The FBI Now Has Trump's Emails

Quora is awesome. The main reason why I dig it so much is that when I'm wondering about a particular issue, I can post a question and a whole bunch of people will leap into action and provide me answers. It's like having my own personal team of researchers.

Take the recent acquisition of Trump transition team emails from the General Services Administration (GSA). I wondered if the emails were obtained illegally as Trump's lawyers and Fox News have been asserting. Quora, what say you? 

-If proper warrants were obtained and/or if federal regulations were followed I’d say no. Seeing how Robert Mueller conducts business I believe he has nothing to worry about. It seems really comical and hypocritical for the current administration to claim its emails are “private and privileged.” Especially after beating the drum for Clinton emails and asking Wikileaks to produce them to gain an advantage in a presidential campaign. If you have done nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide. This is how you really drain the swamp.

-The Trump transition team, like all previous transition teams is provided with facilities, IT (phones, faxes, computers, email etc..) and things like offices and furniture by the GSA, a federal agency. During the transition, the President Elect and his/her staff are provided with email addresses that end in @ptt.gov and the President Elect doesn’t have “Executive Privelage”..yet so the team’s communications aren’t “protected” as confidential.

-No. The Trump transition-team emails the General Services Administration (GSA) provided to investigators were housed on GSA servers. The Trump transition team used GSA office space and computer facilities, including government email, during the transition. Transition team members signed waivers acknowledging that their government-provided email was subject to routine monitoring and auditing. They had no expectation of privacy. Yes, Transition lawyers are crying foul now. That's their job. They don't have a case. The Trump administration knows very well, however, that if they say something forcefully enough, lots of people will choose to believe them.

Answer: NO.

Did they honestly think that THEIR emails wouldn't be under scrutiny?

He Knows As Much About The Law As Right Wing Bloggers And Commenters

Buying Space Votes in Alabama

I was riding home from the new Star Wars movie today when Ira Flatow and Annalee Newitz were discussing Donald Trump's announcement that he is directing NASA to send Americans back to the moon, and eventually Mars. As Newitz said, such an initiative is meaningless without significant funding, and since Trump's tax giveaway to corporations and the wealthy will blow a gigantic hole in the budget, it will certainly come to nothing, just as George Bush's moonshot initiative did.

I was puzzled and dismayed when Trump announced the policy. Puzzled because it makes absolutely no sense for someone as stupid, callow and selfish as Donald Trump to care about the space program. And Donald Trump is spectacularly stupid: one of the pronouncements he made last February was that he wanted the first test flight of NASA's heavy lift rocket -- the biggest rocket ever -- to be manned.

This man is a total idiot. Doesn't he remember Apollo 1? No, of course not. During the 1960's he was too busy fighting his personal Vietnam, banging every woman in New York with a pulse. He couldn't be bothered to notice that three American astronauts had died in a fire atop an untested Saturn V in 1967.

You just don't put human beings on an untested rocket. It needlessly complicates an already complex mission, but it's also immoral and a public relations nightmare.

So, why the announcement? Maybe it's his phallic fantasy: after taunting Kim Jong Un with "Little Rocket Man," perhaps Trump's motivation was his desire to be Big Rocket Man. As he signed the document, Trump was thinking, "My rocket's bigger than your rocket!"

I was dismayed because his endorsement discredits the manned space program. Trump praising NASA automatically puts it on the liberal shit list, just when space was coming back in vogue with the help of Elon Musk. Musk has revitalized support for space exploration among liberals with his reusable rockets, electric cars, solar panels, and hyperloop mass transit.

But, listening to Flatow and Newitz talking, I suddenly realized that the real reason Trump had announced the NASA initiative was totally cynical. It was made on Monday, the day before the senate election in Alabama.

Alabama has a lot of highly educated people who work at NASA and related space technology companies in and around Huntsville. Polling told Republicans that support for Roy Moore was very soft among wealthy, college-educated engineers and technicians who work in the space industry.

Trump was not-so-subtly trying to buy votes for Roy Moore from space industry workers by making the announcement the day before the election. But they wouldn't have it: Doug Jones beat child molester Roy Moore with a coalition of blacks, women and college-educated white suburbanites and city-dwellers.

So, remember this: Donald Trump never does anything for anyone. If he supports you or your cause, he's just working an angle: it's only temporary because he needs you for something in the next couple of days or weeks. After that he'll throw you overboard. Just ask the dozens of people who've left his administration after less than a year, including Anthony Scaramucci, James Comey, Michael Flynn, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Omarosa Manigault Newman -- the list goes on and on, and gets longer every day.

