Four Ways Trump Goes Buh-Bye

Yesterday, Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's former national security adviser, plead guilty to lying tot he FBI and named Jared Kushner and KT McFarland as two senior people in the Trump campaign as having directed him to do so. This comes on top of the New York Daily news report that President Trump's mental capacity is essentially gone. Michele Goldberg at the New York Times has a report that strengthens this assertion.

At this point, I think we see four clear ways the Trump era comes to an end. Here's my take on the likelihood of each transpiring.

1. Trump is indicted by Robert Mueller for colluding with the Russians to win the election in 2016. 

Right now I give this about a 70% chance of happening. It has gone up significantly since yesterday, obviously. If the Democrats take back either chamber next year, it's over for Trump. I predict that Kushner is going to be the next one to cave.

2. Trump resigns from office because he can't take it anymore.

Trump is a whiny baby just like all internet trolls. Taking his ball and going home has a lot of appeal. But he would be admitting defeat if he quit. He might quit if he feels the heat from Mueller and knows he's fucked, hoping that Pence will pull a Gerry Ford and pardon him. I give it about a 40% chance of happening.

3. Trump is indicted on sexual harassment/assault charges. 

Trump has already admitted that he's done this and nothing has happened. The "liberal" media has been too focused on bringing its own people down to notice that they are being jobbed by the right. It's time for them to focus on Trump and let loose the floodgates of every accuser he has ever had. Trump deserves the Bill Clinton treatment.

It is hard to prove this stuff, though, so I give it only about a 25% chance of happening.

4. Trump is removed from office because he is mentally unwell.

This has the greatest chance of happening. If you take a critical look at this behavior for the last 2+ years, it's obvious. He's batshit nuts. He believes every wackadoodle theory the internet has to offer. At this point, I think there is an 80% chance that the 25th amendment will be invoked at some point, likely by the military members of the cabinet, and that will be it. For example, Trump could order a nuclear strike against North Korea and Mattis, Kelly and McMaster all block him.

It's only a matter of time before one of these four things happen and I'm thinking it will be sometime in 2018 before the midterms.

Trump's Tax Bill Sets Stage for a Repeat of 2008

Remember the crash of 2008?

It got started a few years earlier, when real estate flippers drove up home prices and created the housing bubble. Banks lent money to people who couldn't afford to repay the loans on these overpriced houses, and then those banks rolled those bad loans into complex investment vehicles that no one really understood, but which became worth less than the paper they were printed on when people defaulted on their loans.

The economy imploded. Most of the big banks were bailed out, but millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes and billions of dollars. 

It took several years for the economy to regain some semblance of normality, and many Americans never regained their jobs, homes and livelihoods. The average person has become permanently poorer, while corporations and the richest Americans have drastically increased their net worth.

Donald Trump's tax bill is going to let that happen again. How?

The tax bill is explicitly crafted to reduce Trump's tax bill zero. The tax bill eliminates loopholes for certain kinds of businesses, but not Trump's and Jared Kushner's.

For example:

• The alternative minimum tax will be eliminated. That was the only reason Trump paid taxes on his 2005 tax return. 
• The tax rate on pass-through corporations will be reduced significantly. Trump's businesses are all pass-throughs.
• Rental income, royalty payments and licensing fees get especially favorable treatment. Most of Trump's income comes from these types of arrangements.
• The tax bill exempts real estate from the limitations of the deductibility of interest payments.
• The like-kind exchange loophole will be eliminated for everything except real estate.

The last two items will create a boom in the real estate market as the wealthy reorganize their businesses to take advantage of that special treatment. It will allow real estate flippers to repeat the the disaster that drove housing prices into the stratosphere. It will be somewhat different this time around, however.

Since 2008 Americans have been leery of buying houses themselves, and are renting instead. The tax law changes mean even more investors will rush to buy up single-family dwellings to rent them out. They'll also buy up existing rental units to "upgrade" them with fancy granite countertops and stainless steel appliances so they double and triple the rent.

In the end, a few giant corporations (like Jared Kusher's) will wind up owning most single-family dwellings and apartment buildings, pushing more and more average Americans and small businesses out of housing ownership. This will cause the rental market to overheat, and rents will skyrocket. While rents are high, Wall Street will create investment vehicles from these overpriced rental properties and sell them to suckers.

Like banks in recent years, these giant rental corporations will find hundreds of ways to screw renters, much the way Jared Kushner's company in Baltimore screwed over their tenants with excessive fees and ridiculous penalties. Kushner sicced collection agencies on former renters for rent they didn't owe and even using the court system to harass tenants by getting them arrested.

Then, like the last time, it'll collapse when people can't pay the exorbitant rents. It will all come crashing down, and millions will be thrown out of their homes, and lose their jobs and billions of dollars in security deposits.

I'm betting the collapse will be caused by something really stupid, like firms using security deposits as a gigantic illicit slush fund, or drastically overstating the value of the assets through some real estate depreciation gimmick made possible by Trump's tax bill.

