An Epidemic of Black Lung in Trump's Coal Mines

Donald Trump got elected with the promise of bringing back coal mining, an industry that has been failing for years. Trump blames renewable energy sources like solar and wind for coal's decline, but the real culprit is fracked natural gas, which is much cheaper and cleaner than coal. Natural gas is also technically far superior because natural gas turbines can spin up in seconds to satisfy shifting power demands, while coal power plants are big, slow dinosaurs.

Trump's big promise was to bring back coal mining jobs. But the problem with these jobs is that working in a coal mine is getting deadlier and deadlier. Miners are coming down with black lung disease (progressive massive fibrosis, or PMF) at an increasingly horrific rate:

"When I first implemented this clinic back in 1990, you would see ... five [to] seven ... PMF cases" a year, says Ron Carson, who directs Stone Mountain's black lung program.

The clinics now see that many cases every two weeks, he says, and have had 154 new diagnoses of PMF since the fieldwork for the NIOSH study concluded a year ago.

That a 50-fold increase. Black lung kills miners by destroying lung tissue: they literally suffocate to death. Last year NPR found that the rate of new black lung cases had increased 20 times, and it has continued to get much, much worse. The only "cure" is a lung transplant.

Why is this happening? Because we're running out of coal:

The NPR investigation also found that the likely cause of the epidemic is longer work shifts for miners and the mining of thinner coal seams. Massive mining machines must cut rock with coal and the resulting dust contains silica, which is far more toxic than coal dust.

The large (and profitable) deposits of coal have already been mined. Yes, there's a lot of coal in the ground, but it's spread very thinly now. It is much more expensive, dangerous and environmentally destructive to mine these inferior seams. Coal is already more expensive than wind and solar in most  parts of the country, and it's only going to get worse.

How has the Trump administration responded to this epidemic? The Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, has literally embraced Robert Murray, a climate change denier and mining executive. Perry's department bent over backwards to propose regulations that would have raised electricity rates for all Americans to give special treatment to coal mining companies.

This is the same guy who has sued HBO and John Oliver for defamation of character, for simply reporting the truth about what is happening in Murray's mines. The guy is a real-life Dr. Evil, as evidenced by an ACLU amicus brief for the HBO suit.

Trump promised coal mining jobs, but what good is a job that destroys the land you live on, poisons your water and and slowly suffocates you while your family members watch helplessly?

A Message From The NRA

The Great Bald Spot

Well, one of Donald Trump's coverups has been exposed: the man is bald. Here's the evidence:

For years Trump has insisted that he's not bald. He has maintained that the thing on his head is his real hair. But, surprise, surprise: he's been lying the whole time. Hair stylists say that it's just a bad weave.

Now, generally I don't make fun of things people don't have control of, like having to wear glasses, baldness, or obesity (which is mostly genetic and societal). But Trump has a long history of making fun of people for things they have little to no control of, like that disabled reporter he mocked in a campaign rally. Then he had the gall to call women like Rosie O'Donnell "fat pigs, dogs and slobs" when Trump is such a porker himself. And in the late 90's he ranted that then-current (and gorgeous) Miss Universe Alicia Machado was fat, embarrassing her in front of a phalanx of photographers. But check out the wattle on Trump when he kisses her (he just can't stop himself!). He was already a fat slob 20 years ago.

So Trump deserves every bit of ridicule he gets for trying to cover up his baldness in such a tacky and phony way.

Trump is ridiculously vain. He thinks baldness is a sign of weakness (Washington and Churchill were such wimps!). After his presidential physical we learned that Trump takes a drug for baldness: finasteride. This has a number of side effects, including many with which Trump is afflicted: confusion, bloating of the face and redness of the skin. And impotence!

Trump even went through a painful and obviously pointless surgical procedure to reduce the size of the Great Bald Spot  (a "scalp reduction"). Afterwards he reportedly yanked out his wife Ivana's hair and raped her (an accusation she withdrew when Donald dangled millions of alimony dollars in front of her).

Trump's hair has always been completely ridiculous. It's an obvious combover, looking like a helmet of hair-sprayed yak fur. Even his daughter Ivanka ridicules it.

Trump's baldness is nothing to be ashamed of or made fun of. What he should be ashamed of is how he insults other bald men, how he lies about his own baldness, and the ridiculous lengths he goes to cover it up, and how stupid the result makes him look. And he has so little self-awareness that he's completely oblivious to all of this.

That makes the Great Bald Spot a perfect metaphor for every other disaster in the Trump administration.

Will He Answer?

Please Do So, Mr. President

Despite all advice to the contrary, President Trump thinks it's a good idea to sit down with Robert Mueller and talk about Russia. I hope that he does. Let's consider both men for a moment.

Robert Mueller is a cool, savvy investigator with decades of experience in criminal justice. As the head of the inquiry into the Trump campaign's ties to Russian intelligence, he has been the consummate professional.

Donald Trump is an arrogant dumb ass.

Who is going to win this battle?

The Memo Was A Giant Yawn

After a week of breathless hand wringing, the GOP and Donald Trump finally released the Congressional Memo that supposedly illustrates how biased the FBI is towards Donald Trump. Before it came out, I was most amused at the notion that this was some sort of smoking gun that Devin Nunes uncovered in the deep, dark bowels of the FBI on a super secret agent spy mission.

THEY WROTE THE FUCKING MEMO!!

By this same measure, I could write a memo about how Donald Trump secretly formed ISIL back in 2011. Then I could release and claim that it was so. Sheesh...

After reading through the memo, I was please to see confirmation that the investigation into Donald Trump and his ties with Russia began with George Papadopolous and his drunken night of bragging. It did not begin with the FISA warrant on Carter Page based on the Steele Dossier. Carter Page was also under scrutiny long before the Steele Dossier.

So, the whole thing was full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Honestly, it's not surprising given the fact that Republicans are madly scrambling to somehow blunt what's sure to be coming this year: an indictment of President Trump for money laundering. 

The Stock Market Just Took a Giant Hit. Will Trump Accept the Blame?

Just the other day Donald Trump bragged in the State of the Union that he was responsible for the increase in the stock market. The market had just hit its highest ever value, 26,616.

Since then -- because of Trump's speech, or the release of the stupid memo? -- the market has plummeted more than a thousand points, to 25,521.

Will Trump accept the blame for that?

To be honest, the market is overheated and a correction has long been overdue. But the real problem is that the stock market consists of scumbags trying to outguess other scumbags. The market dropped because the Friday unemployment report was good and there have been some meager wage increases.

That raises the bogeyman of inflation, a fear Republicans falsely raised throughout the Obama administration. Inflation was always around the corner, they said, and businesses used that as an excuse to keep wages down.

