Gun McNutt Goes Too Far Even for Texas

A gun nut, ironically named Chris McNutt, who thinks anyone should be able to walk around carrying a gun without a permit has eighty-sixed the very law he was advocating for:

A Texas bill allowing gun owners to carry concealed firearms without a permit is now indefinitely stalled after a pro-gun activist advocated for the legislation by stalking state lawmakers — even appearing at their homes.

On Friday, Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen announced plans to abandon the “constitutional carry” bill after the activist, Chris McNutt, showed up at his doorstep and at the homes of two other lawmakers.

McNutt, executive director of the nonprofit Texas Gun Rights, was reportedly outraged the bill failed to advance quickly through the legislature. He posted a series of rants to his group’s Facebook page complaining about the legislative inaction. He followed these posts with videos of himself visiting the neighborhoods of two Republican state lawmakers, Reps. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock and Four Price of Amarillo.

This nut job went to Bonnen's house while his wife and son were home, and Bonnen was 200 miles away in Austin for a scheduled legislative session.

Friday, Bonnen called McNutt’s actions “gutless intimidation tactics.”

“One fringe organization’s leader disturbingly traveled over 700 miles in 24 hours just to visit the homes of lawmakers — knowing full well that members were hundreds of miles away in our Capitol while wives and children were alone,” Bonnen said in a statement.

The fact is, people like McNutt want guns precisely because they want to threaten and intimidate people. They want to flash their firearms in public around because they don't want "people to mess with them." That is, they want to be able to bluster and insult and intimidate and threaten other people at will, and then flash their guns when they're called out for their dickish behavior.

There are legitimate reasons for some people to have guns: deer hunters, Olympic biathletes, bounty hunters, cops, security guards, etc. People who shouldn't have guns include dope dealers, wife beaters, and racist dickheads.

Racism is the motivation for laws like Florida's Stand Your Ground law: George Zimmerman wasn't convicted of murder for killing Trayvon Martin because that law was passed for the express purpose of letting whites shoot blacks at will.

People who fervently want guns are exactly the ones who should not have them, because strong emotions and guns do not mix. If emotion -- fear or anger -- is the entire rationale for gun ownership, those people shouldn't have guns.

They should instead work to remove that source of fear or anger from their lives through legal means, rather than thinking that they can shoot their way out of it -- because the source of their fear can also have a gun.

The second and third words of the Second Amendment are "well regulated." The First Amendment contains no such wording about freedom of speech, yet there are numerous laws and regulations governing what you can and can't say and where and when you can say it -- libel, slander, obscenity in public places and on television and radio, as well as specific calls to violence against public figures.

We have freedom of speech, yet licenses are required for television and radio broadcasters on public airwaves. Why not licenses for guns on public streets?

It is specious nonsense to say that the Constitution grants the individual absolute right to brandish firearms as they will. And maybe even Texas is beginning to understand how truly whacked these gun nuts are.

People Who Aren’t Victims and Why Volume #2: Issue Hijackers

Lately I have noticed people bringing their low level of emotional intelligence and, well, crazy ass bullshit into serious issues, latching on to them merely out of childish rage. If someone offends you, stop and think about it. Is this really offensive generally or is it about me?

Hurt feelings or sensitivities aren’t cause to accuse someone of sexism, racism, homophobia or religious bigotry. These types of petulant outbursts erode progress on these issues.

Your personal crap is your responsibility.

Trump Says Solar Power Causes Skin Cancer

AP -- After being ridiculed for claiming that wind turbines causes cancer, President Donald Trump doubled down on his campaign against renewable energy. In Florida for the 165th golf trip of his presidency, the president sported a red MAGA golf hat while doing doughnuts on the greens in his souped-up golf cart.

While the president stopped to rest during the 20-foot walk from his golf cart across the sand hazard at the 13th tee, where his gold-plated golf ball rolled after a bad toss by his caddie, who had fished it out of the water hazard, he took questions from reporters.

"There's no question about it, solar power is very, very, very dangerous," Mr. Trump said, panting from exertion. "I can tell you from very, very personal experience how very, very dangerous the sun is. Just look at my skin. Look how very, very orange the sun has made it. I've been hearing that the sun emits very, very dangerous ultra-violent radiation that causes cancer. So that proves that solar power causes skin cancer.

"My very, very intelligent uncle was a physi-, fizzle- -- very, very smart man with great -- great! genes -- Einstein level genius -- you know, he invented X rays! -- told me if that socialist Green New Deal went through 400 million Americans will die every year from skin cancer.

"He told me that carbon dioxide and soot and ozone and sulfur dioxide from burning coal and gasoline forms a very, very protective layer in the atmosphere that prevents all that ultra-violent radiation from giving us skin cancer.

"The smartest people are saying that if climate change is real -- which it isn't, it's all a hoax that AOC -- who sucks very, very hard -- I should know how hard she sucks, I'm from New York too -- it's a hoax she started in 1985, the same year my genius uncle died -- he was born in Germany in the same town as Einstein, on the same, in the same hospital -- if climate change is real, then we'll have to use geoengineering and put more of that stuff in the air. So burning coal will stop climate change -- which isn't happening! -- and prevent skin cancer!"

In non-fake news, a judge in Arizona ruled that the Central Arizona Project (which buys millions of megawatt hours of electricity to power irrigation pumps) could stop buying power from a coal-fired power plant, which the owners had decided to close because natural gas and renewable energy were far cheaper.

To wit: Idaho Power announced that it would be buying power from a solar farm for 2.2 cents a kilowatt hour. This was part of Idaho Power's announcement that they would switch to 100 percent clean energy within 25 years, relying totally on wind, solar and hydro power.

Note that Trump won the popular vote in Idaho by 59% to Clinton's 27%. Conservative Idaho, often associated with white separatists and survivalists, is not buying Trump's campaign against renewables. Also note that the four of the top five states in wind power production voted for Trump in 2016: Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas.

I don't get it. Most conservatives don't buy Trump's lies on energy production. Most don't buy his lies on closing the Mexican border. Conservative business owners need more workers than they can find, especially in construction and farming. There are thousands of workers eager to come here from Mexico and Central America. Most conservatives don't like his trade policies, with all the punitive tariffs that Americans are paying -- not China, and the retributive tariffs that are literally driving American farmers into bankruptcy.

Why does anyone like this guy?

Marked Safe!

Trump's Mental Condition Continues to Deteriorate

Donald Trump has shown serious signs of senility for at least the last five years. And the evidence keeps mounting.

Trump has claimed that his father was born in Germany at least three times, most recently the other day when he was meeting with NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg:

"I mean, Germany, honestly, is not paying their fair share. I have great respect for Angela and I have great respect for their country," the president said of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "My father is German. Right? Was German. And born in a very wonderful place in Germany, and so I have a great feeling for Germany."

Trump's father was born in New York. His grandfather was born in Germany, came to the United States as a teenager, went back to Germany after living in the US for a time and begged to stay there, but the Germans deported him for evading military service as a youth. Draft-dodging runs in the Trump blood, I guess.

Like some wacky old grandpa, Trump thinks that wind turbines cause cancer because they make noise. Infrasound, in particular. You know what else makes infrasound? The wind. The waves. Whales. And every motor that runs in every city and every farm.

You know what really causes cancer? Coal: coal dust causes cancer in miners and the general population can get cancer from breathing coal soot and drinking water contaminated by effluent constantly spilling from pits filled with coal ash. Oil also causes cancer, from the chemicals used to extract it with fracking, to the crap spewed into the air from refining it (like benzene), to breathing the soot produced by burning diesel, to the fumes you inhale when you fill your tank.

And then there are Trump's frequent speech problems. Trump was unable to pronounce the word "origins" three times on Tuesday, saying "oranges" instead. Which is pretty hilarious, considering how orange Trump looks. Steven Colbert mocked Trump for these mispronunciations, which people politely call "gaffes" but are really signs of his deteriorating mental condition.

