The Recent Evolution of Republicans Explained

Oh, It's Cold, Climate Change Can't Be Happening!

Because it's cold, conservatives are denying the reality of climate change again. And the news media are aiding and abetting them with stories like this:

The Arctic blast that descended this week on a swath of the country stretching from the Rocky Mountains to New England continued Tuesday, bringing record-breaking low temperatures, snowfall in some Northeast areas and school closings in the Mid-South.

Yeah, baby, it's cold outside. But only here. In a lot of other places, like California and Australia, which are burning to the ground, it's really hot.

And it's also very warm in Juneau, Alaska, where it's 46 degrees as I write this. That's 20 degrees warmer than it is here in Minnesota.

This is part of a pattern, where warm air moves into the polar regions and pushes the cold air south into the continental US. Yes, it's true: global warming can make it colder in some places while the rest of the planet is getting ever hotter.

Climate change has screwed up the jet stream, which used to keep arctic air bottled up at the north pole. But the jet stream has weakened, allowing more episodes like the current cold wave to occur.

That's why, several years ago, scientists started using the term "climate change" in preference to "global warming." Conservative climate denialists thought this was some kind of bait and switch.

But a warming planet does not warm evenly. Some of the changes in climate have counterintuitive effects. A hotter atmosphere holds more water, meaning that there will be more rain, but that rain is not spread evenly over the planet. Some areas get hammered by horrible hurricanes and destructive downpours, while other areas are socked by droughts and wildfires.

That extra water in the atmosphere has other effects: all that rain and snow that hammered the Great Plains and Midwest last spring and summer killed off the oysters in the Gulf of Mexico:

The [oyster] business, and the distinctive cooking and dining traditions it supports, had already been battered by Hurricane Katrina five years earlier. And now it is enduring an even bigger setback: This spring and summer, the Mississippi River, swollen by Midwestern rain and snow, inundated coastal marshes, lakes and bays with freshwater, killing oysters by the millions. That has led to shortages and soaring prices.

The country grows a lot of food in places like California and Arizona, which are getting hammered by drought and excess heat, exacerbated by global warming. That excessive rain in much of the Midwest this spring delayed or prevented planting of corn and soybeans, piling more financial distress on farmers already burdened by the loss of markets caused by Trump's tariff wars (which were supposed to be so easy to win, yet they've been going on for three years now). To top it off, the farm bailout Trump promised is mostly going to agribusiness, not small family farmers.

Climate change is quickly destroying our food production, and if we don't do something about this soon there will be permanent environmental damage, followed by famine, more mass migration and war.

“Your liberal angst gives me great pleasure.”

I've been saying for years that conservatives have only one conviction: trolling liberals. Due to whatever problem they had with authority in their lives, their first reaction to liberals saying facts and stuff is to try to get attention by being obnoxious.

Well, here's a fine example.

“I am going to continue hiding these books in the most obscure places I can find to keep this propaganda out of the hands of young minds,” the mystery book relocator wrote in a note left for Ms. Ammon, the library director, in the facility’s comment box.

“Your liberal angst gives me great pleasure.” 

People with this mindset should never be in charge of anything.

Trump Derangement Syndrome Part 7

The followers of Donald Trump are violent. They repeatedly call for a Civil War if Trump is removed from office. They claim they will use second amendment solutions if he doesn't win reelection in 2020. The final characteristic of someone with Trump Derangement Syndrome is "irrational thoughts potentially leading to criminal and terroristic behavior."

Examples.

I've been saying this for years, even before Trump. The right-wing of this country need to spend some time in Gitmo. I'm glad they were right about keeping it open:)

Trump Is Incapable of Learning

Donald Trump is facing impeachment now because he tried to blackmail the president of Ukraine into producing dirt on Joe Biden's son. Trump apparently has bought into a counterfeit story Rudy Giuliani is pushing that Ukraine, not Russia, is behind the hack on Democratic email accounts.

They also apparently think Hillary Clinton's email server is floating around in Ukraine, which is totally ridiculous. That email server never left Clinton's office: she deleted some personal emails with the approval of her lawyers. Trump apparently doesn't understand the concept of putting emails in the trash -- he seems to think that means she took the whole server to the dump and the Ukrainians made off with it.

