Sunday, February 18, 2018
Russia, the NRA and the Parkland Massacre
Donald Trump's other attempt to discredit the FBI is to suggest the investigation into Russia's hacking of the 2016 election is somehow diverting attention away from dangerous gun nuts who are shooting up our schools, concerts and nightclubs.
There is a connection between the Russia investigation and the shooting in Florida, but it's not the one Trump is suggesting: the NRA is colluding with Russia to turn America into a warzone where school kids are shot by the hundreds every year.
In recent years the NRA has become involved with Russian oligarchs (apparently receiving illegal contributions from Aleksandr Torshin), and phony Russian "gun rights" organizations.
As they frequently do, the Russians have set up a "honeypot" trap by
having an attractive woman be the face of their "gun rights" group in
the United States, in the person of Maria Butina.
Russia has reasonable gun laws, so any Russians coming to the United States to talk about gun rights are obvious liars. Their support of the NRA is yet another social engineering scam to divide public opinion in the US and set us at each others' throats.
As Trump would put it: Every time there's another school shooting in the United States the Russians are laughing their asses off.
There is a connection between the Russia investigation and the shooting in Florida, but it's not the one Trump is suggesting: the NRA is colluding with Russia to turn America into a warzone where school kids are shot by the hundreds every year.
In recent years the NRA has become involved with Russian oligarchs (apparently receiving illegal contributions from Aleksandr Torshin), and phony Russian "gun rights" organizations.
Russia has reasonable gun laws, so any Russians coming to the United States to talk about gun rights are obvious liars. Their support of the NRA is yet another social engineering scam to divide public opinion in the US and set us at each others' throats.
As Trump would put it: Every time there's another school shooting in the United States the Russians are laughing their asses off.
Blame the State of Florida for Parkland, Not the FBI
Having now been forced to admit that the Russians hacked the 2016 election, Donald Trump and the Republicans are attacking the Mueller investigation by trying to discredit the FBI.
Republicans always complain about how libtards look to Washington to solve their problems. "Why don't they do something themselves?" conservatives whine.
Well, it turns out that several Florida agencies were well aware that the shooter was mentally ill, but did nothing to stop him:
A Florida social services agency conducted an in-home investigation of Nikolas Cruz after he exhibited troubling behavior nearly a year and a half before he shot and killed 17 people at his former high school in Florida, a state report shows.The problem is not the FBI. The problem is that Florida knew this kid was bad news, and did nothing about it. The state of Florida let him buy an AR15 assault rifle! Why didn't they add this kid to the list of people who can't buy guns?
The agency, the Florida Department of Children and Families, had been alerted to posts on Snapchat of Mr. Cruz cutting his arms and expressing interest in buying a gun, according to the report. But after visiting and questioning Mr. Cruz at his home, the department determined he was at low risk of harming himself or others.
The report is the latest indication that Mr. Cruz was repeatedly identified by local and federal agencies as a troubled young man with violent tendencies. The F.B.I. admitted on Friday that it had failed to investigate a tip called into a hotline last month by a person close to Mr. Cruz identifying him as a gun owner intent on killing people, possibly at a school. The local police were called to Mr. Cruz’s house many times for disturbances over several years.
The deaths in Parkland are the fault of the NRA, the gun cult and Republican legislators in Florida.
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Cutting the Cord, or Why We Need Network Neutrality
Cable TV companies are among the most despised in the nation. Their employees are surly and uninformed, their service is terrible, their prices have risen two or three times faster than inflation, and they make you pay for hundreds of channels you don't care about and will never watch. That's because they're monopolies, and have been free to do whatever the hell they want after Congress deregulated them 20 years ago.
When cable companies started using their monopoly position to provide Internet access, it only got worse. They claimed they had the right to charge not only their customers for their Internet access, but the companies that sent their customers data. They claimed they had the right to slow down or block any company that they felt used too many "network resources," but really they wanted to shut down companies like Netflix that provided streaming video that competed with their core entertainment business.