It has long been clear that Trump is a senile old dotard, as the love of Trump's life, Kim Jong Un, called him. Trump's Twitter feed and his administration's policies should be evidence enough of that, but when he starts losing it in full public view, even Republicans should realize that it's time to quietly demand his resignation behind closed doors.

Trump can claim he needs to spend more time cheating at golf.

People Who Are Not Victims and Why Volume1: MAGA Hat Wearers

If you put on a MAGA hat and then whine when people take you to the mat about it, tough shit. The MAGA hat is a symbol of hate and oppression rooted in racism and sexism. Expect to be hassled if you are out in public. Stop blaming others for the ideas you have embraced.

Our culture has ZERO room for this shit anymore and you will be held accountable.

This Is Getting Ridiculous

Last week a woman breathlessly reported that Joe Biden kissed her inappropriately -- on the back of the head in a completely asexual fashion, in front of hundreds of people. It was demeaning, she said. The other day another woman said that Joe Biden grabbed her head and rubbed noses.

This is getting extremely silly. What's next? "When Joe Biden shook my hand he clasped his other hand over mine and I felt oppressed, claustrophobic and unable to escape." Or "Joe Biden yelled in my ear at a campaign rally when everyone was clapping and screaming. And he sprayed spittle on my ear!" Or "Joe Biden leaned in to talk to me and he breathed on me and I could smell that he ate sausage and eggs for breakfast! And I'm a vegan!"

I'm from Minnesota, where physical displays of affection are less common than other places. I used to have a boss from Maryland. He would touch us to express support, putting his hands on our shoulders (no, he wasn't gay...). I didn't really like it, but I tolerated it. He clearly meant nothing by it, that was just the culture he came from.

If it were up to me, shaking hands wouldn't be a thing. It's a pointless invasion of personal space, a vector for disease, an anachronism supposedly hearkening back to ancient Greece to show that you weren't carrying a weapon.

The Japanese practice of bowing is much more respectful and hygienic, and allows for more subtlety and nuance than a handshake.

Then there are the jerks who use the handshake as a form of aggression and intimidation (like that dickhead Trump). I, like a lot of people, have arthritis, and shaking hands with a guy who likes to squeeze hard doesn't intimidate or threaten me -- it just proves the guy is stupid, inconsiderate lout who cannot be trusted.

The argument that "it's different for women" just doesn't cut it. Biden has done exactly the same sorts of things with men, as Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post noted. And other women, including Stephanie Carter, wife of former secretary of defense Ash Carter, have expressed appreciation for Biden's physical expressions of support.

So far, none of the things Biden has done disqualify him in any way for being president. Democrats lodging these complaints are only helping the Republicans. Not because they are tearing down Joe Biden.

But because they further the Republican narrative that Democrats are completely bound up in PC culture, that Democrats are delicate little flowers triggered by the slightest perceived offense, that they are intolerant and can't respect the fact that other people and cultures have different standards of physical intimacy, that they accuse people falsely and imagine slights where none are intended.

This, in the Republican narrative, makes Democrats weak and incapable of running a country in a world filled with rough and tumble people.

I don't think Joe Biden should run for president. He's too old. And, to state the obvious, this behavior is indicative of his age, showing that he's from a different era with different standards of behavior, when physical contact implied trust, camaraderie and affection.

But these allegations of impropriety for innocent acts of support are preposterous and deleterious to all Democrats. Worse, these spurious allegations diminish the credibility of victims of real sexual harassment.

Knock it off, you idiots. 

Covered By The ACA

Mexican Countries?

Check out what just blew up the internet...

The question I have is this. Are Fox News employees that dumb? Or are they doing this because they know their audience is that dumb?

Republican Opposition Politics is Killing this Country

Alex Jones, the right-wing rabblerouser who once claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax "staged" by a massive government conspiracy and that no one had died, is being sued by Sandy Hook parents. These parents have faced harassment and death threats from people who bought into Jones' lies.

Jones has been trying his case in the media, trotting out his lawyer and filling his followers' heads with his typical nonsense. Now the lawyers for the parents have released Jones' deposition in the case, and it reveals a great deal about how Alex Jones -- and rightwing blowhards in general -- think and form their opinions.

For example:

Most notably, Jones refused to acknowledge whether his actions added to the grief and distress of those who had lost loved ones in the shooting, and he claimed the lawsuits filed against him were retaliatory for Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid in the 2016 election. When shown short video clips of himself from his own TV show, Jones continuously claimed they had been manipulated or taken out of context.

He also blamed his years of misinformation and spin about the massacre on “psychosis.” Jones claimed that years of witnessing “corrupt” governments and institutions made him deeply skeptical of the “mainstream media” and the “agenda hidden behind things.”

Right, Alex, right. You're crazy because "they" made you that way. The parents sued you because Hillary lost. No, you dummy, they sued you because you were lying when you said their kids weren't killed by a nut job that the NRA, the Republicans and idiots like you armed and encouraged.

During the questioning, the Sandy Hook attorneys outlined the main conspiracy theories Jones has broadcast during the last six years and provided evidence debunking each one. Jones acknowledged that some of the so-called anomalies that initially inspired his conspiracy theories were later proven to be false. But he stopped short of taking responsibility for creating those theories; he told the Sandy Hook lawyers he was simply reporting on Internet chatter and providing a platform for the free exchange of ideas.

Jones claimed that the media, corporate lawyers, “the establishment” and the Democratic Party tried to make it seem like he was obsessed with the Sandy Hook massacre and that it was his only “identity.” They “tricked” him into consistently debating it, he said.

This is the common thread on the right: the Democrats "make" us do and say these idiotic things. We don't make up this crap, we just "report" on nonsense we see on the Internet.

In essence, whenever the mainstream media or a Democrat says something is true, they are forcing Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the conservative horde to say it is false, because they must reflexively oppose and contradict anything that their perceived enemies say.

This also seems to be the pattern shaping up for Republicans to deny responsibility for their obstruction on climate change. Now they're claiming that Al Gore "politicized" the issue when he took it on during the 2000 presidential campaign and the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Because Al Gore said climate change was a problem, Republicans were forced to say it was not, because they must oppose Democrats on every issue that Democrats think is important.

This shows the how utterly corrupt and empty Republican philosophy is. They aren't for anything: they simply have to oppose everything that the Democrats believe or support, no matter how important that issue is to the welfare of the country.

If Democrats are for abortion, Republicans are against it. If Democrats want to tackle climate change, Republicans literally want to burn more coal. If Democrats want to take guns out of the hands of wife beaters, Republicans want to put guns in every purse and waistband. If Democrats want to outlaw carcinogenic chemicals like Roundup, Republicans want to spray them on like perfume. If Democrats want birth control, Republicans want women barefoot and pregnant. If Democrats want to show immigrants compassion, Republicans want to throw them in prison -- even though people like Donald Trump are the ones hiring immigrants to do everything from building his golf courses, to cleaning his bedroom and ironing his shirts, to driving his family's car.

This is why American democracy is failing. It isn't that Democrats won't compromise. It's that the Republicans reflexively oppose everything the Democrats support.

Democracies work by negotiation: one side gives something the other side wants in exchange for something they want. Nobody gets everything they want, but everyone gets something.

We should be thinking of the country as a big family that doesn't always get along. If Joey gets a new pair of $300 basketball shoes, Lizzy should get that crappy phone replaced. Mom and dad -- the president and Congress -- should make sure everyone is treated fairly.

But Republicans have made everything into US vs. THEM, and turned government into a warzone, with no holds barred and no prisoners taken. And they're proud of this. They brag about how inflexible and dictatorial they are. They are so wrapped up in opposition politics that they would take the side of a corrupt foreign power that has actively been trying to destroy the United States for the last century -- Russia -- over their fellow Democratic countrymen.

These tactics may give Republicans a temporary tactical boost among their most virulent supporters. But they are ruining this country, undermining its moral authority around the world, alienating us from longtime allies and destroying the social fabric that holds us together.