Now that they think inflation's really here they're ready to tank the stock market. It's just a scam to get corporations to fire a bunch of employees, lower wages, increase stock buybacks and increase dividend payouts to shareholders to make their stock more attractive.

Whenever something good happens that benefits the people who actually do all the work that makes the country run, the stock market tanks. The second it looks like companies will have to pay workers more, the greedy bastards bolt or demand a ransom payment. And since CEO bonuses depend on stock price, they always screw the employees to make themselves richer.

That's why communism happened. You can blame Marx. You can blame Lenin. But no one would have listened to Marx and Lenin without the greedy bastards who kept forcing more work out of people for less money.

And the scumbags like Trump and his cronies are trying to force us down that road again.

Best Meme Ever

Trump's CIA Chief Meets with his Russian Bosses

While everyone was oohing and ahing about how Donald Trump managed to deliver the State of the Union speech without drooling or pooping his pants, further evidence of collusion with the Russians went mostly unnoticed by the media:

Two top Russian spy chiefs traveled to Washington last week to discuss counterterrorism issues with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, but the unusual visit also raised concerns among some U.S. officials that Moscow could interpret the encounter as a sign the Trump administration is willing to move beyond the issue of election interference, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said.

Pompeo met with Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service or SVR, and Alexander Bortnikov, who runs the FSB, which is the main successor to the Soviet-era security service the KGB. The head of Russia’s military intelligence, the GRU, also came to Washington, though it’s not clear that he met with Pompeo.

Naryshkin and Bortnikov are both subject to sanctions for Russia's invasion of Crimea and supporting the ongoing guerilla war against Ukraine. They should not have even been let into the country, much less be meeting with American national security officials.

It recalls the meeting that Trump had with Sergei Kislyak last year, when he bragged that he had gotten rid of the Russia investigation by firing James Comey, making Trump sound like some junior employee trying to impress the big boss.

This is unprecedented (or should I say, unpresidented, as Trump seems to think it's spelled). These three Russians are the sworn enemies of the United States, and Trump's national security apparatus is colluding with them.

The evidence that Russia interfered with our election and is continuing to attack American institutions is undeniable, yet the Trump administration totally blew off a law Congress passed to enact further sanctions on Russia.

Trump's Treasury department was supposed to draw up a list of bad Russian actors and sanction them, but all they did was copy and paste a list of Russian billionaires from Forbes' website, fifteen minutes before the deadline.

These people are not professionals -- they're middle schoolers cribbing their homework from the Internet.

Trump is selling this country out to the Russians, and Republicans in Congress are sitting idly by as the worst treason in American history unfolds before their eyes.

White Evangelicals, This is Why People Are Through With You

John Pavlovitz has knocked it out of the park. Here is the open letter, reprinted in its entirety and dedicated, with fondness, to Ed "what the heck" Heckman who trolled this blog for so many years as A. Noni Mouse and still obsessively reads it every day, unable to comment. Ed, your kind has reached the end of their time. Buh-bye...

Dear White Evangelicals, 

I need to tell you something: People have had it with you. They’re done. They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why: They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy. 

For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity. They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him.

And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was, you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family, you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities, you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance, you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy, your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership, your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him, you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure. 

You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him. And yet today, you openly give a “mulligan” to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles. And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again. 

With him, you suddenly find religion. With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution. With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission. With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart. With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement. With him, you see only Providence. And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly. They recognize the toxic source of your duality. They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities. They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus. They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself. They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it. They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth. 

And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition. Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more. You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness. You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation. You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness. You’ve lost the plot. And most of all you’ve lost your soul. I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you. 

But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.

Kickback Nation

The real goal of Trump and his enablers has now become clear: get rich off their government connections and government programs.

Trump, of course, holds all his events at Trump properties, making money off the government in the process by charging federal agencies for using facilities at his golf courses, Trump Tower and Mar a Lago required to provide protection for Trump and his family. Which is basically half the time.

Foreigners freely admit they do business with Trump's hotel in Washington to curry favor with the administration.

Michael Flynn cashed in on his position by selling access and influence to Turkey and Russia.

Jared Kushner and his family cashed in numerous ways, from selling green cards to Chinese nationals, to getting money from Russian banks, to using his phony Middle East "peace" initiative as a cover for soliciting cash from Israeli investors.

Montana business associates of interior secretary Ryan Zinke used his position to get an outrageously overpriced contract with Puerto Rico to repair the power transmission infrastructure, until the deal was exposed and canceled.

The border wall is just a giant scam to funnel Homeland Security cash into the pockets of corrupt companies.

Betsy DeVos is dismantling regulations that prevent for-profit colleges and charter schools from ripping off students, as well as screwing over students with gigantic debts to private lenders incurred obtaining worthless degrees from for-profit institutions.

When a photographer leaked a photograph of energy secretary Rick Perry hugging former coal execute and convicted felon Robert Murray, the photographer was fired. Murray was convicted of ignoring mine safety regulations, which resulted in the deaths of nine miners in 2012. Perry tried and failed to give coal mining companies a handout which would have cost ratepayers $12 billion.

The Trump administration is cutting staff at federal prison facilities, sending inmates to private prisons, which are more poorly staffed and have a long history of inmate abuse.

And, of course, the entire tax bill was a huge quid pro quo for Republican campaign donors, a fact which numerous Republican congressmen admitted. Republican Chris Collins of New York said, "My donors are basically saying, 'Get it done or don't ever call me again.'"

Congress passed a law that requires the Trump administration to impose restrictions on Putin and the Russian oligarchs who enable him for Russian interference in elections in the United States and countries like Germany, France and the Czech Republic, but the Trump administration isn't going to enforce them.

You'd think this last action would be sufficient to prove that Trump is directly colluding with the Russians. But Republicans in Congress are instead attacking the FBI with a phony memo.
This kind of backroom dealing and influence peddling is exactly the kind of thing that Trump voters said they hated when they talked about draining the swamp in Washington. But Trump is dialing up the corruption to 11.

The Force of a Gun!

I've been thinking a lot recently about the argument we hear all the time from the gun humpers about how their hard earned money is taken by the force of a gun. For the rest of us adults this is known as paying your taxes.

This argument has always irritated me because it's very two dimensional. The core of what they are saying is true. Not paying your taxes will result in your arrest. The problem is that there really aren't scores of IRS agents raiding the homes of taxpayers across the country. The gun humpers fail to note that years and years will go by with penalty after penalty being assessed until finally, perhaps, someone might come to your door and arrest you...if they get around to it. People who dodge their taxes are lower on the priority list than, say, a murderer or a drug dealer.

