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.

The NRA is a Russian Asset

The United States Senate has released a report that states what those of us who live in reality already know. The NRA is a foreign asset of Russia. The report details how various members of the NRA and its board were offered business opportunities in Russia (gee, that sounds familiar) in exchange for access to conservative and political outlets in the United States.

In short, they are traitors. And for all the caterwauling I've heard over the years from Kevin Baker on his gun blog about communism, deep states and Orwellian futures with leftists in charge, he and his followers are doing a damn fine job of becoming exactly what they claim to fear. Classic propaganda technique, right? Accuse your enemy of doing the very thing you are doing and demonize them for it. Goebbels 101.

Kevin and followers (who I still see read my blog every day), you have zero credibility. You have sold out your country merely because of adolescent spite of the left. How fucking pathetic...

What Trump Really Did to Ukraine

Everyone is talking about what Donald Trump did to Ukraine. They're framing it as though Trump had merely tried to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky into fabricating dirt on Hunter Biden, or "finding" a server with Hillary Clinton's emails on it.

Trump had just withheld about $400 million in funds Ukraine desperately needs to fight its war against Russia, and to get that money Trump wanted "reciprocity" from Ukraine and for Zelensky to "play ball."

But the unspoken threat was really this: "Come up with dirt on Hunter Biden or I'll have Russia invade you." Everyone knows that Trump is in Vladimir Putin's pocket. Zelensky knows this better than anyone, and it's why he emphasized that he stayed in a Trump hotel when he traveled to New York (and that's a perfect example of Trump's conflicts of interest and his violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution).

Trump is a mob boss threatening to have Vito kneecap guys who won't play ball. Trump has always talked like a mob boss and now he's acting like one. He can't spin this implicit threat as playing hard ball to get a better deal for the United States. Because letting Ukraine fall to a Russian invasion would make us -- and Trump -- look even weaker than we already do.

Yet Trump made that implicit threat.

And since Zelensky is president of Ukraine, a Russian invasion means certain death for him. That's why Zelensky is playing patty-cake with Trump. Trump, in essence, threatened to have Zelensky killed by the same Russian war criminals who shot down a civilian airliner over Ukraine unless Zelensky "investigates" the Bidens.

This is clearly a misuse of presidential power for partisan political gain, the very definition of the high crimes and misdemeanors the Constitution refers to in impeachment proceedings.

If Republicans let Trump get away with this heinous, they will never be able to complain about a future Democratic president's actions on something as innocuous as, say, extending health care benefits to Americans who aren't covered by insurance.

That was the horrible executive overreach that Republicans said Obama was guilty of.

Impeach. Trump. Now.

More than ever.

The Gun Humpers Are Going To Need A Bigger Boat Part II

The Gun Humpers Are Going To Need A Bigger Boat

I've been waiting a long time for gun safety ads like this. Hey gun humpers, you're going to need a bigger boat, assholes.

We are coming for you and nothing is going to stop us.

Sean Spicer Embarrasses Himelf -- and All of Us -- Once Again

After completely embarrassing himself by repeating Donald Trump's lies about the most obvious things (like inauguration attendance), Sean Spicer made it even worse by appearing on Dancing with the Stars:

Mr Spicer opened his performance dressed in a neon, lime-green ruffled shirt and white trousers, banging a pair of bongos as he danced with partner Lindsay Arnold to the Spice Girls' 1997 hit, "Spice Up Your Life".

However the judging panel were unimpressed with the performance, awarding the pair a lowly 12 out of 30, ranking them near the bottom of the contestants.

After his performance was mocked by some spectators, Mr Spicer framed his battle for success on the show as a clash between ruling elites and the American heartland.

"Clearly the judges aren’t going to be with me. Let’s send a message to #Hollywood that those of us who stand for #Christ won’t be discounted. May God bless you," he said in a tweet.

Yes, Spicer tried to play the Christian card. Sorry, Sean, you can't play the Christian card after selling your soul to the demon Trump.