The College Admissions Scam

A couple of weeks ago the FBI arrested a bunch of wealthy parents who had cheated and bribed their kids' way into elite colleges like Georgetown, UCLA, Yale, Stanford and USC. The media liked to emphasize the Hollywood aspect of the scandal by bandying about the names of two actresses (whom I'd never heard of), but this wasn't a Hollywood scandal: most of the parents involved were just wealthy billionaire businessmen.

To make it that much worse, one of the students was an "Instagram Influencer," who didn't really seem to want to go to college in the first place. She was taking up a slot at USC, but would much rather just spend all her time taking pictures of herself hawking products by Calvin Klein, Lulus, Tressemme, etc.

One particularly disgusting aspect of the scandal is how coaches took bribes to accept students who had never played the sports they coached. The man heading up the scam photoshopped the kids into sports action shots and fabricated fake awards on applications.

Which brings up the question: why do we have sports scholarships for colleges in the first place? Every year there are dozens of scandals with boosters and college coaches committing recruiting violations, players being arrested for sexual assault, and now student athletes are demanding salaries. The NCAA is a cesspool of corruption. Universities should be institutions of learning, not farm teams for the NFL and NBA.

But back to the scandal: the thing is, none of these wealthy kids need any kind of college degree to succeed: because their parents are stinking rich, they'll get everything they want handed to them, like Donald Trump. The only reason these kids were in fancy colleges was to stoke the parents' egos.

Today there's a story in the news about how these elite colleges have record low acceptance rates: Yale has 5.91%, USC 11%, Harvard 4.5%. What the headline doesn't mention, though the body of the article does, is that lots of kids apply to lots of colleges.

This is the scam: if large numbers of kids are applying to 20 colleges, sending applications to Harvard and Stanford just for kicks with no hope or intention of going there, the acceptance rate for these schools is completely meaningless. These schools are advertising these low acceptance rates to rationalize jacking up their tuition rates sky-high.

The question is, do you need a degree from one of these these high-falutin' colleges? Is an elite institution a requirement for success?

In general, a big fat no. In some fields, perhaps, the answer may be yes: every current Supreme Court justice has attended Harvard or Yale.

But that's the exception. I graduated from the University of Minnesota 40 years ago with a degree in Russian (with most of my coursework in computer science) and had no trouble getting a job. My wife took BS, MBA and master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from Minnesota, and worked in semiconductor design for companies like CDC and Honeywell. We were able to retire from corporate life after working full-time only 25 years.

Things are different now, you say. Not so much. I know a woman who graduated four years ago from Winona State (a small no-name college in Minnesota) with a degree in Information Sciences, and she got a job immediately at Medtronic, the big medical device manufacturer, for a high five-figure salary. She is already a senior analyst making six figures today.

Kids are stressing out too much about making it into big-name colleges. State and local colleges provide degrees that will let you earn a decent living even though they don't have the cachet of an Ivy League school.

The most important factor is not the school students choose, but their chosen field of study. They should pick a major that they excel at, which is in demand in the place where they want to live.

Sometimes it seems that every other kid I meet wants to be a veterinarian or a marine biologist. The thing is, vet school is very expensive, vets don't get paid a lot, the work is stressful, and they have to work weird hours. I personally know working vets, and it's a tough gig. Marine biologists aren't in all that much demand, and they need to work near the ocean.

If people love animals, they should get a dog, not a DVM.

Also, if kids aren't college bound, they shouldn't waste tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a degree from one of these bogus for-profit colleges, many of which are going bust these days (like ITT Technical Institute and Education Corporation of America). Many of these "schools" are just scams (a la Trump University and the Golf Academy of America). These are sadly still being pushed by Betsy DeVos, Trump's education secretary, who has a vested interest in such ventures.

Local community colleges and vo-tech schools are much better deals, and often credits are transferable to four-year institutions if students change their minds. These schools teach vital skills like programming and repairing industrial robots, which isn't glamorous, but is highly essential these days.

Finally, college just costs too much. When I went to college a Pell grant and a part-time job were enough to pay for it all. I didn't have to take out any loans. College doesn't have to be free, like so many Democratic politicians want it to be. However, every state college and university should set in-state tuition so that if students live at home and work part-time they can pay for it all without taking on debt.

Yeah, they won't have the "college experience" of living in a dorm, whining about cafeteria food, getting drunk out of their gourds and finding themselves naked on the mall at 6 AM Sunday morning.

But they'll have a degree and won't be in hock up to their eyeballs.

NRA To Shutter Its Doors

A recent and hysterically breathless letter from NRA president Wayne LaPierre states that the NRA could shut down "very soon" and it's all because of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. I realized that the NRA was having cash flow problems and struggling but OMG, where is my fainting couch?

Perhaps the reason why they are struggling financially is due to the fact that they are domestic terrorists responsible for the deaths of thousands of people and they, along with other gun rights groups, are finally falling out of favor with the American public. Being a merchant of death kind of does that to you.

The clocks is ticking on the NRA and their supporters. They better hope there won't be any mass shootings for awhile. Or they could...oh...I don't know...change? Maybe?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Read On Fox News Every 30 Minutes

The True Odds of Shooting a Bad Guy With a Gun

One of our regular readers sent me this recently from a couple of years back. It's still valid today.

The reality seems to be that when our bullets don't wind up in non-human animals or street signs, then when you use one to shoot someone, about 99 times out of a 100, you will commit a felony, shoot yourself, or shoot someone by accident. In one out of a hundred cases, you shoot the bad guy

Yep. Sorry, "heroes" but your need for a gun makes your life more dangerous to yourself and me. You are a direct threat to my family.

The Destruction of Climate Change Is Happening Right Now Before Our Eyes

Last week we drove to Utah for a wedding. Along the way we stayed overnight in Kearney, Nebraska, on I80. The town is famous for the Sandhill crane migration, and we saw tens of thousands of cranes flying overhead and standing in the fields at dusk.

My wife saw that a storm was going to hit Denver the day we planned to visit a nephew and stay there, so we continued on and stayed in Glenwood Springs, on the other side of the pass along I70.

The next day we tried going to Vernal, UT, to check out Dinosaur National Monument, but the highway was in near white-out conditions. We turned back south and headed to Grand Junction instead. On the way we saw a dozen emergency vehicles headed the opposite direction.

The weather reports were calling the storm a "bomb cyclone," and it was hitting everything from Utah to Iowa, so we stayed in Grand Junction. A record was set for the lowest atmospheric pressure in Colorado, at 968 millibars. This was a land-based hurricane, with winds up to 96 mph, equivalent to category 2 hurricane.

We got to Utah without incident, but along the way we heard many stories from several travelers who simply couldn't get home. After the snow there was rain, and then it got really warm, and all the snow melted at once. Highways in Nebraska and Iowa were inundated by flood water, and thousands of people were stranded.

Damage reports are trickling in. Nebraska's bill for the storm will be $1.3 billion. Iowa's will be $1.9 billion. Other states suffered similar destruction.

Meanwhile, temperatures in Alaska have been in the 70s.

Climate change didn't "cause" this storm. But it made the storm that much more destructive. Global temperatures are rising, and that means the air can hold more water. More water means more energy in the atmosphere, more snow, more rain, more floods and more death and destruction.

Places like Alaska, Nebraska and Iowa are strongholds of the Republican Party and climate change denial. Yet they're the ones who are going to suffer the most damage from climate change. Nebraska is sucking its aquifers dry (pretty much every farm uses irrigation) and as it turns into a semi-desert it will cease to be the breadbasket of the United States.

It's so confounding: voters in these states keep electing the people who are responsible for the destruction of their way of life. How long will they let the Republicans play them for suckers?

We Need To Make Racists Afraid-Deathly Afraid

The recent shooting in New Zealand has made one thing very clear to me: racist gun humpers aren't really afraid of ordinary society. They look at liberals and see vegans who listen to NPR and talk too much about diversity. In short, they see weakness. We need to disabuse them of that notion. Yet how can we accomplish that without arming ourselves to the teeth?