And the crash will almost certainly involve a huge stock market "correction" as investors pull out of stocks whose prices were driven sky-high with the promise of giant dividends made possible by Trump's tax cut gimmicks. Many of those stocks will plummet when fickle investors have realized their gains from those stocks, and pull out of them to find the next golden ticket.



During the last bubble the Bush administration was asleep at the switch: regulators ignored all the warning signs of the impending crash. Trump recently appointed Mick Mulvaney to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mulvaney takes over agency with the intent of totally neutering it. This means that nothing will be done to prevent the shenanigans that will cause the bubble, because the people running the government will be profiting from the bubble.

The CFPB was created to prevent another economic disaster by forcing the big banks to have enough assets to cover their loans. It also went after the predatory practices of banks, such as the Wells Fargo debacles, where they opened accounts for customers without their permission and sold them unneeded car insurance. They also went after payday lenders and other financial scams that hurt regular Americans. This will all end with Mulvaney in charge.

Most people are focusing on the inherent unfairness of the tax cut, with huge cuts for the wealthy and corporations and much smaller cuts for real Americans that completely dry up in 10 years -- a scam required to get around Senate rules to avoid a filibuster.

The problems I outlined above will take a few years to manifest, with the economic crash coming in six to eight years, on a timetable similar to the disasters that befell most previous Republican administrations in the 20th century: Coolidge/Hoover (the Depression), Nixon (1974 recession), Reagan (the S&L crisis) and the George W. Bush (2008 collapse).

The only hope we have to avoid a repeat of 2008 is if Democrats take the House in 2018 and the presidency in 2020.

Stinger Got Stung

The right-wing slime machine has been pushing lies for years. One of the biggest slimeballs is James O'Keefe, who runs the ironically named "Project Veritas." 

O'Keefe destroyed ACORN, a voting rights organization that helped register low-income voters, with a scam video. It came just in time for the 2010 midterms, in which Republicans took control of many statehouses in part due to low turnout among minority voters. This allowed Republicans to control redistricting across the country, allowing them to gerrymander legislative districts to solidify their control over congress, even though Republicans are a minority in many states. Their plan worked!

O'Keefe also tried to destroy Planned Parenthood with phony videos. He was arrested in 2010 for entering a federal building with a false ID trying to carry out a sting against Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu.

In the last few months there have been a slew of accusations of improper sexual conduct against media figures and politicians, including Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Al Franken, etc. One of the most visible has been the accusations against Roy Moore, the Republican senate candidate from Alabama. He stands accused by more than half a dozen women of improper sexual conduct when they were minors and he was a 30-something assistant DA.

The accusations against Moore, first published by the Washington Post, are especially credible. They have contemporary corroborating testimony from people who knew that Moore was going after young girls. Moore was banned from the local mall and YMCA for harassing teenage girls. Moore himself confirmed this pattern of conduct when he bragged about first seeing his wife when she was 15, while he was stalking girls in a high-school auditorium.

Many of the accused have lost their jobs (Weinstein and Spacey), admitted their guilt (Weinstein, Spacey and Franken) and even apologized (Franken).

Moore has not admitted guilt or apologized. He has not left the senate race. He has doubled down and attacked his accusers. They are now in their 50s, and like many Alabamians, are Trump voters. They have no axe to grind against Moore politically. By using their real names they have opened themselves up to harassment, but they are willing to risk it because they don't think a child molester should represent their state.

So the right-wing slime machine went into action. Someone started making phone calls in Alabama, claiming to be "Bernie Bernstein" from the Washington Post, and offering cash to women who would make harassment claims against Moore. It's the trifecta of hot buttons: a Jewish reporter from the liberal media attacking a conservative Alabamian.

Then the Washington Post was contacted by a woman with a shocking story:

A woman who falsely claimed to The Washington Post that Roy Moore, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama, impregnated her as a teenager appears to work with an organization that uses deceptive tactics to secretly record conversations in an effort to embarrass its targets.

In a series of interviews over two weeks, the woman shared a dramatic story about an alleged sexual relationship with Moore in 1992 that led to an abortion when she was 15. During the interviews, she repeatedly pressed Post reporters to give their opinions on the effects that her claims could have on Moore’s candidacy if she went public.

It was all a lie. The reporters did their homework and found inconsistencies in the woman's story. They followed her to the Project Veritas office and exposed another one of O'Keefe's phony stings.

With this failed scam O'Keefe has significantly strengthened the case against Moore. He proved that the Washington Post doesn't print every lie someone tells them, that the Post dots their i's and cross their t's. Like real reporters should.

Was O'Keefe involved with the Bernie Bernstein calls, trying to solicit false accusations? Is Roy Moore colluding with O'Keefe to save his foundering campaign? How deep does this go?

Who Has Been Hitting This Site A Lot Lately?

Check it out...

I have to wonder if some of those guys who used to post here were real people or it they were Russian trollbots.

What The Results of the Alabama Special Election Will Tell Us

The results of the Alabama special election are going to be the most definitive statement on the state of the GOP in 2017. I’m speaking more of the base here than of the national leaders who have largely rejected Moore.

If Moore loses, it will show that there are still plenty of decent people left in the GOP, especially in Alabama. It will means there is hope for conservatives in terms of being more reasoned voters.

