Will Alabama Sell Its Soul to the Devil?

Today Mitch McConnell -- Republican Senate majority leader -- called on Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for an empty Alabama Senate seat in a special election to be held next month, to leave the race. The head of the Republican Senate campaign committee called upon the Senate to expel Moore should he win.

Today George F. Will, the crotchety arch-conservative eminence, endorsed Moore's opponent, a Democrat with a history of supporting unions and prosecuting civil rights cases, including convictions of two men who bombed a church 40 years earlier, killing four black girls.

Today a fifth woman accused Moore of attacking her when she was a sixteen-year-old waitress:

“I tried fighting him off, while yelling at him to stop, but instead of stopping, he began squeezing my neck attempting to force my head onto his crotch,” Ms. Nelson said in a statement she issued at the news conference. She said Mr. Moore warned her that “no one will believe you” if she told anyone about the encounter in his car.

Two days ago one of Moore's former colleagues said everyone knew that the 30-something Moore had a fondness for jail bait:

"It was common knowledge that Roy dated high school girls, everyone we knew thought it was weird," former deputy district attorney Teresa Jones told CNN in comments aired Saturday. "We wondered why someone his age would hang out at high school football games and the mall ... but you really wouldn't say anything to someone like that."

The vast majority of Alabama voters are Christians, many of them evangelicals and Baptists. The state went for Trump in a big way, even though he openly bragged about forcing himself on women, and more than a dozen women confirmed that Trump's bragging was true.

Republicans and the religious right used to claim that character counts and morality matters. But when their candidates prove to be liars, womanizers and sexual predators, they no longer believe that criminal sexual behavior matters.

It should be clear to everyone that politicians like Moore and Trump, who trumpet the Bible but ignore its rules, are totally lacking any sort of morality and common decency. They're just con men mouthing the lies they think the voters want to hear. These liars are ridiculing the intelligence of Alabama voters.

Democrats and liberals have accepted the validity of allegations of sexual harassment against numerous media and Hollywood types, most of whom have lost their jobs and lucrative deals. After Fox News paid more than $100 million in settlements for similar allegations, why do Republicans insist that "their guys" are innocent? It's clear that sexual harassment has nothing to do with political affiliation: it's a power trip for men who think they can grab and bang whoever they want.

If Republicans are willing to accept the word of Weinstein's accusers at face value without a trial or due process, they have have to accept the accusations of Moore's victims.

Critics of the religious right have long believed that the Moralizing Majority were nothing but a lying bunch of hypocrites. Will Alabama prove them right by electing Moore?

Good Guys with Guns: Stop Bad Guys from Getting Guns in the First Place

I am admittedly getting very tired of hearing myself whine about Republican inaction on gun violence. But Republicans seem to have an infinite amount of patience -- and gall -- repeating the same nonsense every time there's another mass murder by a guy with a gun.

This time the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Mac Thornberry (R-TX), is blaming the Air Force for the mass murder in Texas.

“I understand that [Air Force] Secretary [Heather] Wilson has initiated an investigation, but I don't believe that the Air Force should be left to self-police after such tragic consequences. Furthermore, I am concerned that the failure to properly report domestic violence convictions may be a systemic issue,” Thornberry said.

Republicans are now claiming that "mental illness" is the problem, and that the Air Force is blame for not reporting the shooter's domestic abuse.

But such reports are useless if you don't have a robust system that prevents people on that list from obtaining weapons. Republicans have consistently blocked attempts to require checks for gun show purchases and for private gun sales and gifts, and have often stymied efforts to disarm domestic abusers.

And even when men are cited for domestic abuse and prevented from buying new guns, many jurisdictions let abusers keep whatever guns they already have.

At the same time Republicans are still pushing to allow civilians to buy silencers and armor-piercing rounds -- also called cop-killer bullets.

If Republicans are serious about stopping these horrendous murders they should sponsor federal legislation requiring every person convicted of assault and every court-designated domestic abuser to have all their guns confiscated and to lose their right to own guns permanently.