Well, that's not exactly true. The federal government has a standing army that should be put to use on what is clearly domestic terrorism. Rather than focus on the very much weakened (if even existent at all anymore) Islamic rooted terrorism, we should turn the laser focus on assholes like this.

White men are the fucking problem. Period. Social media is filled with assholes like this and they should be targeted and jailed. Terroristic threats are a felony. The shooter in New Zealand live streamed his attack. How about we live stream racist, white pricks getting the shit beat out of them? Better yet, we just make these fuckers vanish into a black site somewhere. Gitmo their asses. 

Until mass shooters feel fear from civilized people, they are going to keep doing what they are doing. It has to be much heavier than just a possible armed person at the scene. That's why the good guy with a gun nonsense won't work. They'd actually probably love that. It has to be a relentless and daily oppression on a number of fronts. Their guns seized immediately or prevention from even owning them in the first place. Their jobs, gone. Constant harassment on social media and in their daily lives. Forced diversity training. Jail for some if they get too out of line. 

White supremacists aren't afraid of us. We need to make them feel that fear. Otherwise, they will keep doing this shit. 

Hijabs in Nebraska!

My wife and I were taking a lunch break at a truck stop while driving across Nebraska when we saw a woman and her daughter get out of a car. They were wearing long dresses that went all the way to the ground, and had their hair covered.

Clearly, they don't believe in the Constitution, as "Judge Jeanine" implied on Fox News that Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota does not:

"Omar wears a hijab, which, according to the Quran 33:59, tells women to cover so they won’t get molested," Pirro said. "Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?"

Were the women I saw Muslims bent on subverting the Constitution, replacing it with Islamic Law?

I doubt it. They were blonde and blue-eyed and in the middle of Husker country. They were probably Mennonites, like these:

Until the 1960s it was extremely common for American women to wear long dresses and cover their hair in exactly the same way that some (not all!) Muslim women. Many still do: Amish women do. Many orders of nuns do. The Christian bible prescribes modest dress for exactly the same reasons that the Quran does. Are they defying the Constitution?

And it's not just women. What about Jewish men who reject American custom and wear yarmulkes during the US national anthem, putting the law of the Torah before the Constitution? Are they anti-American, or simply devout?

How do you think a Trump supporter would react to a Jew wearing his kippah during the anthem at a football game? The same way they react to Colin Kaepernick?

Personally, I think customs requiring women to cover themselves up are evil: they put the onus of avoiding rape on women, rather than demanding men behave like civilized human beings.

But if women want to wear halter tops, or miniskirts, or hijabs, that's up to them. No one else has any business telling them what they can wear.

But then you've got people like Jeanine Pirro and Sebastian Gorka condemning an American citizen in the starkest terms for a stupid wardrobe choice.

And why? It's not because they actually believe that wearing a hijab means these people are trying to subvert the Constitution, any more than Amish or Mennonite women wearing the same outfit are.

No, Gorka and Pirro and Fox News only care about inflaming public opinion, inciting hatred against Muslims and Democrats in general, and Ilhan Omar in particular. They are always searching for a sacrificial goat to demonize, and this week it's Ilhan Omar because she dared speak the truth about the vile behavior of Benjamin Netanyahu's conservative government in Israel.

They and the rest of the Fox News propaganda machine are a bunch of baby Goebbels intent on perpetuating the discriminatory, racist and corrupt rule of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

Most Republicans don't really care about Jews or Israel. Trump thought many of the neo-Nazis chanting "Jews will not replace us!" in Charlottesville were fine people.

Many evangelicals believe that the second coming of Jesus Christ is contingent on the Jews returning to Jerusalem. And then Armageddon comes, Israel is destroyed, the Rapture comes and the world ends.

These people don't support Israel because they love the Jews (they want to make Christianity the national religion after all). It's because they want their blasted prophecy to come true. The same prophecy that would have all Jews die because they haven't accepted Jesus as their personal savior.

The Madam of Miami Massage and Citizens United

Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign was just socked with a huge fine for receiving foreign campaign contributions:

The Federal Election Commission on Monday doled out $940,000 in fines to the super PAC that backed Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential bid and a Chinese-owned corporation that made illegal donations to it.

The unusually large FEC fines came after the commission found evidence Bush’s super PAC took money from a foreign national, which is prohibited under federal election law. The super PAC, Right to Rise, was fined $390,000 for the violation, while the FEC gave an additional $550,000 fine to American Pacific International Capital, Inc. The company had donated $1.3 million to Bush’s super PAC in the spring of 2015, as Bush was gearing up for a run for president.

So what, you say. The problem is that the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allowed corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to politicians. Other decisions have allowed contributors to donate to PACs (political action committees) with complete anonymity. That means there is no way to know whether foreign money is being funneled into American campaign coffers. Only idiots like Neil Bush (of Silverado Savings and Loan fame) will get caught, however.

Jeb lost, so this is irrelevant, right? Nope. Take the case of Cindy Yang, the founder of the massage parlor where Patriots owner Robert Kraft was arrested for soliciting prostitution.

Yang has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Donald Trump and other Republicans and has made a business of selling access to Trump at Mar a Lago. She brings foreigners into his inner circle, getting them into places that he frequents and connecting them with Trump surrogates like his sons.

Besides the obvious scandal of Trump and his family posing for selfies with the Madam of Miami Massage, who is apparently involved in human trafficking and prostitution, and the pay to play aspect of foreigners buying access to Trump and donating money to his campaign, this is a huge security risk.

Trump conducts real government business in these locations and he's bringing people linked to Chinese intelligence into his very home. Trump is notoriously careless with secret intelligence, blabbing everything to the Russians he can think of, so what kind of intel is he giving to the Chinese at his shindigs? And are they leaving surveillance devices in Mar a Lago?

And this is all possible because of the Supreme Court's Citizens United, which equated money with free speech and said that there was no appearance of corruption if corporations are free to donate unlimited quantities of cash anonymously....

How Trump Wins in 2020

Matt Schlapp recently scored the much coveted first segment on Real Time with Bill Maher. Schlapp is the head of CPAC and a conservative podcaster. He had many interesting things to say but the most revealing were his thoughts on how Donald Trump could win the 2020 election. Of course, this is assuming that he will make it to the election. I still don't think he will. But let''s assume that he does, for argument's sake.

Schlapp thinks that Americans will look at what Trump said he was going to do when he got elected and how he followed through on it. Schlapp believes Trump has done a good job on this. Certainly, Republicans are happy that Trump got the two SCOTUS judges, got out of the Iran deal, is (kinda) building a wall, and is being the troll they love him to be. But are independents? Or the two time Obama Democratic voters who voted for Trump in 2016? I'm not so sure. Trump can't win without those voters.

The biggest miss by Schlapp is who Trump will be running against. Obviously, the candidate the Dems put up is going to truly tell the tale. I think it has to be a Gen Xer, non Senator who is a woman of color. This same candidate should have a deep populist streak in her and spend most of her time on kitchen table issues, steering clear of trollbait. The Dems won in 2018 because they took this tack. They should stick with what wins and get back that element of the voter base that peeled off to Trump in 2016. They should start with how Trump voters are pissed about their tax returns.

Here is the full interview with Mr. Schlapp.

Own Your Bad Eggs

Check out the last few minutes of Spike Lee's masterpiece, BlacKkKlansman.



Start owning your bad eggs, conservatives. They are leading to your downfall.

Think Like a Dictator

There's an upwelling of anger against Donald Trump among his allies for his defense of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. When asked about the death of Otto Warmbier, an American student who died from a brain injury after being released from a North Korean prison, where he had been sentenced to 15 years hard labor for stealing a propaganda poster, Trump said:

I don’t believe that he would have allowed that to happen; it just wasn’t to his advantage to allow that to happen. Those prisons are rough — they’re rough places — and bad things happened. But I really don’t believe that he — I don’t believe that he knew about it.

He tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.

Is Trump totally oblivious? Kim unquestionably allowed it to happen: Otto died, Kim is the absolute dictator of North Korea, he could have let Otto go at any time before the injury. Ergo, Kim allowed it to happen.