If Moore wins, then it will fully illustrate what I have been saying for years: conservatives hate liberals with all of their hearts and souls and they are completely inconsolable. Further, Moore’s victory will show where the real problem lies in terms of partisan politics. It’s with the right, not the left. So, it will be end of the “both sides are bad” argument.

Moore’s victory will show that the conservatives would rather vote for an accused pedophile who was banned from a mall then vote for a liberal. They will show themselves to be so far gone in terms of emotions about liberals that it’s going to be impossible to bring them back.

They will then head into 2018 with a child molester in the Senate.

Why Japan Has No Mass Shootings

Flynn Caves

Several of my conservative friends are under the ill suited to reality belief that nothing much is going to come from the Trump-Russia investigation. We here at Zombie Politics have covered this story quite well so if they aren't convinced now, well, it's likely that they are being too emotional about liberals being right about something again.

This is especially true now that Michael Flynn, Trump's former NSA adviser, is cooperating with Mueller. 

Two sources familiar with Mueller’s investigation said Flynn may be able to provide insight into three major areas of inquiry. These are: any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 campaign; money laundering and other possible financial crimes by Trump aides; and whether Trump sought to obstruct justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey in May, as Comey was probing the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia.

Conservatives need to understand that the rest of the political world, especially Democrats and liberals, don't do psychotic witch hunts as they do (projection). It wouldn't matter which party it was. Collusion is collusion.

And treason is treason. 

How Trump is Connected To Russia

This just in...check it out!

Roy Moore's Access Hollywood Moment

The Republican candidate for the senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions stands accused of sexual harassment by nine women. After saying nothing for several days, Donald Trump has begun to defend him, saying that Moore totally denies the allegations.

When pressed Trump doesn't say he believes the denial. Or that the women are lying. He just says that Moore denies them. Because that's all that matters: Moore's not admitting fault or apologizing for his actions, which at this point everyone knows (one of Trump's favorite constructions) are true. That's the sign of a fighter, and Trump likes fighters.

But now there's a tape of Moore admitting to a pattern of conduct -- a turn of phrase that a former district attorney would surely be familiar with -- consistent with what his accusers have alleged: stalking underage girls.

Moore's confession, though much less graphic than Trump's Hollywood Access tape, begins at 1:27 in the video below.

In the interview, from a few months ago, Moore describes how he first saw his wife performing at a dance recital when he 30 and she was 15. Yes, a 30-year-old assistant DA was checking out the sophomore babes at a high-school dance recital.

What kind of single man at that age hangs around in high school auditoriums watching teenagers dance? It's just plain creepy.

Moore said he saw his future wife performing at the front of the auditorium and was impressed. "And I remember her name, it was Kayla Kisor -- K. K.," he says in the interview. "But I remembered that and didn't meet her. I left and it was, oh, gosh, eight years later or something. I met her and when she told me her name I remembered -- K.K."

Yeah, K.K. So easy to remember, just one letter short of K.K.K. I can just imagine what he said next: "Is your middle name Kristin? Because if it is, you just have to marry me!"

Collusion

Luke Harding is the former Moscow bureau chief of The Guardian. He has a new book called Collusion that documents the numerous connections between Donald Trump and the Russians. His interview with Terry Gross is very interesting.

What's most interesting is the sheer volume of connections that Trump has to Russia, both direct and indirect, that go back 40 years. The first of course, is his marriage to Ivana, a Czech immigrant (at the time Czechoslovakia was a Soviet puppet state). As Harding tells it:

Well, the KGB really forever has been interested in cultivating people, actually, who might be useful contacts for them, identifying targets for possible recruitments possibly to be agents. That's not saying that Donald Trump is an agent, but the point is that he would have been on their radar certainly by 1977 when he married Ivana, who came from Czechoslovakia, a kind of communist Eastern bloc country. And we know from Czechoslovak spy records de-classified last year that the spy agencies were in contact with Ivana's father, that they kept an eye on the Trumps in Manhattan throughout the 1980s. And we also know, from defectors and other sources, that whatever Prague learned, communist Prague, would have been funneled to the big guys in Moscow, to the KGB. So there would have been a file on Donald Trump.

But I think what's kind of interesting about this story, if you understand the kind of Russian espionage background, is Trump's first visit to Soviet Moscow in 1987. He went with Ivana. He writes about it in "The Art Of The Deal," his best-selling memoir. He talks about getting an invitation from the Soviet government to go over there. And he makes it seem kind of rather casual. But what I discovered from my research is that there was actually a concerted effort by the Soviet government via the ambassador at the time, who was newly arrived, a guy called Yuri Dubinin, to kind of charm Trump, to flatter him, to woo him almost. And Dubinin's daughter, sort of who was part of this process, said that the ambassador rushed up to the top of Trump Tower, basically kind of breezed into Trump's office and he melted. That's the verb she used. He melted.

