A Pattern of Systemic and Endemic Corruption

A wildfire in Pruitt's home state of Oklahoma

Scott Pruitt, who is under investigation for more than a dozen ethical violations, has just resigned from the EPA.

Pruitt treated rank and file EPA employees as enemy combatants, installing a $40,000 sound-proof telephone booth in his office so they couldn't overhear his conversations.

Those conversations were frequently with lobbyists and energy company execs who paid him off in a number of ways, including giving him a cut rate on a pricey condo in DC.

Pruitt also had his assistants and security detail do menial tasks for him on the government dime. He had his detail scour Ritz-Carlton hotels for moisturizer. He had employees try to secure a chicken filet franchise for his wife, and buy a used mattress from the Trump hotel in Washington.

This guy's judgment is abysmal. Who in their right mind would buy a used mattress from a hotel? Doesn't he know what happens on hotel mattresses?

In an administration that is larded with corrupt scumbags, Pruitt was arguably the worst. But the minute he was out the door, Trump hired another corrupt scumbag, Bill Shine. Shine was fired from his job as co-president at Fox News for the myriad sex scandals that happened on his watch.

Trump claimed he would hire the best people. But this administration has had a huge number of firings and resignations in just a year and a half: 61% of his senior staff have resigned. Clearly the Trump administration is packed with losers.

Why does Trump pick such turkeys? A number of reasons:

First and foremost, only losers will work for Trump. He treats his people like garbage, showering them with ridiculously overblown praise one moment, then stabbing them in the back and exposing them to national ridicule the next (Hey, Jeff Sessions, are your ears burning?). What self-respecting person would put up with that crap?

Second, the administration is in total chaos. Trump doesn't know anything about anything, but he thinks he can run the entire government by royal decree. Trump doesn't need any State Department employees to set policy because, he says, "I'm the only one that matters."

Third, there is no consistency or logic in the administration's policies or messaging. Trump will twit something one day ("HOUSE REPUBLICANS SHOULD PASS THE STRONG BUT FAIR IMMIGRATION BILL, KNOWN AS GOODLATTE II"), only to do a 180 three days later ("I never pushed the Republicans in the House to vote for the Immigration Bill, either GOODLATTE 1 or 2"). How can you defend a moron like this?

It's a non-stop dumpster fire.

Fourth, Trump picks turkeys because of their corruption and baggage. Their scandals distract from his scandals.

The more we talk about Scott Pruitt and the mattress girl, or Bill Shine covering for Roger Ailes' sexual harassment, the less time we have to talk about Trump and the Russians, Trump's tax returns, Trump's sexual harassment suits, Trump's illegal use of Trump Foundation funds to buy portraits of himself and give illegal campaign contributions to the attorney general of Florida, etc., etc., because Trump's scandals are all old news.

Pruitt is the worst EPA administrator in history, but his replacement is even worse: Andrew Wheeler was a coal industry lobbyist.

Infamous for denying that climate change is happening, and that our use of fossil fuels contributes to global warming, Pruitt is leaving when all-time heat records have set around the world in the last weeks and months.

All-time high temperature readings recently occurred in Denver (105), Montreal (98), Ireland (90), Yerevan, Armenia (108), Tbilisi, Georgia (105), and Northern Siberia (90s), a full 40 degrees hotter than normal.

In Quriyat, Oman, the hottest low temperature (109) was recorded on June 28. Yeah, it never got lower than 109 degrees.

Oh, and a couple of months ago high temperatures, strong winds and low humidity burned hundreds of thousands of acres in Pruitt's home state of Oklahoma and neighboring Kansas.

Geeze, Republicans. Wake up! Your states are literally on fire and you keep supporting bozos who are setting them ablaze.

Why Compromise With The Right Doesn't Work

Space Force!

The Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives

People need to understand a key difference between conservatives and liberals: Conservatives want their judges, their tax cuts and their guns and they DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHO DELIVERS IT. It could be a person who raped and murdered someone (they would call it fake news anyway). Conservatives also fucking vote.

Liberals, on the other hand, want their perfect ideological soul mate and will nit pick and hand wring while the US becomes a place where the Handmaid’s Tale is real, kids get shot in school every day and massive inequality is the order of the day. Worse, they don’t vote.