No, Kim didn't personally bash Otto over the head with a lead pipe. He lords over an evil dictatorship that kidnaps foreigners and throws them in prison for decades for bogus offenses. He then uses these victims as pawns to extort favors from foreign governments. For example, to get a meeting with Trump.

How can Trump not understand that Kim is evil incarnate and that he is directly responsible for Otto's death? Because Trump thinks like a dictator.

And by the way, Trump is doing exactly the same thing to women and children that Kim did to Otto Warmbier.

When victims of gang violence and poverty come to the United States from Central and South America seeking asylum, Trump's policy dictates the ICE throw them into privately-run for-profit prisons, separating parents from children. Some of these kids are put in cages. Some of them have been sexually assaulted in ICE detention. Some of them have died. Many of them will never see their parents again because they were so young when they were taken that they don't even know their last names, and their parents have been sent back to their home countries (or died).

If Trump admits that Kim is guilty of Otto's death, he would be admitting that he is responsible for all the travesties that happen to children in ICE detention centers.

It's the same with the Saudi prince, Mohammad bin Salman, and the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi: MbS wanted Khoshoggi dead, and now he's dead. MbS didn't slice up his body, but he ordered the hit and is responsible. But because MbS is best buds with Jared Kushner, and he's a dictator like Trump wants to be, Trump "believes" his denial.

Trump is jealous of dictators like Kim, MbS and Putin (who's had dozens of journalists and political opponents murdered) and wants to pull the same crap that they pull. Trump constantly trashes our democratic allies, but consistently lavishes praise on the most heinous tramplers of human rights.

It just baffles the mind to think that so many Republicans are defending a creature so thoroughly and indisputably corrupt. In a few months or years they will find themselves in exactly the same position that Michael Cohen finds himself in: they will rue the day that they defended Trump, that they lied for him, that they threatened people for him, that they sold their souls to this ineffably corrupt demon who will throw them under the bus the instant he no longer needs them.

Like Michael Cohen, or Michael Flynn, or John Kelly, or Reince Priebus, or Steve Bannon, or Rex Tillerson, or Jeff Sessions, or Rod Rosenstein, or Jim Mattis, or... Well, you get the picture.

How Conservative Propaganda Works

The Epic Takedown That Has The Internet Exploding

Exactly How Stupid Is Donald Trump? 42 Billion!

Donald Trump is, to put it mildly, stupid. But have you ever wondered exactly how stupid he is? What if there was a way to put an actual number to his level of stupidity?

Well, there is a way. And since money is the only thing that matters to Donald Trump and Republicans, that number should be a dollar figure. We will roughly calculate this based on Trump's proposal for controlling forest fires.

One of the major causes of forest fires in recent years is climate change. Donald Trump is relentless in denying this basic fact. He thinks that we can stop forest fires by raking, which he said the president of Finland told him was how they prevented fires (note: Finland is near the Arctic Circle and has 187,000 lakes). The Finnish president denied ever saying this.

Trump doubled down on stupidity in an interview on Fox News last November, this time claiming that a governor of "a certain state, I won't say which," told Trump they tested raking forests and that it stops forest fires. The reason Trump won't say which states is because he's lying and doesn't want to be embarrassed, as he was when the Finnish president called him on his lie.

So, down to brass tacks.

According to a 2014 USDA report, there were 819 million acres of forest and woodlands in the United States in 2012. California alone has 33 million acres of forest.

So, how long does it it take you to rake your yard? A couple of hours? We'll just say two hours. The average American yard is 0.22 acres. That means it takes 4.5 hours to rake an acre. The average lawn maintenance worker made $11.53 an hour in 2012, and that price has only gone up since then. But we'll low-ball it and use that number.

It would take 148,500,000 hours to rake all 33 million acres of California's forests, at a cost of $1.7 billion. That's 74,250 man years.

If we apply the Trump forest fire solution to the entire country, it would  take 3.7 billion hours (1.8 million man years) and cost $42 billion. Every year. Forever.

So, where do we put all those leaves and pine needles that those workers rake up? And how do we get those leaves and needles out of those forests, many of which have no roads? And what happens to the animals and insects that live in those forests when all these guys with leaf blowers and rakes come tearing though? And what happens to the trees when they no longer have the nutrients that decaying dead leaves put back in the soil?

So that's how stupid Donald Trump is: 42 billion.

Given the dire straits a lot of employers are in these days trying to find people who will do menial jobs like lawn maintenance, where are we going to find 1.8 million people working full time raking forests?

For a start, I hear that 10 immigrant groundskeepers who worked illegally at Trump's Westchester golf club are newly available.

How can anyone take this clown seriously? He's a stupid, senile old man who thinks you can solve forest fires by raking. Now, I doubt he really believes this is an actual solution to forest fires. What he's doing is insulting the intelligence of everyone who's listening, in particular his supporters.

He has been feeding his voters a completely stupid and unrealistic line of bullshit on everything from forest fires to immigration, while at the same hiring hundreds of foreigners -- many illegally -- to work at his golf courses, hotels and clubs to do jobs that he categorically refuses to give to Americans.

Trump voters get really mad at liberals who think they're stupid. But Trump constantly treats them like morons, feeding them an idiotic diet of total bullshit of every day, while taking their support for granted.

Too Many People Running For President

Now that Bernie Sanders has thrown his hat into the ring along with the 89 other people running for the Democratic nomination, I must say something. There are too many people running for president. Again. The GOP got stuck with Trump because so many people ran in 2016. Who are the Democrats going to get stuck with?

I've also got an issue with so many Senators running for president. We need them in the Senate, not the executive branch. I don't see any of that magic, populist fairy dust with any of the Senators who are running. Many Americans are going to see them as establishment and not as outsiders which is what wins elections.

Perhaps the biggest mistake that all of them are making is assuming they are going to be running against Trump. He will not even be in office by the time of the 2020 election.The Mueller investigation is going to put us into a place where he have never been in this country-prosecuting a foreign asset that colluded with the Russian government to win an election. They should be thinking about who is going to fill that void and start planning on running against them. It's not going to be Mike Pence or William Weld.

I want to see a populist nominee run for president who has previously won elections, isn't a long time senator, and understands that she or he will not be running against Trump.

O, Lord, Save Us from Geezers

Predictably, Bernie Sanders has announced that he will be running for president in 2020.

Sanders will be 79 years old on election day. That's too damn old to be president. There's a 10% chance Sanders will be dead by election day 2020.

The same is true for Joe Biden, who will be 79 on inauguration day in 2021. Elizabeth Warren will be 71 in 2020, which is also too old to be president: she would be almost as old Trump when he assumed office.

If the election of Donald Trump has taught us anything, it is that people his age should not be president. If you listen to Trump 20 years ago, you will notice a huge difference in the level of coherence in his speech. He was always a dick, but he has not aged well. He is frequently confused when he speaks, often contradicting what he just said in the previous sentence, darting off on pointless tangents and constantly making asides that undermine the very message he is trying to deliver. He spends more than half his day in "executive time," watching TV and napping. In short, he is a foolish, fat and weak old man who is not competent to be president.

We do not need a repeat of Trump's senility in the Oval Office.

Lest you think that I too am going senile by repeating myself on this issue, I am fully aware that this is the second time I've ranted about this recently. But this election is too important to cede to geezers who are highly likely to be dead before their term is up.

I am 61 years old, and it has become abundantly clear that people my age and older have lost more than a few steps, both physically and mentally.

After age 65 or 70 people who are still actively pursuing a goal are simply running out of time, whether they can admit it to themselves or not. They get hung up on winning and proving that they were right before they die, and not concentrating on what's best for the country.

Sanders and Warren are right where they belong, in the Senate. There are a hundred senators working in a deliberative body, there's no single point of failure and they're relatively easy to replace when they die. They don't have to make snap decisions the way a president does. It's a much less stressful and demanding job.

Yes, experience is important. But after a certain age, people just don't learn any more. They simply become more hardened in their attitudes, more certain that they're always right, and less flexible and agile mentally and physically. That's just how old people are.