Ditto for anyone on the terrorist watch list and the do-not-fly list. And local law enforcement -- who know these guys and have to deal with the aftermath of their anger -- should also be able to place people on this list, even if there is no conviction.

Naturally, there must be a legal proceeding to restore gun rights after the perpetrator has proved to stable enough to own guns again. But the public and local law enforcement must have ample opportunity to register any objections with the court.

Republican lawmakers should require every gun, ammunition and ballistic armor transaction to be checked against the federal database. That should include sales in gun stores, at gun shows, on the Internet, and all private transactions -- including sales and gifts.

Anyone selling or giving a gun to a person banned from gun ownership should be considered an accomplice, liable to prosecution as a co-conspirator for whatever crimes the shooter commits.

Republicans should require every gun -- including those currently owned -- to be registered. Every gun should be locked in a safe unloaded and separate from its ammunition. Every gun theft should be reported within 24 hours.

If a gun is stolen and is used in a crime, and the owner didn't report it, they should be charged as an accomplice (truly innocent victims of gun theft will never be charged, trials will sort out the rest).

Finally, transporting or selling guns across state lines which are subsequently used in a crime should be a major federal felony. Republicans like to complain about gun violence in Chicago and claim how useless gun laws are, but the fact is most of those guns are stolen or bought in southern states and then resold illegally in big cities.

The above laws would not stop every shooting death. Just like seat belts don't prevent every car crash death, and chemotherapy doesn't prevent every cancer death. But such laws would dramatically reduce the number of gun murders. And they would put a big dent in the number of gun suicides as well.

Since felons are already banned from owning guns, there is ample precedent for revoking Second-Amendment rights. If you don't want to lose your right to own a gun, take some personal responsibility, as Republicans are so fond of saying. Don't beat your wife. Or your girlfriend. Don't get in bar brawls. Don't beat up gays. Don't piss off the cops. If you do, and you keep your nose clean for a few years, you can have your guns back.

Republicans will complain that such laws put too much of a burden on law-abiding gun owners and gun dealers. But these people have the most control over guns, and the most to lose when they are misused. The federal government can't do everything: good guys with guns should do everything in their power to prevent bad guys from getting guns in the first place.

Republicans are intentionally derping their pro-gun talking points, hoping they will wear down good and honest Americans with their well-worn lies. And, yes, I too am tired of hearing myself complain about Republicans and guns.

But as long as Republicans keep condoning, excusing, enabling and abetting mass murder, I will complain about them.

The Good Guy With A Gun Lie is Still a Lie

President Trump recently trotted out the good guy with a gun lie in relation to the Sutherland Springs, Texas shooting that was the worst mass shooting in the state's history. It's quite likely that he is completely unfamiliar with John Donohue's recent study that shows that states with right to carry laws generally have 13-15% higher gun violence rates.

Donohue uses additional statistical models than a similar report issued in 2004, and analyzes a further 14 years’ worth of data, from 2000-2014, during which 11 states introduced right-to-carry laws. He claims not only a statistical association between right-to-carry laws and increased violent crime, but a causal link. He uses statistical models to take into account other factors that could have an impact on violent crime rates to estimate what would have happened to those rates in various states if they had not introduced RTC laws when they did:

… [I]t might be the case that some states decided to fight crime by allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns while others decided to hire more police and incarcerate a greater number of convicted criminals. If police and prisons were more effective in stopping crime, the “no controls” model might show that the crime experience in RTC states was worse than in other states even if this were not a true causal result of the adoption of RTC laws. As it turns out, though, RTC states not only experienced higher rates of violent crime but they also had larger increases in incarceration and police than other states…RTC states did not have declining rates of incarceration or total police employees after adopting their RTC laws that might explain their relatively bad crime performance.

In short, the more guns, the more violent crime.

This Is Exactly Why Women Don't Report Sex Crimes

Women have historically been extremely hesitant to report sexual harassment because they will be called liars, the abuser's pals will say they did nothing wrong, and the victims will be threatened with physical, financial and legal retribution.