Obama's FCC instituted "network neutrality" to prevent cable companies from screwing their customers and other businesses. The FCC classified internet providers as common carriers (like phone companies) who can't discriminate against other businesses.
The Trump administration, of course, is getting rid of the policy because the cable industry has given Republicans tons of campaign contributions.
For the last eight or ten years there's been a lot of talk about cord cutters -- people who get rid of their cable TV subscriptions and use antennas to receive broadcast TV over the air, or subscribe to services that stream cable-TV content over the Internet.
These services have historically have not been very good. They don't have all the channels people want and quality has been rather choppy. Worse, they didn't have the local TV stations that people depend on for weather forecasts and local news.
That has all changed: it's now possible -- in many areas of the country -- to cut the cord and get pretty much the same local and cable programming that your cable company provides. For a fraction of the price!
Last year CenturyLink, our DSL provider, ran a fiber optic cable down the main street near our house. Recently they offered a life-time guaranteed price of $50/month for 80 megabit internet. It's not the gimmick that the cable companies always offer, where they give you a deal for three months and then triple the price. In 20 years our DSL provider has never raised the guaranteed price. Instead they drastically increase the data rate for a marginal, guaranted-for-life price increase.
In that same time frame Comcast's prices has more than doubled, to more than $100/month with no improvement in service. They just keep adding more worthless channels we never watch. So we decided to dump Comcast.
We tried an antenna, but we live in a very hilly suburb and the transmitters are 20 miles away. The signal is awful with indoor antennas, and putting an antenna on the roof is a hassle and might not even work. So we decided on streaming.
We looked at four services that stream cable programming and local channels: YouTube TV, Hulu, Sling and DirecTV Now (which is not the satellite TV service). They're all comparably priced and have similar features: full HD, live-streaming of local and cable channels including movies and sports, a DVR feature (with varying release dates, capabilities and costs), and access to on-demand libraries of shows and movies that appear on the supported networks. All of them let you try the service for a week for free, and they're all in the $35-40 price range. Some of them have 4K capability.
Their channel lineups aren't identical, and will vary by region. We picked YouTube TV, which has all the channels we care about except for the local PBS affiliate, but as public TV supporters we have access to PBS's streaming service, which gives you access to episodes of shows like Victoria before they're aired on local stations.
But we would have been happy with DirecTV Now or Sling; both were fine. DirecTV Now has a distinct advantage of charging only $5/month to add HBO. Hulu had more restrictions, was more expensive, and was less reliable than the others, but it does include access to a huge library of TV shows going back decades.
YouTube TV includes some channels that Comcast charged extra for (like TCM, ESPNU, the Olympic Channel), so we're paying $50 a month less to get more of the things that we want.
Some of the services don't have access to Comedy Central, the local CBS or the CW affiliates, perhaps because Comedy Central, CBS and CW have their own streaming services (CC's and CW's are free, CBS's is $6), or they just haven't finished negotiations yet. YouTube TV is still actively adding channels (TBS/TNT came online just last week).
Furthermore, if you have limited viewing habits, you can save even more money. ESPN is introducing their streaming service this spring for only $5/month. HBO's streaming service is $15/month. There are also tons of other on-demand streaming services, like Amazon and Netflix, that have large libraries of shows or offer pay-per-view movies and shows.
You can stream through a browser with your computer, through an app on your smart phone, or through several different streaming devices. We went with a streaming device because using a computer is a hassle when you're sitting on the couch, and would rather use a remote than our phones.
Most of these streaming devices are tiny compared to computers or even cable TV set-top boxes: Roku's Streaming Stick, Google Chromecast, Amazon's Firestick use WiFi and connect invisibly to your TV's HDMI port. We went with the Roku Ultra because we wanted a traditional TV remote and a wired connection. Many of these devices allow you to "cast" the stream from your smart phone to the TV screen, if that's your thing.
You will, of course, need a decent Internet connection to use these streaming services. Looking at the stats on our Roku box, it looks like it uses about 4 megabits, so at least an 8 megabit connection is needed.
