The Pope Ups the Pro-Life Ante

There are people who pretend to be pro-life, and then there are the people who really are pro-life. Pope Francis is the real deal:

Pope Francis has declared the death penalty wrong in all cases, a definitive change in church teaching that is likely to challenge Catholic politicians, judges and officials who have argued that their church was not entirely opposed to capital punishment.

Before, church doctrine accepted the death penalty if it was “the only practicable way” to defend lives, an opening that some Catholics took as license to support capital punishment in many cases.

The Catholic Church has a long history and hasn't always been on the side of the righteous, but in the last sixty or seventy years the Church has become more consistent on the sanctity of life. It, of course, opposes abortion, but generally favors reasonable reasonable restrictions on handguns, opposes war in all its forms, and vigorously advocates for the poor, minorities, immigrants and victims of terrorism and government oppression.

I may not agree with the Catholic Church on everything, but it has overcome many of its hypocritical deficiencies and is generally a force for good.

This is definitely not the case with American evangelicals and Republicans. They claim to be pro-life, but they're constantly on the warpath, clamoring for more military spending, more guns on the street, applying the death penalty to more cases, torturing suspects in military internment camps, and constantly attacking minorities and immigrants.

Take the governor of Nebraska, Pete Ricketts. He's supposedly a Catholic, but when the state of Nebraska repealed the death penalty in 2015, the Roman Catholic governor used his family fortune to bankroll a referendum to reinstate it.

American evangelicals and Republicans are all phonies. They claim to be so morally superior to the rest of us, yet they voted in droves for known sexual predators like Donald Trump and Roy Moore.

These are the same people who keep clamoring for more "religious liberty" in the United States, but what they really want to do is insult, ostracize, beat up and eventually drive out all gays and Muslims.

These self-proclaimed moral majoritarians in the White House and Republican statehouses shred the ten commandments every day.

The only reason Republicans oppose abortion is so that they can sucker single-issue Catholics into voting for them. Because people like Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, Roy Moore and all the other Republican toads embody everything that good Catholics despise.

Back in the day Republicans demanded that the Catholic Church excommunicate Democrats who supported a woman's right to choose (which is not the same as favoring abortion).

Perhaps the Catholic Church should excommunicate all the Republicans who endorse the death penalty, clamor for the torture of suspects, spread the cancer of handguns, and deny the basic human rights of immigrants and minorities.

Put Them In Gitmo

If you want to know just how fucking sick and dangerous Trump supporters are, look no further than this recent story about Alex Jones (a regular Trump adviser along with Sean Hannity) and the Sandy Hook families.

In the five years since Noah Pozner was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., death threats and online harassment have forced his parents, Veronique De La Rosa and Leonard Pozner, to relocate seven times. They now live in a high-security community hundreds of miles from where their 6-year-old is buried.

Yep. That's right, folks. It's not merely enough that Mr. Pozner has to live with the death of his child. He also has to live under constant threat from Trumpsters who think that the Sandy Hook shooting was "fake news" and that the parents are crisis actors. These are the people that used to be outliers and now they are part of the mainstream Republican party. For further evidence of this, take a look at this photo taken at a recent Trump rally.

Trump supporters believe that their dear leader is fighting a war alongside a hero named "Q" against a deep state menace that includes the media. Check out how CNN's Jim Acosta was treated at the event.



These people are dangerous. They are domestic terrorists. They need to be Gitmo'd.

Now.

Not All Cop Shootings Are Worthy of Protest

Marchers in Minneapolis are blocking trains to protest the death of Thurman Blevins, who was shot and killed by cops responding to a call about a man drinking and randomly firing a pistol. Video of the encounter shows (though not very clearly) that Blevins had a gun, which was found at the site, along with a bullet casing.

There have been countless cases where police have killed a black man for no good reason, and the African-American community has a right to be extremely angry about their treatment at the hands of law enforcement.

Philando Castile should not have been killed. Michael Brown should not have been killed. Trayvon Martin, though not shot by cop, should not have been killed. Walter Scott, Eric Courtney Harris and Akai Gurley should not have been killed, and in their cases the killer cops were actually convicted.

An awful lot of cops seem to be on a power trip, and start shooting at anyone who disobeys them or runs away, even if it's not clear they've done anything wrong. Many cops think that fleeing is a sign of guilt, when the reality is that being near anyone with a loaded handgun exponentially raises your odds of being killed -- especially black men near cops.

Sometimes the cops even shoot black men who are lying on the ground obeying their orders with their hands up. So it's easy to understand why black men run when the cops show up: they get shot no matter what they do, so they might as well take a chance on running.