Trump is angry at Ukraine because he thinks the country is behind the "whole Russia thing." But Trump's problems all started when he and his campaign got all buddy-buddy with the Russians. In particular, his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had worked for Viktor Yanukovych, a corrupt pro-Russian Ukrainian politician who was kicked out of the country by his own countrymen. (His extravagant presidential estate became of tourist attraction, a "museum of corruption," displaying the lavish lifestyle of an oligarch.)

Manafort was working for Trump free of charge. Trump, ever the cheapskate, thought this was a great idea. But no one works for Trump for free. In August 2016 Ukrainian investigators uncovered a ledger that showed Manafort received $12.7 million for working for Yanukovych's party, which Manafort of course had not disclosed on his taxes. Manafort had just finished tilting the Republican Party platform severely toward Russia at the expense of Ukraine, which Russia had invaded a few years earlier.

Clearly, Manafort was still working for Russia and/or pro-Russia Ukrainians, and being Trump's campaign manager was just his cover story.

Manafort was quickly kicked off the campaign, and Trump claimed he hardly knew the guy. Manafort is currently serving a prison sentence for his various crimes.

This is relevant now because history is repeating itself. Rudy Giuliani is working as Trump's "personal lawyer," free of charge. He has been interfering with American foreign policy in Eastern Europe, and has been the driving force in extorting Ukraine to fabricate dirt about Joe Biden and his son.

Like Manafort, Giuliani is not really working for free, or for Trump: he's been doing some dirty deals with two Ukrainians with connections to Russia, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who have been charged with making illegal campaign contributions on behalf of Russians who want to get into the marijuana business in the United States (yeah, Giuliani -- the former prosecutor -- and his buddies are in bed with drug dealers).

Recently it was revealed just how Giuliani was getting at least some of his payoff: he got a Trump supporter, Charles Gucciardo, to "invest" half a million smackers in Parnas's company, Fraud Guarantee (that's the actual name!). Parnas then turned around and gave that money to Giuliani.

This, of course, reeks of corruption: the president's personal lawyer leans on a Trump supporter to invest in a bogus company that puts the money back into Giuliani's pocket.

Hey, Rudy, back in your prosecutor days you would have called that kind of a mob deal "money laundering."

Meanwhile, Giuliani was running around Ukraine demanding that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy "investigate corruption," which is Trumpspeak for manufacturing fake evidence against the Bidens.

It is clear that Giuliani always intended to corruptly cash in on his position as Trump's lawyer, while claiming to work for free. Just like Paul Manafort.

Didn't Donald Trump learned anything from the whole 2016 election mess? He's gone and done exactly the same thing: employing some corrupt bozo making crooked deals in Ukraine.

Trump is either a total idiot, or he's fully aware of the corruption and doesn't care. Or both.

Geeze. How can Republicans continue to support this crook, and all the crooks who work for him, enriching themselves at the expense of the United States' good name?

After three years of Trump we've become just another corrupt oligarchy.

Trump Derangement Syndrome Part 6

Trump folks are always pissed off and the president encourages it. After all, he is a Russian asset working quite hard to divide our country so Russia can have more say in the world. A sure sign of TDS is "Extreme levels of aggression and anger aimed at anyone unwilling to join the cult of personality."

It's important to note that this is where they really try to engage their projection tactics. Breathless posts on social media and blogs about how angry liberals are and how they are the ones that are violent etc. It takes a grand total of a second before Antifa is brought up with the hopes of forgetting just how fucking hate-filled and angry Trump people are.

If Trump encouraged them to kill liberals at a rally, his followers would do it.

Don't Steal Our Water!

We've known for more than 30 years that climate change is a serious problem. Places like California, Nevada, Colorado and Arizona are suffering from decades of worsening drought and wildfires.

After a horrendous fire season last year, California is being torched again this year. The main problem is that people keep building houses in the hills and forests, and when those forests burn, their houses do too.