After Trump's visit to Moscow, he suddenly got interested in politics:

There was no randomness about this. I mean, we know from Dubinin's daughters that they picked on Trump. And there's a kind of curious coda to this, which is, two months after his trip - actually, less than two months, he comes back from Moscow and, having previously shown very little interest in foreign policy, he takes out these full-page advertisements in The Washington Post and a couple of other U.S. newspapers basically criticizing Ronald Reagan and criticizing Reagan's foreign policy. Now, Trump is many things, but he is not an expert on international affairs, and this is curious. 

Trump's Anti-Reagan Ad

Trump coincidentally began being political, right after coming back from the Soviet Union. He spent almost $100,000 on ads in the Washington Post, New York Times and Boston Globe slamming Ronald Reagan.

It's almost as if Trump was acting on orders from the Russians. Or was being manipulated by them through flattery.

After several disastrous bankruptcies, American banks would no longer lend Trump money. So Trump turned to foreign banks, including Deutsche Bank -- which coincidentally was fined $630 million this past January in a Russian money-laundering scheme.

Trump's secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross, is coincidentally involved with the Bank of Cyprus, which coincidentally involved with Russian money-laundering.

And then there's the $90 million Trump coincidentally got from a Russian Putin Pal for a moldy Florida mansion at the height of the financial meltdown:

It was a kind of seaside mansion bought by Trump in 2004 and then sold by him for $95 million at the height of the financial crash and giving him a profit of about $50 million. And I've tried to interview Rybolovlev. He won't meet with me, but I've talked to his press guy and - who says that Rybolovlev basically donned a pair of swimming trunks and never set foot in the mansion but kind of paddled along the territory and saw it from afar, decided to buy it.

When he did buy it, he realized it had a mold problem. He never, ever lived there. He demolished it, and it seems a kind of pretty disastrous piece of real estate acquisition, but one that massively enriched Trump. Now, his press guy says, nothing to see here, this was a reasonable investment, you guys are all conspiracy theorists. But it's very strange.

If Trump were a Democrat Republicans in Congress would be screaming bloody murder, calling Trump a Russian puppet and spy. They would be demanding his impeachment and execution for treason. They've called for Hillary Clinton to be jailed for far more tenuous connections to a Russian company that bought a Canadian company that owns uranium mines across the world, including the United States.

Trump has hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of financial dealings with Russian investors, Russian oligarchs who own condos in Trump Tower, as well as connections to Russian mobsters. He (and Ivanka) has made hotel deals with several oligarchs across the world, including Canada and former Soviet Republics (most have failed to materialize or went into bankruptcy -- Trump is a bad businessman). He doesn't have any direct investments in Russia (though he has tried to build a hotel there for the last three decades), but Russians have literally put hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in his pockets.

This is why Trump will never say anything to piss off Putin and the Russians. They kept him afloat when he was down. They made him what he is today. And they've got all the dirt on him. Even if there isn't a golden shower video.

Voting "Yes" With Emojis

President Supports Accused Pedophile

No, that's not an Onion headline. It's real. Yesterday, President Trump threw his support behind Roy Moore yesterday, noting that "we don't need a liberal person in there."

As I have noted many times over the years, conservatives are so filled with hatred and anger towards liberals that they would rather support someone like Moore over the clearly better man for the job. They do this because they are so tribal, so petty, so fucking adolescent that they can't seem to bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. This is why their party is nearly dead.

Even if Moore somehow manages to eke out a win (which is possible given the demographics of who votes in special elections), the GOP will be saddled with supporting an accused pedophile going into the 2018 elections. Moore would also likely be booted from the Senate straight away, setting off a deeper civil war within the GOP. Those suburban white women that Trump carried last year will be gone and it's likely that both the Senate and the House will flip.

There are some fairly strong indicators that women have mobilized effectively and turned out to the polls. If that happens in the suburban areas of Alabama, Moore is toast and the GOP will still be stuck with the pedophile label. That's really the doomsday scenario.

Because if Trump actually goes down there and campaigns for Moore and then he LOSES, it's going to make the Luther Strange tantrums look like brief weeping.

Get Out Of My Light!

A Salacious Sex Story and a Pivot to Tax Policy!

Sex abuse of minors isn't limited to Republicans, or Democrats, or politicians, or Hollywood celebrities. It isn't even limited to men:

An Oklahoma teacher is accused of having sex with a high school student after the boy’s parents reported nude photographs and text messages on their son’s phone to authorities.

Hunter Day, a 22-year-old teacher at Yukon High School in Yukon, Okla., was arrested Wednesday after authorities said they used the boy’s phone to confirm a meeting and found Day sitting on her living room floor with the lights off and candles lit.

This woman isn't even a real teacher:

Day was hired to teach science at Yukon High School at the beginning of the school year, according to an October report by Oklahoma City-based News 9. She was among the state’s 1,500 emergency certified teachers hired without education training to help mitigate teacher shortages. It’s one of many ways Oklahoma is dealing with a deepening budget crisis that has forced class sizes to surge, art and foreign-language programs to shrink or disappear and — in many districts — schools to operate just four days a week. 

News 9 reported that Day had little to no teaching experience. She held a degree from Oklahoma Baptist University and at one point planned to go to medical school. Day had a 10-month contract to teach at the school, but said she planned to get her certification requirement so she could return next year.