In short, conservative want it more. And that needs to change.

No SCOTUS Pick For Trump

Donald Trump should not get a SCOTUS pick as long as the Mueller investigation is going on. And if he is found guilty on any count, the Gorsuch pick should be nullified.

Consider that Trump is likely laundering money for the Russians through Deutsche Bank and worked with a foreign entity to tip the 2016 election in his favor. Such a person should not allowed to pick a judge who will render decisions on the law. Further, Trump has demonstrated on multiple occasions that he values loyalty above all else and thinks that Gorsuch and this latest pick will be on his side when (not if) things go south for him in the legal department.

I'm also wondering today about recent reports that Justice Anthony Kennedy's son, Justin Kennedy, may be connected to Trump's cash flow from Deutsche Bank. It's no wonder Mueller's investigation is taking so long. More and more information is coming to light...

More Of This, Please

Wake The Fuck Up

Trump Invites Putin to Join Hair Club for Dictators

After betraying South Korea, our ally of more than sixty years, for a roll in the hay with Little Rocket Man, Donald Trump is preparing to sell out our Eastern European allies with a "summit" with Vladimir Putin.

It's completely disgusting how Trump trashes our closest allies in Canada, Asia and Europe for photo ops with men who routinely murder journalists, political opponents and their relatives.

Trump is trying to sell the North Korea fiasco as a win, but it was a disastrous loss for democracy. The big fat man gave the little fat man everything he wanted. Trump accepted North Korea's claim for a "nuclear free Korean peninsula," which means the United States pulls our troops out of South Korea and abandons our pledge to shield the south with our nuclear weapons. It's only a matter of time before the north swallows up the south, the same way China gobbled up Hong Kong, ending democracy in the former British colony.

And that nuclear test site that Kim "decommissioned?" It collapsed, rendering it unusable, before Kim held a dog and pony show of dismantling it.

The only concrete thing we got out of the deal was three Americans that Kim had imprisoned. Which only teaches Little Rocket Man that kidnapping and extortion work on Donald Trump.

What will Trump give to Putin? Free reign in Ukraine? Revoke the NATO memberships of Poland and the Baltic states? And then the rest of the former Warsaw Pact nations? A pledge to pull our troops out of Germany? Or to pull the United States out of NATO altogether?

Trump is weakening the United States by severing political ties with our democratic allies, destroying the world trade system by imposing foolish tariffs that only hurt American companies and workers, and pulling out of international organizations like the UN Commission on Human Rights, leaving us with and less influence on the international stage.

There's a serious possibility that the international community will abandon the dollar as its reserve currency, something that was unthinkable until Trump blundered into office. That will make the dollar as useful as the ruble or the yuan.

When Trump met with the Russian ambassador he bragged about how he got rid of Comey. Will Trump tell Putin how he's dismantling the Supreme Court and eliminating the rule of law? Since this is right before the midterms, will he ask Putin to flood social media with pro-Trump propaganda like he did in 2016, and this time hack the computers that run the elections to ensure that Republicans win?

Or is Trump just inviting Putin to join his new Hair Club for Dictators?

Start Seeing Trade War Cycles

Trump's Space Force Is a Horrendously Bad Idea

Donald Trump is an enormously ignorant man, and his idea for a "space force" is a perfect example of why this is so. He thinks we need a separate military department to plan for a war in space.

The problem is, you can't win a war in space: waging even a small-scale war in earth orbit will render space completely unusable to everyone. Blowing up several satellites in low-earth orbit (LEO, up to 1,200 miles altitude) will create a cloud of shrapnel that will eventually destroy everything at that altitude.

Most satellites are powered by solar panels, and because weight is at such a premium, satellites have paper-thin walls: they are extremely fragile.

Objects in LEO orbit at speeds of 17,000 miles per hour. At that speed, even the tiniest pieces of debris can destroy a satellite. A paint chip could blow out the space shuttle window. The kinetic energy of an object is equal to one half its mass times the velocity squared: at that speed, a one-ounce piece of metal has the explosive force of four or five sticks of dynamite.

In an attack on a satellite, the debris from the primary target's destruction will cause more collisions, destroying more satellites, making more debris, causing more collisions, until a chain reaction destroys everything in LEO.