Since Alabama voters defied Trump, I'm predicting that he will punish the state: NASA's budget -- and Huntsville's in particular -- will suffer for it. Trump's just that kind of guy.

Why Doug Jones Won

CNN has a great piece up on how exactly Doug Jones won the Alabama senate seat last night. Essentially, it's this: when Democrats turn out to vote, they win. It's just that simple.

Jones was a great candidate who ran as an unapologetic liberal. When the Dems don't half ass and moderate it, they can win...even in deep red Alabama. No doubt, Moore was a terrible candidate but that was only one of many factors. Democrats will now be fully energized and we can expect to see more quality candidates running even in districts where previous beliefs have said they would not win.

Like my co-blogger, I thought Moore would win merely on the abortion issue alone. I was quite happy last night to be wrong. It's safe to say now that there is a lot of energy on the ground now for Democrats given last night's results and the results last November in Virginia and New Jersey. If this carries into next year, Trump is fucked. One or both houses will be taken back and he will be impeached and thrown out of office (if it doesn't happen sooner).

Jones stands an excellent chance of holding on to his seat when it comes up again in 2020. Since the GOP seems to now be fully engaged in a civil war, who knows what kind of candidate they will put up? It will also be a presidential year so more Democrats will turn out.

Oh yeah, one more thing. The polls were accurate. Jones won within the margin of error.

How Did Roy Moore Lose?

I was certain that Roy Moore would win the Alabama Senate election by 10 or 20 points. Donald Trump won Alabama by 30%, and he came out strong for Moore in the final days of the campaign. Polls indicated a tight race, with Moore gaining momentum as election day approached. Even Steve Bannon showed up to spew his brand of vitriol and hatred.

It shouldn't be surprising that Moore lost. After all, he stands credibly accused of molesting several teenage girls when he was a thirty-something D.A., while his opponent put the murderers of several teenage girls in prison.

Doug Jones won on the strength of a good turnout by black voters and whites in big cities and suburbs, as well as a lack of enthusiasm by Republicans. More than 20,000 write-in votes were cast -- almost two percent of the total.

But it wasn't just the allegations of child molestation that sunk Moore. It was his long record of lawlessness, intransigence, wistful longing for the good old days of slavery, and homophobia.

Moore went into hiding for the last few weeks of the campaign. He assumed that the voter suppression tactics of the Alabama secretary of state, John Merrill, would hold down black turnout:

“If you’re too sorry or lazy to get up off of your rear and to go register to vote, or to register electronically, and then to go vote, then you don’t deserve that privilege,” Republican John Merrill said in an interview with documentary filmmaker Brian Jenkins. Jenkins had asked why he opposed automatically registering Alabamians when they reach voting age, and his response sizzled with anger toward people who “think they deserve the right because they’ve turned 18.” So he made a pledge: “As long as I’m secretary of state of Alabama, you’re going to have to show some initiative to become a registered voter in this state.”

Jones won because Senate races are statewide, by pure majority vote: there's no electoral college and no possibility of gerrymandering, as is the case for House seats.

Moore may have also been banking on Russian social media efforts to sway voters. In a video from last summer Moore says the United States is a focus of evil in the world and admires Putin's morality: "Well, then maybe Putin is right. Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know."

Putin has had dozens of journalists, opposition politicians and antidoping officials murdered. He has doled out lucrative government businesses to his lackeys and uses the Russian mafia to further Russia's goals abroad. But he's against gay marriage, so he's okay in Roy Moore's book!

Then, just before the election, Moore and his wife, Kayla, made an appearance in which she insisted her husband doesn't hate Jews and wasn't racist: he has a Jewish attorney, he hired a black marshal for the Alabama Supreme Court and they have black friends!

Was she really so clueless that she thought saying these things means you're not racist? Or was this calculated to send a message to the racists affirming exactly how racist he is?

The worst thing isn't even what she said: it's the creepy smile Moore wore the whole time. He looks like he's sneaking up on a teenage girl to cop a feel.

I am frankly amazed and heartened that Moore lost the election in Alabama. Maybe Republicans in congress will get the message. Maybe they'll start an investigation of Trump's sex crimes: they tried impeaching Bill Clinton for less.

But it's not all hopeful: almost half the voters, more than 670,000 people, thought it was appropriate to send a child molester to the U.S. Senate instead of a civil rights lawyer.