That she's a Baptist like Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate accused of molesting minors, is particularly humorous.

Child rape is one of the real consequences of the Republican fixation on cutting taxes for billionaires, particularly oil billionaires, who have a stranglehold on Oklahoma politics and have turned the state (along with Kansas) into an economic cesspit.

With their new tax plan, Republicans in Washington want to turn the rest of the country into Oklahoma: by removing the deduction for state and local taxes, they intend to get revenge on richer blue states and force them to reduce or eliminate their income taxes. Income taxes pay for education and infrastructure that make blue states much more attractive to businesses that pay higher salaries.

It's extremely hypocritical. One of the reasons that Republicans say that corporate taxes and the inheritance tax are "so unfair" is that they are "double taxation." The logic for inheritance taxes goes like this: the parent paid taxes on the original wealth, so when the heir is required to pay taxes on the inheritance it's "double taxation."

This is actually false, because most inherited wealth that exceeds the current $5 million threshold is in the form of real estate and capital investments, the value of which has typically increased over time, and those gains have not yet been taxed.

Eliminating the state and local tax deduction really will cause the double taxation problem that Republicans are always screaming about. If low-tax red states are angry that high-tax blue states have better education and infrastructure, then red states can charge income taxes, improve the lives of their citizens and increase their competitiveness.

Hypocritically, Republicans want to keep the charitable tax deduction. That means they won't pay taxes on money that they give to their churches. The vast majority of church donations are spent on their own church buildings, services for church members, pastor salaries, etc. Many churches have associated schools, and donations pay for school buildings, subsidize teacher salaries, etc. Some tiny amount of church money is an actual charity, i.e., spent helping the poor, but it's insignificant compared to the spending on their own infrastructure.

Republicans argue that churches and charities perform a public good that society should help subsidize.

My state and local taxes pay for charitable services to the poor, medical care for the poor, education for the poor, and thousands of other services that benefit everyone in the state, not just members of a particular religion.

If we allow tax deductions for donations to churches and other non-profit charities, then we should be able to claim the taxes we pay to states, counties and cities as charitable donations as well. They serve the public good far more than churches and religious universities that churn out hypocrites like Roy Moore and Hunter Day.

If Al Franken Was a Republican...

In light of Leeann Tweeden's accusation that Al Franken forcibly kissed and groped her in a USO skit, and his subsequent admission and apologies, and Trump's hypocritical tweet criticizing Franken, let us imagine how this would have gone down if Franken was a Republican.

Trump would ignore Leeann Tweeden's accusation completely and pretend it never happened, as he has ignored more than half a dozen credible allegations that Moore stalked and assaulted more than half a dozen underage girls at restaurants, malls and the YMCA.

When finally forced to comment on the incident in a press briefing Trump would proclaim that Tweeden knew what she signed up for when she agreed to do the skit. In a nonsensical aside, Trump would say that Tweeden is a has-been, has low ratings, is no longer a 10, and maybe isn't even a 9 or an 8 and is old and dried-up. He would say that this is a witch hunt, political correctness gone mad. People are trying to stop men from being men and women from being women.

Other surrogates would defend Republican Franken with various excuses: the kiss was just part of the skit. Any groping was accidental, or part of the act to make it seem more authentic and easier for the troops to identify with. This was for the troops, they'd emphasize, Republican Franken was a hero for devoting so much time to the USO!

The photo, they would say, is clear evidence that nothing untoward happened: who would mug for the camera like that if they were doing something wrong? They would claim that the whole thing was just "horseplay" being misinterpreted after the fact, like Trump's "locker room" talk when he bragged to Billy Bush about assaulting women.

Breitbart would invent a story that the photo was part of a campaign to prevent sexual assault in the military: the caption, they'd claim, was cropped when Tweeden posted it. It originally read, "DON'T DO THIS!"

Pundits on Fox News would attack Tweeden. They would claim that she is a model who has made a career inciting lust in men. Who could blame Franken? They would note that she was one of the Top Hooters Girls of All Time. That she appeared scantily clad in many magazines, including Stuff Magazine, FHM and Playboy, where she also posed nude in 2011.

Fox & Friends would endlessly play images of Tweeden in a bikini in a garage, on a car, by an engine, wearing lingerie and stiletto heels, wearing a sexy Santa's suit, wearing a top open to her navel, and wearing nothing with strategically placed elbows. And photos from her Playboy shoot with black rectangles hiding the naughty bits.

Various Fox News shows would find half a dozen men who claim that they slept with Tweeden. They would find a dozen more who would say that she was a terrible tease and led them on, only to turn around and accuse them of groping her when she had invited the attention in the first place.

The national Republican Senatorial committee would attack Tweeden's motivation, and claim this is a partisan hit job. They would point out that in the elections prior to the incident she voted for the president of the opposing party. They would say that at 44 years old, Tweeden's looks are fading, her career is lagging and she did this to get more attention.

If he were a Republican, Franken would never admit the incident had happened. He would never apologize. Like Roy Moore, he would go on the offensive. He would say that she was the aggressor. He would portray her reason for not reporting it earlier -- that he was famous and accusing him would hurt her career -- as false because at the time she was a famous supermodel and NASCAR idol, and he was just a has-been comedian on the path to oblivion, before the he saw the light while serving the troops and decided to run for higher office.