Sadly, TiVo does not work with most of these streaming services, though there's no technical reason it could not: it works fine with Hulu, Netflix and Amazon. TiVo with cable has a better interface and user experience than Roku or YouTube TV. TiVo's wishlists are very nice, and the commercial skip feature is great. But it's just not worth almost a thousand dollars a year.
We're lucky that we live in an area that has two Internet providers: Comcast and CenturyLink. But a lot of people don't have any choice: they only have Comcast or some other giant cable company that has a government-sanctioned monopoly on cable and Internet service.
These streaming services are bringing competition and innovation into America's living rooms. Net neutrality is needed to guarantee that all Americans have equal access to the information and entertainment services, and that new companies have an equal opportunity to compete against companies that were granted monopolies by cities and states decades ago.
This kind of competition could save the average American consumer $500 to $1,000 dollars a year. Which is a hell of lot more money than middle-class Americans will see from Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy.
But without net neutrality Comcast can shut out millions of Americans from these services, taking billions of dollars out of their pockets.
When cable companies started using their monopoly position to provide Internet access, it only got worse. They claimed they had the right to charge not only their customers for their Internet access, but the companies that sent their customers data. They claimed they had the right to slow down or block any company that they felt used too many "network resources," but really they wanted to shut down companies like Netflix that provided streaming video that competed with their core entertainment business.
Obama's FCC instituted "network neutrality" to prevent cable companies from screwing their customers and other businesses. The FCC classified internet providers as common carriers (like phone companies) who can't discriminate against other businesses.
The Trump administration, of course, is getting rid of the policy because the cable industry has given Republicans tons of campaign contributions.
Net neutrality can save many Americans $1,000 a year.
To see why network neutrality is important, let's look at a real-world scenario. A scenario that could save many Americans $500 to $1,000 a year.For the last eight or ten years there's been a lot of talk about cord cutters -- people who get rid of their cable TV subscriptions and use antennas to receive broadcast TV over the air, or subscribe to services that stream cable-TV content over the Internet.
These services have historically have not been very good. They don't have all the channels people want and quality has been rather choppy. Worse, they didn't have the local TV stations that people depend on for weather forecasts and local news.
That has all changed: it's now possible -- in many areas of the country -- to cut the cord and get pretty much the same local and cable programming that your cable company provides. For a fraction of the price!
Last year CenturyLink, our DSL provider, ran a fiber optic cable down the main street near our house. Recently they offered a life-time guaranteed price of $50/month for 80 megabit internet. It's not the gimmick that the cable companies always offer, where they give you a deal for three months and then triple the price. In 20 years our DSL provider has never raised the guaranteed price. Instead they drastically increase the data rate for a marginal, guaranted-for-life price increase.
In that same time frame Comcast's prices has more than doubled, to more than $100/month with no improvement in service. They just keep adding more worthless channels we never watch. So we decided to dump Comcast.
We tried an antenna, but we live in a very hilly suburb and the transmitters are 20 miles away. The signal is awful with indoor antennas, and putting an antenna on the roof is a hassle and might not even work. So we decided on streaming.
We looked at four services that stream cable programming and local channels: YouTube TV, Hulu, Sling and DirecTV Now (which is not the satellite TV service). They're all comparably priced and have similar features: full HD, live-streaming of local and cable channels including movies and sports, a DVR feature (with varying release dates, capabilities and costs), and access to on-demand libraries of shows and movies that appear on the supported networks. All of them let you try the service for a week for free, and they're all in the $35-40 price range. Some of them have 4K capability.
Their channel lineups aren't identical, and will vary by region. We picked YouTube TV, which has all the channels we care about except for the local PBS affiliate, but as public TV supporters we have access to PBS's streaming service, which gives you access to episodes of shows like Victoria before they're aired on local stations.
But we would have been happy with DirecTV Now or Sling; both were fine. DirecTV Now has a distinct advantage of charging only $5/month to add HBO. Hulu had more restrictions, was more expensive, and was less reliable than the others, but it does include access to a huge library of TV shows going back decades.