Polls Are Usually Accurate

Conservatives hate polls. It's probably because they are fact based numbers and we all know that facts have a liberal bias. Conservatives don't want to face reality and want to play in the emotional end of the pool, chucking all logic right out the window.

Take the 2016 presidential election. Conservatives think that all the polls were wrong and Trump beat all those smug elites who talk about facts and stuff. The problem is that the polls were quite accurate. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by around 3%. Trump won all the states he was supposed to win by the margins that were detailed in the polls and he picked off three (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) that were within the margin of error. Sure, the projections were wrong but not the polls. The final projection by Nate Silver gave Trump a 30% chance of victory. That's just a little bit less than 1 in 3 which is how it all played out.

So, because I'm someone who looks at polls and recognizes their scientific accuracy, I say that Roy Moore is going to win the Alabama senate race tomorrow. He's been up in the last several polls of likely voters (the only type of poll that matters) and is in a state that just doesn't have enough Democrats. He's also running against an unapologetic Democrat who supports abortion rights and gun control. Moore is running in a special election which means that the turnout demographic is going to be older and whiter. That means more conservative.

As I have said for many years here at Zombie Politics, conservatives are very tribal and want to beat liberals. They don't care who wins, even it's a monster like Roy Moore. If a member of the Nazi party from the 1930s ran against Jones, conservatives would be goose stepping their way to vote for the guy.

Since it's clear that conservatives have lost all capacity for rational thought, all efforts should be focused on getting out more voters and burying these psychotics at the polls. The headline for Wednesday morning.

Republicans elect accused child molester. 

Three More Republicans with Spines

It's just two days till the special senate election in Alabama. Voters will choose between a civil rights lawyer and a child molester.

Donald Trump and Steve Bannon went to Dixie to rally support for the child molester, Roy Moore.

I'm not sure why Alabamans should listen to these guys. Bannon is a former Goldman Sachs banker, wannabe Hollywood producer, online computer game gold farmer, and media elite. Donald Trump is a smarmy billionaire New York real estate mogul and reality TV star (on NBC, a fake news network!) with connections to the Russian mob, who admitted screwing over hundreds of people when he paid out millions of dollars to those he lied to in the Trump University case.

Bannon called the Alabama election a war. And it is a war. A war for the soul of the Republican Party. For decades the Republicans have coyly courted racists and misogynists with racist dog whistles and hyperbolic anti-abortion rhetoric.

But with Donald Trump condoning neo-Nazis, openly endorsing the apartheid rhetoric of the alt-right, and bragging about sexual assault, the majority of Republicans have abandoned any pretense of Christian morality. It's all about the Benjamins, baby.

There are some Republicans who have resisted the racism and the sexism of Donald Trump. Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and Mitt Romney can be counted among them. Three more have distinguished themselves in the past two days.

In an opinion piece on the New York Times Peter Wehner, a fellow of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote that he has stopped calling himself an evangelical Republican. The hypocrisy of Roy Moore and evangelicals who voted en masse for Donald Trump has finally pushed him over the line.

Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia expressed her distaste for Roy Moore on Fox News. She notes that if Moore wins, he'll likely face a Senate ethics committee. And given the recent resignations of John Conyers, Al Franken and Trent Franks, it is quite likely that Moore will not be seated.

Finally, Alabama's senior senator, Richard Shelby, denounced Moore on CNN:

“I didn't vote for Roy Moore,” Shelby said. “I wouldn't vote for Roy Moore. I think the Republican Party can do better.”

Shelby encouraged fellow Alabama voters to do as he did on his absentee ballot: to write in the name of another Republican for the office. Jones's chances of victory would be significantly boosted if large numbers of Republicans abandon Moore in favor of various write-in candidates. Shelby declined to name which Republican got his vote.

“The state of Alabama deserves better,” he said.

There's another risk factor here for Republicans: so far nine women have accused Moore of sexual misconduct when they were teenagers as young as 14. How many more are out there? How many were paid hush money and are holding their tongues because of an NDA? If there's a Senate investigation, the FBI will be involved, and who knows what dirt they'll dig up.

The election Tuesday will show whether the people of Alabama value tribal loyalty over honesty, morality and integrity.

Bitcoin's Wild Ride

What is money worth? When it was tangible and made from rare metals such as gold or silver, people felt it had an intrinsic value. Yet you can't eat gold. Silver won't keep the rain off you or keep you warm. These precious metals are very useful in electronics, though we toss tons and tons of old cellphones and TVs into landfills without extracting the metal. 