Just look at Alabama:

Republican officials in Alabama staunchly defended their party’s Senate nominee, Roy S. Moore, after a report that he had made sexual advances toward four teenage girls when he was in his 30s.

The Washington Post reported that, in early 1979, Mr. Moore, then a district attorney and later the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, had approached a 14-year-old, eventually kissing her, undressing her, touching her over her bra and underpants, and guiding her hand to touch him over his underwear.

Moore claims that there's nothing to the women's allegations. Some Republicans basically admitted that Moore was guilty, but didn't care or think it was wrong, and some even played the Bible card:

Alabama’s state auditor, Jim Ziegler, told The Washington Examiner that the women’s claims were “much ado about nothing” and said that Mr. Moore had done nothing “immoral or illegal.” (Alabama law, both in 1979 and now, finds that someone who is 19 or older and has sexual contact with someone between the ages of 12 and 16 is guilty of second-degree sex abuse.)

Mr. Ziegler sought to justify Mr. Moore’s actions by comparing him to the biblical Joseph, saying, “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.” 

According to this line of reasoning, it's okay for a 32-year-old man to cop a feel from a 14-year-old girl because Jesus.

Then the Pizzagate conspiracist, Jack Posobiec, published a photo and the address of Moore's accuser online. As you may recall, Posobiec inspired a nut with a gun to shoot up a pizza joint. Now he has threatened Moore's victim with similar attacks.

And then there was this was scumbag:

Ed Henry, a state representative, told The Cullman Times, in Cullman County, Ala., that the women who came forward should be subject to legal action.

“If they believe this man is predatory, they are guilty of allowing him to exist for 40 years,” he said. “I think someone should prosecute and go after them. You can’t be a victim 40 years later, in my opinion.”

This weasel is blaming the victim for the crimes of a powerful sexual predator -- Moore was a DA in 1979 -- and then threatening to use the court system to attack and silence her. And then they wonder why women wait 40 years to report the assault.

At least guys like Louis C.K. have the guts to admit what they did was wrong and apologize for it. But Moore doesn't think he did anything wrong; he thinks he owns girls and women and can do anything he wants with their bodies. He can kiss them, fondle them, take away their birth and control and stop them from having abortions for pregnancies caused by unwanted intercourse with older men.

This is the same hypocrite who put the 10 commandments on the wall of his courtroom and on state property, pretending to be all holier than thou.

Moore is an unrepentant animal who preyed on young girls. We should not be surprised. Moore was the lone dissenter in the 2015 conviction of a 17-year-old daycare worker who sexually assaulted 3- to 5-year-olds.

The kid was just following in Moore's footsteps, after all.

Eewww!

Every day now there's another truckload of sexual harassment allegations committed by rich, powerful and famous men. Yesterday it was Louis C. K., a comedian, and Roy Moore, a former Alabama supreme court justice who was kicked off the bench twice and is currently running for U.S. Senate.

One of the most puzzling aspects of these harassment episodes is the allegation that these men, including Harvey Weinstein and Louis C.K., masturbate in front of women.

There are only two possible reactions to a man masturbating in front of a woman: "Eewww! Gross!" and "Eewww! That's disgusting!"

I know that some men like watching pornography in which beautiful women touch themselves. But I can assure them that the attraction is not reciprocal: no woman in the world is stimulated by the sight of a fat, balding, middle-aged man jerking off.

In the English-speaking world there are many synonyms for "loser:" many of them are variations on a theme: jerk-off, wanker, tosser, to name a few. And the archetypal biggest loser ever is the guy running around in a trench coat exposing himself to little girls.

Why do these idiots think that losing the trench coat makes it attractive?

Too Soon!

Could Alabama Turn Blue On December 12?

Alabama is holding a special election on December 12 to fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions when he became Attorney General. The GOP candidate is Roy Moore. Moore was recently installed at the Bannon pick to fuck with the establishment in DC. Moore is classic wingnut who loves to brandish his gun at rallies.