YouTube TV includes some channels that Comcast charged extra for (like TCM, ESPNU, the Olympic Channel), so we're paying $50 a month less to get more of the things that we want.
Some of the services don't have access to Comedy Central, the local CBS or the CW affiliates, perhaps because Comedy Central, CBS and CW have their own streaming services (CC's and CW's are free, CBS's is $6), or they just haven't finished negotiations yet. YouTube TV is still actively adding channels (TBS/TNT came online just last week).
Furthermore, if you have limited viewing habits, you can save even more money. ESPN is introducing their streaming service this spring for only $5/month. HBO's streaming service is $15/month. There are also tons of other on-demand streaming services, like Amazon and Netflix, that have large libraries of shows or offer pay-per-view movies and shows.
You can stream through a browser with your computer, through an app on your smart phone, or through several different streaming devices. We went with a streaming device because using a computer is a hassle when you're sitting on the couch, and would rather use a remote than our phones.
Most of these streaming devices are tiny compared to computers or even cable TV set-top boxes: Roku's Streaming Stick, Google Chromecast, Amazon's Firestick use WiFi and connect invisibly to your TV's HDMI port. We went with the Roku Ultra because we wanted a traditional TV remote and a wired connection. Many of these devices allow you to "cast" the stream from your smart phone to the TV screen, if that's your thing.
You will, of course, need a decent Internet connection to use these streaming services. Looking at the stats on our Roku box, it looks like it uses about 4 megabits, so at least an 8 megabit connection is needed.
Sadly, TiVo does not work with most of these streaming services, though there's no technical reason it could not: it works fine with Hulu, Netflix and Amazon. TiVo with cable has a better interface and user experience than Roku or YouTube TV. TiVo's wishlists are very nice, and the commercial skip feature is great. But it's just not worth almost a thousand dollars a year.
We're lucky that we live in an area that has two Internet providers: Comcast and CenturyLink. But a lot of people don't have any choice: they only have Comcast or some other giant cable company that has a government-sanctioned monopoly on cable and Internet service.
These streaming services are bringing competition and innovation into America's living rooms. Net neutrality is needed to guarantee that all Americans have equal access to the information and entertainment services, and that new companies have an equal opportunity to compete against companies that were granted monopolies by cities and states decades ago.
This kind of competition could save the average American consumer $500 to $1,000 dollars a year. Which is a hell of lot more money than middle-class Americans will see from Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy.
But without net neutrality Comcast can shut out millions of Americans from these services, taking billions of dollars out of their pockets.
The Children Continue To Speak
Donald Trump's tweet about the Florida shooting has garnered many comments from students who were actually at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Here's my favorite.
“I don’t want your condolences you fucking price of shit, my friends and teachers were shot,” she tweeted. “Multiple of my fellow classmates are dead. Do something instead of sending prayers. Prayers won’t fix this. But Gun control will prevent it from happening again.”
I'll extend Sara's fucking piece of shit comment to all the gun rights activists in the United States along with this promise. I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that YOU are held responsible for the deaths of every single person who has died in a school shooting.
If I were in charge, you'd be at Gitmo right now and you'd never see the light of day again.
“I don’t want your condolences you fucking price of shit, my friends and teachers were shot,” she tweeted. “Multiple of my fellow classmates are dead. Do something instead of sending prayers. Prayers won’t fix this. But Gun control will prevent it from happening again.”
I'll extend Sara's fucking piece of shit comment to all the gun rights activists in the United States along with this promise. I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that YOU are held responsible for the deaths of every single person who has died in a school shooting.
If I were in charge, you'd be at Gitmo right now and you'd never see the light of day again.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Another Shooting by a White Supremacist Terrorist
Several news outlets are reporting that the Parkland Florida school shooter, Nikolas (spelling Amerika with a 'K') Cruz, was a member of the "Republic of Florida" white supremacist group:
The [Anti-Defamation League] said ROF leader Jordan Jereb told them Cruz was associated with his group. Jereb, who is based in Tallahassee, said Cruz was brought into the group by another member and had participated in one or more ROF training exercises in the Tallahassee area, the ADL said. Law enforcement officials have not confirmed the link.