But the Blevins case does not seem to be worthy of protest because of his erratic behavior:

According to the 911 caller, that man was "intoxicated," and "walking around shooting off his gun," which the caller labeled a "silver nine millimeter." The caller says the man shot his gun into the air and the ground, and hadn't hurt anyone, and that he was carrying a bottle of Amsterdam gin.

So, yes, it's a tragedy that Blevins was killed. But like most Shakespearean tragedies, it was of his own making.

What if the cops had just let him run away? He might have gone home and sobered up. Or he might have shot his girlfriend, or his mother, or robbed a liquor store and killed the clerk, or went to work and killed six people. You can see how cops feel that they just can't win, no matter what they do.

The reality is, cops don't only kill black men. Last month in Chaska, a Minneapolis suburb, cops responding to a 911 call killed a sixteen-year-old white boy who was acting erratically, threatening his mother with knives and a bat.

Justine Damond, a white woman reporting a rape last year, was killed by a Minneapolis cop who almost took his partner's head off when he fired at her through the squad car window.

And just few days ago in Aurora, Colorado, cops killed Richard Black, an elderly man who had just shot and killed a naked crazy man who'd broken into his house and attacked his grandson. The responding officers mistook the grandfather, who had a conceal carry permit, for the assailant because he was armed.

Which just proves that the NRA is dead wrong: guns do not make you safer. Blevins is dead because he had a gun. Black is dead because he had a gun. And most of the others are dead because cops thought they might have guns.

Cops are on a hair trigger all the time because so many guns flood the streets of America. Every time they approach someone sitting in a car, or in their house, or walking on the street, they face a real danger of being shot. But that still doesn't justify trigger-happy behavior.

African-Americans are killed by cops at twice the rate as whites. This is a horrible injustice. Cops who kill black men without justification should be fired and charged with murder. Cops should not be able to use the "I was afraid so I shot him" defense: they're trained professionals who are paid to make the right decision about deadly force, and should be held to a higher standard.

But protesters should choose their causes more carefully to avoid cheapening the effect: not every black man killed by the cops is a martyr.

Some are just dangerous, drunken idiots shooting up the neighborhood.

Oh yeah, those assholes...

The South Has A Wide Variety of People

Milk: Republicans Against Regulations, Except When They Aren't

Dairy farmers and cattle ranchers are not happy. There's been a steady rise in the number of vegans and vegetarians, and the search for alternatives to milk and meat is threatening their bottom lines.

One of the big battlefields is naming. For decades people who are allergic to dairy products have turned to things like soy milk. As veganism goes mainstream, people are looking for alternatives to animal products, and soy milk is increasingly popular.

But a lot of people are allergic to soy, or don't like how it tastes. And so the marketplace has responded with almond milk, coconut milk and even oat milk.

Republicans have been screaming about reducing regulations for years, and the Trump administration has been rolling back environmental regulations like crazy.

So how does FDA in the Trump administration respond to the thriving growth in plant-based dairy  alternatives? By hammering the burgeoning industry with regulations!

The Food and Drug Administration signaled plans to start enforcing a federal standard that defines “milk” as coming from the “milking of one or more healthy cows.” That would be a change for the agency, which has not aggressively gone after the proliferation of plant-based drinks labeled as “milk.”

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb talked about the plans this week, noting there are hundreds of federal “standards of identity” spelling out how foods with various names need to be manufactured.

Now this is ridiculous. Soy milk has called that for at least thirty or forty years, and coconut milk has been called that for centuries.

The thing is, no one ever calls soy milk just plain "milk." It's always got the "soy" in front of it. So there's never any confusion.

But dairy farmers are guilty of hypocrisy: feta cheese is properly made of sheep's and/or goat's milk. Many people who are allergic to dairy products can eat feta.

In the United States producers usually make fake feta, using cow's milk, which means people with dairy allergies can't eat it. In Europe feta is a protected designation, and to be called feta, the cheese must be made the traditional way in Greece, essentially giving Greece a trademark on the word feta, the way the Champagne region in France has a lock on champagne. Thus, American cheeses can't be sold in Europe under names like feta, parmesan and gorgonzola.

American dairy farmers want to sell completely phony feta and parmesan in Europe, but are trying to prevent the sale of clearly labeled soy milk.

The Trump administration wants to use government regulation to pick winners and losers in the war between soy milk producers and dairy farmers. Typical Republican hypocrisy.

For meat producers there's an even bigger problem coming down the pike. Some vegans don't eat meat because of the cruel conditions under which animals are raised, and the huge environmental costs: cows produce enormous amounts of methane, contributing to global warming. Large corporate farms create toxic lagoons filled with cow and hog manure. Spills from these lagoons are responsible for killing millions of fish across the country every year.

Meat production is also horrendously inefficient; per gram of protein, animal protein uses 6-10 times as much water as plant-based protein. It also takes a long time to raise large animals like cattle and hogs. Animal husbandry for food production is not sustainable with larger and larger human populations.

