired and shunned from every day society. That type of bullshit is simply no longer tolerated. There is no doubt that Trump's presidency is having an adverse affect on many areas of our culture but this is not one of them. In fact, I think his being elected has hastened a change that has been a long time in coming.

Women are equal to men and should be respected.

Don't Bully Except...

The Fate of a Quintessential Right-Wing Blogger

I'd never heard of Lane Davis, but I'd heard of all the things that consumed him as a conspiracy theorist. He worked as a blogger for The Ralph Retort, a right-wing website.

Davis was an avid Trump fan and wrote that he would vote for Trump even if he killed the pope.

Davis relentlessly pushed the misogynistic GamerGate movement, mercilessly attacking women who work in the computer game industry, then turned against his GamerGate fellows in a dispute over credit.

Davis was an acolyte of and unpaid intern for Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos is a gay ultra-conservative Catholic and woman hater who frequently espouses racist garbage. He is married to a black man and condemns Pope Francis for being too liberal.

Davis was convinced that the phony Pizzagate pedophile ring was true, even after another right-wing nutjob shot the place up and Alex Jones of Infowars infamy disavowed the conspiracy. He believed Seth Rich had been murdered to silence him over Pizzagate.

And then one morning last July Davis started ranting nonstop at his parents about liberal pedophiles taking over the country. His mother called 911, which only made him more paranoid. He spat in his father's face and stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife.

You would have thought such a grisly murder would have been a big deal in the "liberal media." You would think that they would have milked this story for all it was worth, with CNN and the New York Times splashing big headlines about the "Pizzagater Patricide" and how right-wing blogs turn people into father murderers.

But no. If you google Lane Davis you find references to him only in the local Seattle paper from July and August. Then there are some references to the case in the last week or so on a computer gaming forum and the Ralph Retort. The "liberal media" ignored this murder until the Daily Beast wrote about it today, months after it happened.

I've always called Fox News "political pornography," because they know they're selling a pack of fantastical lies to give racists and misogynists their jollies. But Fox News is soft-core porn. People like Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos know the extreme conspiracy theories they're pushing are hard-core pornographic lies, literally in the case of Pizzagate.

But some people can't separate truth from lies. The lies drive them mad. The lies drive them to shoot up pizza places and kill their dads.

Yet these right-wing sites keep pushing outrageous lies at these vulnerable people, all for monetary and political gain. How many more of their own followers are they going to sacrifice to the god of profit?

Jeff Flake Finally Says What Every Republican Knows Is True

Jeff Flake, Arizona's "other" senator, announced his resignation on the senate floor today. You should read his speech in full.

I applaud him for his honesty, though it comes far too late. The damage to the Republican Party and the nation itself may already be irreparable.

Why is it that Republicans can never acknowledge the truth and the error of their party's ways until they're no longer in office (George Bush), have announced their retirements (Flake and Bob Corker), or are dying from brain cancer (John McCain)?

Why are Republicans letting Frankenstein monsters like Donald Trump and Steven Bannon stage a hostile takeover of their party and hound them out of office?

Why aren't these men of good conscience staying and fighting these liars, misogynists and neo-Nazis for control of the Republican Party and the United States government?

After criticizing Democrats for decades, why are these Republicans abandoning their party and leaving everything up to the Democrats to wage this fight for the soul of the American people?

When will Republican members of Congress who aren't resigning stand up to the wannabe dictator in the Oval Office?

Non-disclosure Agreements Enable Sexual Predators

In the last year or so there have been dozens of reports of famous men harassing, groping, grabbing, assaulting, and intruding on the dressing rooms of women. Some have forced women into sexual relationships as a condition of continued employment and others have committed rape.

The offenders have included Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Casey Affleck, Bill O'Reilly (and a host of other Fox News anchors and execs), as well as other entertainment industry and major corporate figures.

These men and their companies had paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in secret settlements, with payments contingent on stringent non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to keep their crimes hidden.

These NDAs are, plainly put, evil. They allow men to repeatedly harass, grope, grab, assault and rape women for years after their initial assaults.