Oh, and he's also a pedophile.

Doug Jones is the Democratic candidate running against Moore. Here is what he stands for straight from his home page.

• Everyone has the right to quality, affordable health care.
• We must restore Alabama’s trust for its elected leaders.
• I will defend a woman’s right to choose and stand with Planned Parenthood.
• All children deserve a first-class education regardless of where they live.
• College must be affordable without burdening a student with overwhelming debt.
• I believe in science and will work to slow or reverse the impact of climate change.
• It is past time we raise the minimum wage to a livable wage.
• Women must be paid an equal wage for equal work at all levels.
• Voter suppression is unAmerican – we must protect voting rights.
• Discrimination cannot be tolerated or protected. America is best when it builds on diversity and is welcoming of the contributions of all.

He's not even trying to be more moderate. He's just straight up going for it in a deep red state. I fucking love it.

If the Democrats manage to flip this seat, all bets are off next year. If they don't, the Republicans will have shown themselves to more morally bankrupt that I thought possible.

Ah well, better a pedophile than a libtard, eh?

An OK Night For The Democrats

Much hay is being made by the Democrats over their election wins last Tuesday night. There's a lot of headlines and stories about how much trouble Trump and the GOP are in blah blah blah. I think it was just an OK night for Team Blue. Why?

Trump still enjoys an 80 percent approval rating among conservatives. They are still the more reliable voter than liberals. That's why all this talk about Trump's sinking approval rating doesn't really matter. All of those polls suck except one: the Rasmussen poll. Take a look at the approve-disapprove as of today. Rasmussen is the only one that samples likely voters. That's why Trump is only underwater by 13 points. The likely voter skews more conservative.

If the Democrats want to crow up about something, they need to figure out a way to shift the likely voter more to the left and that means more people out to vote. The only thing conservatives have going for them is that their voters are more reliable. They don't have the numbers and they certainly don't have the solutions.

Here We Go Again

Every time there's a mass shooting, some idiot Republican trots out the same old tired lies, the most egregious of which is the "good guys with guns" nonsense. This time it was Trump:

"But, this isn't a guns situation, we could go into it, but it's a little soon to go into it," said Mr. Trump. "Fortunately somebody else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite direction.

This is -- like 90% of what Trump says -- just plain false. According to local law enforcement:

Sheriff Tackitt said he believed the gunman went around the outside of the church firing rounds before entering and shooting at parishioners. After he left the church, he and an armed bystander engaged in a brief “firefight” before Mr. Kelley got into his vehicle, according to the sheriff. The gunman had dropped his rifle in the church after slaughtering the parishioners; he pulled a pistol during his exchange with the bystander.

Mr. Kelley contacted his father from his cellphone during the chase to tell him that he had been shot, according to law enforcement. Mr. Kelley told his father that he “didn’t think he was going to make it.” He subsequently shot himself, though officials said they were not yet sure if that shot had caused his death.

The murderer had already killed his victims, abandoned the murder weapon and left the scene. He was shot at by a bystander, who gave chase. But the killer died by his own hand. A good guy with a gun did not end this situation: the guy stopped killing, left, then shot himself.

Once again, guns are not protection. They can only deliver retribution after the killer has shot and killed 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 or 100 people. The number of dead is a function of the firing rate of the weapon, its magazine capacity and the real protection the shooter has -- body armor in this case, or the inaccessible firing position of the Vegas shooter.

A clear pattern is developing. These mass murderers are angry white male domestic abusers and gun idolators. The church the Texas killer shot up was where his wife's parents worshiped.

But in a broader context mass murderers are almost always angry, narcissistic, vengeful misogynists, whether they are Muslim truck terrorists, high-school shooters, college shooters or church shooters.

Trump said, "But this isn’t a guns situation. This is a mental health problem at the highest level."