Sanders is exactly the same guy he was 20 or 30 years ago, only older and slower. So are Biden and Warren. If they didn't have what it takes to be president at age 50, they certainly don't have it at age 79.

The last thing we need is for Sanders to win the election in Nov. 2020, and then die of a stroke a week later.

The Democrats are supposed to be the party of youth and new ideas. Why are so many of them rushing to nominate great-grandpas?

Coulter Finally Calling It Like It Is

Usually it's liberals who call Trump voters stupid. But Ann Coulter, formerly one of Trump's most steadfast supporters (she wrote a book called In Trump We Trust) is finally calling it like it is:

"No, the goal of a national emergency is for Trump to scam the stupidest people in his base for 2 more years," she tweeted early Friday morning. "The goal is to get Trump's stupidest voters to say "HE'S FIGHTING!" No he's not. If he signs this bill, it's over."

In his incoherent, rambling speech announcing the emergency declaration Trump admitted that he didn't need to do it, and that it would be litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, which will take months or years. So much for the "emergency."

Trump and the Republicans controlled every part of the federal government from 2017 to 2018 -- the
presidency, the Senate, the House and even the Supreme Court -- and he did diddly-squat on building the wall. Then, suddenly, right before the election he says we're being invaded. And then after the election he lost for the Republicans, he shuts down the government for month, costing taxpayers literally billions of dollars, all just to sign a bill that gave him less for the wall than the Democrats and Republicans offered before the shutdown!

Like everything Trump does, this is just one big con. He doesn't care about the wall. He knows the wall is useless. He never liked the wall. But his stupid racist supporters liked to chant "Build the wall!" at his rallies, so he went with it.

The whole point of the emergency declaration is not to actually build a wall. It's just a stupid political stunt to generate division in this country, to sow chaos, and to get ratings, as if this were a reality TV show. Trump is pretending to fight for the wall, knowing full well that it will cost the government hundreds of millions in legal fees, and will likely fail in the end.

Building the wall will require confiscation of thousands of acres of private land through eminent domain, something that conservatives usually call government overreach. And it is this question of eminent domain that will likely cause the Supreme Court to rule against Trump (Clarence Thomas really hates eminent domain).

Worse, this stupid political stunt will also cost the citizens along the border millions of dollars in legal fees to fight this stupid political stunt, which is really outrageous. Conservatives carped when the federal government tried to charge Cliven Bundy fees for grazing his cattle on government land. Now Trump wants to take private land to build a monument to racism. Come on!

Trump's press conference was nothing but lies. Drugs don't come through unwalled border areas: they come in hidden compartments of semitrailers hauling lettuce and machine parts (a la Breaking Bad), or regular cars going through border check points, or in tunnels built under the existing walls (as we learned from El Chapo's trial), or in boats, or in private airplanes, or in drug mules flying on commercial airliners.

Check out this bundle of incoherent nonsense spewed out of Trump's cake hole:

Asked Friday whether conservative media personalities influenced his policy on building a border wall, the president denied commentators like Coulter and Fox News' Sean Hannity pushed him to declare a national emergency to get a physical barrier on the southern border.  

"They don't decide policy. In fact, if I went opposite — they have somebody, Ann Coulter, I don't know her. I hardly know her. I haven't spoken to her in way over a year. The press loved saying 'Ann Coulter.' Probably if I did speak to her, she'd be really nice. I just don't have the time to speak to her," Trump said.

But he does have plenty of "executive time" to watch Hannity and Coulter on Fox News constantly whining about the border wall.

Just listen to him: "I don't know her. I hardly know her. I haven't spoken to her in way over a year." Hey, Donald: you knew her well enough to invite her to the Oval Office, where you had an obscenity-laced screaming match about the border, NAFTA, etc. So, by any reasonable definition, you know her.

This is how he talks all the time: he makes one statement, contradicts himself, then contradicts himself again. Why does anyone trust this guy at all? He's clearly lying or he's so confused he doesn't know what he knows. He has no brain, it's all just Swiss cheese and air. Nobody's home.

Yet his supporters like him? I am completely baffled. They can't like this guy. The only thing there is to like is the hatred and bile that he spews.

Even more baffling: how was Ann Coulter fooled by Trump? She's wrong about most everything, but she's not an idiot. Trump has always been a stupid, lying scumbag. Always.

People like Coulter let their racism and hatred cloud their judgment, and the country is paying the price.

Oldest Audio Recording of a President

So cool!

For Those Of You Who Don't Understand Socialism...

White Men: Stop "whitesplaining" the definition of racism

From a recent article by John Blake.

There are different strains of whitesplaining, but what unites them all is the belief that white people are more qualified to decide what's racist and what's not, says Jonathan Walton, author of "Twelve Lies That Hold America Captive." 

White men in particular have felt free to define standards of beauty, goodness and even freedom for all people, Walton says, "so why not define racism as well." 

"The power to define is reserved for white people, which is the crux of whitesplaining," he says.

Yep.

Sorry, white people, in particular, white men. You don't get to define what racism is.

Marked Safe!

The First Step Act and Blackface

In Trump's state of the union address he cited The First Step Act as one of his administration's accomplishments (one of the very few actual accomplishments). This law is the first substantive criminal justice reform in many years, after decades of politicians running on a "lock them up and throw away the key" platform.

I say "his administration" instead of "his" because Trump was not the impetus for his administration's support of this bill.

It was Jared. Jared Kushner. The guy who does what Trump constantly fantasizes about (banging Trump's daughter, Ivanka). He's the one Trump assigned to do everything in his administration, from fixing all the computers in the White House to bringing peace to the Middle East.

Jared accomplished none of his other assignments, but he got this done, because it was personal. Jared's dad was thrown in jail for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. He was put there by Chris Christie, who was tossed off the Trump transition team by Jared's relentless character assassinations.

There have been similar laws passed around the country recently. Florida is going to allow former felons to regain their voting rights. This is especially important for African Americans who are often the victims of selective prosecution with the express intent of disenfranchising them.

So, there's a clear trend across the country to forgive people who have done wrong in the past, but have served their time, repented and made things right.

Which brings us to the white guys in Virginia who wore blackface. The governor, the attorney general and Republican majority leader in the state senate all confess to wearing blackface decades ago. It was extremely common, and many whites didn't think of it as racist: for them it was just another aspect of a costume, like wearing green makeup when dressing up as the Hulk or the Wicked Witch of the West.

These men are not accused of committing any crimes, only of doing something that really makes African Americans mad.

Wearing blackface was never a thing in Minnesota, where I live. No one ever did it. My only knowledge of the practice was in connection with Al Jolson singing in blackface in The Jazz Singer.  I always thought blackface was stupid, and that movie was looked down upon, but was unaware of the visceral reaction it produced in African Americans. (The Klan costume in Gov. Northam's yearbook photo is a separate issue. If it turns out that Northam was a closet Klansman, that's potentially disqualifying.)

But the question is, how long should someone be punished for having worn blackface?

If former felons are getting the right to vote after having served their sentences, shouldn't former blackface wearers have the right to serve in public office decades after doing something stupid in their youth?

Especially if they have spent the last 20 years showing no racist tendencies and advancing the cause of African Americans? These men may have been casual racists, but to be honest, we are all of us -- white, black, and everyone else -- casual racists: it's the human condition to categorize and stereotype the unfamiliar. But if they have repented of that casual racism decades ago, shouldn't they be forgiven their sins? Just as we're forgiving the sins of felons by returning their right to vote?

This situation is further complicated by the accusations made against the lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, a black man whom two women have accused of sexual assault. Many Democrats have called on Fairfax to resign, but these accusations also seem politically motivated to me.

This whole business seems to be orchestrated by a right-wing website intent on decapitating the Democratic leadership of Virginia to allow Republicans to steal the governorship.