The lawyers of the victims, of course, get a huge chunk of these settlements, often worth $20 or $30 million in the case of Fox News. These lawyers have no incentive to stop the assaults and hypocritically claim that they are "helping" women. Here's how Gloria Allred rationalizes it:

“My duty as an attorney is to my client and to assist her and protect her and support her in what she thinks is best for her life,” Ms. Allred told me. “I don’t think any woman should be sacrificed for the ‘cause.’”

For a number of women, she said, a confidential settlement is the right outcome. “Some clients want to protect their privacy — they don’t want anybody to know,” she said.

In most cases, Ms. Allred said, if there is no confidentiality agreement, there is no shot at a settlement. And she disputed the notion that out-of-court settlements somehow let the alleged harassers off scot-free.

”If the accused sexual harasser is paying my client $500,000, or $1 million or $2 million, that’s not nuisance value,” she said. “That’s an admission that the accused feels that he has risk and that he has done something that he should not have done.”

Allred doesn't think any woman should be sacrificed for the cause? These NDAs shield sex offenders from criminal prosecution, allowing them to repeat their crimes over and over, for five, 10, 15, 20 years. Allred's client might have gotten a payout, but the women these scumbags assault after Allred teaches the offenders how to cover their tracks won't have any leverage and will get nothing.

Why should the other women be sacrificed so Allred's client can have a big payday?

Harvey Weinstein has been accused of assaulting more than 50 women. If he had been exposed by his first accuser and charged by the police, dozens of women would have been spared the pain and degradation of Weinstein's crimes.

If Republicans in Congress are serious about stopping men like Harvey Weinstein, they should pass legislation to require all NDAs imposed on victims of sexual harassment to be filed and approved by the courts.

They should also pass a law to make corporate management and human resources personnel mandatory reporters of sexual assault allegations. There is ample precedent for mandatory reporting laws, which are already on the books in all states for child abuse. Employees are vulnerable people by definition because of the asymmetric power dynamic: their livelihoods depend on retaining the good graces of their bosses.

If Republicans like Mike Pence and John Kelly think women are so "sacred," why do they stand idly by while men like Trump, O'Reilly, Ailes and Weinstein peep at, grope, grab and rape female employees for years on end?

The Computer Threat Bigger than Skynet

People keep saying that driverless cars are the future. Like this guy in the New York Times. I beg to differ.

Driverless cars are a much bigger threat than an evil AI like the Terminator movies' Skynet, which in the movies nuked humanity into near-extinction. Mostly because if Skynet nuked us, it would destroy the people and power, communications, and manufacturing infrastructure that Skynet itself would need to exist.

As a programmer, I know that all programs have bugs. The programs that guide driverless cars will have hundreds of millions of lines. They will depend on other systems -- navigation, radar sensors, computer vision -- that also have hundreds of millions of lines. That means there will be millions of bugs. Bugs that won't get shaken out in testing because it's impossible to test every pathway through a program. Different combinations of inputs that never occurred during testing will inevitably uncover bugs that will cause fatalities.

It's impossible to keep the maps the cars need in sync with the real world. There will always be errors in the maps, and these errors will kill people. This isn't an idle fear because this has already happened: a woman died when her husband drove off a bridge because his GPS was outdated. Yes, he was an idiot for blindly following his GPS. But he was still smarter than your car's computer will be.

Then there's hacking. Since these cars will of necessity be connected to the Internet for updates, maps, traffic reports, etc., they will be vulnerable to hacking. If a hacker finds a way to do something simple but quite deadly -- like issue a shutdown command to every car in Los Angeles -- tens of thousands of people could die in a matter of seconds.

Or someone could threaten to do this to a Tesla or a Google, demanding billions of dollars in ransom, along the lines of those hackers who lock up peoples hard drives and demand bit coin payments. Or that army of Russian hackers could turn their attention away from goading Americans on Facebook into hating each other and attack our driverless cars.