Actually it was a "guns situation" because the guy shot 50 people with a gun. But Trump is right about the last part. This is a mental health problem at the highest level: the presidential level.

Trump shares the same profile as these mass murderers: an angry, narcissistic, vengeful misogynist.

It's no coincidence that we setting records for mass murder under Donald Trump and the Republicans. He and the Republican Party have pushed grievance politics for years, egging the base on to "take back" the country. Trump brags about how he always gets revenge, hitting back 10 times harder than those who cross him. Trump regularly demeans and attacks women.

Trump has no empathy, no sympathy, no self control. Every day he practices verbal mass murder on Twitter and at his press conferences. He does not apologize -- he gets even. His tirades greenlight people who harbor grievances to get their revenge.

Trump and the right constantly rail against "political correctness." They want to freely insult women, gays and minorities, take liberties with women's bodies, beat up gays and Hispanics, and use their political and economic power to intimidate and disadvantage women, gays and minorities. All in an effort to "restore" America to the way used to be: with white men on top, able to get their way every time, taking whatever they want.

"Political correctness" is just a synonym for civil society and the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. By throwing out social norms of conduct, Trump is normalizing narcissism and psychopathy.

And opening the door to endless carnage in our streets, at our concerts, schools and churches.

Thank You, Gun Cult and Steve Bannon!

When an enemy reveals their strategy to you, listen.

Steve Bannon, in his interview with the American Prospect.

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

Kevin Baker, Gun Blogger. recently on Quora.

Ok, one more time: the "gun manufacturer's lobby" is the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NRA represents ~5 million dues-paying members and probably double that, if not more, in other citizens who aren't members, but who VOTE.

Bloomberg's millions of gun-control dollars (greed) have not and will not overcome millions of voters. Why is it that Democrats only seem to like democracy when the vote goes their way? As the saying goes, after every incidence of 'gun violence' they always want to take the rights of the people who DIDN'T do it. Well, we VOTE. WE vote, not the NRA.

So, if the Democrats change how they talk about racism and identity politics in similar way to how the LGBTQ community won (gay marriage becomes marriage equality), Bannon won't "have 'em" anymore. Thanks for the reveal, Steve!

And, if the gun safety folks get more people to vote, then they win too? Right now about 11 percent of the voting public wants to ban guns. That's over 20 million people. Compare that to the mere 5 million people in the NRA. Forget about Bloomberg's millions. More voters is all we really need. Thanks, Kevin!

Trump's Justice

I think if Donald Trump had his way, the Department of Justice would be comprised of his own personal agents. His recent comments about the NYC attack and past comments about the Russian investigation reveal what I have always believed about him and his supporters.

They are closet fascists.

They essentially want to be able to act without consequence and those smug, liberal elites getting in the way. They know what's right and it's definitely not any of that liberal claptrap.

I'm wondering if they realize just how much of deep violation this is of the US Constitution. Do they really want us to become a banana republic?

@realDonaldTrump does not exist

Donald Trump's Twitter account disappeared for several minutes yesterday. Sadly, it didn't mean that Trump had deleted it. No: a Twitter customer support worker deactivated it on his last day at work.

Some of Trump's apologists thought Trump was being censored and instantly started screaming "Freedom of speech! Freedom of speech!"

Sorry. It's Donald Trump who doesn't believe in freedom of speech: he has blocked numerous people from his Twitter feed, including Stephen King, Marina Sirtis, and VoteVets.org.

Does freedom of speech even apply to Twitter? They set the terms of usage. Twitter has a code of conduct and has banned numerous people for threatening physical violence, cyberstalking, cyberbullying and other forms of harassment.

But they claim the right to revoke anyone's account at their discretion. They're a private company. Providing a free service. What possible right can anyone claim to use the resources of a private company?

Donald Trump has violated Twitter's code of conduct numerous times, including threats of nuclear war against North Korea. If there's one person whose Twitter account should be deleted, it's Trump: he is the biggest bully on the planet.