In Phoenix temperatures this past August were over 100 degrees every day, and hit 110 or more twelve days (twenty years ago, there were only three 110+ days). It's unsafe just to go outside in heat like that, and you certainly can't exercise or work. Even planes can't take off when it starts getting that hot.

We live in Minnesota, where a lot of people complain about the winters (which aren't anywhere near as cold or snowy as they used to be). The thing about winter is that you can still go outside and do things if you dress properly.

But when it starts getting to 118, 120 degrees, you can't put on clothes to get cooler. You'd have to wear a liquid cooling system like a spacesuit to keep your body temperature down.

Yet people continue to move to these areas. We're in a bike club and have acquaintances who just bought a house in Phoenix. But they have to come back to Minnesota in the summer to ride their bikes because you can't exercise outside in Arizona in the summer. It's just too damn hot.

And because of the heat island effect, the more buildings and houses they put up in Phoenix, and the more plants and natural soil they displace, the hotter it will get.

This is the core of the problem. There are far too many people living in areas that have too few resources. Water, in particular, is in very short supply.

Which brings us to the issue that brought on this rant: a railroad company is proposing to steal water from an aquifer in Minnesota and ship it to the southwest. They want to ship half a million gallons a year by rail.

The company doesn't think there's anything wrong with this:

Dakota County officials said Progressive Rail would work with Oregon-based Water Train, which provides water to government agencies in Colorado, Utah and Arizona. Water Train’s website says the company is “nothing more than delivered bottled water, except our bottles (railroad tank cars) hold more than 26,000 gallons each.”

Oh, it's just bottled water, only our bottles are 26,000 gallons. Right. This is a terrible analogy, because bottled water is a terrible scourge.

Worse, shipping water by rail, which burns diesel fuel to power the engines, will only exacerbate the problem that's causing the water shortage in the first place: global warming.

A few years ago the water level in White Bear Lake, a large lake northeast of St. Paul, dropped precipitously because of aquifer depletion. It takes tens of thousands of years to replenish aquifers. It's ridiculous to drain our resources so that geezers can flee south for the winter.

Clearly, the answer is not to send water to the Southwest. People should start moving out of those areas to return the population to levels that local resources can sustain.

And, of course, we should stop burning so much oil flying and driving around the country to escape the global warming that we're causing by burning so much oil and coal and gas.

Trump Derangement Syndrome Part 5

People with Trump Derangement Syndrome have "the belief that anything negative is in no way related to Donald Trump, but anything positive somehow is." This photo sums it up nicely.

Remember when conservatives hated deficits?

I guess it's OK if Trump does it.

Trump Derangement Syndrome Part 4

Trump supporters are traitors. They care more about their own tribe than Americans in what they perceive to be other tribes. They view Democrats as enemies of the state. Looking for evidence?

So, a fourth key characteristic of Trump Derangement Syndrome is a "loss of perspective on what Patriotism means exactly. Symptoms include tolerance of Un-American Ideals, Worship of unfriendly foreign states, respect or Tolerance for ideological influences we have literally had to go to war with at various points in history."

I always used to laugh about the mouth foamers on the right when they talked about reeducation camps. Well, perhaps we should give them what they fear. After all, that's how you deprogram someone in a cult.

Trump Derangement Syndrome Part 3

Donald Trump has lied more times than any other president. In fact, he has many false statements and many pants on fire statements. A key sign of Trump Derangement Syndrome is the "inability to distinguish fact from Fiction."

Specifically, "symptoms include believing a man who lies so regularly that more falsehoods escape his lips than truth, especially when that man says someone else is lying."

So, it's NEVER that Trump is lying. It's ALWAYS a plot by someone else, usually a liberal elite who is out to get Trump and his supporters.

Trump Derangement Syndrome Part 2

The next characteristic of Trump Derangement Syndrome is Incapacitating Cognitive Dissonance associated with anything related to Donald Trump. All negative news about Trump is somehow the fault of the left or isn't real. Take note of how quickly whataboutism or bothsidesism is employed when Trump makes a mistake. 