Then there's GPS jamming. The key to all driverless cars are GPS receivers and the maps built into their navigation systems. GPS signals come from satellites in earth orbit. Radio signals weaken with the inverse square of the distance. That means that a signal twice as far away is four times weaker. A signal a thousand times further away is a million times weaker. GPS satellites orbit at 12,000 miles.

GPS signals are therefore extremely weak. A few local jammers could completely blind the car's navigation system, making it forget where it is. How many people this would kill is impossible to know. How thoroughly will GPS signal loss be tested in these cars to make sure the system brings the car safely to a stop?

Also, radio waves have a hard time going through water and metal. Will driverless cars work in tunnels, especially ones that go under rivers? There's a company that says it has a fix for this, but it's another computer system that can be jammed or hacked.

And then there's GPS spoofing. The Russians are actively testing GPS spoofing, which makes your GPS think you're someplace you're not. These false inputs could kill thousands of people, making them drive off roads and bridges, or into buildings, crowds and bridge abutments.

And then there's the North Koreans. We know they've hacked Sony, the New York Federal Reserve, and the South Korean military. They don't need nukes if they can hack our cars and bring our entire nation to a standstill.

Assistive automobile technology is a good thing -- sensors that let you know when there's someone in the lane you're switching into, or if you're going to run over a kid while backing up. But it's a mistake to surrender total control of your life to a computer, when there are so many bad actors out there who have more control over that computer than you do.

Reason Left This Country A Long Time Ago

Over the last few weeks, I have been watching Ken Burns' magnificent series entitled The Vietnam War. Like all of his films, his attention to detail and historical accuracy are truly remarkable.  The stories of each of the veterans of the Vietnam War had the most impact on me. I know several vets and nearly all of them have unanimous praise for the series. There is, however, one exception.

Along with Doctor Sean and Pastor Ed, Vietnam Vet Tim is a regular at the health club I go to for workouts. Like Sean and Ed, both of whom I have written about extensively on here over the years, Tim is very conservative. During the 2016 election, he foamed at the mouth about Hillary Clinton and wondered how I could look my daughter in the eye and support such a criminal for president. This was two days before the Access Hollywood tape was released. Oh, the sweet, sweet irony...

I ran into Tim a couple of days ago and asked him about Burns' series. His face immediately turned red and then went off about it being a hit job. I asked him if he watched the whole thing. He said that he watched part of one episode and then couldn't watch anymore more because it was so liberally biased. Anyone that was against the war was essentially a traitor and should be summarily punished. I then asked him about the Kent state shootings where four students lost their lives after the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a group of protesters.

"They all deserved to die," he said.

His view may sound completely irrational yet 58% of the country thought the same thing in 1970 when the shooting occurred. Protesters had burned down the ROTC building at Kent State the day before so people felt that killing unarmed students was completely justified. They were all a bunch of hippie fucking commies so why not cull the unwanteds. eh?

The only problem with this line of thinking was that not all of the victims were protesters. One of the four victims was a young man named William Knox Schroeder. Schroeder was an ROTC student who just happened to be walking by the protest between classes when a bullet from an M-1 semiautomatic rifle blew through his chest. Another, Sandra Lee Scheuer, was also merely walking between classes when she was shot.

I informed Tim of these facts but he got even worse. He stomped off after muttering something about insurgents and I really didn't want to continue a conversation with a Vietnam Vet who was still in very deep denial about what really happened. Not surprisingly, Tim is a die hard Trump supporter who refuses to accept any sort of fact that conflicts with his vision of reality.

I'm certain that there are many folks out there that are wondering how Donald Trump can be the representative of our nation. How can people be so unreasonable? The fact is that this has been going on a long time. A large swath of our electorate suspends logic when they vote. The very fabric of our country is woven with epistemic closure.

The 58% of the people that thought that killing student protesters was justified all share the same mindset of today's Trump voter. Facts don't matter. Only their anger, hate and fear matter. The truth is what we make it, not what those arrogant, elitist scum tell us is the truth. Only the other side is evil and our people are always in the right.

And people wonder why there are comparisons made to Nazi Germany...