In LEO atmospheric friction will eventually clear out the debris, but it will take years, if not decades, to clean up near-earth space.

Spy satellites and certain kinds of communications and weather satellites orbit in LEO, as do the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station (ISS). That would have to be evacuated and abandoned, wasting billions of dollars and decades of work.

A war in space would render us blind and deaf, unable to monitor Russian, Chinese, North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapon sites.

Worse, it would severely hinder our ability to predict the weather. Now, as storms are becoming more and more powerful because the earth's atmosphere is heating up and holding more water, we would lose the ability to track and predict hurricane tracks.

GPS Satellite

Because the United States military depends so heavily on GPS technology, GPS satellites would be a prime target for destruction. They are in medium earth orbit, about 12,500 miles up.

These satellites are delicate, two-ton machines made of computers, spidery antennas, glass panels, paper-thin aluminum and gold foil.

A war in medium earth orbit would destroy our constellation of GPS satellites. Americans dependent on Google Maps to get them where they're going would have to resort once again to paper maps. Younger generations, who have never learned to read a map, would be totally lost. Self-driving cars would become a pipedream.

A war in high earth orbit would destroy our geosynchronous satellites, including communications, TV and weather satellites. At an orbital radius of 26,192 miles, the debris field would be less dense since there's so much more volume, but it would never clear out because there's no atmospheric drag. Shrapnel from destroyed geosynchronous satellites would also have wildly eccentric orbits, colliding with satellites at any altitude.

A war in space would render space too dangerous for human space travel. With that much debris in orbit, sending people into space would be a total crap shoot.

There are currently 40,000 man-made objects in earth orbit, and the DoD's Joint Space Operations Center is tracking over 15,000. Blowing up even a few satellites would create a huge cloud of junk in orbit that would be very difficult to track and predict: with that much debris, there will be repeated collisions and orbits will change constantly.

Finally, weaponizing space would be the most catastrophically stupid idea conceived of by mankind because it is so immensely destructive. That's why the world banned nuclear weapons in space in 1963.

But you don't even need nuclear weapons. Objects traveling at orbital speeds have so much kinetic energy that any heavy object is the equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Most satellites and meteors burn up in the atmosphere because they are not aerodynamic.

But with the proper construction any piece or rock or metal in orbit properly nudged could survive the descent to the surface and destroy a city as thoroughly as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- with the added bonus of no radioactive fallout. (Read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress [1966] for an idea of what tossing rocks at Earth can do.)

This is also why intentionally bringing an asteroid to earth for purposes of mining is a spectacularly bad idea. One crazy dude could plop it right on earth and all humanity could be exterminated like the dinosaurs.

There are billions of stars in the universe, which means there are probably billions of earth-like planets out there. But we have seen no definitive signs of extraterrestrial life. This is the Fermi Paradox: where is everybody?

The most likely reason that we have detected no intelligent life out there is that by the time a civilization is technologically advanced enough to venture into space, the enabling technology is powerful enough for one moron to destroy that civilization, either through genetically engineered plagues, nuclear weapons, or orbital bombardment with dumb rocks.

In our case, that one moron may be Donald Trump.

We Can Pretend This Is Normal of We Can Do Something

If you want some solid evidence of how anger and hate filled Trumpists are, look no further than the death threats, eggings, angry emails, and calls that the WRONG Red Hen restaurant have received in the last few days. Aww...aren't they cute when they get all emotional and stuff?

I find it incredibly hypocritical to get lectured right now on civility from Trumpists. Pick any day of the year since Trump announced his candidacy and I can show you multiple examples of incredibly poor behavior. This is their modus operandi. They continually accuse their opponents of doing the same thing they do with the goal of muddying the waters and brainwashing people into thinking every one is "just as bad."

Well, the rest of us aren't. We may react to what Trumpists are doing but we aren't the origin of the problem. THEY are. And we need to keep calling them out on it. My co-blogger posted a piece yesterday in which he stated that everyone should be served everywhere. The problem with this approach is that it gives tacit approval to gestapo tactics and an authoritarian wanna be regime.

I think that Jason Sattler has it right, writing for the USA today. We can pretend this is normal or we can do something. I say we do something and forget about the hand wringing over how to handle Trump snowflakes and their feelings. Will they care if we treat them better? No, they won't. They will think we are weak.