And what's really crazy about this appeal is that Trump's most fervent supporters are evangelical Christians, like the Southern Baptists and the people who run Liberty University, who ban dancing outright.

I'm really getting tired of having to repeat this, but it becomes ever so much more obvious the longer the Trump administration drags on: the Republican Party is full of nothing but hypocrites.

An Energy Policy Dictated by Vanity

We recently built a house, and one of the primary considerations was low energy consumption. Thus, all the light fixtures use LEDs or LED bulbs.

How much energy do LED bulbs save? An incandescent 60-watt light bulb uses, obviously, 60 watts. An LED bulb that produces the same amount of light (800 lumens) uses 9 watts. LEDS use only 15% as much power as incandescents.  You can get 8 LED bulbs at Home Depot for less than 10 bucks. That's a buck and a quarter per bulb.

LED bulbs will typically last more than a dozen years. They will save almost as much electricity in a single year as they cost ($1.08) with typical usage. It's a total no-brainer.

LED bulbs now come in a wide variety of "temperatures." They're no long just harsh bright white light, they come in warmer and cooler colors. You can get a bulb that casts a yellowish "warm" light (2700K), or a cool white (3100K) or a bluish daylight (5000K).

Not only do they use less power and are cheaper than incandescents, they are also safer: LED bulbs usually have a plastic shell that won't shatter into a thousand tiny shards of glass like old incandescent or compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs.

LED bulbs are also less sensitive to vibration. An incandescent bulb has a thin tungsten filament that's prone to breaking if the bulb vibrates.

Why are we talking light bulbs? Because the Trump administration recently nixed regulations that promoted energy-efficient lighting. They claimed that the new bulbs would cost more, which is totally false. The reality is that they're cheaper to buy outright and they're far cheaper to use.

Obviously, the stated rationale is false. So what's the real reason? Donald Trump has a personal grudge against LED bulbs. He thinks they make him look orange. Seriously.

Trump always looks orange because he uses bronzers (spray tanning products):

The president’s skin tone, said makeup artist Jason Kelly, is more likely the result of artificial tanning and an overapplication of bronzer, a type of powder or cream designed to give a tanned look.

Kelly, 45, was the official makeup artist for the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland in 2016. When then-candidate Trump came into the makeup room, he already had his hair and makeup done, Kelly said, and was sporting a thick layer of bronzer. Kelly applied a layer of loose powder on Trump, but according to the makeup artist, Trump “came in, and he said he thinks he already looks pretty good.”

According to the New York Times, aides close to the president have reported similar experiences: Trump tends to prefer to do his makeup in private.

Kelly said it is generally recognized among makeup artists that Trump’s application of bronzer is atypical. “When I see him, I see a line of oxidized bronzer around his hairline,” Kelly said. “The application is like a kindergartner did it.

LED bulbs have nothing to do with Trump looking like an orangutan.

Why is this country's energy policy being set by a vain old man who's afraid to let professional makeup artists get too close to his ridiculous toupee?

The Biggest Problem With The Democrats

During the Democratic debate on Thursday night, Beto O'Rourke had the line of the night.


It was fantastic and spoke to exactly what most voters want. Yet, for the last few days, Democrats have been wringing their hands and having conniption fits that it will cost them votes.

Uh...what?

The biggest problem with the Democratic party is they never seem to understand where the electorate is at. So, they wilt under right-wing bullying and behave in an overly cautious fashion. This is exactly why they lose elections.

They need to fucking go for it. Start talking about banning guns. If someone doesn't like it, tell them to fuck off. Tell the gun humpers that we are coming for them.

And it's not going to be pretty.

Equity Feminism

Moscow Mitch!

Do Immigrant Lives Matter?

Meme of the Year

But But But Liberals....