ROF has mostly young members in north and south Florida and describes itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics” and seeks to create a “white ethnostate” in Florida.
Three former schoolmates of Cruz told ABC News that Cruz was part of the group. They claimed he marched with the group frequently and was often seen with Jereb, who also confirmed to ABC News that Cruz was, at least at one point, part of that group.If this kid had even the most tenuous connection to any form of Islamic or liberal group, you can be certain that Donald Trump and the Republican echo chamber would be screaming bloody murder about the scourge of Middle East immigrant terrorists and the evils of Mohammedanism.
But since Cruz was a MAGA hat-wearing white supremacist gun nut Trump and the right are only talking about mental illness.
The one thing that all these mass shooters have in common is an infatuation with guns.
The one thing that all these mass shooters have in common -- from Columbine, to Sandy Hook, to Las Vegas, to Parkland -- is an infatuation with guns. Like Cruz, lots of people are depressed and have other mild forms of mental illness. But most don't pose a danger to anyone, except perhaps themselves.The real danger to society at large is not run-of-the-mill depression or even schizophrenia -- it's this infatuation with guns. It is so common that it needs a name: let's call it Gun Infatuation Syndrome. Gun infatuation is a form of mental illness, like drug addiction, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
People suffering from GIS make guns a basic part of their daily lives. GIS progresses as its sufferers come to devalue human life: since the only purpose of guns is to kill, killing is normalized in their minds. Their positive view of guns metastasizes into a positive view of killing and killers -- Cruz and other mass shooters idolize past mass shooters.
Conservatives are all about profiling people: they were livid when New York gave up the racist Stop and Frisk program, claiming that there would be blood in the streets. But the murder rate dropped precipitously during after stop-and-frisk ended, prompting honest conservatives to admit they were completely wrong about the policy.
Some conservatives want to profile American Muslims and ban all Muslim immigrants because some Muslims are terrorists. Even though the fact is more Americans die at the hands of right-wing racists like Dylann Roof and Nikolas Cruz than Muslims.
The simple fact is: the people most likely to commit mass shootings are those with lots of guns. People who have no compunctions about shooting other people. People who have a chip on their shoulder and feel that they have the right to use lethal force against those they think have wronged them. Narcissistic people obsessed with vengeance.
With a vengeful narcissist in the Oval Office actively promulgating this mindset, is it any wonder that we've already had 18 shootings at schools just six weeks into 2018?
People are blaming the FBI for not doing anything about Cruz after they received warnings about him. But there are literally millions of gun nuts out there like Cruz who post exactly the same crap on the internet that he did.
And whenever the FBI does go after these gun nuts they scream bloody murder about the Deep State and their Second Amendment rights.
So, sure, let's profile the people who are most likely to commit shootings -- people who have lots of guns and are suffering from Gun Infatuation Syndrome. Let's take their guns away and get them into treatment.
Before they shoot up your kid's school.
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Surprise, Surprise: Trump Lawyer Admits Stormy Daniels Payment
After a month of claiming that Donald Trump never had an affair with that woman, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen admitted that he paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about her affair with Trump.
In the most detailed explanation of the 2016 payment made to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, Mr. Cohen, who worked as a counsel to the Trump Organization for more than a decade, said he was not reimbursed by the Trump Organization or the campaign for the payment.Of course, everyone knew that Trump had an affair with Daniels and had paid her off. Nobody ever believed the denials: Trump just denies things, hoping that the nonstop chaos he generates will make everyone forget the impeachable offenses we learned about the day before.
“Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly,” Mr. Cohen said in a statement to The New York Times. “The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”
A couple of questions about this: how much money has Trump paid Cohen over the years? How much has money has Trump paid Cohen in the year and half since the payment was made?
It's irrelevant whether Cohen submitted a expense report with a "porn star payoff" line item. That's the reason the wealthy pay lawyers $1,500 to $2,000 an hour: so that they can make problems like these go away as quietly as possible. Cohen will just bill Trump an additional 90 hours for, say, "legal research," "discovery" or the old standard, "services rendered," and poof -- he's made his $130,000 back.