Republican Franken would appear on Sean Hannity's show to defend himself. In the same way that Roy Moore said he only dated teenagers with their mothers' permission, Republican Franken would say that he okayed the script with Tweeden's agent first. Then, while trying to dance around that red herring, he'd admit that if he had groped her -- and he hadn't! -- it would have been an accident or a momentary lapse in judgment. One lone mistake in a long career only trying to make people laugh and serve the troops.

Then, when he was finally forced to admit he touched Tweeden's boob because they found his fingerprints there, he would say -- like every Republican who's had an affair in his thirties or forties -- that it was just a "youthful indiscretion."

But Franken is a Democrat. So he admitted his mistake. He apologized. He called for an investigation. He's taking his medicine.

Many Democrats and feminists are angry and disappointed. But should he be forced to resign? Leeann Tweeden herself doesn't think so:

When asked whether she thought Franken should resign, Tweeden said, “I didn’t do this to have him step down. I think Al Franken does a lot of good things in the Senate. You know, I think that’s for the people of Minnesota to decide. I’m not calling for him to step down. That was never my intention.”

She continued, “I just wanted him to understand what he did was wrong and how he treated me and how abusers do that under the guise that it’s funny, or that ‘Oh, I can get away with it because I’m a comedian.’ That’s never funny. When you shine a light on it, that’s the culture of it — that’s the chance we need to make.”

Other women, such as author Kate Harding, concur:

As a feminist and the author of a book on rape culture, I could reasonably be expected to lead the calls for Al Franken to step down, following allegations that he forced his tongue down a woman’s throat, accompanied by a photo of him grinning as he moves in to grope her breasts while she sleeps. It’s disgusting. He treated a sleeping woman as a comedy prop, no more human than the contents of Carrot Top’s trunk, and I firmly believe he should suffer social and professional consequences for it.

But I don’t believe resigning from his position is the only possible consequence, or the one that’s best for American women.

The Senate should hold an investigation into sexual assault in general, using the Franken case as a prime example of how seemingly innocent shenanigans are really assaults on women's persons.

They should invite Leeann Tweeden to testify. Then they should censure Franken for his behavior. Let the people know that this kind of behavior is not to be tolerated. Turn Franken into an example of the kind of contrition that men should show when they treat women like objects instead of human beings.

But it shouldn't stop there. The Senate should invite the 16 women that Donald Trump forcibly kissed, fondled, groped and slammed into walls to testify. They should hear testimony from the women that Roy Moore tried to rape.

Al Franken should not just resign and go away. He should demand that every man who violates a woman get the same sort of scrutiny that he's getting. He should demand equal treatment for all abusers.

This whole Franken thing could backfire terribly on Republicans. Next thing you know, they'll start accusing Franken and Tweeden of collusion, manufacturing the whole thing to increase the pressure to impeach Donald Trump.

Is Our Military Too Big for Our Population?

When we talk about large the US military is, it's usually in terms of how much money we spend on it or how much hardware we have or how many times over we could destroy the planet with our nukes (the answer is 5 to 50).

Depending on when or who you ask, the United States spends as much on its armed forces as the next 7 to 10 countries. People as diverse as Rand Paul and Barack Obama have made this statement, and it's true. Our military budget is massive:



But two reports in The Hill on the same day about our nation's military readiness raise a serious question: do we have enough qualified people to staff the military, or has it grown larger than our population can support?

The first report is about John McCain's anger (what else is new?):

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is again threatening to hold up Pentagon nominees, this time over a news report about the Army granting mental health waivers to recruits.

At issue is a USA Today report that said the Army has lifted a ban on issuing waivers for recruits with a history of self-harm, bipolar disorder, depression or drug and alcohol abuse.

McCain is legitimately concerned that the Army is lowering standards for soldiers because it can't meet its recruiting goals. This is especially concerning in light of the recent mass murder in a Texas church: the shooter was booted out of the Air Force for domestic abuse and mental illness. The stress of military life is the last thing a person with preexisting mental health issues should be exposed to.

The second report was about the Air Force's pilot shortage:

Top Air Force leaders and lawmakers are warning that a pilot shortage of 2,000 could cripple the service, leaving it unready to handle its responsibilities.

“With 2,000 pilots short, it’ll break the force. It’ll break it,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said on Thursday during the annual State of the Air Force news conference.

The Air Force needs 20,000 pilots minimum to fly its wide range of aircraft, including fighter jets, helicopters, transport planes, support attack planes and cargo aircraft. At the start of the year, it said it had 18,500 pilots, well short of its minimum.

A big part of the problem is that we have been fighting wars nonstop for 16 years. Some military personnel have been deployed to war zones four, five, six and more times. This is the longest war we've ever fought, and it's taking a huge toll on the mental health, families and marriages of enlisted personnel.

At the same time, Donald Trump is quietly pushing through yet another troop surge in Afghanistan. Our troops are being kidnapped and executed in secret missions in Africa. And Trump is threatening North Korea with war.