People Hated By Antifa

A Tough Week For the United States

Donald Trump's presidency has always been marred by his erratic personality. Each week brings some crazy pile of nonsense that chips away at his support. This time around it was attacks on the Fed chairman, trying and failing to buy Greenland for the oil reserves, and calling himself the "chosen one" while looking up to the heavens. The cherry on top was the latest round of tariffs coupled with an adolescent outburst towards US firms doing business with China.

All of this is perfectly in line with Trump's role as a Russian asset. Their goal is to erode our hegemony in the world and they are doing a good job of it. The stock market is all over the place, everyday people are taking financial hits as a result of the tariffs, and some of Trump's own supporters are beginning to question him.

“I voted for Trump in 2016 because I thought he was saying what everyone was thinking. But I’m disappointed,” says Debbie Dymek, an estate sale manager, as she pushes her cart through the aisles of a Meijer grocery store in Sterling Heights. “The bashing of everything and everyone, is that necessary? I’m an outspoken person, so when he says things that bother me, I know it must bother others.”

What Ms. Dymek likely doesn't understand is the army of trolls out there that love all of this. Most right-wing bloggers and commenters are rooting for the country to fall apart. They sooooo want this because of their emotional issues with authority figures. Trump has brought all these assholes out of their slimy holes and this is their time in the sun. The crazier Trump gets, the more they love it.

But average folks like these Iowa farmers aren't loving it anymore.

But fellow farmer Mike Holden, standing nearby, respectfully begs to differ. Though he has historically voted Republican 80% of the time, he doesn’t support Mr. Trump. He points out that farmers have no control over the weather, the cost of inputs like seed or machinery, or the price of grain, so they can’t pass on the cost of something like tariffs, which have driven the price of soybeans down by roughly 20%.

“We have enough uncontrollables,” says Mr. Holden, who raises beef and grows corn and soybeans. “We don’t need another one in the government.”

Mr. Ulch, who for years ran a fertilizer company on top of farming, had always wanted a businessperson to be president, so that he or she would understand “what goes on out here.”But he would have preferred someone like Mitt Romney. “To be honest with you, my vote [in 2016] was more against Hillary than it was for Trump,” he says – and that was before the trade wars hit. 

 “I’ll have a hard time voting for Trump again,” says Mr. Ulch.

So who will they vote for? Ms. Dymek gives us a clue.

“Warren?” she says, confirming that she named the Massachusetts senator correctly. “I like her because she’s forceful in a good way. I think she believes what she says.”

I'd ROTFLMFAO if Warren out populists Donald Trump and wins.

Trump Is The Chosen One

Trump Stoking White Nationalist Attacks on Jews and Hispanics

If there was any doubt that Donald Trump is a white nationalist who is intentionally egging on white supremacists to attack ethnic and religious minorities, two stories from earlier this week should allay any doubts.

The first:

A Nazi sympathizer who threatened to butcher a Hispanic woman and boasted that President Trump would wipe out nonwhites in a “racial war and crusade” was arrested on charges of making threats, the F.B.I. said on Tuesday. 

Prosecutors said that the suspect, Eric Lin, 35, sent a barrage of chilling and gruesome Facebook messages to the unidentified woman, who lives in Miami. Mr. Lin was arrested on Friday in Seattle, where he had recently moved from Clarksburg, Md., but was charged in Miami. 

“This is a RACE WAR and ALL of you will DIE!” Mr. Lin wrote to the woman on Facebook in early June, according to a criminal complaint. The next day, he wrote, “You want to see what a real Nazi can do?” adding later that he was operating under the authority of Hitler. In July, he wrote that “I thank God everyday President Donald John Trump is President and that he will launch a Racial War and Crusade.”

No matter how much Trump denies that he is responsible for the massive uptick in anti-semitic and anti-Hispanic attacks, it is clear that he has inspired racists to kill Hispanics and Jews in shootings in the Walmart in El Paso and synagogues in Pennsylvania and California.