So scientists are looking at alternatives, like "cultured meat." Meat is just animal muscle tissue, which can now be grown in a test tube. It's basically cloning muscle tissue.

This would use drastically fewer resources. It would eliminate the need for factory farms where animals are packed into tiny cages their entire lives, making it cruelty free. There would be no urine or feces produced, so there would be no toxic manure lagoon spills.  There would be no need for slaughterhouses, which are notoriously dangerous to work in and basically require immigrants to staff them, because Americans simply refuse to work in these awful, awful jobs. And it would be far more sanitary, since there would be no dirty animals or slaughterhouse workers touching the meat.

But meat producers are already trying to ban calling cultured muscle tissue products "meat," again using FDA regulations to thwart their competition.

Which is totally ludicrous: these products are genetically identical to meat. You can make a rational argument for disallowing the term soy milk -- I actually have no problem with the FDA making soy milk producers call it a "soy beverage." But cultured meat is meat, even more than lunch meat, or sausage or hamburger are meat.

Have you ever eaten a hot dog? Or a bologna sandwich? Or even a turkey sandwich? Most of these "meats" have utterly no resemblance to real meat.

Most days I have a turkey sandwich for lunch. However, this is a misnomer: the texture and flavor of "turkey breast" lunch meat is nothing like a real turkey breast. Based on its texture and appearance it seems that they render it into a slurry, add preservatives and water, compress it in a tubular mold, slice it and then package it in plastic.

In real turkey, like you have on Thanksgiving, you can tease apart the fibers in the meat and tell that it was actually a muscle at one point. But most every kind of prepackaged lunch meat is a solid, textureless blob of animal protein.

Just like cultured meat.

Hamburgers, hot dogs and sausage are even less like real meat than cultured meat, because they don't use all muscle tissue. They include all kinds of animal byproducts (muscle, gristle, organs, fat, lips, snouts, etc.), ground up together into a product that has no resemblance to the texture of real meat.

Republicans claim to be against regulation, but they aren't. In their view, the purpose of regulation is to stifle competition, not to protect consumers from unsafe products or predatory monopolies.

Typical Republican hypocrisy.

Time For A Paradigm Shift

"Fixing" Problems He Caused

The thing about Donald Trump is that he constantly is causing his own problems. He does something really stupid, then does something that he thinks "solves" the problem he caused in the first place.

Most of the time he causes political problems for himself with his constant lying, but this habit has much larger consequences that endanger the entire economy and risk nuclear war.

For example:

A while back Donald Trump started making bellicose tweets and threatening to nuke North Korea. Then Trump did an about face, had a meeting with the dictator that runs the joint, Kim Jong Un, proclaiming how smart and how much Little Rocket Man loves his country. Trump got nothing from North Korea and publicly gave a petty dictator a blowjob.

Trump adopted Kim's position that the United States and North Korea should pursue "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," which basically means that Trump will retreat from South Korean peninsula, abandoning our allies.

Trump brags he saved us from nuclear war -- the one he threatened to start.

A while back Trump started a trade war with China and our allies. Other countries are now retaliating. The trade war is hurting companies like Harley Davidson, but even the threat of a trade war was killing American farmers who export soybeans to China. So the other day Trump announced that he would spend billions of dollars to subsidize farmers hurt by the idiotic trade war that he started. It's nothing short of a bribe to make them overlook how much he's screwing them over.

Months ago Trump tore up the deal to limit Iran's nuclear ambitions, which was reached by international consensus. The other day Iranian President Rouhani said, "America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars." That's a pretty conciliatory thing for an Iranian to say, considering that most every time an Iranian says "America" it's preceded by "Death to."

But Trump responded with a blistering all-caps Twitter tirade threatening to destroy Iran if they ever threaten the United States again.

Which is almost exactly what Trump did when Kim Jong Un threatened to nuke the United States. And then Trump turned around and had a summit meeting with Kim and has since had nothing bad to say about the petty little dictator, who by all reports is still developing nuclear capabilities (according to the Wall Street Journal).

And the stupid thing is, Iran is going to continue to yammer "Death to America" and Trump will do nothing about it, because Trump is stupid and weak, and is Putin's puppet. Putin uses Iran and Hezbollah to indirectly attack the United States, usually through Israel. (This eternal antagonism is intentional and mutually beneficial because it keeps the conservatives in power in all involved countries: Russia, Iran, Israel, and the United States.)

Trump desperately wants a "win" with Iran to make Obama look bad. As he did with North Korea, Trump will sell out any- and everyone to make himself look good.

So what did Putin and Trump talk about in Helsinki? None of his advisors seem to know.