And despite what Cohen says, paying hush money to a porn star weeks before an election is a campaign expenditure -- an illegimate and illegal in-kind campaign expenditure, to be sure, but a campaign expenditure nonetheless.
Had Daniels' story about Trump banging a porn star without a condom appeared while his wife was still nursing their child come out immediately after the pussy grabbing tape, it might have been too much even for the soulless vipers that Republicans had become. It might have cost Trump the election.
It's all part of the pattern that Trump and his family use to buy off politicians and prosecutors to escape prosecution. In 2012 Ivanka and Jared's lawyer bought off the Manhattan DA with a campaign donation to avoid indictment for fraud. In 2013 the Trump Foundation donated $25,000 to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi's reelection campaign in exchange for dropping her fraud case against Trump University, as well as giving her a large in-kind donation of a campaign event at Mar-a-Lago. Other states proceeded with their fraud case and Trump admitted guilt in the form of a $25 million settlement. Pam Bondi screwed over her constituents -- Trump's victims in Florida -- by not pressing their case against Trump: they got nothing, while Trump's New York victims got compensation.
Any one of these illegal transactions should be sufficient to put these people in jail. But, as Trump loves to say, the system is rigged: the rich can get away with anything.
And this is why the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling is the most corrupt and corrupting ruling in American history.
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Pulling a Putin
Donald Trump finally released his budget, and of course it massively increases the federal debt. When Barack Obama wanted to jump-start the economy with infrastructure spending in the aftermath of Bush's economic meltdown, Republicans refused, claiming that the federal debt was absolutely horrible.
Now, with the King of Debt as president, Republicans are now completely in favor of having the federal government go on a huge borrowing spree to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and a massive increase in military spending.
Trump ran for president on promises of extracting us from foreign wars. But he has increased troop levels in Afghanistan, and sent troops to Syria and back to Iraq. American troops have died in Africa on secret missions. Trump is on course to start wars with North Korea and Iran. He's starting programs to build new, smaller, nuclear weapons to respond to "extreme circumstances" and non-nuclear attacks. This is the same idiot who wondered during the campaign why we couldn't use nuclear weapons.
But the biggest lie in Trump's budget is the "infrastructure plan." The plan claims to spend $200 billion over 10 years. Notice how they always do these things over 10 years to make it sound like a lot of money? The budget is redone every year, so these 10-year budget proposals are a total joke -- it'll all be thrown out next year.
But Trump's budget actually includes $168 billion in infrastructure cuts to programs that Trump doesn't care about, such as mass transit. So Trump is really only proposing to spend an additional $3 billion a year on infrastructure, which is only a hundred miles of interstate or a couple of big bridges.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated last year that $4.6 trillion is needed for our roads, bridges, ports, drinking water supplies, dams, airports and mass transit. Trump's plan does absolutely nothing to address those needs.
What it does do is to privatize billions of dollars of federal assets, including airports, roads, and federal land. Trump is doing what Vladimir Putin did: give away government assets to his pals so they can get rich.
Trump wants to turn every interstate in the country into a toll road so his buddies can soak you every time you drive to work. Trump wants give his campaign contributors a private monopoly on airports so they get a cut every time you fly. Trump wants to sell federal lands --including parklands -- to Canadian and Chilean mining companies that will leave the land a toxic mess for centuries.
This is the very definition of crony capitalism and corruption.
Now, with the King of Debt as president, Republicans are now completely in favor of having the federal government go on a huge borrowing spree to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and a massive increase in military spending.
Trump ran for president on promises of extracting us from foreign wars. But he has increased troop levels in Afghanistan, and sent troops to Syria and back to Iraq. American troops have died in Africa on secret missions. Trump is on course to start wars with North Korea and Iran. He's starting programs to build new, smaller, nuclear weapons to respond to "extreme circumstances" and non-nuclear attacks. This is the same idiot who wondered during the campaign why we couldn't use nuclear weapons.