At the same time, Trump is ending the DACA program, threatening to kick the Dreamers out of the country. There are almost a thousand service members in the US military who were brought to the United States illegally as children, and now their futures are in doubt.

People throw around a lot of solutions: reinstate the draft, institute higher pay, use more robots and drones, etc. But the real question is, why do we need such a gigantic military in Trump's age of America First, where we sacrifice our European and Asian allies to the Russians and the Chinese? We're the not the world's policeman anymore: why spend one out of every five federal budget dollars on the military?

If there was a path to "winning" militarily in Afghanistan we would have discovered it by now. In fact, we know exactly how to crush the Taliban in Afghanistan: destroy their bases in Pakistan. But that would unleash all kinds of hell, inciting more terrorists angry at American interference in the Muslim world.

We keep telling ourselves we have to intervene militarily across the world to protect ourselves from the people who hate us. But most of those people hate us because we keep intervening militarily across the world.

Are Trump Supporters Ashamed of Themselves?

Michael Kruse wrote a piece last week for Politico magazine that highlighted Trump supporters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The testimonials were filled with the usual irrational nonsense like this.

“Everybody I talk to,” he said, “realizes it’s not Trump who’s dragging his feet. Trump’s probably the most diligent, hardest-working president we’ve ever had in our lifetimes. It’s not like he sleeps in till noon and goes golfing every weekend, like the last president did.” 

I stopped him, informing him that, yes, Barack Obama liked to golf, but Trump in fact does golf a lot, too—more, in fact. Del Signore was surprised to hear this. 

“Does he?” he said. 

“Yes,” I said. 

He did not linger on this topic, smiling and changing the subject with a quip. “If I was married to his wife,” Del Signore said, “I don’t think I’d go anywhere.” 

He added: “Some of these things are like that thing he said to Billy, Billy Bob, Billy Bud”—searching, unsuccessfully, for the name Billy Bush—“on the bus, that comment he made.” Del Signore shrugged. “He’s a human male. I’m glad he wasn’t saying, ‘Hey, I like little boys.’ You know? So he’s not perfect.” 

Del Signore said he’s been following politics far more than before because of Trump. Trump, he said, is just “more interesting.” So now he likes watching the news. “Ninety-nine percent of the time I watch Fox,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll be sitting there listening to all this Fox stuff, and I’ll say, ‘Maybe they aren’t right, maybe I’ll flip to CNN’—but every time I’ve found that Fox has been correct, and CNN is definitely fake news.”

Pretty typical.

But I guess your typical Trump voters are an embarrassment to the leaders of Johnstown because they penned a response to Politico that was just posted today.

It’s too bad, but not surprising, that Kruse instead focused on specific comments by a few people who fit a narrative he created before arriving. We wish Mr. Kruse would have taken the time to understand the context of the entire community, rather than simply using it as the convenient backdrop for a preexisting storyline. For readers outside of our region, his story depicted a community that does not reflect who we truly are and what we believe.

Oh, really?

It seems to me, Mr. Janakovic et al, that you have some really awful assholes that live in your town. Worried a little that perhaps people won't want to do business there now that your political slip is showing? It seems to me that your already hard hit economy would sink even further if people found out that guys like Del Signore were hanging around.

I guess Trump supporters aren't to proud of who they are. It speaks volumes when they have to hide and pretend that they are really just good people, right?

Everyone Is Wondering: Is Roy Moore Gay?

Since the news first broke about Roy Moore molesting underage girls when he was a 30-something district attorney, journalists have been flooding into Alabama.

All the major networks have boots on the ground. The New Yorker sent Charles Bethea, who discovered that not only did Moore haunt a local mall cruising for underage girls, but the mall had banned Moore due to numerous complaints about him badgering girls. Breitbart dispatched two reporters to Alabama to harass Moore's accuser but only succeeded in confirming the Washington Post's story.

But perhaps everyone is on the wrong track. So far there haven't been any reports of Moore actually having had heterosexual intercourse with any girls. The most detailed reports indicate that Moore had one girl touch his penis and he forced the head of a second girl into his lap. As we know from Donald Trump's bragging over his own harassment, heterosexual men generally put their hands all over women.

It makes you wonder: maybe Moore went after young girls not because he likes young girls, because they were the closest socially-acceptable alternative to boys.

That's not to say all gay men are pedophiles. Kevin Spacey was criticized for implying that in his confession for groping a boy 30 years ago. No, Moore is already a pedophile for molesting underage girls. But maybe he chose girls because they are more like boys than adult women are.

Consider: Moore has long been fixated on gays. He gained his fame -- and lost his seat on the Alabama supreme court for a second time -- by disobeying US Supreme Court rulings on gay marriage.

It's not uncommon for the loudest anti-gay voices to be closet homosexuals. Ted Haggard, an evangelical pastor in Colorado, constantly ranted about the evils of homosexuality, but paid to have sex with with a male escort and did crystal meth with him.

The Catholic Church has been unrelenting in its attacks against homosexuality for centuries. Yet estimates are that 15% to 50% of the priesthood is gay. As US News noted:

Father Gary Meier, a gay, St. Louis-based Catholic clergymen, says there's a wide range of statistics out there on gay priests, but jokes that in his experience, "30 percent are gay, 30 percent are straight, and 30 percent are in denial."