If Democrats fall for this, every Southern white Democrat over the age of 30 will be automatically disqualified from serving in public office. Every male black Democrat will be automatically disqualified because there'll always be some woman out there who thought he was too forward or handsy. And every black female Democrat -- the only kind left after all the others have been eliminated -- will be depicted as a bossy, ball-busting feminist by their Republican opponents.

Meanwhile, Republican office holders who are explicitly racist to blacks and Latinos to this day will get a free pass, and Republican office holders who harass and assault women will continue to do so with impunity. And get reelected. Because Republicans don't even pretend to care about minorities and women.

So that's the choice: if Democrats reject every white politician for wearing blackface at some point in the distant past, and every black male for womanizing, they will automatically cede every election to racist, sexist Republicans who will do everything in their power to pass laws limiting the rights of blacks and Latinos to vote and women to get reproductive services and equal-paying jobs.

BWAHAHAHAHA!

I am a Republican voter. I just did our taxes.

The @GOP tax bill cost my family THOUSANDS of dollars this year on our return due to changes, thereby hitting us with the LARGEST tax increase of our lives.

We are middle-class homeowners, and you raised our taxes.

Infuriating!

— Dennis Jordan (@DennisMJordan) February 5, 2019

What the fuck did you expect, asshole? We told you and we told you but you stomped your feet, made up a bunch of nonsense about Hillary, and shouted about immigrants. Don't worry, though, we will take of you...like we always do...

Color and Diversity

This week I have learned that non woke white men (especially the older ones) are very sensitive about the issue of race. They fly into hysterical rages not unlike Joan Collins on the 80's show, Dynasty when confronted with the current reality of racism.

 As John Pavlovitz recently noted in his marvelous essay, The Extinction of the White American Dinosaur,

"These Jurassic, soon-to-be-amber-trapped relics, will act as if the very sky above them is falling, because in very real ways, it is. They will thrash and spit and bellow, in an effort to buy themselves a few more days and a bit more power...

The misogynistic, supremacist nostalgia of their dying glory days is dissolving, in the glorious refining fire of what is coming on the horizon: color and diversity and new and young and wide open."

Straight Outta Bugs Bunny

The exploding cigar is a tired old joke from Bugs Bunny era of cartoons. But the advent of vaping has sadly made it a not-so-uncommon occurrence:

William Brown had errands to run on a chilly Texas evening, and his grandmother was happy to lend him her light-blue Lincoln Town Car.

Brown stopped at a store selling vaporizer smoking pens outside Fort Worth on Jan. 27. He sat alone in the parked car, put his lips to a pen, and soon after, an explosion sent shards of metal into his face and neck, said Alice Brown, his grandmother.

He thrashed and fell out of the car, trying to regain his balance on the hood and trunk before collapsing, she said, according to evidence from the scene conveyed to her by authorities.

Brown, 24, held on for two days before he died at a hospital. The cause of death was listed as stroke after the carotid artery in his neck was severed by “penetrating trauma from exploding vaporizer pen,” the Tarrant County medical examiner found.

There were more than 2000 vape pen explosions between 2015 and 2017. A Florida man died last May. That should put to rest the idea that vaping is safer than smoking cigarettes. To be fair, exploding cell phone batteries also kill people. But cell phones don't have heating elements...

Companies like Juul are trying to sell kids on the idea that vaping is cool and is safer than smoking cigarettes. But it ain't so: nicotine itself is highly toxic. Under normal circumstances average vapers are unlikely to OD on nicotine; they're more likely to make themselves sick rather than killing themselves. However, it is possible: Russian composer Igor Stravinsky nearly died from nicotine poisoning from smoking cigarettes.

 A number of of people have died from drinking vaping liquid, including children. The sweet-smelling and colorful vaping liquid often reminds children of juice or candy. Juul makes mint, mango, cream and fruit flavored JUULpods, each of which contains an an entire cigarette pack's worth of nicotine.

Nicotine is still highly addictive, making vaping the "gateway drug" for cigarettes. 

And, even though vaping doesn't pollute your lungs with carbon monoxide and all those other nasty carcinogens omnipresent in tobacco, don't forget that nicotine is carcinogenic: nicotine metabolites are known carcinogens, and nicotine itself causes DNA damage and mutations, which are precursors to cancer.

Conservatives Are Trying to Make Democrats Commit Political Suicide

Pretty much every Democrat is demanding Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia to resign because of a picture that appeared in his medical school yearbook. It shows a man in blackface standing next to a someone in a Ku Klux Klan costume.

First off, this is out there because a white nationalist website is trying to nail him. The motive is clearly to turn other Democrats against him.

Northam hasn't helped himself by giving an inconsistent narrative. But it's quite possible that neither person in that photo is Northam. The yearbook was probably the very last thing on Northam's mind when he graduated from medical school. I never had anything to do with my high school yearbook. I never had my photo taken for it, or bought a copy, or ever saw one. So there might be a nasty surprise waiting for me there.

One of Northam's "friends" could have put that page together -- perhaps the same one who give Northam the nickname "Coonman." Speaking of that, why was Northam given that nickname? Was it because his white friends thought he was too friendly with African-Americans, and he didn't act racist enough for them?

The only thing we know for sure about this yearbook debacle is that we don't really know anything. People should investigate. Reporters should talk to the editor of the yearbook, and the person who laid out Northam's page. Their names should be in the front of the yearbook.

They should find the photographer, and the other person or persons in the photo. Because at least one of them is not Northam, and they could confirm or deny Northam's story.

It also seems that the yearbook staff at Eastern Virginia Medical School had a long history of racist claptrap, all on its own. It was still publishing photos of students in Confederate uniforms up until 2013, when the school dropped the yearbook over similar offensive photos. Obviously the yearbook staff was packed with racist losers, so it's quite possible Northam had nothing at all to do with his page 30 years earlier.

I also don't think white people, especially young white people, understand how offensive African Americans find blackface to be. The Klan costume everybody gets. But until recently, unless you had black friends that you were with when someone appeared in blackface, you'd never know how bad it makes them feel, because most white folks don't know the history.

But the larger issue is that no one is pure. Every one of us has some stupid or embarrassing thing that we did when we were in high school or college. Pretty much everyone said or did something racist, or called a white dude a cracker, or joined the wrong club, or misinterpreted a girl's friendliness and drunkenly groped her, or shoplifted cosmetics, or smoked too much weed, or "borrowed" a car, or got in a nasty fight and hurt someone seriously.

We all have done something completely out of character, and a mistake or two should not define or condemn us for the rest of our lives. To demand absolute and total purity from every person in politics is not only foolish, it is suicidal for a political party.

To wit, the man who would replace Northam, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, has just been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2004. The source? The same white nationalist website that "outed" Northam. It's clearly a setup. They're poking the Democrats in the eye, showing how ridiculous their knee-jerk demands for purity in all things is.

Because if Democrats insist every person accused of racism or sexual misconduct or shoplifting resign immediately, there won't be anyone left in the party.

The Republican Party, the Russians and Howard Schulz are doing everything they can to get the Democratic Party to tear itself apart. Democrats shouldn't fall for it.

Al Franken was hounded out of the Senate this way. In retrospect, it was clearly a hit job by a bunch of conservatives who wanted to use women's anger in the #MeToo era to destroy an effective voice in the Senate. But because Al Franken was a good guy with a conscience and a sense of shame, he did what he thought was the right thing and resigned.

I don't know whether Northam should resign. We don't know enough to say yet. Did he go to school in a state with a racist past? Yep. Was he even in that photo, or have anything to do with that page? There's not enough evidence to say yet.

But we do know that if Democrats demand everyone with the slightest whiff of scandal resign in knee-jerk fashion, the party will cease to exist.

I'm not suggesting that they follow the Republicans' lead and give a pass to every pussy-grabbing, race-baiting scumbag. But you've got to give these things the time to let the truth shake out.

Democrats should investigate, and if Northam was complicit with race-baiting crap, they can demand his resignation.

But Democrats shouldn't let conservatives scumbags bait them into destroying each other. They should be taking out their anger on the white nationalists trying to torpedo Notham. These Breitbart-clone clowns are actively trying to harm African Americans, unlike this well-meaning Democratic governor who happened to go to a college with a centuries-long history of institutional racism.