Find a good balance between not stooping to Trump's level and coddling the Trumpists for fear of their votes. Don't let them be dicks! Call them on their bullshit. In short, do what the owner of the Red Hen did and ask them politely to leave. Tell them we have no place for their inhumanity in our society.

Saving A Seat for Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Is Turnabout Fair Play?

Republicans are bitching mightily about Sarah Huckabee Sanders being kicked out of a restaurant because she works as an apologist for a racist dickhead who intentionally inflicted pain on thousands of immigrant children to further his political goals.

But how is this any different from the baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple? Or the pharmacist who refused to fill a prescription for a woman whose fetus had no heartbeat? The medication would induce a miscarriage for a fetus that was already essentially dead. Or the county clerks who refused to issue marriage licenses for gay couples?

All these refuseniks are in the wrong. If you're a pharmacist, it's your job to fill prescriptions that doctors have legally written. If you're a baker, it's your job to bake cakes for weddings that are legally licensed. If you're a restaurant owner, it's your job to sell meals to all comers.

If you can't in good conscience do the job you're being paid for, you should get a different job.

This is a dangerous path. Ultra-conservative Jews and Muslims will refuse to provide services to women because they can't shake their hands or even talk to them. County clerks will refuse to issue marriage certificates for mixed-race couples because "my faith demands that the races remain pure."

Restaurants will refuse to seat blacks because they're black. They're already calling the cops on blacks for the pettiest disagreements -- like the Waffle House that called the cops because black customers felt they had been overcharged 50 cents for a glass of orange juice.

Donald Trump is the prime instigator for all this crap. He is doing everything he can to divide this nation and set everyone at each others' throats. He thinks he can "win" by gaming the census, gerrymandering House districts and inflaming white resentment against any and all foreigners, including Canadians and Europeans.

So, no: it's wrong to refuse to seat Sarah Huckabee Sanders at your restaurant, even though dining out on high-calorie restaurant food is the last thing she should be doing.

Trump's Gargantuan Insider Trading Scam

To understand the true depths of the corruption of the Trump administration, you can't look at each story individually. You have to look at several of them at once to understand what's really going on.

Take these two stories:

Story Number One: Trump's Commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, profited by short-selling stock in a Russia-linked company that the New York Times was going to publish a story about, revealing the connections between Russia and Ross. Ross sold the stock three days after receiving a list of questions from the Times, which is insider trading.

Story Number Two: Today Harley Davidson announced that it would be moving jobs to Europe in response to tariffs imposed by the EU on their motorcycles, put in place in response to tariffs on steel and aluminum imposed by Donald Trump.

On the face of it these don't seem to have much to do with each other. You need to do a little analysis.

As on noon central time the Dow has dropped 400 points. The market has lost all the value gained so far this year.

During the campaign Trump said he loved trade wars. Trade wars are easy to win, he said.

This is manifestly false. Because we are the highest-cost provider, most American companies are going to lose market share. Workers are going to lose their jobs (as Harley Davidson showed). The cost of most goods will rise (like the 20% price increase in washing machines that has occurred since Trump imposed tariffs on them last year).

"Easy to win" means Trump can personally make money off the trade war. In 2006 Donald Trump said that he hoped the real estate market would tank so that he could go in and profit from other people's misery. In 2008 it did and millions of Americans lost everything.

That's how Story Number One explains Story Number Two. Donald Trump is starting a trade war in a blatant attempt to manipulate markets. Somewhere out there a Trump crony, perhaps one of his Russian buddies, is shorting stock. Others are lying low, waiting for stock prices to drop until they can snap it up at bargain basement prices.

Then, as he does with everything (North Korea, splitting up immigrant families), Trump will do a total 180 on trade and drop all the tariffs. The markets will rebound, share prices will skyrocket and everyone will start buying the stock that Trump's cronies bought at the bottom of the trough.

Trump is waging a gigantic insider trader scam that makes Ross's paltry scheme look like tiddlywinks.

I don't know how the money will get back to Trump -- he's got a lot of shell companies. We'll never really know until his impeachment hearing reveals his taxes.