The "force of a gun" argument also sets up a cartoon villain in the form of the federal government that they can have an adolescent outburst against. For some reason, the gun humpers need villains in their lives so they can caterwaul about how unfair life is.

What I can't figure out is why they don't just fucking leave. Taxes are going to be around forever. We need them to help keep our country in decent shape. In fact, we need a lot more of them if we want to compete against countries like China. Like the teenager who complains about the rules of the house over his head, the gun humpers should be more grateful that we have such a blessed life in this country and taxes support this life in a very necessary fashion. Further, the gun humpers constantly wine about others who should leave if they don't like our laws.

Perhaps they should heed their own advice.

About the Anti-Christ...

When Barack Obama was president evangelicals were constantly calling him the Anti-Christ. Every time there was a natural disaster they said it was God's wrath for his and our moral failings.

But Donald Trump is a much better candidate for the Anti-Christ: he literally embodies all the Seven Deadly Sins, which I cataloged in a previous post.

In Trump's first term we have had more than 15 natural disasters that cost a billion or more dollars:

• Hurricanes Harvey and Maria
• Floods in California, Arkansas and Missouri
• Wildfires in California and much of the West
• Mudslides in California
• Record heat and cold across the country
• Drought in the Dakotas and Montana
• Dozens of tornadoes in the Midwest
• Severe weather in Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, etc.

Hate crimes against Jews and other minorities are way up.

Americans are killing each other in mass shootings at schools, churches and concerts with increasing frequency and bloodiness. Conservatives choose not to call these acts of terrorism, but bouts of insanity. Trump's ethos of "hit them back ten times harder" has inspired and validated outbreaks of vindictive rage among his followers.

Because of Trump's incendiary and foolish behavior toward North Korea there are serious concerns that we are on the brink of nuclear war: the Doomsday Clock has been moved to two minutes to midnight. Residents of Hawaii thought the world was going to end when they recently received warning of an incoming nuclear missile.

Trump says he we will move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which many take as a sign of impending Armageddon, when the Jews return to Jerusalem.

Then, of course, there's the non-stop lying and boasting that Trump engages in. The Anti-Christ, above all, is known as the deceiver.

Then there are the biblical allusions to the Anti-Christ. I'm no biblical scholar, so I'll leave that to the experts. Here's a post from "God Reports," a Christian website, entitled, "Could Christians be fooled by the antichist?"

In his second letter to the Thessalonians, Paul teaches that before the Day of the Lord the antichrist will be revealed. This coming world ruler will attract followers from all over the world with his magnetic personality.

He will be a financial and political genius.

In Daniel 7 he is referred to as the “man of sin, the “little horn.” Daniel wrote, “This horn possessed eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth uttering great boasts.”

He will be boastful and egotistical, a megalomaniac in his quest for world power. He will come preaching peace. But Daniel says, “through peace he will destroy many.” (Daniel 8:25)

His authority will be overpowering, his hatreds intense, his political techniques first rate. The news media will not be able to resist covering his every move and pronouncement – however outrageous.

Sound familiar? The above was published two years ago, when Trump was still battling the 17 dwarves for the Republican nomination.

It's completely wrong in its characterization of Trump as a financial and political genius -- he's an blundering idiot on all counts -- but somehow he manages to keep all these evangelicals in his thrall through some of demonic power despite the ugliness of his person, his personality, his sins and his words. . . .

The Two Opioid Crises

The United States is going through two opioid crises. The first is the proliferation of opioid drugs to treat every minor ache and pain. The second is the crisis of faith — or rather, the lack of a crisis of faith — in American evangelical circles.

Karl Marx famously referred to religion as the “opium of the people.” The full quote is:

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

Marx believed that, like opium, religion relieved their pain, but, like opium, it sapped their will, making them complacent. Religion reinforced the status quo, giving power to the elites (the nobility and capitalists) and prevented the people from fighting against real social problems.

In Soviet Russia the government took Marx’s dictum as a warning against a harmful addiction. The Soviets repressed religion, though Stalin’s 1936 constitution guaranteed freedom of religion and freedom from religion.

The Soviets never stamped out religion: they didn't tear down churches or ban literature with religious overtones, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Instead, the Orthodox Church was co-opted by the Soviets and made subservient to the government, but kept at arm's length. Religious minorities who refused to toe the line -- notably Jews and Pentecostals -- were routinely persecuted, imprisoned and murdered, with the blessing of the Orthodox Church.

When he came to power, Vladimir Putin recognized the Soviets' error: instead of suppressing religion, Putin has taken complete control of the Orthodox Church. He has in fact turned everything completely around: now his government goes after atheists and people who break a law that makes it a crime to "insult the feelings of religious believers." Putin has harnessed the homophobia and misogyny of the Church and turned it into official state policy.

The Pussy Riot arrests were just a taste of the theocratic dictatorship that Putin is constructing.

This did not go unnoticed by Donald Trump. Trump has never been a religious man. Every time he mentions religion ("Two Corinthians," "I don't bring God into that picture") it is clear he neither knows about nor cares anything for religion.

Yet he has promised American evangelicals the moon: more restrictions on abortion, the ability to discriminate against homosexuals, denying women access to birth control and any medical treatment they just don't happen to like. He's feeding them the opium they demand.

Trump's entire life history is a catalog of deadly sins that evangelicals used to rail against: lust (the divorces, the womanizing, bragging about sexual harassment), gluttony (he even lies about his obesity), greed (huge tax cuts for himself, the casino gambling, "My whole life I've been greedy, greedy with money"), sloth (exercise uses up finite energy), wrath ("Get even with people"), the envy (the constant obsession with his wealth compared to others), and of course, pride: he can't go five minutes without bragging about himself in the most expansive terms possible, and demands everyone around him constantly shower him with empty praises.

Yet some American evangelicals claim that Trump was ordained by God to be president. When it came to light that he paid a porn star $130,000 to keep quiet about having sex with him just after Melania gave birth to their son, Tony Perkins of the conservative Family Research Council said, "Yes, evangelicals, conservatives, they gave him a mulligan. They let him have a do-over. They said we'll start afresh with you and we'll give you a second chance."

But it's not a second chance. It's the hundredth or thousandth chance: almost every day there's another story of Trump's egregious moral failings, from outright lies, to constant vulgarity, to sexual predation, to banging porn stars, to casual racism, to normalizing Nazis, to giving himself gigantic tax cuts to the elites that Trump promised to take down.

Are evangelicals so doped up on opiods and religion that they can't see they've made a bargain with the devil?

Instead of Left Vs. Right, how about Fact Checkers Versus Non Fact Checkers?

A recent question on Quora raised an interesting point. Why not get rid of the whole left-right, liberal-conservative paradigm and merely divide people into those who deal in facts and those who do not?