Then there is the question of Moore's choice of wardrobe. Take another look at that precious picture of Moore above, wearing a cowboy hat and toting that cute little gun. He looks like a gay parody of the sheriff in a Village People performance of YMCA.

Donald Trump and Fox News constantly spread innuendo and rumor by couching accusations against their opponents as questions of the form "Everyone is saying ..." or "Everyone is wondering ..." when only Donald Trump and Fox News are saying these things and are trying to get everyone else to echo the buzz they want started.

So, in the best tradition of right-wing slimeballs, I'll formulate the question the way they always do: "Everyone is wondering: is Roy Moore Gay?"

Maybe all those reporters in Alabama will figure it out if they start looking in the right places. Like gay bars, or the YMCA, which was apparently a gay hookup spot back in the day.

Everyone is wondering: was Moore a member of the YMCA in the 1970s and '80s?

Hiring the Fox to Guard the Henhouse

In another incredibly idiotic lapse in judgment, the Trump administration is hiring a security company started by a KGB agent to guard US embassies in Russia. 

To make up for the loss of security guards axed in the Russian-mandated staff cuts, Washington has hired a private Russian company that grew out of a security business co-founded by Mr. Putin’s former K.G.B. boss, an 82-year-old veteran spy who spent 25 years planting agents in Western security services and hunting down their operatives.

Under a $2.8 million no-bid contract awarded by the Office of Acquisitions in Washington, security guards at the American Embassy in Moscow and at consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok will be provided by Elite Security Holdings, a company closely linked to the former top K.G.B. figure, Viktor G. Budanov, a retired general who rose through the ranks to become head of Soviet counterintelligence.

The Trump administration is basically hiring Russian spies to guard our embassies. How can they be so stupid after the big scare over Kaspersky Antivirus, which the US government has now banned.

What will these Russian guards do?

Marines will continue to guard American diplomatic missions, but tasks previously handled by local guards hired directly by the embassy in Moscow, like screening visitors, will be taken over Elite Security employees. Hiring guards directly allowed closer monitoring of their backgrounds, but any Russian working for an American diplomatic mission, no matter how closely screened, is vulnerable to pressure from Russia’s state security apparatus. 

It doesn't say exactly what "screening visitors" means. I'm assuming that it means checking them for weapons, bombs, spying devices, stolen documents, etc. Does it make any sense at all to trust these guys after our embassies and consulates in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Benghazi were attacked by terrorists?

Are Trump and Rex Tillerson, Exxon's secretary of state, openly colluding with the Russians, or are they just fucking morons?

On Rand Paul's Injury

Last week Rand Paul's neighbor attacked Paul while he was sitting on his riding lawn mower. He broke six ribs. The neighbor was charged with fourth-degree assault and released. Both parties have characterized the incident as a minor disagreement between neighbors.

But because of the nature of the injury, some have speculated that something much more nefarious must be going on, especially since the neighbor is a Democrat! Exactly how serious is Paul's injury? This article discusses it.

But it doesn't really say anything about how common it is, or what sort of circumstances can cause such an injury. The thing is, this can happen to anyone in the most innocent of circumstances.

I have a friend who had pretty much the same injury as Paul. He was out for a walk with his wife. He tripped on a section of short lawn fencing. He fell and broke several ribs. He was in agonizing pain for weeks.

Minor falls can cause serious, even deadly injuries. A Minneapolis cop was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for throwing a single punch at a loudmouth in a bar. The victim fell backwards and cracked his head on the stone floor. He needed three brain surgeries.

This is why "minor" assaults and bar room brawls should never be treated lightly. Punch someone in the eye and they can go blind (detached retina). Hit someone in the chest and their heart can stop (commotio cordis).

The law recognizes several degrees of assault, but the fact is that a single punch or a single fall can kill you if it hits you in the wrong place at the wrong time, or you land wrong.

Pretty much every mass murderer in history started out with with some form of animal cruelty, domestic abuse or assault. Society needs to treat all forms of violence as potentially deadly threats, instead of pardoning the perpetrators with the lame "boys will boys" excuse.

Assault rates vary greatly by state: in 2014 Kentucky, Rand Paul's state, had an aggravated assault rate of 250 per 100,000 population, while Minnesota had a rate of less than half that: 123 per 100,000. Alabama's rate was 283, while Vermont's was a mere 69. Wisconsin had 170, California had 236, Illinois had 213, New York had 229, Texas had 245 and Florida had a whopping 366.

Violence is clearly concentrated in big cities and the South, implying that it has a lot to do with poverty, which breeds violence.

But culture has something to do with it as well: the South is clearly much more violent than the rest of the country. It seems that Southerners don't take insults well, and react violently. Which would explain why Rand Paul was attacked over seemingly nothing, and Paul and the local cops dismissed the attack as minor.

Maybe if we stopped condoning minor violence and stopped teaching our children that it's okay to beat people up in anger, we'd have mass shootings once a month instead of almost every day.