Trade War

Putin's Puppet Speaks!

"No collusion! No collusion!" is Donald Trump's rallying cry. But you wouldn't know that from what he said this morning:

“Russia should be in this meeting,” Mr. Trump said. “Why are we having a meeting without Russia being in the meeting? And I would recommend — and it’s up to them, but Russia should be in the meeting, it should be a part of it. You know, whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct, but we have a world to run and the G-7 — which used to be the G-8, they threw Russia out. They should let Russia come back in because we should have Russia at the negotiating table.”

And it's even worse when you hear Trump speak the words: he sounds just as aggrieved about Russia being excluded from the G-7 as he does about  Jeff Sessions recusing himself from the Russia investigation.

In case Trump doesn't remember, the reason that Russia was kicked out of the G-8 was that they invaded Ukraine, a country that had freed itself from the Soviet Union, occupying the Crimea. After that the Russians sent mercenary troops into eastern Ukraine, occupying even more of the country.

The Russians subsequently set up anti-aircraft batteries that shot down a Malaysian Airlines jet en route from Amsterdam, killing 298 people. That's a war crime.

This is why it's impossible to believe Trump's denials about colluding with Russia during the election. He's done nothing to curb their interference with social media, nothing to protect our electoral computer systems from Russian hacking, and he's constantly lobbying for sanctions against Russia to be lifted. After he fired James Comey Trump bragged to the Russian ambassador that the pressure from the Russia investigation was over because he fired "that nut job."

Now Trump wants Russia back in the G-8 so they can dictate the economic policy of the free world!

Meanwhile, Russia continues to work against the interests of the United States, supporting dictators in Iran (helping further Iran's nuclear interests) and Syria, where the Russians have been bombing civilians non-stop.

Worse, Trump's tariffs are angering our European allies and driving them into Putin's embrace. The Europeans are fools to have anything to do with that murderous dictator.

But now that the United States is run by a moron who thinks he can shoot the FBI director and not be indicted, why the hell not?

The Best Kind of Wall

Hey, You're Racist!

Now that the Philadelphia Eagles, the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers have all stated that they will not come to the White House for any victory celebrations with President Trump, perhaps it's time for the president (and his supporters) to reflect upon the fact that they are fucking racist.

I realize that it is highly unlikely that they will see the errors of their ways but I have to try, right? Granted, actually listening to a liberal is an anathema to Trump and his supporters. It's just not in their nature to reflect, take advice, and change. They really, really need to, though, because they look like a bunch of fools right now and they will pay the price at the ballot box this fall.

As far as the sports teams go, they should just invite Barack Obama to their practice facility and give him a jersey. They could have a big party as well and invite the liberal media

Hee hee...

The President Can't Pardon Himself

Back when Dick Nixon was breaking the law and getting into all sorts of trouble, the Department of Justice issued this memo regarding whether or not the president can pardon himself. In short, he can't.

Mostly I think what's going on here is Trump is trying to muddy the waters because he knows what's coming. If I were a conservative, I'd bail out right now. You still have time to hold on to a little integrity if you do.

Dancing FBI Agent Shoots Bystander

Lest we forget why carrying a gun all the time is an idiotic idea, here's yet another demonstration of the foolishness of the concealed carry trope:



Guns should only be carried by on-duty officers of the law, or hunters in the woods. They should never be carried by people walking around the streets, and especially not by people drinking or frequenting bars.

And then there's the incident that occurred in Liege, Belgium last week: a man stabbed two armed cops, stole their guns, shot them both dead, then shot and killed a man sitting in a car, then went to a school and took a woman hostage. When other officers responded four of them were wounded before the attacker was killed.

For umpteenth time: guns are not protection. They will not stop someone from backstabbing you and stealing your gun. Stab/Kevlar vests are far better protection than guns, but as the Liege incident shows, they're not total protection.

Design changes could fix some of these problems: how on earth did this FBI agent shoot someone while picking up his weapon? What happened to the safety?

And if the cops in Belgium had better vests and guns that only authorized users could fire, perhaps the only death that day would have been the attacker.

Racism That Gets You Elected President

The Hypocrisy of the Right

The Silliness of Spelling Bees

The 91st Scripps National Spelling Bee concluded yesterday, when a 14-year-old boy from Texas named Karthik Nemmani correctly spelled the word koinonia.  That's a Greek word, meaning a body of religious believers. The girl who took second place misspelled the word bewusstseinlage, German for a feeling devoid of sensory components.

So if these are Greek and German words, why is this a billed as a test of English spelling?

English adopts words from other languages to describe new things that exist in another culture or religion or scientific discipline. Other languages do the same thing, which is why German and French newspapers are littered with tech-related English terms.