Obviously, it will end up that the more fact based folks will be left of center but there still are plenty of people on my side of the aisle that get emotional about politics and ignore reality. This is particularly true of progressives who think that both parties are "just the same."

Honestly, I think this is a great idea in the era of "alternative facts." If someone can't accept reality and has solutions to problems that don't exist, they shouldn't be in charge of anything.

Will Trump Abandon Our Kurdish Allies?

Donald Trump is about to abandon the one group in Iraq that has consistently been on the United States' side for the last 17 years of conflict in Iraq and Syria. Turkey has begun a ground assault against Kurdish forces who helped defeat ISIS.

Turkish troops crossed the Syrian border into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin on Sunday morning, beginning a ground assault against American-allied militias there, as the first accounts of casualties emerged amid rising international criticism of Turkey’s military action.

Turkish fighter jets were again in the skies Sunday bombing Kurdish militia targets in the border region. Ten people were reported killed in the bombing raids, according to Kurdish militants, and three people died on the Turkish side of the border in retaliatory shelling, local people said.

Turkey is ostensibly our ally, but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become increasingly authoritarian in the past few years (with Trump cheering him on), turning Turkey from a secular democracy into a radical Islamic dictatorship. Erdoğan doesn't limit his thuggish behavior to Turkey: he has had his security forces beat American citizens on American soil, more than once.

Turkey also co-opted Michael Flynn, paying him tons of cash to push pro-Turkish positions before and after the election. Yes, Trump's security advisor was on the payroll as a foreign agent for the Turkish government!

Turkey is now allying itself with Iran, Russia and Syria against the Kurds, who were gassed by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. The Kurds are not Arabs and have long been discriminated against in the Middle East and Turkey, often being forbidden to speak their own language, which is an Indo-European language.

When borders in the Middle East were reorganized after WWI and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire the Kurds did not get their own country. Their lands were split up among Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Turkey has attacked non-Turkish minorities within their border relentlessly, killing or deporting millions of Kurds and Armenians who had lived there for centuries.

Some Kurds have engaged in terrorist activities in Turkey and other countries. They consider themselves freedom fighters, rebelling against governments that have consistently denied their basic human rights. When the Iraq War started the Kurds thought they could finally get help from the United States, with its history of democracy and freedom.

But the United States under Donald Trump has utterly no moral authority. He can't tell Turkey to ease up on the Kurds -- they'll just point to what he's doing in this country: throwing Muslim and Hispanic men, women and children into prison to await deportation to countries where they will likely be killed. Many of these people were raised as Americans, think like Americans, talk like Americans and speak no language other than English.

At the UN in September Trump boldly declared that every country should have their own version of America First: “As president of the United States, I will always put America first. Just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first.”

Trump showed what he meant by that when he endorsed  Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte's campaign of mass murder without due process. Trump has no respect for the rule of law; he only respects power and the show of brutal force.

Under Trump most of the rest of the world has lost faith in the United States. Except, of course, in dictatorships like Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, and theocracies like Israel where Arab Christians and Muslims are second-class citizens.

There is a real danger of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict becoming an all-out war, with Turkey going for a "Final Solution" for the Kurdish problem, aided by Syria, Iran and Russia.

Will Trump stand by and let Turkey commit genocide on the only people who've stood by the United States in Iraq? Based on how Trump treats his own allies in Congress, it looks like the Kurds are on their own.

Quote of The Day

“Most important, he is the first president to fail to defend the nation from an attack on our democracy by a hostile foreign power — and to resist the investigation of that attack. He is the first to enrich his private interests, and those of his family, directly and openly.

He is the first president to denounce the press not simply as unfair but as “the enemy of the American people.” He is the first to threaten his defeated political opponent with imprisonment. He is the first to have denigrated friendly countries and allies as well as a whole continent with racist vulgarities.”

--Sean Wilentz, The New York Times. 

Literally a F!cking Moron

Details of Donald Trump's affair with porn star Stormy Daniels were reported last week in an interview that was conducted in 2011, before the hush money was paid.

Trump's lawyer and Daniels say that the affair never happened, but the NDA requires both parties to deny everything, so this is expected. But there's little doubt that it happened, a fact pretty much everyone on both sides of the aisle acknowledge.

Daniels is cashing in on the publicity with a burlesque tour in red states, where Trump supporters line up to pose with her topless. (She's a Republican and ran for senate in Louisiana.)

In addition to revealing that Trump asked Daniels to spank him with a copy of Forbes magazine with him on the cover:

Among the more bizarre details, Daniels said Trump watched the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” documentaries during one of their trysts. She also said he complimented her on her nose, likening it to “a beet.” She said he did not wear a condom during their trysts.

Yes, Donald Trump had sex with a porn star and did not wear a condom. This is sheer stupidity, giving the high rate of STDs in the porn industry.

Trump is literally a fucking moron.

This man is a germophobe who fought his own "personal Vietnam" by banging hundreds of women in Sixties and Seventies.

And it gets even crazier. At the exact same time that the story of him banging a porn star bareback is flooding the airwaves, Trump is catering the the anti-abortion crowd.

These are the same people who insist that the only sex education kids get is abstinence. When they mention birth control it's only to tell kids that it has a spectacular failure rate and gives you breast cancer.

With Trump's history of unprotected sex and paying hush money, it makes you wonder how many women he impregnated and then paid to have abortions and keep quiet about them. I expect we'll have at least two stories about this in the next year.

He wouldn't be the first "pro-life" Republican politician to demand a mistress have an abortion. Republican Tim Murphy resigned after it came to light he insisted his mistress get an abortion. And Tennessee Republican Scott DesJarlais won an election after admitting he tried to make his mistress get an abortion.

Meanwhile, the career of Democrat John Edwards was destroyed when it came out that he'd had an affair with Rielle Hunter, who actually had the child.

The entire anti-abortion/anti-gay/abstinence movement is a bunch of liars, frauds and hypocrites. From the priests who molest choir boys, to the pastors who bang parishioners, to the ministers who do drugs and have gay sex, to the politicians who knock up their mistresses and demand they get abortions, to the church-goers and voters who know exactly what these men are doing and let them get away with.

It's all about the patriarchy and keeping women in their place. They don't give a damn about the unborn, or chastity, or morality. It's about punishing women for the sex that men force them into having.

Distinction Deniers

The NRA is Fucked

Well, well, well...it looks like the NRA is in a wee bit of trouble. The FBI is investigating whether money from Russia was funneled through the NRA to help Donald Trump win the presidency. It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

I would laugh my fucking ass off and never stop rolling on the floor if this is what brought down the NRA. Some patriotic organization...taking money from a totalitarian state and a foreign one at that. Aren't those guys always bitching about oppressive governments?