Then Trump himself accused American Jews of being disloyal:

President Trump said on Tuesday that any Jewish person who votes for a Democrat is guilty of ignorance or “great disloyalty,” intensifying his efforts to drive in a partisan wedge over religion and support for Israel even as he appeared to draw on an anti-Semitic trope.

Mr. Trump did not go into specifics about what he considered to be Jews’ disloyalty, but his language was reminiscent of the anti-Semitic smear that Jews have a “dual loyalty” and are more devoted to Israel than they are to their own countries.

How can American citizens who happen to be Jewish be "disloyal" to Israel? They're Americans! The current right-wing government of Israel, run by that petty criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, has occupied the Sudetenland West Bank and Gaza strip, turned Christian and Muslim Israelis into second-class citizens, and kept millions of Palestinians in ghettos reminiscent of 1940s Warsaw. American Jews, in particular, are quite conscious of how dangerously close Israel is to morphing into a clone of Nazi Germany.

Was Trump's father disloyal to Germany when he opposed Nazi Germany in WWII? (At least we assume he opposed Nazi Germany -- maybe he didn't. That would explain a whole lot about his son, wouldn't it?)

Donald Trump is this close to telling American Jews that they should leave the United States and "go back" to Israel, just like he told four women members of the House of Representatives to go back to the countries they came from -- when three of them were born in the United States.

When neo-Nazis hear Trump accusing Jewish Americans of "disloyalty" he's saying exactly what they're saying, giving them justification for murdering Jews. Any nuance about it being Israel they're being disloyal to will be lost -- the neo-nazis who love Trump will only hear that Jews are disloyal and conclude that Trump wants them to kill Jews.

And then Trump has the gall to call himself the king of Israel. Well, Donald, if you're king of Israel you are automatically disqualified from being president of the United States.

We'll expect your resignation in the morning.

Trump's Desire to Buy Greenland Proves Global Warming is Real

When we first heard about Trump wanting to buy Greenland it was surreal: it sounded too stupid to be true. Why would anyone want to buy a giant block of ice? 

Because, as Trump is constantly saying, global warming is a hoax, and if global warming is a hoax then Greenland is totally worthless glacier-covered real estate.

Trump was scheduled to make a presidential visit to Greenland, and initially denied that the trip had anything to do with Greenland:

Trump’s desire to buy Greenland, which is part of the kingdom of Denmark, was first reported last week by the Wall Street Journal. Two people with direct knowledge of the directive told The Washington Post that the president has mentioned the idea for weeks, and that aides are waiting for more direction before they decide how seriously they should look into it.

Trump is scheduled to visit Denmark in two weeks, although he said Sunday that his visit is not related to his interest in Greenland.

Well, guess what? Trump was lying. What a surprise! The only reason he agreed to go to Denmark was to cut a deal to buy Greenland. Since Denmark has zero interest in selling out the semi-autonomous island and its citizens to a Putin sycophant, Trump is pouting like a baby and staying home.

President Trump on Tuesday night abruptly canceled a coming trip to Denmark, writing on Twitter that because the country’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, “would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland,” they would meet “another time.”

Mr. Trump was scheduled to visit Copenhagen on Sept. 2 and 3, after being invited by Queen Margrethe II. The president was expected to participate in a series of bilateral meetings and meet with business leaders, and Ms. Frederiksen had underscored the importance of the session, calling the United States “Denmark’s most important and strongest ally in NATO.”

What's really going on? Greenland does have natural resources, which have until now been locked under miles of ice. That includes oil. A lot of it.

But the glaciers on Greenland have been melting crazy fast due to global warming caused by our burning fossil fuel -- July was the hottest month on record:

Last week, the world received yet another stark reminder of what's yet to come as temperatures at the highest point of the Greenland ice sheet rose above freezing and melted the snow there for the first time since July 2012 and perhaps only the third time in the last 700 years. The glacier-covered island lost 12.5 billion tons of ice in one day.

Yes, Greenland lost 12.5 billion tons of ice in a single day.