English spelling is not hard because we have so many of these foreign loanwords: most of them come from languages with phonetic spelling (like bewusstseinlage), or are phonetic transliterations (like koinonia or samurai). They are spelled the way they are pronounced, using the spelling and transliteration conventions of those languages.

On the other hand, spelling of native English words is hard because pronunciations have changed over the centuries (with remarkably predictable progression), but we have retained older spellings. English spelling is not arbitrary and chaotic -- there are logical historical and linguistic reasons for most of our "crazy" spellings.

For example, the word right used to be pronounced somewhat like the first syllable of the German word richtig (the ch is a voiceless velar fricative). Over time English either dropped the velar fricative (as in right and through) or replaced it with another sound (such as the f in laugh). The vowel shifted from a "long e" sound to a "long i" sound in the Great Vowel Shift.

English is a Germanic language, so it has common roots with German. But English changed drastically after the Norman invasion. For centuries Latin was the language of the Church and historians, and French was the language of the English court. Thus, thousands of Latin and French words flowed into the common tongue, making it a Germanic/Latinate amalgam. That's why the easiest way to improve your English spelling is to learn some German, French and Latin.

The spelling bee is really a contest of general linguistic knowledge, not English orthography. Perhaps that's why the majority of winners are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Or are native-born Americans just getting dumber, fatter and lazier?

Wall Street Greed

The Only Numbers That Matter This Memorial Day

The Real Patriots Are The Ones Taking the Knee

Turning In His AR-15

Truly, a profile in courage. I wonder how many more gun owners will do this? I suspect it could be more than the gun humpers would like. They are so fucking insecure that if they lose just a few, they will foam at the mouth about how we are all going to die in boiling pits of sewage.

Football Players Kneeling

The Good Guy with a Gun Trope Disproved Yet Again

This past Thursday a gunman opened fire at an Oklahoma restaurant and was killed by bystanders.

The gun nuts are thrilled! Finally, after all these years of repeating the mantra "only good guys with guns can stop bad guys with guns," a shooting was finally stopped by an armed bystander.

Except it wasn't. The bystanders didn't stop anything:

The man, whom police identified as 28-year-old Alexander Tilghman, planted himself outside the door to Louie's Grill & Bar in Oklahoma City at about 6:30 p.m. local time. He began firing a handgun into the restaurant. Three people, including two juveniles, were wounded, according to police. A fourth person fell and broke his arm when the shooting started.

The gunman turned to flee and was confronted by two armed men outside, Carlos Nazario, 35, and Bryan Wittle, 39.

Police say the two men had arrived at the restaurant separately and saw the man open fire. They went and got handguns they each had stored in the trunks of their vehicles. The men then shot and killed the gunman, according to police, who gave no further details.

The "heroes" shot a guy who was running away. Yay for vengeance!

Because, by definition, only bad guys shoot first, armed bystanders cannot prevent shootings. As in this case, they can only retaliate once the shooting starts. The only reason the shooter was the sole fatality was that he was a terrible shot.

The only way to prevent shootings is to keep guns out of the hands of people who don't need them for work.

Arming teachers will not prevent school shootings. At best it will reduce the number of fatalities by putting down shooters while they're reloading. Which means they can fire 6 or 10 or 17 or 100 rounds before anyone can react, depending on the magazine capacity of the weapon.

So far this year we've had 23 school shootings (there was another one Friday in Indiana). That's one a week for the second year of the Trump administration. Trump is winning school shootings so hard!

Arming bystanders will not reduce the number of shootings, though it might reduce the number of victims. Making guns harder to obtain will directly reduce the number of shootings: the fewer guns there are, the fewer shootings there will be.

Would-be shooters will have to work harder to get guns and may just give up once they've cooled down. If they're more persistent, many of them will draw the attention of their families and the authorities, and they'll be stopped. Some percentage will still get hold of guns. But many shootings will never happen in the first place.

As a bonus, reducing the number of guns in circulation will reduce the number of suicides.

Arming teachers and bystanders just puts more guns in circulation, increasing the number of shootings, both intentional and accidental. People will inevitably lose or drop or have their guns stolen and bad guys will get hold of them. More guns also increase the number of suicides.

This is just a fact, based the experience of pretty much every other civilized country in the world.

If I Die In A School Shooting...

"If I die in a school shooting, then I hope I'm the last one."

After 10 people were shot and killed at Santa Fe High School, students are sharing what they'll miss if they die in a school shooting. pic.twitter.com/alQ9k5bCuM

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) May 25, 2018

Get Up!

North Korea Summit Canceled: More Proof Trump is a Moron

Today Donald Trump canceled the summit he had scheduled with King Jong Un. This was completely predictable, because Kim will never give up his nuclear weapons.