Well, I suppose if they help the NRA out, then they are OK...

It's Not the Affair, It's the Extortion

Ivanka Lookalike Stormy Daniels

In a development that surprised absolutely no one, it was reported that Donald Trump paid a porn star $130K not to go public with revelations a few days before the 2016 election that she had sex with him in 2006. The person in question is Stormy Daniels, aka Stephanie Clifford.

It wasn't a lousy gossip rag reporting this: it was the Wall Street Journal, a Rupert Murdoch newspaper that is always in the Republican corner. 

It's not new news that Trump was screwing around on his wife Melania while she was pregnant and shortly after the birth of their son.

The National Enquirer bought the exclusive rights to Playboy playmate Karen McDougal's story of her affair with Trump. The Enquirer's CEO, David Pecker (ironically, his real name), never published it, essentially buying McDougal's silence.

Other porn stars (who also bear a disturbing resemblance to Trump's daughter, Ivanka) have come forward with stories of Trump offering to pay them $10K for sex.

Trump attacked People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff at Mar-a-Lago when Melania was in the other room. She, too, is a tall blonde like Ivanka.

The story here is not the sex. Everyone knows Trump is a dog. It's that Trump is vulnerable to extortion. He pays people money to keep them quiet about things that embarrass him. The CIA and the FBI would never hire anyone who is so open to blackmail, much less give them a security clearance. Yet this bozo sits in the Oval Office.


So the question quickly becomes: how many people has Trump paid off to keep quiet, and what crimes is he covering up? How many companies are sitting on embarrassing stories, like the National Enquirer's McDougal interview, which they're holding over Donald Trump's head? Are there Russian prostitutes who have the goods on Trump? Is this why Trump never has a bad word to say about Putin?

When Trump was running for president a major reason I cited for his being completely unqualified for the office was his vulnerability to extortion and blackmail. Here we have direct evidence that Trump has paid people off for keeping his dirty secrets. This establishes a pattern of dishonest behavior.

A full congressional investigation is warranted. As I said before, we cannot know whether any decision Trump makes is for the good of the country, for his own profit, or quid pro quo for some company or foreign government that has some leverage over him.

Trump's Approval Ratings Falling Everywhere

The New York Times and Morning Consult have a significant amount of data that shows that Trump's approval rating has dropped across ALL demographic groups. The list is quite extensive.

The one that strikes me as the most interesting is the no college degree category has fallen from 46% to 40%. That's basically the election of 2016 right there. Unemployed workers are now under 30% as well as independent women.

Basically, he's fucked and he's making it worse every day.

What Are You Doing For Others?

(1963, Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr., Sermon: Three Dimensions of a Complete Life, Start Page 67, Quote Page 72, Published by Harper & Row, New York. (Verified on paper))

Can We Ignore Trump Now?

Donald Trump's recent "shithole" comments serve to reinforce a theory I have regarding his candidacy and his presidency. It goes something like this. 

He never really wanted to be president. He only wanted to increase his brand and saw an opportunity to fleece the right wing blogger and commenter set for a monthly subscription to his TV network that he wanted to start. He saw that he had a solid 30% of the country behind him and knew exactly what to say in order to get them on his side.

Essentially, all he had to do was act like Archie Bunker and spout racist, xenophobic and misogynist nonsense. It made all those people thump their chest and shout "YEAH!" at the top of their lungs. Add in the icing on the cake: it makes liberal heads explode. Now, those right wing bloggers and commenters are ejaculating all over the place!!

He has carried this tactic into his presidency. He makes a dumb ass comment that is racially insensitive. Liberals go bananas. Conservatives love it. Nothing changes. Repeat.

I say we break the cycle. The next time he does this, ignore him. He's just a child, after all, with a failing brain. Leave him alone to be the demented fool that he is and trust that a few people around him will make sure the country won't totally fall apart as long he is in office.

Take the energy that comes from being pissed off about this and get more people registered to vote in key Congressional districts. Find the little league coach and urge them to run for office. Better yet, run yourself.

The only way that we stop this cycle is through the election process.

Why Would Norwegians Emigrate to the Shithole that Trump Is Creating?

Yesterday, in a bipartisan meeting about immigration reform, Donald Trump confirmed what everyone already knew: that he is a racist dick.

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to [Haiti, El Salvador and African countries].

Trump then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries such as Norway, whose prime minister he met with Wednesday. The president, according to a White House official, also suggested he would be open to more immigrants from Asian countries because he felt that they help the United States economically.

Trump doesn't get it: people don't emigrate from nice places to worse places.

That's why Norwegians aren't interested in moving to the US. Norway is, per capita, richer than the United States. Norway has a higher per-capita GDP. There is far less economic inequality. Norwegians are happier than Americans. Their social services and medical care are better. Their air and water are cleaner. They have longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality rates, greater equality for women, and on and on.

And moves by the Trump administration are turning the United States into a third-world shithole by the day: the elimination of environmental regulations will poison our air and water. Trump's willful sabotage of the ACA will ultimately leave tens of millions without access to health care. Trump's tax cuts for billionaires will increase taxes on the middle class, destroy Social Security and Medicare, and increase income inequality. Opening coastal waters to oil drilling will foul our beaches. Trump's history of sexual harassment, blatant misogyny and sexism is emblematic of the problems women face in this country.

So, by pretty much any economic, environmental or social measure, Norway is a better place for the average person -- and especially women -- to live than the United States.

Back when my ancestors came from Norway, Sweden, England and Ireland that wasn't the case: those countries were shitholes in the 19th century, run by corrupt, wealthy and arrogant aristocrats and filled with religious intolerance.

Why did Trump single out Norway? Because he is a racist, senile old man. He had just met with the prime minister of Norway, who was a white woman, so the country was still within the horizon of his limited attention span.

Every day Trump proves that he is not a president. He is a racist, senile, old white man who sits around watching TV and drinking diet Cokes while tweeting knee-jerk reactions to whatever drivel he's watching on Fox News.

Following Steve Bannon Back Under The Rock

It was only a few short months ago that this guy was supposedly all powerful. Look at him now. He’s nothing as the cartoon above so astutely illustrates.

This is a good lesson for liberals, moderates and conservatives who are horrified at what’s been happening with Trump. Just be patient. These people are morons. It’s all going to be over soon.

And all their little troll supporters will crawl back under the rock with Bannon...

Really? No One Can Figure Out Why Trump Exempted Florida from Coastal Oil Drilling?

Donald Trump stirred up rat's nest last week when he opened the nation's entire coastline to oil drilling, against the wishes of every coastal governor, including Republicans and Democrats. No one wants a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on their shores.