As noted in the link, "Symptoms include extraordinary mental discomfort related to contradictory beliefs i.e. “Law Enforcement cannot be questioned” “the FBI is Evil” — “Corporate Media is all Fake News” “Fox News is always right”

Trump Derangement Syndrome Part 1

Since Donald Trump was elected, his supporters have tried very hard to blame his multiple and deep issues on the rest of  us. As is often the case with school children, the "NO YOU!" strategy has been employed and, thus, Trump Derangement Syndrome was born.

Recall that this phrase was originally used to denigrate people who were upset about George W. Bush lying to get us into a war that ultimately was very poorly executed and resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. Later it was accurately used to describe people who would have mental and emotional meltdowns when Barack Obama was intelligently doing his job and helping the country.

There is such a thing as TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) but it's not something the rest of us have. There are six distinct signs of TDS and today I'm going to begin a series that will highlight each one. Please use these signs if you encounter a Trump supporter who is accusing you of TDS.

The first key characteristic of TDS is “an absolute and blind adoration of a cultivated personality. Symptoms include odd facial expressions, changes in behavior and wardrobe, sudden illegibility of social media feeds, the sudden belief that a bankrupt reality show host would make a good leader of the free world.” Please refer to the examples of this below for visual evidence.

This is what a cult looks like. People that are in cults are deranged and highly dangerous. I'm fairly certain that many Trump supporters are going to have to have behavioral management therapy after Trump's time is done.

Trump Supporters Will Be Eaten

Amen, Brother

The Presidential Age Limit, Revisited

Bernie Sanders went into the hospital last Tuesday after having a heart attack. His campaign wasn't upfront about this at first, and only admitted that it was an actual heart attack Friday morning.

Sanders had an earlier scare when he cut his head on a shower door and required 7 stitches.

At 78, Sanders is clearly too old to be running for president. If he were elected, he would be almost 80 when he assumed office in 2021.

Donald Trump is 73, and is also far too old to be president. His fast-progressing dementia is exactly why there should be an age limit for presidential candidates.

Joe Biden is 76, and is too old. His performance in the debates showed that he is definitely slowing down.

Elizabeth Warren is 70, but she seems fine, and as a woman will probably outlive all the men in the race. But, as a woman, she's more prone to osteoporosis and could be one fall away from a broken hip and steep physical decline.

Different people do age at different rates. Their genetics, weight, exercise habits, sleep hygiene, diet and other activities directly affect their longevity, health and cognition.

Donald Trump is clearly inferior to the other candidates on all fronts. His father died of Alzheimers. He is an obese -- and I'll use his own favorite word to describe people who have the same physique that he does -- pig. He doesn't exercise and believes that exercise hurts your health. He sleeps only a few hours a night. He eats garbage. All he does is whine on Twitter and watch television. And he can't even walk up a hill.

The problem with the elderly is that they do not recover from minor accidents that younger people simply brush off. The slightest accident -- or another heart attack -- could send Bernie Sanders into a series of health crises that ultimately incapacitate or kill him.

If Sanders is the Democratic candidate, a slip in the shower next October could hand the presidency back to Donald Trump (if he hasn't been impeached or suffered a mental breakdown by then).

I'm lumped in with the same generation as Warren and Trump, the baby boomers, even though people my age were too young to be drafted in the Vietnam War or take part in the sexual revolution of the 1960s. My age cohort was more influenced by events of the 1970s: the moon landings, Watergate, Three Mile Island, and the Iran hostage crisis.

But I'm still old enough to realize that 60-65 is the maximum age for a presidential candidate. The rigors of the campaign and the office are too stressful for the elderly. Once you hit your 70s, the supposed advantage of experience turns into recalcitrance and an inability to change and adapt to new circumstances.

On a practical note, both Sanders and Biden are older than Trump, and in the general election Republicans would hypocritically hammer on their age endlessly, even though both of them are much healthier than Trump.

Biden and Sanders should step aside sooner, rather than later, and clear the decks for candidates who can make it all the way to the finish line.