What this incident really shows is that your accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Apple and all the others are completely insecure in the most meaningful sense. Any low-level support person can go in and muck around with your data. Look at your pictures. Read your emails. Delete them. Copy them. Forward them to your wife.

This is of necessity: to provide fast service to resolve problems, a large number of support personnel need access to your accounts. But who are these support personnel? Most are poorly paid phone operators with minimal understanding of the systems they work with. We don't know how they're vetted, how they're trained, how they're monitored. We don't even know what country they work in: many IT support functions are contracted out to giant phone banks in India and the Philippines.

But we trust them with all our data, our deepest secrets.

It's clear that Twitter has no safeguards to stop disgruntled employees from screwing around with your Twitter account. The same thing is almost certainly true for Facebook and Google: thousands of support personnel, programmers, system operators and database administrators have total access to your data. And they need access to do their jobs and provide efficient service.

We are all being conned into putting all our data in "the cloud" so we can always have access to it. The problem is, everyone else has access to it too.

More Domestic Terrorism at a Denver Walmart

Police have released more information after capturing the man who shot three people in a Denver Walmart:

Two men and a woman were killed in a shooting inside a suburban Denver Walmart on Wednesday night that forced customers to either hide or flee.

Thornton police reported "multiple parties down" and advised people to stay away from the area as dozens of police cruisers and emergency vehicles raced to the scene.

The men died at the store, and the woman died at a hospital.

Police spokesman Victor Avila said a man nonchalantly entered the store and fired a handgun into a group of people before fleeing in a car. No one has been arrested.

"This is a very heinous act," Avila said. "We don't know exactly what the motive of the person was, but it was certainly a terrible act."

All you need to do is read the names of the people who he killed and you'll know the motive:

[Scott] Ostrem is accused of casually walking into a Thornton Walmart at 6:10 p.m. Wednesday and fatally shooting 52-year-old Pamela Marques, of Denver; 66-year-old Carlos Moreno, of Thornton; and 26-year-old Victor Vasquez, of Denver.

He calmly, coldly and methodically murdered three people with Hispanic names. Was that an accident? These were people he didn't know. People he just picked at random in a Walmart.

His actual motive is irrelevant. His actions, intentional or not, terrorize and ethnic minority to advance an overt political goal -- to chase Hispanics out of the country. That's the definition of terrorism.

His lawyer will tell him to deny this motivation, because if he admits to terrorism or racial animus he'll be stuck with a much bigger sentence. So we'll ever hear the truth.

But you know the Trump voters clamoring for The Wall are cheering this guy on. They got the message the Walmart killer sent. And some of them will take this as an inspiration. And this act of terrorism will be repeated. Only the next guy will take pages out of the books of Dylann Roof and the Vegas shooter: he'll be outfitted with a bump stock and he'll shoot up a Catholic Church during a Spanish-language mass.

Every time a white guy -- like this guy, or the Vegas mass murderer, or the Colorado theater killer, or Gabby Gifford's would-be assassin -- shoots a bunch of people conservatives just blow it off.  They dismiss the killers as nut jobs or psychos. And then they say, "That's the price of freedom."

But when a Muslim kills someone, or a black man simply takes a knee during the national anthem, it's a terrible travesty and we have to lock up all Muslims, eliminate due process and cancel the first amendment.

Because freedom isn't for Muslims or black football players. Freedom is only for white guys with guns.

Trump Deserves the Same Fate as Weinstein and All the Others Losing Their Jobs

In the last year or so, dozens of men have been fired from their positions of power for harassing women. It started slowly, first with was Roger Ailes, then Bill O'Reilly, then a variety of lesser Fox hosts and producers. Gretchen Carlson and and Megyn Kelly left Fox News, disgusted with Trump and management that allowed women to be treated like dogmeat.

In the last few weeks the steady drip has turned into a torrent: after dozens of women accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment and worse, he was fired from his company. Others in Hollywood, including Kevin Spacey, have lost their jobs. Several men in Silicon Valley (SoFi and Uber) have been fired. NPR's editorial director was fired for kissing women (with tongue) in job interviews while he was at the New York Times' Washington Bureau in the '90s.