It's a Race to the Bottom Between Fox News and Harvey Weinstein

Fox News has been hammering "Hollywood" over the huge number of women that Harvey Weinstein has harassed and assaulted. But they've been downplaying their own sex scandals, in which many women were harassed and assaulted by several Fox executives, including Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes, resulting in numerous large payouts.

The New York Times broke the Weinstein story, and now they've broken another story about Bill O'Reilly:

Last January, six months after Fox News ousted its chairman amid a sexual harassment scandal, the network’s top-rated host at the time, Bill O’Reilly, struck a $32 million agreement with a longtime network analyst to settle new sexual harassment allegations, according to two people briefed on the matter — an extraordinarily large amount for such cases.

Although the deal has not been previously made public, the network’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, acknowledges that it was aware of the woman’s complaints about Mr. O’Reilly. They included allegations of repeated harassment, a nonconsensual sexual relationship and the sending of gay pornography and other sexually explicit material to her, according to the people briefed on the matter.

It was at least the sixth agreement — and by far the largest — made by either Mr. O’Reilly or the company to settle harassment allegations against him. Despite that record, 21st Century Fox began contract negotiations with Mr. O’Reilly, and in February granted him a four-year extension that paid $25 million a year. 

Get that? Fox News renewed O'Reilly's contract right after they paid $32 million to a woman to settle sexual harassment claims. And then they fired him a couple of days later. Not only are the guys at Fox totally devoid of any sort of morality, they're terrible businessmen to boot.

Naturally, O'Reilly claims he's completely innocent. He says he settled to save his teenage children terrible embarrassment. Those would be the same children who wanted to live with their mother after O'Reilly dragged her down the stairs by the neck. The court unanimously voted to grant the mother full custody.

More to the point, companies don't pay eight-figure settlements unless the allegations are substantial and well-documented. So there's no doubt O'Reilly is lying.

So, who's winning the settlement race: Fox News or Harvey Weinstein?

The disclosure of Ms. Wiehl’s settlement follows a wave of public accusations against the Hollywood studio mogul Harvey Weinstein, which has increased scrutiny of sexual harassment in the workplace. The Times reported this month that Mr. Weinstein had reached at least eight settlements with women, most of whom received between $80,000 to $150,000.

Ms. Wiehl’s $32 million deal dwarfs other previously known sexual harassment settlements at Fox News. The largest of those was the $20 million payout the former host Gretchen Carlson received after she sued Mr. Ailes in July 2016.

The settlement with Ms. Wiehl was more than three times the amount of any of Mr. O’Reilly’s previously known deals; in 2004, he had settled a lawsuit with a producer, Andrea Mackris, for about $9 million. Publicly known harassment settlements involving Mr. O’Reilly have totaled about $45 million.

It looks like Weinstein has paid out about a million bucks, while Fox News has probably exceeded $100 million.

So Fox News wins, by two orders of magnitude! Of course, it's a team effort with Fox, so Harvey never really had a chance.

Pesky Press

R.I.P. John Kelly's Soul

Trump's latest unforced error -- screwing up a phone call that was supposed to console the grieving widow of a fallen soldier -- has ensnared his chief of staff in his web of lies. Trump corrupts everyone he touches, even the noblest soldiers.

John Kelly, who was by all accounts an honorable man, made a public statement in front of the press that was full-on Trump: one lie after another attacking Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, who called Trump to account for the botched condolence call. Kelly said:

"And a congresswoman stood up, and in the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there and all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call he gave the money -- the $20 million -- to build the building."

The video of the ceremony that Kelly references clearly shows that everything Kelly said -- from her bragging about getting the funding to understating the cost of the building by an order of magnitude -- was a lie.

Now I can understand why Kelly is upset about the incident. It hits very close to home -- his son died in service to his country. Kelly coached Trump on what to say. He was on the call. He thought Trump had relayed his message properly. Trump tried to. But Trump is just bad at being president.

Trump is great at gushing phony praises and insults, but he's terrible at talking to people in any meaningful way. He's not very smart. He's selfish and self-centered. He can't relate to anyone but fat rich white men. He has bad words.