But today a big fat rat came crawling out of that nest: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced that Florida would be exempt from coastal drilling.

Why Florida?

The governors of New York, New Jersey, California and several other states requested exclusion from the drilling plan last year, while the plan was being drafted, citing the tourism value of their coastlines.

“The problem is that the request for exclusion came from most of the East Coast states and all of the West Coast states, and yet it was just granted to Florida,” said Sierra Weaver, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “The problem is treating Florida differently from every other state that requested exclusion.”

In fact, Florida was not among the states that had requested an exemption to the drilling plan. Throughout his political career, Governor Scott has veered between supporting and opposing offshore drilling.

Legal experts said they were perplexed by Mr. Zinke’s move. “No one knows what the legal implications are, because this has never been done before,” Ms. Weaver said.

Well, duh. Isn't it obvious? Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort is in Florida. When he suddenly realized -- almost a week later -- that opening up the entire US coastline to oil drilling would put his own property at risk of being hit by a massive oil spill, he had Zinke exempt Florida.

When well people finally understand that Trump cares only about himself?

It's Not About Smart, It's about Old

Donald Trump has rightly been ridiculed for stating that he is "like, really smart," and is a "very stable genius." 

Most critics examine the usage of the word "like," which completely undermines the "really smart" in many ways. In particular, it makes him sound like a Valley Girl or stating that he is not actually smart, but just a facsimile of smart.

For years now Trump's mental acuity has been in question. Every time the question comes up he trots out the same old nonsense about having a high IQ and going to a fancy college. This time he said:

"I went to the best colleges for college," said Trump, who holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. "I had a situation where I was a very excellent student, came out, made billions and billions of dollars, became one of the top business people, went to television and for 10 years was a tremendous success, as you probably have heard, ran for president one time and won."

Look at this quote: I went to the best colleges for college. Smart people do not talk that way. That's something a stupid, inarticulate and confused person would say. It's also patently false: UPenn and Wharton are simply not the best, by any measure.

And it's totally irrelevant. Trump went to college 50 years ago. His IQ test was decades ago. That has no bearing on his knowledge and mental fitness today. I took calculus in college 40 years ago, and got all A's. I remember nothing of calculus. It would be ridiculous for me to brag about having the best grades in calculus now, because it has no bearing on my current mathematical capabilities.

The question isn't how smart Trump was 50 years ago, it's how smart is he today? How well can he focus? He well can he absorb information from his staff? If you compare his speech patterns today to the speech patterns he evinced 20 years ago, it's clear he's suffered a marked cognitive decline.

And it's not just Trump, it's any old person. He's 71 years old, an age when parts of the brain start undergoing rapid shrinking:

For example, the gray matter of the human frontal lobe shrank an average of about 14% between the age of 30 and 80, and the gray matter of the hippocampus about 13% over the same period. But shrinkage of white matter was even more severe: The white matter of the frontal lobe shrank about 24%, similar to the white matter volume decrease in most other brain regions measured.

Moreover, unlike the gray matter, which showed a more gradual shrinkage over time, the decline in white matter was most precipitous between the ages of 70 and 80. So although the average decline in the frontal lobe was 24% at age 80, it was only about 6% at age 70.

Brain shrinkage came to my attention the other day when I read that Alex Trebek of Jeopardy fame, who is 77, had brain surgery for a subdural hematoma, probably caused by a fall:

The elderly also are at increased risk for the condition simply due to old age. This is because, as we age our brains shrink slightly, creating a space between the brain and the skull. This space put stress on the veins in the brain and increases their risk for tearing and bleeding

Finally, Trump is genetically predisposed to Alzheimers, which killed his father.

One of the first complaints I registered about Trump's run for president was that he was too old: he was the oldest president at inauguration. Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are also too old to be president. And Joe Arpaio's run for Senate, at age 85, is a total joke. His brain is the size of pea (admittedly it started out that way).

Congress can't pass laws setting a maximum age for being president, because the Constitution sets the requirements.

But Congress can demand that Trump undergo physical and psychological evaluations by independent physicians and psychiatrists to determine how much cognition he has lost, as well an MRI to scan his brain to see how much shrinkage has occurred, and to look for other signs of deterioration (yeah, that's a thing).

Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan suffered from a stroke and Alzheimers late in their terms, and others ran the presidency. All partisan animus aside, there are numerous indications that Trump's mind is not firing on all cylinders, and the nation would be best served by determining whether Trump's mental issues are due to impending senility or are simple personality defects.

Trump claims to have a very good brain. So why doesn't he prove it: have him take an IQ test. A cognition test. A short-term memory test. A reading comprehension test. A brain scan. But he won't, because he'd fail.

The best way to shut up a braggart is to make him prove his boasts.

The Stable Genius

Donald Trump Is A Liar

Donald Trump is a liar.

This is fact.

How do I know this?

Quora's wonderful new Answer Wiki.

Answers point to:

• Fact checking websites’ analysis of Trump’s statements.
• Particular statements Trump has made that are widely accepted as non-factual.
• Many easily checkable non-factual statements Trump has made.
• Examples where Trump has contradicted himself or withdrawn non-factual statements.
• Some answers point out that Trump may not be a deliberate liar:
• He may simply have no understanding of the things he ‘lied’ about.
• Perhaps he believes his factually incorrect statements to be true.
• He may be saying things that feel true to him, although they are not factually accurate.
• He doesn’t have a concept of truthfulness vs. lie, so he isn’t aware that he’s lying or that there is truth.
• Perhaps he believes that the statements he makes are clear and obvious examples of hyperbole-not lies. (This is also not true)

Man, I love Quora!

Fly the Friendliest and Safest Skies...

If you want proof positive of Donald Trump's delusional megalomania and fast-progressing dementia, you need look no further than this tweet:

Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

This is pure crap, as many have pointed out. There hasn't been a US airline fatality since 2009 (through three people did die when a Korean airline ran into a wall at SFO in 2013).

However, there have been numerous fatalities in crashes of private aircraft. If Trump is responsible for there being no airline crashes, is he responsible for the private plane crashes? The FAA regulates those too.

And what about the crash of a medevac helicopter in Arkansas a month and a half ago? Or the medevac helicopter crash in Virginia in September?

Or the helicopter crash near the Charlottesville alt-right rally that killed two state police troopers? That one we can pin on Trump because his blatant racist baiting throughout the campaign and his presidency encouraged the racists and Nazis to take to the streets, causing the accident that killed two troopers and the murder of a woman run down by a car.

Or maybe we can blame Trump for the tremendous rise of incivility on airlines, and the beating of a United Airlines passenger. Or we can blame Trump for the man who smeared feces all over the lavatories of a United flight last week.