The Kim dynasty is more vicious and recalcitrant than Iran's leaders have ever been, so only an idiot would have thought that there was a snowball's chance at the sun's core that North Korea would agree to denuclearization, much less actually go through with it.

The summit fell apart after both John Bolton and Mike Pence started talking about the "Libya model" for North Korea's denuclearization. That model involves a dictator giving up his nukes and then being ignominiously murdered by his own people. For some reason Kim wasn't interested.

North Korea has been trying to get a summit with an American president -- any American president -- for two decades. Giving Kim the meeting was huge concession to North Korea by the United States.

Only Trump was stupid enough to fall for it. A summit between Kim and the president of the United States elevates Kim to the level of a world power, and lowers the president to the level of a tin-pot dictator.

This was pointed out to Trump by pretty much every opinion columnist in the free world, but Trump is such a needy, attention-seeking little bitch that he blew them off, one and all.

Ever since his dealings with the mafia in New York, Trump has been most comfortable with criminals and tin-pot dictators. Trump's preferred company is violators of human rights like Russia's Putin, China's Xi, the Philippines' Duterte, Turkey's Erdoğan, Israel's Netanyahu, the Saudi monarch and Egypt's el-Sisi, not people like Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau.

Trump is not comfortable with diplomats and statesmen. He's a know-nothing bull-shitter, huckster and charlatan who is completely out of his depth with serious people. He is the stupid uncle at a wedding who keeps making unfunny off-color jokes about the bride -- and his own daughter.

Remember how just last week Trump was demanding a Nobel Peace Prize? Looks like he'll have to settle for a Trump-Kim summit commemorative coin. I hear they're still available!

The Supreme Leader can't stop laughing. When a scumbag like Kim Jong Un can sucker the American president you know the world is in deep, deep trouble.

Beneath the Planet of the NRApes

When the original Planet of the Apes movie came out in 1968 the world was living under the threat of nuclear annihilation.

The hero of the film, George Taylor, is an astronaut who lands on a world run by intelligent chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas. Humans are mute and animalistic. In one of the most iconic moments in 1960s film, Taylor discovers the Statue of Liberty half buried on the beach.

Taylor realizes that he has been on earth all along. Humanity had nuked itself into oblivion and the apes had taken over. Taylor was, of course, played by former NRA president Charlton Heston.

The company that produced Planet of the Apes was 20th Century Fox. The film reportedly saved Fox from bankruptcy, so they decided to cash in with a sequel. But they had a difficult time making a go of it. Heston wanted nothing to do with it. They had serious problems coming up with a script. The budget was cut to the bone.

Different iterations were named The Planet of Men, The Dark Side of the Earth, and Planet of the Apes Revisited. In the end they called it Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

In the film another astronaut (played by James Franciscus) follows Heston. He discovers a race of mutated humans with mental powers who live in the abandoned subway system of New York. These mutants worship a planet-killing nuclear bomb etched with the ominous initials "ΑΩ".

The apes and the mutants go to war, and in the end Heston got his wish. He put his character out of his misery by pressing a trigger, detonating the bomb, and destroying the planet.

Though not the Planet of the Apes franchise. Three more Apes movies were produced in the 70s, there was a live action TV series, an animated TV series, a 2001 remake directed by Tim Burton and another reboot that has spawned three films since 2011, making Andy Serkis a tidy sum of money.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes was an allegory on the folly of war (Vietnam was in full swing in 1970 when it came out). It was also a bad, depressing, didactic flick.

But it was on the money with its portrayal of mutants worshiping the instruments of death. The film was filled with Christian imagery: monks in habits, a creepy chorus accompanied by an eerie organ, inverted crucifixes and the Alpha-Omega.

Lest you think that worshiping a nuclear missile is over the top, consider that most Christians worship the instrument of Christ's death, the crucifix. Some sects, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, consider the crucifix a graven image and claim that its use is idolatry. At its core, Christianity is a death cult, obsessed with death and resurrection, engaging to this day in ritual vampirism and cannibalism.

It is ironic that some 20 years after the release of Beneath the Planet of the Apes Charlton Heston came to be the president of the NRA, the leader of another cult that worships the instruments of death. After destroying weapon idolaters in the movie, he became the Moses of his own cult of gun worshipers.

The problem with worshiping these instruments of death is the ever-present temptation to use them for their true purpose. Someone always wants to pull the trigger to end their own misery and take as many others with them as they can, just like Heston's character in the movie.

These days Heston has many followers: in Parkland, in Santa Fe, in Sutherland Springs, in Newtown -- in far too many places to remember any more.

And we already know how this movie ends.