Apparently Kelly told Trump to say something along the lines of "Your husband died doing what he loved -- defending his country." But Trump told the widow that her husband "knew what he signed up for … but when it happens it hurts anyway."

Now, why did Trump phrase it that way? Because it's all about Trump. Trump was trying to avoid responsibility for Johnson's death by emphasizing that the soldier knew he could die, and it wasn't Trump's fault.

And this is how the family probably heard it: "Don't blame Trump, what's-his-name knew what he signed up for." Yeah, Trump forgot Johnson's name.

Let's construct an example of this usage that should make it crystal clear to John Kelly why Johnson's family took offense at Trump's phrasing:

Today John Kelly got up in front of the press corps and made himself look like a marionette with Trump's fat arm poking through the back of his jacket and his stubby fingers moving Kelly's lips.

But you shouldn't feel sorry for Kelly. He knew what he signed up for when he became Trump's chief of staff: being a yes-man, shill and liar.

I assume Kelly knew he was lying. He was just sending talking points out to Fox News and spinning for the base. But at this point Kelly is so wrapped up in the spinning, the lies and the corruption that he's lost his way. He can't think like a normal person anymore.

Normal human beings would simply have said that they were sorry for the misunderstanding and wished the family the best. They would have had no further comment. And if they had let it go there that would have been the end. But there are no normal human beings at the White House.

Billy Mumy, from "It's a Good Life"

Trump's employees are like the parents of the child with god-like powers that Billy Mumy played in the classic Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life." They are scared witless by a seven-year-old all-powerful monster that always has to have the last word.

To gain entry to this White House you have to sell your soul to Trump. All must dedicate themselves to his never-ending glory.

They should put a sign over the gates of the Inferno that the White House has become:

"Abandon all truth, empathy and dignity, ye who enter here."

Trump Has Already Cost Three Million People Their Health Care

Ever since Donald Trump entered the Oval Office he has tried to destroy the health care law. After promising better health care at a lower cost, he never came up with his own plan: he tossed that hot potato to Congress. Then he blamed them when they came up with awful plans catering to the wealthy that nobody in the country liked.

At the same time Trump has been sabotaging the law in various ways. Now his treachery has born fruit:

The percentage of U.S. adults lacking health insurance rose in the third quarter of 2017 to 12.3%, up 0.6 percentage points from the previous quarter and 1.4 points since the end of 2016. The uninsured rate is now the highest recorded since the last quarter of 2014 when it was 12.9%.

The uninsured rate, measured by Gallup and Sharecare since 2008, had fallen to a record low of 10.9% in the third and fourth quarters of 2016. However, the 1.4-point increase in the percentage of adults without health insurance since the end of last year represents nearly 3.5 million Americans who have entered the ranks of the uninsured.

Still, the uninsured rate remains well below its peak of 18.0% measured in the third quarter of 2013, prior to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) mandated healthcare exchanges and the associated requirement that all adults have health insurance or be subject to a fine.

Trump will claim the law itself is to blame: but it's Trump's open sabotage of the ACA that is causing the decline in the number of people covered.

Let's look at what Trump has wrought with one disease: cancer.

Based on an incidence of 455 per 100,000 people, approximately 16,000 of those who lost their coverage will contract cancer in the next year. Cancer mortality is 171 per 100,000 -- including people who have health care. When you don't treat cancer, it's almost always fatal.

Most of those 16,000 will be unable to afford treatment -- since they can't afford health insurance in the first place -- and thousands will go bankrupt trying to pay for it. And contrary to the Republican refrain of "anyone can go to the emergency room," emergency rooms don't treat cancer -- they don't do long-term radiation treatments or chemotherapy.

Without health care almost all those people are going to die, and Donald Trump will have killed them.

Cancer's not the only disease: 9% of Americans have diabetes, which means 315,000 of those who lost their health care are diabetic. About 29% of Americans have hypertension, or a million of those who lost their health care. Many of these people will have to give up their medications, and as a result will have heart attacks and strokes.