But the biggest lie in Trump's budget is the "infrastructure plan." The plan claims to spend $200 billion over 10 years. Notice how they always do these things over 10 years to make it sound like a lot of money? The budget is redone every year, so these 10-year budget proposals are a total joke -- it'll all be thrown out next year.
But Trump's budget actually includes $168 billion in infrastructure cuts to programs that Trump doesn't care about, such as mass transit. So Trump is really only proposing to spend an additional $3 billion a year on infrastructure, which is only a hundred miles of interstate or a couple of big bridges.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated last year that $4.6 trillion is needed for our roads, bridges, ports, drinking water supplies, dams, airports and mass transit. Trump's plan does absolutely nothing to address those needs.
What it does do is to privatize billions of dollars of federal assets, including airports, roads, and federal land. Trump is doing what Vladimir Putin did: give away government assets to his pals so they can get rich.
Trump wants to turn every interstate in the country into a toll road so his buddies can soak you every time you drive to work. Trump wants give his campaign contributors a private monopoly on airports so they get a cut every time you fly. Trump wants to sell federal lands --including parklands -- to Canadian and Chilean mining companies that will leave the land a toxic mess for centuries.
This is the very definition of crony capitalism and corruption.
Monday, February 12, 2018
More Bari Weiss, Please!
If the #MeToo movement is going to succeed, it's going to need more people like Bari Weiss. Logical, rational, civics minded....all traits she has in abundance.
Sunday, February 11, 2018
Boo Hoo! Trump Feels So Sorry for His Wife-Beating Aides
Donald Trump is whining again about unfair everything is for powerful, rich, white men, and how their stupid and worthless wives are destroying their lives just because their husbands slapped them around for mouthing off:
President Trump on Saturday appeared to side with men accused of domestic abuse or sexual misconduct, following a week of turmoil surrounding allegations of spousal abuse against two male aides that brought the national #MeToo movement inside the White House.Yes, Donald, there still is something called due process. And these men have received it. They are still walking around free, and have not been charged with a crime, even though they abused their wives, multiple times. They are not in prison. They were never charged with crimes. Law enforcement is not harassing them or forcing them out of office. They either resigned voluntarily or were fired by you because they embarrassed you.
In a tweet, Trump questioned whether “due process” is being given to those accused of wrongdoing and expressed sympathy for their damaged careers and sullied reputations.
“Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused — life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”
Their rights have not been violated: no one has beaten, bruised and bloodied them, or falsely imprisoned them. Which is not true for the wives they've assaulted and divorced.
These men have been paid big government salaries for the last year, even though they still only had temporary security clearances. That's because they were still being investigated by the FBI. They had access to top secret government documents even though they had embarrassing secrets that they could be blackmailed with. Secrets dark enough that, when revealed to the general public, forced them to resign.
Their terminations show exactly why people like this should not have security clearances and work for the president.
Yeah, Trump says these guys deny they beat their wives. That's so lame -- everyone knows they did it. How stupid does Trump think we are? Wife-beating is a badge of honor among these clowns. They brag about slapping the missus to keep her in line, just like Trump bragged about grabbing women by the pussy.
These men have no inherent right to work in the White House. These weasels sealed their own fates when they assaulted the wives they had pledged to love and honor till death do they part. These weren't one-time temper tantrums -- Porter has assaulted at least three women. Only now, years later, has he finally been held to account, albeit in the most minor way. Because we all know that by next week Porter will have a seven-figure job working as a lobbyist for some billionaire Republican or foreign government, because he has the ear of the president.
Working for the president is a privilege that should be reserved for people with the highest moral character and integrity. Not lying, cheating, wife-beating scumbags.
But when the president himself is a lying, cheating wife-beating scumbag with the morals of an alley cat in heat, the only people who will agree to service him are incompetent, corrupt and immoral thugs.
Saturday, February 10, 2018
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.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.
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.
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.
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?
Thursday, February 08, 2018
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 07, 2018
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?
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?
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