What will Trump take credit for next?

Trump has nothing to do with airline safety. The only thing he has to do with aviation is fly around the country on Air Force One to play golf.

Trump did not even appoint the current administrator, Michael Huerta, a Democrat who was appointed by Barack Obama in 2013.

Huerta resigned two days after Trump's tweet, though this was because his five-year term is ending, and I would guess that he doesn't think Trump would reappoint him, and probably wants nothing further to do with this dumpster fire of an administration.

Trump has no one lined up to take Huerta's place, and given the dismally slow pace with which Trump has filled government vacancies, it is not likely to be filled any time soon. And when it is filled, you can be sure that it will be an industry shill and not an independent-minded regulator, which means safety will take a back seat to profitability. As if flying weren't already miserable enough...

Which means we can expect this long string of death-free flying to end when Trump's man is in.

Ever Argue With Someone On The Internet?

It looks like this...

I don't need a book to tell me that Donald Trump is mentally unbalanced. I don't need the smug, liberal elite media to tell me. I only need his Twitter feed.

Oh, and doesn't this remind you of the folks who used to post here?

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Donald Trump and the Republicans are yet again claiming that climate change is a hoax because, Baby, it's cold outside.

Yes, it's cold outside. That's the difference between weather and climate.

On a day-to-day basis, we have weather. Today, it's cold, tomorrow it's warm, it rains on Tuesday, it snows on Wednesday.

On a decade-to-decade and century-to-century basis we have climate. Hundreds of millions of years ago we had drastically higher seas, and a much warmer climate. Twelve thousand years ago we had an ice age. Two hundred years ago our "normal" climate had been established. But then we started burning coal and oil -- carbon which had been stored underground over billions of years -- in the span of two centuries, and the CO2 released has quickly warmed the climate. Faster than any time in history.

To understand climate you have to look at the whole planet. While it's been cold in the eastern half of the US for the last week or so, it's hot in the rest of the world.

In particular, it has been extremely warm in Alaska. For example, at 1:00 PM Central time today we had the following readings:

Nome, AK: 26
Anchorage, AK: 21
Juneau, AK: 35 and rain
Barrow, AK: -2
New York City, NY: 15
Washington DC: 19
Minneapolis, MN: 1

Yes, it's colder in Washington than it is in all the major cities of Alaska, and Minnesota is just barely warmer than one of the coldest places humans normally inhabit.

The planet has warmed so much that the jet stream has been affected. Essentially, hot air from the south has pushed its way into Alaska, forcing cold air into the lower 48.

The snow and cold in Florida are a direct result of extremely high temperatures in the western US and arctic regions. That is, the severity of the blizzard and cold in the east are a direct result of climate change.

This has been happening regularly for the past several years, so it's nothing new. But Republican shills for the oil and gas industry keep repeating the lie that the planet isn't warming, and even if it is, it's not their fault.

So, as long as they keep lying about climate change, I'll keep posting weather reports from Alaska to show how ridiculously warm the earth is getting.

The Problem with the Gig Economy, Illustrated

A week ago we ordered a waffle maker from Amazon.com, with free shipping. We tracked the package on the Amazon website, and Wednesday morning the site said the package it was in a suburb 12 miles southwest of us. Later in the day it said it was out for delivery and that it would arrive by 8 PM.

At 8 PM Wednesday still no waffle maker. This was weird, because in the past Amazon would ship us stuff and it would get here via UPS exactly when they said it would.

Thursday morning the Amazon tracking website said the waffle maker was in a suburb 22 miles southeast of us, and again said that it was out for delivery and would arrive Thursday by 8 PM. It was getting further and further away...

During the past two days we have seen UPS trucks go by again and again, but no delivery.

At 2:53 PM on Thursday we got the waffle maker. It was delivered by a guy wearing an orange and yellow safety vest driving an unmarked white van: Amazon had used their own delivery service this time. As "proof" that they delivered the package, they took a picture of the box at our door, which appeared on the Amazon website. So secure!

This service is called Amazon Flex, and it's patterned after Uber. But unlike Uber, you've probably never heard of it. I hadn't, until I looked into why it was taking so long to get the package.

According to this article on Gizmodo, Amazon Flex has all the problems that Uber has. It treats employees as contractors, uses an app to set up deliveries, and requires drivers to have their own vehicles. Drivers undergo a minimal background check and receive minimal training (watching videos on their phone). They don't wear a uniform and have nothing to identify their vehicles as Amazon Flex. But oh! They get a non-photo ID badge!

Like Uber, drivers compete with each other for deliveries, snatching up "blocks" of deliveries through the app. Like Uber, drivers are part-timers making deliveries for supplemental income. Some drivers cheat and use bots to secure more desirable delivery blocks in the app. Like Uber, a lot of drivers don't even make minimum wage due to expenses and wasted time (and there's a lot of wasted time, especially when delivering to apartment buildings).

There are many problems with this, especially when you consider that Amazon is rolling out Amazon Key, where they actually unlock the front door of your house, go inside and drop off packages. Do you really want someone who is basically a random person off the street going into your house?

In my experience, UPS and USPS drivers have always been professional and prompt. It's their full-time job, so they have a major incentive to do it well. With Amazon Flex, like Uber, you never know who you're getting.

My sister tried driving for Uber a couple of times, but didn't like it. So she just quit.

Do you really want your stuff delivered by people who are just "trying it out?" If your package goes missing was it really stolen from your doorstep, or did the delivery guy just decide he'd had enough of Amazon Flex and kept the package for himself after taking its picture on your doorstep, or just dumped it on the street in disgust?

Delivering packages isn't rocket science, but when there are regular routes UPS drivers and mail carriers get good at making efficient deliveries. They don't get lost, they know the ins and outs of the neighborhoods and the preferences of customers. They optimize routes for fuel efficiency, since UPS pays for the gas.

Amazon Flex drivers are essentially random, and will change every day. Since drivers pay for the gas, Amazon doesn't care how fuel-efficient the system is, as long as their Prime customers get the packages on time. No one else matters to Amazon.

Unions are quickly going out of fashion, but without the ability to bargain collectively, the American middle class would never had risen. UPS drivers and US mail carriers are some of the few remaining unionized workers in the country.

A big part of the rise of income inequality has been the disappearance of unionized blue-collar jobs. But even workers at non-union factories have some level of influence over their pay and working conditions because they're at the factory, working side-by-side with their supervisors, and therefore have some kind of relationship with management.

But with gigs like Uber and Amazon Flex, there is only the app. Workers have no relationship with their bosses. They have no influence over their wages and working conditions. Their fates and livelihoods are dictated by algorithms coded thousands of miles away. Their only option is to quit.