When money started being printed on paper it was originally backed by precious metals held by governments: the pound sterling was a pound of sterling silver in 775 AD. But over time the intrinsic value of paper money essentially became zero -- though you can burn it to keep yourself warm.

Most of our money is no longer tangible: our paychecks are not even checks anymore -- they're automatically deposited to our bank accounts. We use automatic transfers to pay our mortgages, utility bills, property taxes. We use credit cards or our cellphones to buy food, clothing and all the other necessities of life.

What makes gold and silver valuable? Scarcity and greed. They are also durable: precious metals won't freeze or burn in a fire. They tend to hold their value over time.

The latest currency fad is bitcoin. In recent days the value of bitcoin has fluctuated wildly:

In a hectic day on Thursday, bitcoin leapt from below $16,000 to $19,500 in less than an hour on the U.S.-based GDAX, one of the biggest exchanges globally, while it was still changing hands at about $15,900 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp. Some market watchers attributed the lurch higher to the coming launch of bitcoin futures on major exchanges.

Having then climbed to $16,666 on Bitstamp at around 0200 GMT on Friday, it tumbled to $13,482 by around 1200 GMT - a slide of more than 19 percent. It was last down 8.2 percent at $15,232.32 on BitStamp.

Bitcoin is a "cryptocurrency" that has no intrinsic value. It is not a metal, or precious gemstone, or even paper. It exists only as a string of binary digits, typically stored on a flash drive. If you lose that flash drive, or encrypt it and forget the key, or the flash drive becomes corrupt (which could happen in 10 years), or someone steals it, the bitcoin that was on it is gone forever.
Bitcoin is scarce because it is "mined" by running a computer algorithm that cranks out a series of numbers. The raw materials used are CPU seconds and electricity, and it takes a lot of electricity. The electricity used to mine bitcoin could power all of Ireland. That's about 1% of all the power used by the internet.

Bitcoin scarcity is further increased by the virtue that there is a finite number of bitcoin that can ever be created. In the minds of crazed and greedy investors, this makes bitcoin perfect: it's like using Picasso or da Vinci paintings as a unit of currency. Gold is less valuable because we can always mine more -- and when we run out here, we can find more in the solar system. Somewhere out there in the asteroid belt is a rock with more gold in it than mankind has mined in all of history.

Up this point bitcoin has been the province of hackers and criminals -- heroin dealers, forgers, prostitutes, hit men -- who lurk on the dark net. But almost every other day there's another story about someone being hacked and losing millions of dollars worth of bitcoin, or another bitcoin currency exchange going bankrupt.

Bitcoin has become so volatile that many companies are no longer accepting it as a form of payment: it's value is fluctuating crazily and the processing fees for converting it into real money make it useless.

Bitcoin supporters love it because they think it's anonymous, it uses a fancy distributed blockchain that eschews centralized control, and doesn't have the backing of any government.

But the anonymity is illusory: to use bitcoin to buy anything, you have to convert it to real money or find a seller who will accept it in exchange for a physical object or service that will eventually find its way to you. These transactions are all ultimately trackable. So, unless you're using bitcoin to hire anonymous hitmen to murder people you don't know, the anonymity is overrated.

And as for governments: the biggest bitcoin mines are in China, where they use cheap computers and electricity generated by dirty coal-fired power plants. These companies use computers that have custom designed ASICs (computer chips) that implement the mining algorithm in hardware.

American companies, pushed by investors to minimize production costs and increase profits, have for years sold out this country by sending jobs and manufacturing to China. Now these investors are starting to sink billions of real dollars into bitcoin, a completely fake currency that no government backs but which China has a de facto monopoly on.

The prices of gold, silver and diamonds have fluctuated over the years. But at the end of the day, they have some use in the real world. Gold, silver and diamonds can be used in jewelry, electronics, drill bits and saws.

Bitcoin has no intrinsic value: the CPU seconds and electricity used to mine it are gone forever, though the CO2 from burning Chinese coal for that electricity will warm the earth for centuries.

When bitcoin crashes the bits on all those flash drives will be completely and utterly worthless. Though I suppose you can use the flash drive to save all your cat videos.

Irony?

#Trumptoo

Al Franken and the Republican Mentality

A majority of Senate Democrats, including most of the women, have called on Senator Al Franken to resign amid allegations of improper sexual advances. It's not surprising, given how many other men have lost their jobs in recent months for similar accusations. Franken will make an announcement tomorrow: it's almost certain he'll resign, as Democrat John Conyers did yesterday for similar reasons.