I'd wager that Putin agreed to let Trump start a fake beef with Iran. Then Putin will come to the United States later this year and "broker" a fabulous new agreement with Iran, solving the problem that Trump will cast as Obama's fault.

The agreement will keep the status quo exactly as it is. Iran will sell oil, and continue to ramp down their nuclear program. It will make Putin look great, and Trump will bask in his master's glow.

And again, Trump will "fix" a problem that he caused in the first place.

Trump is just a transparent con man. A piece of trash who changes his story almost every hour.

First he asks Russia to hack the Democrats. They do. Trump's son, son-in-law, security advisor, campaign manager and other campaign surrogates meet dozens of times with Russian ambassadors, lawyers and spies. Republican and NRA operatives like Paul Erickson were literally sleeping with Russian spies like Maria Butina.

Then Trump wins the election and denies Russia messed with it. He blames a 400-lb fat guy sitting naked on his bed (could that be projection?). Pressed, all his experts constantly acknowledge Trump is lying. Then Trump grudgingly admits Russia interfered. Then he flip-flops on this ten more times, back and forth, back and forth, looking like a mendacious, feeble-minded nitwit embarrassing himself and everyone who works for or supports him.

In Helsinki Trump fawns all over the man who ordered the hacking of our election, the man who made Trump president. Reporters ask Putin if he wanted Trump to win and if he helped him. Putin says yes!

And days later Trump insists that Russia wants Democrats to win, even though Putin publicly endorsed Trump while getting a blowjob from him in Helsinki.

And then, to top it all off, Trump orders the IRS to eliminate the requirement that PACs report the identity of their donors, opening the floodgates for foreign money into American elections. The governor of Montana has already sued over this.

Why did Trump do this? He wants the Russian money, of course: he's notoriously cheap. But it's also quite possibly a false-flag operation in the works. Russia and other countries will secretly fill Trump campaign coffers, while making a few small donations to Democratic PACs, funneling through innocuous intermediaries, which will conveniently be "discovered" by WikiLeaks at some embarrassing point in the fall campaign.

Trump will then say, "See! I told you Russia wanted the Democrats to win! Nyah, nyah!"

This man is a traitor. Each day that Republicans let this piece of garbage sit in the Oval Office they blacken their souls as collaborators in treason.

Our Warming Planet

Updating Godwin's Law

Does Godwin's law need to be updated? Yes, I think it does given that we live in an age with Donald Trump and his insanely irrational supporters. Thankfully, Mike Godwin himself agrees as well.

By all means cite GL if you think some Nazi comparison is baseless, needlessly inflammatory or hyperbolic. But Godwin’s Law was never meant to block us from challenging the institutionalization of cruelty or the callousness of officials who claim to be just following the law. It definitely wasn’t meant to shield our leaders from being slammed for the current fashion of pitching falsehoods as fact. These behaviors, distressing as they are, may not yet add up to a new Reich, but please forgive me for worrying that they’re the “embryonic form” of a horror we hoped we had put behind us.

Yep.

The "Thought" Process of a Trump Supporter

Putin Supplies Trump's Montenegro Talking Points

Vladimir Putin is now feeding Fox News and Donald Trump their talking points:

During an interview with Trump that aired Tuesday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked him why the U.S. should abide by the rules of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and defend Montenegro if it is attacked.

“Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?” Carlson asked. “Why is that?”

“I understand what you’re saying,” Trump replied. “I’ve asked the same question.”

“Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people … they have aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations, you’re in World War III.”

Now, before Helsinki Trump had never given Montenegro a single thought. Trump only asked himself that question because Montenegro is one of Putin's pet peeves: Russia engineered a failed coup in Montenegro in October 2016. American never really heard about it because it was at the height of our election campaign. That wasn't an accident.

So why Montenegro, and why now? Because of the meeting in Helsinki, where Putin fed Trump new instructions. I can just imagine how it went down:

Putin [staring intently into Trump's porcine little eyes]: Repeat after me: The people of Montenegro are very aggressive. They are arresting my spies and coup plotters and I can't have that. You don't want to start WWIII over a tiny country that nobody cares about.

Trump [porcine little eyes glazed over in hypnotic trance]: The mountain negroes are very aggressive... The mountain negroes are spies and want to start World War III... Nobody cares about mountain negroes....

The details of Putin's coup attempt in Montenegro:

In October 2016, for the day of the parliamentary election, a coup d'état was prepared by a group of persons that included leaders of the Montenegrin opposition, Serbian nationals and Russian agents; the coup was prevented. In 2017, fourteen people, including two Russian nationals and two Montenegrin opposition leaders, Andrija Mandić and Milan Knežević, were indicted for their alleged roles in the coup attempt on charges such as "preparing a conspiracy against the constitutional order and the security of Montenegro" and an "attempted terrorist act."