What's the Rationale for Raising Taxes on Billionaires?

There's a lot of talk about raising taxes on the rich, with Elizabeth Warren announcing her candidacy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engorging conservatives' ... ire, the peripatetic Bernie Sanders, and the backlash Howard Schulz has gotten for demanding Democrats genuflect before him and his billions.

The question, though, is why should we raise taxes on the rich. We don't want to punish people for simply being successful -- it's the American dream. Is there some underlying logic that would justify taxing billionaires at 70% or higher, as we did during the 1950s (which conservatives always look back at nostalgically as the pinnacle of American greatness)?

There is a long-standing tradition of taxing things that cause problems in society. For example, alcohol and tobacco. It's a way of punishing sins that we have found impossible to make illegal, but wish to discourage or minimize.

The case for taxing alcohol and tobacco is clear: alcohol is a dangerous drug, costing the country hundreds of billions of dollars in increased crime (40% of violent crimes are committed under the influence), automobile crashes, lost productivity and medical costs due to accidents and alcoholism. Tobacco costs billions of dollars in lost productivity (smokers are always on break), medical costs and causes millions of deaths due to cancer and emphysema. And it's the leading cause of home fires, costing hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Gambling costs billions in lost productivity and embezzlement by gambling addicts. So we tax gambling heavily, or give government a monopoly on it, as with lotteries.

So one argument for taxing billionaires is that their lust for wealth causes problems, just like alcohol, tobacco and gambling. And sure enough, billionaires do cause many serious social problems.

Look at the Sackler family, the people behind Purdue Pharma, who were responsible for pushing prescription opioids and addicting millions of Americans, killing hundreds of thousands in the last decade.

Other pharmacy billionaires (like Martin Shkreli) have been jacking up the price of prescription drugs 10-, 20- and 100-fold, solely to increase profits. This forces millions of Americans into medical bankruptcies. Millions of patients are rationing their insulin and hypertension medications, and some have stopped taking them altogether, causing numerous complications and death in many cases. These guys are committing blackmail: your money or your life.

Oil, coal and pipeline billionaires keep denying that burning fossil fuels causes climate change. But we're already seeing the effects right now, today, with the drastically increased destructive power of extreme weather and the massive flooding that accompanies it.

Industrial agriculture billionaires have made farmers dependent on genetically engineered corn and soybeans, forcing them to spend themselves into the poorhouse buying seed and the chemicals required to poison weeds. These companies then sue farmers who try to plant seed from the grain they grow, the way farmers have for thousands of years. And now Donald Trump's tariffs have yanked the market out from under them.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey have set Americans at each other's throats, severely damaged the free press and helped put a narcissistic man-child in the Oval Office.

Uber's Travis Kalanick has turned thousands of Americans into struggling "ride share" drivers, and made the lives of struggling old-school cab drivers a living hell, causing many to commit suicide.

Hedge fund billionaires buy companies in hostile takeovers, take out big loans against those companies, pay themselves big returns, run the business into the ground, declare bankruptcy, then bust the company up and sell the pieces, screwing all the employees and the people they borrowed money from.

Walmart and the entire fast-food industry pay workers peanuts and force them to work part-time, so they can avoid paying full-time benefits such as health care. Millions of Americans are working 60 to 80 hours a week, taking two or three different part-time jobs, and they still don't have enough money to live on.

Even relatively benign billionaires, like automobile execs, create social costs by increasing the demand for more and more freeways, and reducing the demand for much more efficient modes of transportation like mass transit. And large businesses in general increase government expenditures by requiring government spending on infrastructure like roads and ports, as well as schools for educating their future employees.

Pretty much every person or company who makes billions of dollars is incurring some kind of social cost that they're not paying for. So society should recoup that cost by taxing them at a compensatory rate.

In their lust for the almighty buck many billionaires ignore the problems their businesses cause. The things they do may not be explicit crimes, but their greed causes more social harm than all the two-bit crooks put together.

Greed is a sin. One of the seven deadly ones. And we should tax it.

The Billionaire Drug Pushers

There are several lawsuits against drug kingpins in the news of late. One is against "El Chapo" Joaquín Guzmán Loera, and is filled with stories of prison escapes, border tunnels, IT guys turning states evidence and raping 13-year-old girls.

The others are far more insidious. Legal action is being taken against giant drug companies, like Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin. This company is squarely behind the opioid epidemic. In 2007 Purdue and three executives pleaded guilty to a host of crimes that led directly to the addiction and deaths of thousands of Americans every year.

Recently more details have come out about why Purdue started the drug epidemic: it turns out the real villains in this story are the wealthy, self-entitled family of billionaires, the Sacklers, who serve on the board. They pushed the CEO and faceless corporate bean counters to push drugs to more and more victims.

The Sackler family, ever more greedy, demanded more aggressive sales tactics to hook more patients on OxyContin, while at the same time referring to their customers as "reckless criminals." Their other activities included:

• The spoils of OxyContin allowed the Sacklers, as board members, to vote to pay themselves more than $4 billion between 2007 and 2018. Figures for individual payments during those years are sprinkled throughout the lawsuit.
• Members of the family personally ordered Purdue to increase the sales force on a number of occasions.
• The family was directly involved in pushing for higher—and more dangerous—doses of OxyContin.
• For years, the McKinsey & Company consulting firm had worked with Purdue to come up with sales tactics. According to a redacted section, the consultants "had reported to Purdue on opportunities to increase prescriptions by convincing doctors that opioids provide 'freedom' and 'peace of mind' and give patients 'the best possible chance to live a full and active life.'"
• Board meetings for the US-based company were held in exotic and luxurious places, such as Bermuda and a castle in Ireland.
• Members of the Sackler family worked on a secret plan codenamed "Tango," which would have expanded Purdue's business into addiction-treatment drugs. [They wanted hook addicts coming and going.]
  
• Purdue employees actively tried to avoid the Sacklers because of their relentless and aggressive demands
• Richard Sackler allegedly sought revenge on an insurance company for dropping coverage of OxyContin amid the epidemic of abuse.
• The Sacklers allegedly knew about but did not report suspected cases of diversion and abuse by doctors.

A trial against another drug company, Insys, is in progress now. Insys resorted to more traditional drug pushing tactics: they hired a former stripper named Sunshine Lee to be the sales director. In addition to the old standard of bribing doctors to prescribe more opioids, they used more conventional drug pushing tactics. Sex:

In testimony Tuesday against the rest, former sales representative Holly Brown made the lap-dancing allegation against her former boss, Lee. Brown testified that in mid-2012 she, Lee, and other sale representatives took one Dr. Paul Madison to a club after a dinner event sponsored by Insys. Brown said that her superiors had told her to focus on Dr. Madison, who was known for prescribing a lot of opioids. She described his office as a “shady pill mill” in a “dingy strip mall in a not-so-nice area of town,” according to reports.

Brown recalled an encounter she witnessed that night between Lee and Madison, saying, “She was sitting on his lap, kind of bouncing around, and he had his hands all over her chest.’’

Lee, a former stripper, had no experience in the pharmaceutical industry before working at Insys, prosecutors noted. According to Bloomberg, court documents reveal that Insys whistle-blowers quoted Burlakoff as saying that “doctors really enjoyed spending time with [Lee]” and that she was “more of a closer.”

Brown echoed the idea, saying in her testimony that Lee played up her sexuality during sales pitches. She dressed in a “sexually suggestive manner’’ and “showed more cleavage than the average sales rep,’’ Brown said.

Prosecutors reported that Insys paid Madison at least $70,800 in “speaker fees.”

A border wall will do nothing to stop the biggest drug epidemic facing this nation: prescription drugs pushed by giant pharmaceutical companies and the rich fat cats behind them.

The Sacklers and Insys make the best argument yet for a 70% tax on billionaires. The country needs to be reimbursed for the death and destruction their unbridled greed wreaks upon the American people.

There is no global warming