Franken has acknowledged the veracity of the some of the claims, and apologized for them. But some he denies. Most of Franken's accusers have remained anonymous, so it's really impossible to judge their veracity.

Most Republicans have remained silent on Franken. That's because Donald Trump, Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore, and Republican Representative Blake Farenthold of Texas have been accused of far more egregious behavior by dozens of women. Farenthold even used $84,000 of taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment suit.

But Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell also called on Franken to resign, saying, “I do not believe he can effectively serve the people of Minnesota in the U.S. Senate any longer.”

What hypocrisy.

Trump and Moore have both acknowledged on tape the pattern of behavior they are accused of. Trump's and Moore's accusers have stood up publicly and made their names known along with their accusations. These brave women have been attacked by the right-wing slime machine as liars. Some of them are Republicans and Trump voters who have no axe to grind.

The Republican double standard is in full view. Republicans say that when Democrats touch a woman's ass, as Franken is accused of by anonymous accusers, it's a firing offense because Democrats oppose sexual harassment.

But everyone knows that Republicans are sexist dicks who think they own women's bodies. Since the voters who elect those sexist dicks think it's just fine when rich men in power fondle women's breasts, grab women by the pussy, molest fourteen-year-old girls, tell dirty jokes at the office and force female employees to have sex with their bosses, Republicans should be able to get away with that behavior.

Republican voters think these women deserve such treatment for putting themselves in a position where rich and powerful men can get at them: if only they had stayed home, barefoot and pregnant, those horn dogs would never have been able to touch them. By working as actresses, or news anchors, or reporters, or waitresses, or going to dinner with Donald Trump, these women are asking to be assaulted. They knew what they signed up for, as Trump would say.

These are the same Republicans who, just a few years ago, claimed to be "values" voters, who said they believe that character counts, and that morality and virtue are the most important aspects in a leader.

But the truth is out now: Republicans only care about wealth and power. They mouth platitudes about morality and the bible, but they think politicians and the wealthy are like the kings of the Old Testament, or the slave owners of the antebellum South: they have a God-given right to commit rapine and plunder.

They don't even care that their politicians lie and break their promises: Trump says the voice on the Access Hollywood tape isn't his, a year after admitting it was, and Republicans voters just swallow it.

The Republican tax cut working its way through Congress is a huge giveaway to the wealthy, giant corporations and Donald Trump personally. It will screw over the little people, resulting in a tax increase for some middle-income folks immediately and for the entire middle class within 10 years. But Trump jerks off, saying that tax bill will hurt him bigly, and Republicans just swallow it.

Republican voters are captive to a slave mentality. In their minds, if a politician has an (R) by his name and blathers Sunday school nonsense on the campaign trail he can play grab-ass all he wants, forcing himself on anyone he wants, anytime he wants.

The Republican Party has without a doubt proved that it is nothing but a nest of hypocritical, lying vipers, intent only accruing more money and power for the wealthy, subjugating the common man, or rather, the common woman, to their every whim.

The Idiocy of Concealed Carry Reciprocity

Republicans in Congress are currently working on a bill that would allow people with concealed carry permits from one state to carry their weapons anywhere in the country, regardless of local laws. In essence, they want states like Wyoming and Alabama to decide gun policy for New York, Chicago and Baltimore.

There are many reasons why this is a terrible idea. First and foremost, what ever happened to states rights? Republicans used to be against the federal government dictating what states can and can't do. Now they're shoving one state's laws down every other state's throat.

Gun nuts say they need this because it's so hard to figure out what the local laws are. "I'd have to, like, read and stuff!" they whine. Seriously, do these people just roam around the country with a gun jammed in their waistbands, never knowing where they'll wind up next?

Another question is how such a law can be enforced. If a New York cop stops a thug with a gun, and the thug has a concealed carry permit from Georgia, or Wyoming or Idaho in his wallet, how is the cop going to validate that permit? It's just a piece of plastic. You can easily buy fake drivers licenses online, the same will be true with concealed carry permits. Unless those states have a 24-hour hotline to validate concealed carry permits, cops will have to arrest suspects and put them in jail until they can verify the permit is authentic.

Then suppose some state decides to sell concealed permits to anyone in any state to raise cash. Should gangbangers in Chicago stopped by the cops be able to just whip out their Wyoming concealed carry permit for a gun they bought off the internet and skate free?

But why just guns?