In June 2017, Montenegro formally became a member of NATO, an eventuality that had been supported and opposed by approximately same share of the country′s population and had triggered a promise of retaliatory actions on the part of Russia′s government.

Montenegro is a small country that was part of Yugoslavia. After Yugoslavia split up, Montenegro and Serbia formed a loose federation. In 2006 Montenegro voted for independence, splitting from Serbia, a Russian puppet state. Since independence Montenegro has aligned itself with the west, the United States and NATO. They use the euro. They want to be a free, modern democracy and not a client of Moscow.

Putin is trying to rebuild Russian hegemony country by country. In 2008 he invaded and occupied part of Georgia. In 2014 he took Crimea and has occupied the eastern part of Ukraine. He shot down an airliner heading to Amsterdam. He interfered in the Brexit vote, the American election, and in other elections all across Europe. He's already got countries like Serbia and Belorussia under his thumb, and is angry that Montenegro got away.

And in case you're wondering why a Slavic country has a name like Montenegro, it is Venetian for "black mountain." The native name of the country is Crna Gora (Црна Гора, pronounced tsrna gora), and the official language is Crnogorski, a dialect of Serbo-Croat.

It is no accident that Montenegro has become the flash point just now. Putin knows how racist and ignorant Trump and his followers are, and knows how to pull their strings. He knows they would be outraged that the United States might go to war to defend negroes. So Putin put the Montenegro bug in Trump's ear.

With the arrest of Maria Butina, it is clear that Russia is doing the same thing in the United States that they did in Montenegro: sending over agents, seducing political activists, recruiting allies in the Republican Party and the NRA.

The only difference is that the Montenegrins managed to repel the Russian coup, while the Americans just let it happen.

Brett Kavanaugh Is Completely Compromised

Donald Trump always brags that he picks the best people. But invariably the people he chooses have terrible judgment or are corrupt, or compromised in some way.

Almost two out of every three senior members of the Trump administration have resigned or been fired, a mere 18 months into this dumpster fire of a presidency. And most of the rest of them have serious ethical problems that will eventually get them fired (like Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross's insider trading scandals).

Even the retirement of Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy is tainted by conflicts of interest: Kennedy's son ran the real estate division of Deutsche Bank when the bank loaned Trump a billion dollars.

Now Trump's pick to replace Kennedy has his own scandal: in recent years he was as much as $200,000 in debt with three credit cards and a loan. Supposedly he accrued the debt by buying his friends' season tickets for the Nationals baseball team.

This doesn't pass the smell test. This guy makes $220,000 a year, and his wife makes $66,000. It's just not credible that someone with that background and that kind of income could get into this kind of debt buying baseball tickets for friends.

No one is that generous. Or stupid. And if he really is that stupid or generous, it is disqualifying for a seat on the Supreme Court.

No, there's more to this. My guess is that he not only has season tickets to the Nationals, but he has racked up huge gambling debts betting on his team, or some other expensive and compromising activity that Trump is trying to cover up with this bogus baseball ticket story.

This kind of debt should be a huge red flag: the FBI and the CIA would never hire someone who is so compromised, and has terrible economic judgment.

Kavanaugh has been trying to live beyond his means, with tastes and appetites that far outstrip his earning potential. He does not come from money, and the salary for a justice is not much greater than what he's making now. So Kavanaugh will likely fall right back into the same trap.

Scott Pruitt, the former EPA director, is cut from the same cloth. He resigned in total disgrace for spending outrageous amounts of money on unnecessary travel and security, using his aides and security detail to run personal errands (buying used mattresses!) and trying to extort jobs from chicken franchises and lobbying firms.

If we should learn anything from the Pruitt episode, it is that men of lesser means in the Trump administration are too easily swayed and compromised by material gains.

But that is of course why Trump picked Kavanaugh. And that is why his nomination should be rejected by the Senate.

The NRA Will Go Down With Trump

Now that Russian agent Maria Butina has been arrested for spying, I'm wondering how long it's going to be before she starts singing about the NRA taking money from Russian intelligence. We've known for years that the NRA views liberals and anyone else, quite frankly, who even mildly disagrees with them as enemies.

So, it's becoming clearer that the gun humpers have gotten into bed with Putin because they'd rather fellate their boom sticks than have allegiance to their country. I'm looking forward to the day that I thought I'd never see: NRA members arrested for spying and the organization itself dissolved for treason.

The Morning After Treason

If you want an explanation for Donald Trump's behavior yesterday in the press conference with Vladimir Putin, look no further than this video.


The people that support Donald Trump hate liberals so much that they would rather ally themselves with an enemy nation than their own countrymen.