Amazon and Uber view their drivers as interchangeable cogs, unreliable meat puppets inconveniently required to ferry their passengers and packages around town. Both Uber and Amazon have made no bones about the fact that they fully intend to replace human employees with drones and self-driving cars and trucks as soon as possible.

And what, exactly, are people supposed to do to earn money?

The gig economy was supposed to be the wave of the future. So far it's a pretty bleak future. And it won't even be the the future for very long.

I Agree With Donald Trump

Time For A New Dear Leader

With the recent revelations from Michael Wolf's new book, Fire and Fury, I think it's time that conservatives jump ship. Folks, you need a new leader. Trump is more or less done. Consider the evidence.

-All the major players that were part of the Trump administration one year ago are gone. Michael Flynn, Trump's former National Security Adviser, is cooperating with the FBI.

-Steve Bannon, Trump's campaign manager that brought him to victory, has accused Trump's son and other Trump officials of treason. He recognizes where the political headwinds are blowing.

-Trump wanted to lose and was horrified when he won. As the book notes, "Once he lost, Trump would be both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary. His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared would be international celebrities. Steve Bannon would become the de facto head of the tea-party movement. Kellyanne Conway would be a cable-news star. Melania Trump, who had been assured by her husband that he wouldn't become president, could return to inconspicuously lunching. Losing would work out for everybody. Losing was winning."

-Trump doesn't read and grows bored when people try to explain things to him.

"Early in the campaign, Sam Nunberg was sent to explain the Constitution to the candidate. 'I got as far as the Fourth Amendment," Nunberg recalled, "before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.'"

-Trump is viewed with disdain by the people around him.

"For Steve Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, he was an 'idiot.' For Gary Cohn, he was 'dumb as sh-t.' For H.R. McMaster he was a 'dope.' The list went on."

-Gary Cohn, the leader of Trump's economic council, sent out an email last April that sums up the Trump presidency.

"It's worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won't read anything - not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored. And his staff is no better. Kushner is an entitled baby who knows nothing. Bannon is an arrogant prick who thinks he's smarter than he is. Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits. No one will survive the first year but his family. I hate the work, but feel I need to stay because I'm the only person there with a clue what he's doing. The reason so few jobs have been filled is that they only accept people who pass ridiculous purity tests, even for midlevel policy-making jobs where the people will never see the light of day. I am in a constant state of shock and horror."

If you are someone who still supports Trump after this assessment, you are just as mentally ill as he is. It's time to find someone new to lead your cause. Anyone associated with Trump is now toxic. It's going to be a fucking bloodbath this year in the midterms. Trump is going to be indicted for money laundering and obstruction of justice...if he doesn't become incapacitated due to mental and physical ailments.

In short, you are on a sinking ship. Get off.

The Beginning of the End?

Donald Trump has never been loyal to his people, and now he has abruptly broken with Steve Bannon after reports surfaced of Bannon calling the meeting Don Jr. had with the Russians treasonous and unpatriotic (via the Times):

“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency,” Mr. Trump said in the statement. “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”

Mr. Trump berated Mr. Bannon for the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama and said the former adviser did not represent his base but was “only in it for himself.” Rather than supporting the president’s agenda to “make America great again,” Mr. Bannon was “simply seeking to burn it all down,” Mr. Trump said.

“Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was,” he added. “It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.”

The cause for this tirade was the publication of excerpts from a book called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff.

In the book, Mr. Bannon was quoted suggesting that Donald Trump Jr., the future president’s son; Jared Kushner, his son-in-law; and Paul J. Manafort, then the campaign chairman, had been “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” for meeting with Russians offering incriminating information on Hillary Clinton during a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower.

Reportedly Bannon has also come to same conclusion that I have: Trump's downfall will most likely come from his history of money laundering for the Russian mob:

According to Mr. Wolff, Mr. Bannon also predicted that a special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and any coordination with Trump aides would ultimately center on money laundering, an assessment that could lend credibility to an investigation the president has repeatedly called a witch hunt. “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” Mr. Bannon was quoted as saying.

Money laundering is a lot easier to prove than collusion, even though it's becoming clearer every day that numerous members of the Trump campaign were actively working with the Russians on targeting social media messaging.

The book is filled with lots of gossip and dirt, but it's hard to know how much of it is true, since it comes from interviews with members of the Trump administration, every one of whom has proved to be a self-serving liar.

Trump accuses Bannon of having lost his mind, but every day another story appears questioning Trump's mental and physical fitness. Reports are surfacing that Trump is even having trouble drinking water, requiring two hands to hold a glass.

Trump is famous -- and widely mocked -- for the wild gesticulations that accompany his rants. Some have speculated that these hand motions have been adopted to mask tremors that would be more obvious if his hands were at rest.

As of this writing Bannon has not responded, and the article on Breitbart simply reports the White House statement.

But it makes you wonder how long Trump can go on like this, instantly stabbing long-time allies in the back very publicly instead of keeping a civil tongue, waiting to see how things shake out: this story could have easily been dismissed by both parties as "fake news."

But by lashing out at Bannon Trump proved the story is true, at least in Trump's mind.

Trump's lack of diplomacy and tact may be popular among the rubes, but diplomacy and tact are the grease that keeps the wheels of politics from squeaking. If Trump alienates Bannon and Breitbart, he will lose rank and file racists; in other words, his base.

Sooner or later even Fox News will grow tired of Trump's childish antics, and then what will Trump watch on TV? All My Children has been off the air for years.

On What Planet Is This A Good Thing?

A Decline in Accidental Gun Deaths

A recent report from the CDC shows that gun deaths in 2015, the most recent year for which they are available, numbered a little more than half of what they were in 1999. In 2015, there were 489 gun deaths from accident whereas in 1999 there were 824 gun deaths from accident.

Experts attribute the decline to a mix of gun safety education programs, state laws regulating gun storage in homes and a drop in the number of households that have guns. While the improvement occurred in every state, those with the most guns and the fewest laws continue to have the most accidental shooting deaths. This is true of overall deaths by firearms.

It's most interesting to note that Illinois has a lower rate of gun violence then does then all of the the southern states where gun laws are very loose. California, as well as my home state of Minnesota, are among the lowest. The Gun Cult tends to focus on the raw number of deaths never taking into account the size of population. Size (ahem) matters because you have to take into account the number of people in an area and compare that to the number of deaths.

Of course, the Gun Cult would never admit that the states with the loosest gun laws have the higher rates of gun violence. That would completely destroy their "gun free zone" myth. It can't possibly be that states like Alaska, Louisiana, Alabama, Wyoming and Mississippi have a greater rate of gun violence.

Say it ain't so!

New Year's Day