It's so hard to figure out what local traffic laws are. How can I know whether Texas allows right turns at red lights? Do I have to stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk, or can I just run them down? Do I have to give bicyclists three feet of leeway, or can I just nudge them off the road? And what about speed limits? Montana has an 80-mph speed limit on the interstate. Shouldn't Montanans be able to go 80 on any interstate in the country?

Why not a national speed limit reciprocity law?

And it's so hard to figure out drug laws. Colorado has legalized marijuana. Shouldn't Coloradans be able to smoke marijuana anywhere in the country? Shouldn't Colorado marijuana shops be able to sell marijuana on the internet to anyone in the country?

Why not a national marijuana reciprocity law?

Prostitution is legal in most Nevada counties. Shouldn't licensed Nevada hookers should be able to ply their trade in any state in the Union?

Why not a national prostitution reciprocity law?

Gambling is illegal in many states. But Nevada allows it, so shouldn't any licensed Nevada casino be able to set up shop in any state they like?

Why not a national gambling reciprocity law?

A lot of states severely restrict abortion. Why shouldn't doctors who have a license to conduct abortions in one state should be able to perform the procedure in accordance with their home state's laws on any patient in any state without regard to local laws?

Why not a national abortion reciprocity law?

The concealed carry reciprocity law is clearly unconstitutional: it denies equal protection under the law. If a Georgian and a New Yorker both walk into LaGuardia airport carrying guns and set off a metal detector, one could be arrested and sent to prison while the other would just get a pat on the back.

States must have the right to enact laws that apply equally and fairly to everyone, regardless of what state they're from. States have a legitimate interest in maintaining their sovereignty -- one of Donald Trump's favorite words. They should be able to say how, when and who can carry deadly weapons within their boundaries.

A Corrupt and Criminal Nation Gets Its Comeuppance

The International Olympic Committee has banned Russia from the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea:

The country’s government officials are forbidden to attend, its flag will not be displayed at the opening ceremony and its anthem will not sound. Any athletes from Russia who receive special dispensation to compete will do so as individuals wearing a neutral uniform, and the official record books will forever show that Russia won zero medals.

The 2014 Winter Olympics were held in Sochi, Russia, where the Russians had a complex scheme to scam the antidoping regimen. The lab that checked urine samples had a secret room where the Russians stored clean urine samples taken months before the Olympics, which were exchanged for steroid-tainted samples taken during the competition.

Russia won 33 medals in the 2014 Games, beating the U.S. count of 28. After investigations are complete, most of these Russians stand to lose their medals. The real winners will receive their medals, four years late, in a ceremony at the upcoming Winter Games.

After Sochi the director of the Russian anti-doping program, Grigory Rodchenkov, received an Order of Friendship medal from Vladimir Putin. But in November, 2015 the World Anti-Doping Agency identified Rodchenkov as the mastermind of the state-sponsored Russian doping program. Rodchenkov was fired and fled Russia. He has come clean about the Russian program, exposing Russia's dirty secrets in great detail.

Two other Russians involved with the antidoping program died within two weeks of each other in early 2016. Nikita Kamaev died of of a "heart attack" and Vyacheslav Sinev's cause of death was not specified -- though I'm guessing it was a case of acute lead poisoning that affects so many people who have outlived their usefulness to Vladimir Putin.

Russia is a corrupt oligarchy from top to bottom. It is a kleptocracy run by a man who richly rewards those who do the dirty work for him, but whom he liquidates when their corruption becomes known.

Putin believes the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Republicans have touted that collapse as the greatest achievement of Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. Yet, astonishingly, Republicans like Donald Trump and Dana Rohrabacher shower Putin with praises.

Americans who think that Putin is a man they can deal with are fools, cowards or collaborators. Putin is intent on destroying the United States and the democracies of Europe, using the freedoms of our democracies as weapons against us. Putin is a thug, a murderer, and a war criminal responsible for the downing of a civilian airliner over Ukraine and airstrikes on civilians in Syria.

Most every day there's another revelation about the Trump campaign's connections to the Russians -- like the meeting between Donald Jr. and the former Russian F.S.B director Alexander Torshin at -- of all places -- an NRA meeting, just days before he met with the lawyer promising dirt on Clinton.

As of this writing Donald Trump has yet to tweet anything about the IOC decision. But if he calls it a travesty and "fake news" we'll know he got his marching orders from Moscow. Like he always does.

Fake News?

Interesting that the “liberal” media holds themselves to a different standard yet still takes shit for being “fake” news. 

And Drudge, Fox and other right wing media can still out and out lie...

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?