There is now no doubt that President Trump is a traitor. He broken his oath of office and should be removed from office immediately. Whether he is denying the Russian attack on our country in 2016 out of hubris or because Putin has something on him is immaterial. Yesterday, he showed the world where his true allegiances lie.

They lie with Russia, not the United States of America.

Trump, of course, is not really the problem. It's the people that follow him. Even with Fox News yesterday blasting the president as weak, there are still people out there, like the woman in the video above, that are supporting this guy. These US citizens have been taken in by Russian foreign agents like Maria Butina (more on her later) by using their hatred of liberals as hook. They will do anything, even commit treason, to make sure that liberals don't get into power again.

As I have said many times, these people are dangerous and need to be neutralized. There may come a point when our intelligence agencies are going to have to look at Trump supporters as enemies of the state acting against our national interests.

Trump's supporters are the problem and the focus should be on them.

Trump Just Swallowed Putin’s Golden Shower

At today's press conference in Helsinki Vladimir Putin spewed a Golden Shower of denials of his country's interference in the 2016 election, and Donald Trump just swallowed it.

There have been dozens of indictments in the Russia investigation, including several guilty pleas, so there's no doubt whatsoever that the interference occurred -- the only question that remains is how closely Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russians, and whether Trump himself is compromised.

Back in June, 2016, the very same day Trump invited the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails, Russian operatives launched a phishing attack against Democratic officials in an attempt to hack their emails. Trump seems to think that if he commits treason in front of the entire world, couching it as a joke, it doesn't count.

If he had been joking, he would have pulled a Comey and said, "I was just joking, and I am shocked and horrified at the thought that this terrible invasion on American sovereignty might be my fault." But instead, Trump keeps parroting Putin's demonstrably false denials.

In parlance that Trump should understand: every time he says "Putin denies he had anything to do it, and I believe him," the entire world laughs at Trump.

They're not laughing because they think he believes Putin -- everyone knows Putin ordered the hacks, and they know Trump knows Putin ordered the hacks. No, they're laughing because an American president, in full view of the entire world, is giving a murderous dictator fellatio and swallowing every spurt.

Just today yet another indictment of a Russian agent was announced. This time it was Maria Butina, the honeypot who conspired with the NRA and other gun nuts.

At this point, even his die-hard supporters are acknowledging that they have a serious problem with Trump.

Trump claimed "both sides" were at fault in Russia's attempts to sway the election. Just like there were fine people on "both sides" when a neo-Nazi killed a woman in Charlottesville.

And then today Trump said, "All I can do is ask the question - my people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin he just said it's not Russia. I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be but I really want to see the server but, I have confidence in both parties."

Trump doesn't see any reason why Putin would have screwed over Hillary Clinton to get Trump elected? Trump, who constantly fawns over Putin, is now best pals with Putin's other puppet, Kim Jong Un. Trump has started a trade war with China, Europe, Canada, Mexico and all our allies. Trump has cast the future of NATO -- a thorn in Putin's side -- in serious doubt. Trump has given Putin everything Putin wants on North Korea, Crimea, Ukraine, Syria, etc. Trump told the world at a press conference that he thinks the FBI, CIA, NSA and NSC are lying about Putin ordering the hacking and the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain.

After today's performance in Helsinki, can there be any doubt that Trump is either Putin's puppet and openly conspiring with him?

The worst -- and best -- thing about Trump is that it has shown that our system of government has a serious flaw in it: the American president has too much latitude to do catastrophically stupid things when there is one-party rule.

In theory the Congress has the power to prevent Trump from making every one of the colossal errors he has made in the last year and a half. But they have abandoned their responsibility as stewards of this country's future because they're afraid of blowback from a few angry voters, or they're anxious to stop abortion, or get a business-friendly Supreme Court.

And the crazy thing is, we already knew how corrupt Trump was, even before the election: from money laundering for Russian oligarchs and the mob through his casinos and real estate deals, to his tax evasion, to his hiring illegal immigrants to do construction, to his Trump University ripoffs, to his sexual molestation of dozens of women, to illegal campaign contributions through the Trump foundation to buy off the Florida AG to get her to vacate the Trump University lawsuit in Florida, and on and on.

There are hundreds more cases like those: all corrupt, all criminal, and they have all been publicly known for decades, but somehow Trump just keeps getting away with it.

Helsinki just showed us why every voter in America should vote a straight-line Democratic ticket this fall. It's looking increasingly likely that the only thing that will protect the United States from a slow descent into a Russia-style dictatorship is a Congress run by the Democrats and impeachment proceedings.

But Republicans can short-circuit that. If they man up and impeach Trump themselves, or less embarrassingly, invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, they can regain the moral high ground and keep all the gains they've made.