Little Donald is Getting Away

Trump's Defense For Dummies

Men With Titties Won't Overthrow The Government

The Fall of John Bolton

John Bolton and I rarely agree on anything. But one thing he's right about is North Korea:

“The strategic decision Kim Jong-un is operating through is that he will do whatever he can to keep a deliverable nuclear weapons capability and to develop and enhance it further,” Mr. Bolton said during an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Under current circumstances, he will never give up the nuclear weapons voluntarily.”

This is a direct rebuke of everything Donald Trump has done in his courtship of Kim Jong Un. The reason for Trump's pursuit of this is pure and simple: he thinks he deserves a Nobel Prize. He's jealous that Barack Obama got one.

As Bolton said, Kim will never give up his nuclear weapons. It would mean his death, because the elites in North Korea (rightfully) believe that nuclear weapons are the only thing keeping their regime afloat.

Look at Saddam Hussein. He gave up his weapons of mass destruction and now he's dead.

Look at Muammar Ghaddafi. He gave up his nukes and now he's dead.

This is all the result of George W. Bush's 2002 "axis of evil" speech, in which he named Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Iraq had been defeated by a grand coalition led by the United States in the 1990s. In defeat Saddam relinquished all his WMDs. He was a toothless old man, allowed to rule his country but kept in check by the United States and other forces.

But that wasn't good enough for Bush. He wanted a war. And so in 2003 he got one, acting unilaterally against Iraq (albeit with a smattering of support from a couple of countries trying to curry favor with the US). Bush claimed Saddam had WMDs squirreled away somewhere, and in 2003 weapons inspectors were racing around Iraq looking for them. After months of searching it had become clear that Saddam had none, so Bush invaded before the momentum of frenzy ran out.

The reason Saddam was being cagey about the WMDs was that if he admitted he had none, he would lose face domestically and his people would no longer fear him, inviting revolution.

So Bush invaded Iraq, taking his eye off the ball on the war in Afghanistan.

Iraq was an unmitigated disaster. There were no WMDs. The people did not greet us as liberators. It cost us a trillion dollars, handed Iraq over to control of Shiites beholden to Iran, and created ISIS. A decade later ISIS took territory in Syria, causing mass migration out of Syria and into Europe. That destabilized political systems across Europe as they dealt with the massive influx of Muslim refugees, causing an upwelling of racist and right-wing politics, resulting in nonsense like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

Given this background it's clear that talking to Kim is a total waste of time. He knows that showing any weakness will get him killed, like Saddam and Gaddafi.

Yet Trump keeps trying to seduce Kim, talking about the "very nice letter" Kim sent, and all that nonsense. Meanwhile North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and constantly threatens Japan and South Korea with missile launches into their territorial waters.

Actions against our allies which Trump just ignores.

John Bolton is right that we can't deal with North Korea. He's wrong to think that we should invade the country, because doing so would get millions of South Korean and Japanese citizens killed, as well as thousands of American military personnel stationed there, and potentially Americans within range of Kim's ballistic missiles on the west coast.

So what does Trump think he can get from Kim? Headlines and attention. That's it. He's playing this up in the press the same way he played up his romances with Playboy models like Karen McDougal, before he payed them all off and forced them to sign NDAs. He's wasting his State Department's time and money on this dalliance with Kim in the vain hope that the Nobel committee will give him the prize he covets so much.

Is Trump stupid enough to fall for fawning praise from Kim's PR guys?  Or to believe that Kim would abide by an agreement even if he signed one? Trump rejected the Iran nuclear deal, and they were actually holding to it!

Bolton recently left his position as Trump's national security advisor in disgrace because he kept harping against any North Korean deal. Like pretty much everyone who works for Trump, Bolton's reputation is now destroyed, permanently stained by the corruption of the scumbag in chief.

Yet when he criticized Trump's North Korea policy, Bolton didn't mention the name of the moron responsible for it, though it's clear that's how Bolton perceives Trump. Like pretty much anyone who's ever worked for him. Yet precious few of them raise their voices against the orange skidmark in the Oval Office.

Republicans, please learn from John Bolton's shame. You will be hailed as heroes by all future generations of Americans if you force this clown to resign.