Now, those people can go to the emergency room. And they won't have insurance. So the rest of us will pick up the tab. Many of them will die, but many will survive. They'll go bankrupt paying medical bills. Many will suffer permanent brain damage or cardiac insufficiency. They'll go on disability or Social Security. And again the rest of us will pick up the tab.

In the long run Trump's spiteful blunder will cost the country untold numbers of dollars and lives. All because he's jealous of the accomplishments of a black man.

How Low Can Trump Sink?

After bragging about how he always called the families of deceased soldiers and lying about the respects Bush and Obama paid the families, then changing his story shortly thereafter, blaming "someone" who told him Obama and Bush didn't pay respects, Trump has disrespected a fallen soldier's family:

The mother of a soldier killed in an ambush in Niger said Wednesday that President Trump disrespected her family during a call with the man’s widow by saying the soldier “knew what he signed up for.”

President Trump denied he said those words to Sgt. La David T. Johnson’s wife during a Tuesday phone call and escalated his dispute with Representative Frederica Wilson, Democrat of Florida, who first described the exchange on Tuesday.

Trump has called the three women on the call liars. He says he has "proof" that the pregnant grieving widow is lying. So where is it? With the Comey tapes?

Any normal adult human being who unintentionally insulted a grieving widow and her family would simply issue a standard non-apology apology: "I didn't mean to upset the family, and I apologize for any misunderstanding," and leave it at that.

But Trump is not normal, and he is (apparently) not an adult human being. He's apparently a six-year-old hell-spawned brat who can never let anything go. He had to take to Twitter and call them liars. And to top it off:

“But that’s not the worst part,” Ms. Wilson said. “She was crying the whole time and when she hung up the phone she looked at me and said ‘he didn’t even remember his name.’ That’s the hurting part.”

Sgt. La David Johnson

Do you think Trump's absent-mindedness and lack of tact on the call had anything to do with the fact that Sgt. Johnson and his family are black?

Perhaps not. After claiming that he had called every soldier who had died on his watch, it turns out Trump is lying there too. He never contacted the mother of Etienne Murphy (who was white, so Trump isn't a racist after all!) after falsely claiming he had talked or written letters to all the families of deceased soldiers.

Trump has been in office less than a year, and there have only been a couple of dozen deaths in the military now that our troops no longer have active combat roles. Thousands of troops died during the sixteen years of Bush and Obama, and by all reports they did all they could to console the families.

Obama lifted Bush's ban on the media covering the return of fallen soldiers (yet another stain on the Bush presidency) and visited Dover AFB multiple times (here's a story from 2009 and one from 2011). Trump has never greeted the fallen at Dover.

Every time Trump lies you think he can't sink lower into his pit of selfish ignominy and mendacity. Yet every week he spews more garbage, tweeting heinous lies that show the man has no conscience, no morals, and no soul.

Trump's Big Lie on Corporate Taxes

The Republicans' tax cuts are all going to the wealthy and corporations, but Trump is trying to sell this as a good thing:

President Trump’s top economist said on Monday that a corporate tax cut being pushed by Republicans would increase a typical household’s income by $3,000 to $7,000 a year, highlighting a primary argument the administration will make in drafting and selling its tax plan.

The idea is that corporations getting a tax cut will turn around and, out of the goodness of their hearts, give that money to their workers.

This is nonsense, of course. Every time corporations get a windfall they give the money to CEOs and shareholders. Because, as Republicans always tell us, the only duty a corporation has is to its shareholders. When American Airlines raised flight crew wages earlier this year, Wall Street analysts were outraged and American's stock got hammered.

Republicans are also planning to change tax law so that corporations will be able to repatriate overseas profits without a tax penalty, which will somehow benefit regular working stiffs. But this too is a lie.

Apple has been hoarding its profits overseas for years. In 2013 Apple borrowed $17 billion to help finance a $100 billion payout to their shareholders, who are all extremely wealthy (who else can afford Apple stock?). In 2017 Apple did it again:

So far in 2017, the Cupertino tech giant has issued unsecured notes three times: on May 5 for $7 billion; on Feb. 15 for $1 billion; and on Feb. 3 for $10 billion, according to company filings with the SEC, for a total of $18 billion.