And Republican voters should be okay with that. They've got what they wanted: the Supreme Court will soon be packed with conservatives who will overturn Roe v. Wade. Environmental regulations have been savaged. The wealthy have their tax cuts. And they'll have Mike Pence as president.

That last was how real Republicans held their noses and voted for a narcissistic scumbag like Trump: Pence was supposed to be the backstop. Diehard Trump voters will be angry, but they're a tiny minority of drunk, drug-addled racists and sexists who will get fed up with politics when their class clown president is ousted, and stay home on election days, continuing to collect their disability checks and watch the World Fishing Network.

Republicans should show Trump the same kind of loyalty he's shown so many people who've worked for him.

Fire his ass.

With Two Tweets, Treason...

Take a look at these two tweets from President Trump earlier this AM.

President Obama thought that Crooked Hillary was going to win the election, so when he was informed by the FBI about Russian Meddling, he said it couldn’t happen, was no big deal, & did NOTHING about it. When I won it became a big deal and the Rigged Witch Hunt headed by Strzok!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2018

Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2018

With these two tweets, Trump has effectively given up on defending this nation. We were attacked by a foreign nation in 2016 and he blames our own country.

He's a traitor. Pure and simple

A Perfect Illustration of Today's Conservative

The Tyrants Clubhouse

If Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987...

...as Jonathan Chait asserts in this recent piece in the New Yorker, than I suspect that both of his SCOTUS picks will be nullified. Certainly, we have never really encountered anything like this in our history and I have zero doubt that Trump supporters and other conservatives will howl at the suggestion. Too fucking bad. This isn't politics. This isn't an overreach.

It's a recognition of reality.

This is just the kind of thinking and acting that needs to happen more on the left. We need to do the same shit the right is doing only a grander scale. If people don't believe it (regardless of whether or not it's true), say it over and over again until they do. In this case, we have the added benefit of it likely being true.

I know that many liberals are feeling like all is lost and another conservative is going to stack the court for years to come but I'm actually feeling pretty good. They've thrown in their lot with a mafia wannabe who is a traitor to this country. The GOP was effectively dead before this and after Mueller is done, there will be nothing left but the wind...

Quote of the Day (Dedicated To Right Wing Bloggers and Commenters Everywhere)

They would rather give a strident middle finger to Barack Obama, even at the expense of the air their kids breathe and the schools they attend. 

They’d prefer to “piss off Liberals,” even if their medical bills bankrupt them and businesses migrate away and natural disasters go ignored. 

Their white fragility is so tenuous, that they’ll give this President a blank check because he’s reversing any recent advances by marginalized communities whose gains they see as threats to their own. 

They’ll gladly take the bold type headline of “Trump Wins,” without caring to read the fine print where they are being hit the hardest and getting nothing trickling down.

---John Pavlovitz. 

 Sadly, sums up some of my friends and family...

Top 10 things Trump Wants To Ask Putin During the Private Meeting

Brainwash Them At An Early Age

Here is a video that is certain to make you ill on a Saturday morning (see also: Germanys, 1930s, nationalism, fascism).

Rape Joke Attempt Turns Racist

By Any Means Necessary...

Here is President Trump's full speech from last night in Montana. I'll skip the insults of Trump for today because the snowflakes that support him take it so personally. Instead, I'm going to go right after the people that are cheering him here and around the country.

Based on what he says in this speech, it's clear to me that you are no different than the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930's. You embrace lies, racism, insults to revered figures in our nation's history, hatred, anger, and a fear of the other. You are despicable people who have no business claiming to be American or patriotic in any way. You would rather love a man like this, in a fashion that is frighteningly similar to how North Koreans view Kim Jong Un, simply because he pushes your feels button. You are fucking pathetic.

You are enemies of this country and we are going to to take you down by any means necessary.

Will the End of Roe v. Wade Be the End of Trump?

For decades Republicans have been promising to get rid of Roe v. Wade, and ban abortion in America. But they never quite managed to do it.

Since the 1980s they have dangled a promise in front of Catholics and evangelicals: vote for us and we'll get rid of abortion! Abortion stills a beating heart! Abortion is murder!

Never mind that the death penalty also stills a beating heart, and lax guns laws kill tens of thousands of Americans every year.

Now, with the resignation of Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court, they seem poised to get rid of abortion.

But is it really a good idea for Donald Trump's job security to appoint a Supreme Court justice who will overturn Roe?

Everyone knows Trump is a skunk and a scumbag. Even though he denies all his crimes, his voters know he's guilty of sexually assaulting woman, tax evasion, laundering money for the Russian mob through his casinos and real estate deals, screwing over Trump University customers, yada yada yada.

But they voted for Trump anyway because they either A) don't give a damn about anything except kicking out Mexicans, and Trump hates Mexicans or B) don't give a damn about anything except abortion, and Trump promised to appoint judges who would ban abortion.

