I've purposefully waited until all the dust settled from the Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore because the hype was masking reality. I also wanted to wait for our president to talk about it because his comments on matters such as this usually indicate what it was all really about. Now that sufficient time has passed, it's clear to me that it was about business development. Check out this video, specifically the two minute mark
.
Trump really isn't interested in countries like Canada or Germany where there isn't much growth opportunity. This is why he spent last week ripping on them. He's more interested in countries like North Korea where he sees a new Trump hotel. This is the main reason why he cozies up to dictators. Sure, he'd love it if he could be president for life but part of me thinks he just says this stuff to rile up liberals and distract them from his goal for more money. Considering he owes Russia a shit ton of cash, North Korean development could solve a lot of his problems.
I want it clear, though, that we shouldn't dismiss outright the praise he heaps on Kim in this video. The simple fact that Trump's followers are that enamored with him means we always have to be vigilant regarding a descent into the type of fascism we saw in the 1930's in Germany.
It could happen here.
Thursday, June 14, 2018
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
The NRA-Russia Connection That Won't Go Away
The DC bureau of McClatchy has a report out that the ties between the NRA and Russia are far more numerous and deeper than originally thought.
Several prominent Russians, some in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle or high in the Russian Orthodox Church, now have been identified as having contact with National Rifle Association officials during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, according to photographs and an NRA source.
It gets better.
It is a crime, potentially punishable with prison time, to donate or use foreign money in U.S. election campaigns.
I've been saying for quite some time that gun people are fucking traitors. It looks like Bob Mueller is building a case against them now too. Maybe my dreams of these assholes ending up in Gitmo may soon be realized.
Several prominent Russians, some in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle or high in the Russian Orthodox Church, now have been identified as having contact with National Rifle Association officials during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, according to photographs and an NRA source.
It gets better.
It is a crime, potentially punishable with prison time, to donate or use foreign money in U.S. election campaigns.
I've been saying for quite some time that gun people are fucking traitors. It looks like Bob Mueller is building a case against them now too. Maybe my dreams of these assholes ending up in Gitmo may soon be realized.
Saturday, June 09, 2018
Friday, June 08, 2018
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?
Thursday, June 07, 2018
Wednesday, June 06, 2018
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...
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...
Tuesday, June 05, 2018
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.
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.
Monday, June 04, 2018
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.
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.
Saturday, June 02, 2018
Friday, June 01, 2018
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?
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?
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Monday, May 28, 2018
Sunday, May 27, 2018
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.
Saturday, May 26, 2018
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:
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.
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 "heroes" shot a guy who was running away. Yay for vengeance!
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.
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."— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) May 25, 2018
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
Thursday, May 24, 2018
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.
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.
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.
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