But there's also another reason for starting this trade war. Trump wants to make his base angrier and angrier. Trump voters in Wisconsin will lose their jobs at Harley Davidson directly because of Trump's tariffs on European steel and aluminum.

But Trump will blame that on the EU. Trump is intentionally inciting anger against allies that have stood by us for decades. He's deserting our allies in Canada, Europe and Asia while nuzzling with dictators like Kim Jong Un, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin.

And Trump voters will swallow the lies that Trump and his official propaganda organ Fox News keep spewing because they love to hate.

A Textbook Case of Cognitive Dissonance

I wish that Chris Mooney would update his amazing book, The Republican Brain. He hasn't really talked about it much since Trump was elected but he should. It was stunningly prophetic. The emotional attachment that his supporters have to him have completely confirmed the neuroscience studies of the last 30 years.

This recent piece in the times illustrates just how bad the cognitive dissonance is with Trump voters. Here is the key quote.

“It makes me angry at them, which causes me to want to defend him to them more,” Ms. Anders said.

As Mooney noted countless times in his book, conservative brains shift all reasoning to the emotional parts of their brain when it comes to politics. Thus, when information come up that conflicts with their noggins, they get defensive and dig in deeper. Because of the massive amount of cognitive dissonance they are experiencing, they feel like they are being attacked.

So, the question becomes, how can we deal with this? Can we?

Note to Democrats: More People Like This, Please!!!

Where are all the deals?

Mr. President, where are all the deals you promised?

No deal on immigration. No deal on health care. No deal on gun control. No deal on spending cuts. No deal on Nafta. No deal on China trade. No deal on steel and aluminum imports. No deal on Middle East peace. No deal on the Qatar blockade. No deal on Syria. No deal on Russia. No deal on Iran. No deal on climate change. No deal on Pacific trade.

I thought you were awesome at this and we'd all be tired of winning.

Fox News v North Korean State TV

Without comment....

This Is Not America

Take a look at the cover of this week's Time Magazine.

Powerful, eh? This cover was made from this photo that went viral after it was taken on June 12th.

This image has become a symbol of the 2,000 children who have been separated from their parents as they enter our country seeking asylum from the violence in their home countries. The problem, according to Trumpists who are foaming at the mouth about this photo, is that this little girl wasn't actually taken from her mother. Their assertion is factually accurate. But so fucking what?

The simple fact that this is all they have as their defense demonstrates just how monstrous they have become. I saw a quote this week that was written last year that really sums up my thoughts these days.

I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters.

Exactly right. Kevin Costner echoed this in a recent appearance on The View.



I agree. This is not the America I recognize. Does being against liberals, trolling them, and hating them supercede being a fucking human being?

Apparently it does because the out and out lying coming from the Trump administration and the hateful denial from his supporters make me want to vomit.

Mothers in the detention centers do not know how to find their children.

Judges and lawyers are wondering where the children of the refugees are.

At another hearing before a different judge, as one of my colleagues asked the agent on the stand about the whereabouts of my client’s child, the prosecutor objected to the relevance of the questions. The judge turned on the prosecutor, demanding to know why this wasn’t relevant. At one point, he slammed his hand on the desk, sending a pen flying. This type of emotional display is unheard of in federal court. I can’t understand this, the judge said. If someone at the jail takes your wallet, they give you a receipt. They take your kids, and you get nothing? Not even a slip of paper?

Children are starting to allege abuse in the places where they are being held.

Trump supporters and Trump apologists, you can't avoid this any longer. Your dear leader is a racist asshole and a horrible human being. If you support him, that means you are as well.

Whataboutism and the Democrats did it first lie

What is whataboutism? Here's a handy definition...

Simply put, whataboutism refers to the bringing up of one issue in order to distract from the discussion of another. It does not apply to the comparison and analysis of two similar issues in terms such as why some are given more social prominence than others.

We are seeing this a lot in the last week with the Trump Administration policy at the border of our country with the wave of refugees seeking asylum in our country. Trump and his supporters keep bringing up a 1997 law and blaming the Democrats for this whole mess.

The problem is that everything they are saying is a fucking lie. There is no federal law mandating the parents and their children be separated. What is happening right now at the border is Trump policy-pure and simple.
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Moreover, his supporters love it. What does that tell you about them?