The money, in all three cases, would be used for “general corporate purposes, including repurchases of our common stock and payment of dividends under our program to return capital to shareholders, funding for working capital, capital expenditures, acquisitions and repayment of debt,” Apple said in its filings.

Apple is buying back stock to drive its stock price to even greater heights, providing a huge windfall to the wealthy.

Wall Street is salivating at the prospect of corporate tax cuts and the repatriation holiday. The Dow topped 23,000 yesterday, not because the social, political and business climate is great.

Every other week there's another mass shooting or race riot stoked by neo Nazis. Hundreds of Americans are dying every day from a prescription drug-fueled opioid epidemic that Trump has done nothing about for months. According to the former NATO chief, Adm. James Stavridis, there's a 10% of nuclear war with North Korea, and a 20-30% chance of conventional war. Donald Trump is actively stoking racial divisions with his attacks on NFL players and his not-so-tacit support for white nationalists. The prospect of Trump destroying the NAFTA treaty has American farmers seriously worried.

No, the prospect of corporate tax cuts, with all the proceeds going to wealthy investors, is the main reason for the Wall Street bubble. Other factors include low inflation and low interest rates, which are mostly due to stagnant wages in the lower and middle classes.

But, incredibly, some upper middle class earners will actually see their taxes go up with Trump's plan. Those are the very people who provided Trump with his tiny electoral college win over Clinton.

Essentially all the tax cuts will go to wealthy elites (including Trump himself), especially in the long term. And yet, somehow the suckers who Trump conned last November still suffer from the delusion that he's sticking it to the wealthy elites.

Trump's Health Care Executive Extortion Order

After promising for years that he would give Americans better health care at lower prices, Donald Trump has begun the process of sabotaging the health care market, increasing the cost and ultimately forcing millions of Americans to lose their health care:

The Trump administration announced Thursday night that it would stop making what are called cost-sharing reduction payments to health insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act. Trump says the payments were improper. Patient advocates, insurance regulators and lawmakers, including some Republicans, say the move will send premiums soaring and could destabilize insurance markets. “It’s going to hurt people, it’s going to hurt kids, it’s going to hurt families,” Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, told the Nevada Independent.

This action will cause people to lose their health care. They won't get treatment they need. They won't get drugs they need to treat conditions such diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. People will get get sick, have limbs amputated, suffer strokes and heart attacks. They will go bankrupt. They will die.

But Trump doesn't care. He is doing this to attack the insurance companies. Now, I'm not a fan of insurance companies: they're leeches and useless middlemen that suck money out of the system and put it into the pockets of their CEOs.

But they're a necessary evil when a country doesn't have a single-payer system, which is anathema to Republicans and many Democrats.

In a White House press gaggle Trump said this:

If you look at their stock price over the last number of years, take a look at what's happened with those insurance companies. They're making a fortune by getting that kind of money.

He's trying to get his supporters mad at the insurance companies, blaming them for everything. But without single payer, nothing Trump promises can ever happen. Trump even bragged on Twitter that he caused the stock price of insurance companies to drop.

Then there was this exchange (throughout the entire Q&A Trump's incoherence and repetitiveness are truly indicative of a man suffering from cognitive impairment -- he should be in a nursing home, not the White House):

Q You promised that you would help people who are struggling. The CSR payment looks like it will hurt low-income people.

THE PRESIDENT: The CSR payments, if you take a look at CSR payments, that money is going to insurance companies to prop up insurance companies.

Q To help lower-income people.

THE PRESIDENT: That money is going to insurance companies to lift up their stock price, and that's not what I'm about.

Take a look at who those insurance companies support, and I guarantee you one thing: It's not Donald Trump.

There you have it. The real reason for this executive order. Trump is retaliating against the insurance industry for supporting his opponent. He is blackmailing them into giving him money, holding the lives of millions of Americans hostage.

Trump admitted he is extorting insurance companies in public and then posted the blackmail threat on the White House website.

This is an impeachable offense.