Guns: Where We Currently Stand

With the Sante Fe High School shooting, the number of school children killed in school shootings has surpassed the number of servicemen killed this year. The blame for this lies directly at the feet of gun owners. If they want our children to stop being killed in schools, they need to figure out other ways to feel secure in their lives. The particular group who are most at fault are members of the NRA, gun rights activist and any gun bloggers and gun blog commenters who, on a daily basis, advocate for unstable people to remain able to acquire firearms. In short, this particular group of individuals are domestic terrorists. They should be arrested by the Department of Homeland Security and summarily Gitmo'd.

At this point, I think it's important to summarize many of the ideas that I've had  for how we can change this and cease living in a fucking war zone. The first step in considering the problem we have with gun violence in this country is to look at the intent of the 2nd amendment. It was written by James Madison and was meant for local militias at the time to protect themselves against possible tyrannical governments in the future. That's why it says...

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." 

It does not mean that people can carry guns with them whenever and wherever they want. Recall that both Madison and Jefferson voted to ban guns on campus of the University of Virginia when it was founded. Further, Alexander Hamilton explains the meaning of  the 2nd Amendment quite well in Federalist Paper #29:

This desirable uniformity can only be accomplished by confiding the regulation of the militia to the direction of the national authority. It is, therefore, with the most evident propriety, that the plan of the convention proposes to empower the Union "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by congress.

If a well regulated militia be the most natural defence of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security...confiding the regulation of the militia to the direction of the national authority...(and) reserving to the states...the authority of training the militia

Since the time the 2nd amendment was written, the ensuing tort has shifted towards broadening individual gun ownership.

Yet even Justice Scalia, writing for the majority in DC v Heller (2008) wrote:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. ... For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues.(54)

Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our [majority] opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. (54-55) 

We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. [Precedent says] that the sorts of weapons protected were those 'in common use at the time' [the Second Amendment was approved]. ... We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of 'dangerous and unusual weapons. " (55) 

So, with all of this, here's is what I think we should do based on why gun violence continues to happen.

First, the current gun regulations are terrible. It’s very easy to obtain weapons that make mass shootings more efficient. People with little or no training can buy a gun at Wal Mart. Mental health history doesn’t matter. Some gun sales and transfers of ownership don’t even require a background check. Many states have very loose gun laws and some now allow guns in schools and churches. Here is how they should be changed.

-Background checks on every single gun purchase. This would include private transfers of sale.

-Mental health checks for every single gun purchase followed by annual mental health checks for every gun owner.

-Regular training similar to what police and military must accomplish in order to use their firearms. Organizations like ALERRT could be used.

-All restrictions removed at the National Trace Center in Virginia

-All restrictions removed from the CDC in their research into the public health issue of gun violence. -Insurance required for gun owners

-All gun manufacturer exceptions for liability removed

Second, mass shootings are #trending and have been since the Columbine shooting in 1998. People in the United States believe that they can solve their problems by shooting up some place. I think that many mass shooters want attention and the media certainly gives it to them.

Third, The United States is very rooted in gun culture even though less than a third of its citizens owns guns. Our entertainment (films, video games, television) are very violent. Even our language is gun based. Here are some examples…

“Number one hit—-with a bullet” (music)

“Rodgers, out of the shotgun” (football)

“Faster than a speeding bullet (comics, films)

“He went off like a loaded gun” (common phrase)

With so many references to guns, it’s no wonder we don’t have more mass shootings.

Fourth, there is still a stigma in this country regarding mental health. Adam Lanza, the shooter at Sandy Hook, was severely mentally ill. He was not given adequate treatment and was likely shunned by the people around him. His mom, an ardent 2nd amendment supporter, was ill equipped to deal with his issues. She paid for it with her life. If we addressed the mental health issue by removing the social stigma surrounding visiting a therapist, we’d have less mass shootings. It should be as common as going to the dentist with an equal amount of indifference when someone says they are seeking psychological help.

Fifth, the United States has a gun culture that makes it easier for unbalanced people to obtain weapons. These folks allow their own hubris and emotions about guns to override public safety. They don’t really care if people die in mass shootings. Their first reaction after a mass shooting is “Don’t take my guns!!!” or “More guns in more places” as opposed to “Hey, how can we help? Let’s make it safer out there.”

They are enablers to mass shootings and bear a great deal of responsibility for all of the deaths the US has experienced from gun violence. In short, they are domestic terrorists and should be labeled as such by the Department of Homeland Security. Given that we have lost more people to gun violence just in the last 50 years than all of the wars we have ever fought in, they are a danger to public safety. 

Finally, it’s hard to implement changes to existing gun law because there is no equivalent of the NRA on the gun safety side of the equation. Gun rights activists vote more reliably. It’s just that simple. This may be changing, however, as Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America just had their fifth anniversary. As more of these shootings happen, more people join their cause. This is the kind of group that could easily counter or even surpass the NRA if more people helped their cause.

Until there is a significant counter balance to the NRA, we aren’t going to see any changes soon.