Now the British government is starting to collapse with sexual harassment revelations:

British defense minister Michael Fallon quit on Wednesday, the first resignation in a growing sexual harassment scandal that prompted calls for a wholesale change in the “locker room” culture in parliament.

"Locker room" culture. Curious choice of words, that. Last year Donald Trump was caught on video bragging about sexually assaulting multiple women. He dismissed it as "locker room" talk. Yet he still -- albeit with the help of the Russians and James Comey -- managed to capture a majority of the electoral votes in the election.

Many of the men who have been accused have admitted wrongdoing and apologized for their actions, including Fallon, Spacey, and even Weinstein. Some are entering treatment.

A dozen women have confirmed Trump's brag of sexual assault, yet Trump's press secretary says those women are lying. So was Trump lying privately to Billy Bush when he bragged about pussy grabbing? Or is Trump lying publicly now?

The irony is that the main reason so many women have finally found the courage to report the sexual assaults against them is the election of Donald Trump. As former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson said on the Daily Show, she used the Trump tape as a teaching moment for her 11- and 13-year-old children on how not to treat a human being.

If Weinstein, Spacey, Ailes, O'Reilly and the defense minister of Britain can lose their jobs for sexual assaults they committed 20 and 30 years ago, then Trump's crimes are fair game for an impeachment hearing. Republicans went after Bill Clinton for less egregious offenses when they impeached him.

When are the "moral majority" Republicans going to live up to the morality they so loudly profess?

Probably never. Trump just bought them all off by including a provision in the tax bill that would allow churches to endorse political candidates. This will allow people to funnel tax-deductible contributions into churches that are just fronts for candidates. It's an outright and outrageous vote-buying scheme by Trump.

This is the real reason that so many evangelicals think that God ordained Trump's victory: money, money, money!

Why Not Release All the Kennedy Documents?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hillary Card

Speaking of Sinking Ships...

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

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

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

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

The Dominos Begin to Fall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How on EARTH are they called racists?

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

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

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

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

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

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

They Are All Dropping Like Flies...Except Trump

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

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

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

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

Women are equal to men and should be respected.

Don't Bully Except...

The Fate of a Quintessential Right-Wing Blogger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeff Flake Finally Says What Every Republican Knows Is True

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Non-disclosure Agreements Enable Sexual Predators

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Computer Threat Bigger than Skynet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reason Left This Country A Long Time Ago

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

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

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

"They all deserved to die," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pesky Press

R.I.P. John Kelly's Soul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump Has Already Cost Three Million People Their Health Care

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Low Can Trump Sink?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sgt. La David Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

Trump's Big Lie on Corporate Taxes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump's Health Care Executive Extortion Order

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

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

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

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

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

In a White House press gaggle Trump said this:

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

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

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

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

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

Q To help lower-income people.

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

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

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

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

This is an impeachable offense.

To The 19th Century and Beyond!!

The Unraveling of Donald Trump

Coming as a shock to no one, Donald Trump is unraveling.

Even before Corker’s remarks, some West Wing advisers were worried that Trump’s behavior could cause the Cabinet to take extraordinary Constitutional measures to remove him from office. Several months ago, according to two sources with knowledge of the conversation, former chief strategist Steve Bannon told Trump that the risk to his presidency wasn’t impeachment, but the 25th Amendment—the provision by which a majority of the Cabinet can vote to remove the president. When Bannon mentioned the 25th Amendment, Trump said, “What’s that?” According to a source, Bannon has told people he thinks Trump has only a 30 percent chance of making it the full term.

30 percent, eh? I put it at even less.

Trump's behavior of late reminds me a great deal of all those right wing bloggers and commenters that used to post on my site. Overly dramatic and emotional...offended by everyone and everything...touchy to the point of paranoia...in short, right wing snowflakes.