Once Trump delivers on that promise, and abortion is gone, why would any good Catholic continue to support this orange turd? He's an arrogant, selfish, amoral, twice-divorced womanizer who is unbalanced and out of control, loves palling around with dictators, and is a clear and present danger to world peace, the environment, the economy, the budget deficit, and the rule of law. And he insults the pope!

Before abortion became a hot-button issue Catholics were most among the most reliable Democratic voters. They are aligned with Democrats on immigration, the death penalty, gun control, the poor, and most every other social and economic issue. Evangelicals were essentially apolitical until Jerry Falwell trotted out abortion for them to rally around.

If abortion is outlawed, will Catholics return to the Democratic Party, and will evangelicals become apolitical again?  I hear evangelicals are getting pretty tired of being scorned for their blatant hypocrisy on Trump.

But, loyalty! His voters are so loyal! They'd stick with him if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue!

Nope. Sorry. Trump voters wanted to stick it to the man, kick over the beehive, poke the giant in the eye. Trump was entertaining, he was the class clown. When the joke gets old, and the bullying arrogance wears thin, and they're tired of losing their jobs and the high inflation due to the idiotic trade war Trump started, they will dump him. He has shown zero loyalty to the people who work for him, so why would anyone remain loyal to him once they've got what they want?

One of the leading candidates for the Supreme Court is reportedly a woman jurist, Amy Coney Barrett, who is an unabashed Catholic. Supposedly, Trump is tempted to name her to defuse Democratic attacks against her based on her sex and religion, putting a female spin on the "Clarence Thomas" maneuver.

But wouldn't it be the supreme irony if Trump nominated her to the court, she voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and was then the deciding vote in the case that tosses Trump out of office? She is a woman, after all, and has probably endured dozens of #MeToo moments at the hands of men like Trump.

Catholics and evangelicals made a deal with the devil when they voted for Trump. But they don't need to keep the devil and his demons around once they have served their purpose. Once Roe goes down, Trump and the Republicans may go down with it.

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.
.
Moreover, his supporters love it. What does that tell you about them?

Children in Cages

The Republican Child Torture Regime

There's been an outcry in recent weeks over the Trump administration's policy of separating immigrant children from their parents. Pictures of kids placed in cages by ICE agents have been plastered all over the media, making Republicans who have some semblance of conscience -- and a desire to be reelected -- reconsider their support of Trump's evil policies.

But this is just part of a long-standing Republican policy of using children as weapons.

Republicans claim to be pro-life and against abortion. They claim to value children above all else. But their actual policies show that they don't care about kids at all. They're constantly railing about welfare moms, trying to eliminate early childhood education programs like Headstart, children's health insurance programs like CHIP, children's nutrition programs like SNAP, and the entire budget of the Department of Education.

Republicans want to eliminate abortion not because they care about the children, but to force women to bear children as punishment for their "debauchery." Republicans think they're making women do the responsible thing by forcing them to have kids, but if you're poor and you've already got two kids, adding a third will just make you poorer and even less able to work.

The Republican trope for people on food stamps is a welfare queen with a half a dozen kids getting pregnant yet again to collect bigger checks. The responsible thing for a person in this position is to get an abortion. Yet that's the last thing Republicans want to let them do.

And at exactly the same time Republicans are making it harder and harder for women to get birth control. They push "abstinence education" which they know full well will fail -- if you look at the reddest counties in white America you'll find the highest rates of teen pregnancy.

But they want to punish girls who have sex, even though, nine of ten times, it's the boyfriend who is so eager to have sex in the first place.

Now, when immigrants come to the United States seeking asylum from abysmal conditions in their home countries, Republicans are taking their children away from them as punishment for "breaking the law."

But the fact is, being in the United States unlawfully is just a civil violation, not a crime. The punishment is deportation, not kidnapping your kids.

Furthermore, entering the United States illegally is not a serious crime, unless you lie or try to evade immigration officers. It's punishable by a $50 fine for a first offense.

That's a misdemeanor. It's like taking a woman's kids away from her for getting a parking ticket.

The people who are presenting themselves to immigration at the border and are being arrested, imprisoned and having their children taken from them are not criminals: they're refugees.

The apparent reason for this oppressive regime of retaliation against immigrants through their children is to incite fear in potential immigrants. Trump is trumpeting to the world, "Come to the United States and we'll steal your children!"

But if you think about it, there's another reason. Who's taking care of all those kids? Prison companies that began setting up large facilities along the border right after Trump's election. There's billions of dollars in contracts for housing and detaining immigrants awaiting hearings and deportation.

Taking their kids away from them means more profits for the prison companies.

And that's why they gave Donald Trump so much money during the campaign.

Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Hungry...