Since Trump wants to buy Greenland it proves that he knows global warming is happening, and that it's happening very fast. But the ice sheet won't melt in the next two years; it'll take decades even at the rate 12.5 billion tons a day. So why the sudden interest? (Other than Trump's childishly short attention span?)

The value of oil company stock depends in large part on its portfolio of proven reserves. They have been pumping oil and gas for almost a century and a half, and all the easily obtainable oil and gas has been extracted. That means oil company stock will start tanking as it becomes obvious that their proven reserves are being depleted.

They're already using techniques like fracking to get the dribs and drabs that are still locked in the earth's crust, but that will only last for a few more years. After that's all gone oil reserves will drop precipitously, as will their stock prices.

So oil execs have to go to places in the arctic that are melting down (Alaska, Siberia and Greenland) to get new oil reserves on the books, to avoid a meltdown in their bonuses.

Everything about Donald Trump is a lie. Global warming is a hoax, he says. He doesn't want to buy Greenland, he says. He's going to Denmark, but not to buy Greenland. It is now clear that he wants to Greenland because he knows global warming is real, that it is caused by mankind, and that it is happening faster than anyone expected, faster even than Al Gore thought it would happen, and Trump wants to be first on the block to get this new real estate.

You have to wonder whether Trump, the oil companies and other climate change deniers are intentionally working to accelerate global warming so they can cash in on what they think will be the coming real estate boom in the arctic.

What they don't understand that global warming will put all the real estate that they already own along the east coast -- including Trump properties in Florida and New York -- underwater long before Greenland will be suitable for serious exploitation.

It will force people living on coastlines to move somewhere else, causing even worse immigration pressure than we're experiencing now as billions of people living in coastal cities are forced to relocate inland.

Donald Trump is a disaster, making all our problems worse. What does anyone like this moron?

The Truth About Antifa

Gun Humpers To Join A Militia

In the wake of yet another round of domestic terrorism perpetrated by gun rights supporters, writer Jeff Yang has proposed something I have been calling for in terms of a solution: make everyone who owns a gun required to join a militia. Thus, the original intent of the 2nd amendment would be fulfilled.

That's why I want to share a solution that should resolve the logjam blocking sensible reform of gun ownership in this country — one that by all rights should get overwhelming support among American patriots of both parties. I call it the "Military Induction for Licensing, Instruction and Training In Arms" Act — the MILITIA Act for short. The proposal is simple: Anyone purchasing a gun should be required to enlist for military reserve service, spanning the entire period of their gun ownership. Under this proposal, being granted a handgun license would simultaneously and automatically register you to serve as a reservist in the Armed Forces branch of your choice — it's that simple. And it should be that simple ... because it's what the framers intended.

Yep. Let's see the gun humper haul their fat asses out for some fucking PT and "well-regulated" training with firearms. Anyone that fails to comply will be a felon.

We here a lot of bravado from gun humpers about the military and defense. Let's see if they can live up to those words. My guess is they can't because, in the final analysis, they are cowards.

My Message Today To Gun Humpers

Fear and Hate

This recent article in Newsweek summed up Trump and his supporters quite well. The daughter of segregationist George Wallace, Peggy Wallace Kennedy, was interviewed and drew some striking parallels and similarities between then and now.

"The two greatest motivators at (Dad's) rallies were fear and hate," said Wallace Kennedy. "There was no policy solution, just white middle-class anger."

Sound familiar?

Fat Asshole With A Gun

The one thing I would add to this meme is for this asshole and all the other gun humpers out there who look like this to JOIN THE MILITARY. I'd love to see how long they would last...

Trump Should Probably Not Be President Anymore

The New Motto of the United States: 45 es un títere

The incompetence of the Trump administration knows no bounds. This was emphasized at an event where Trump stood beside a fake image of the presidential seal that mocked him:

The real seal is on the left, and the one on the right was displayed at the event. The eagle has two heads instead of one (like the Russian double-headed eagle), it's got golf clubs instead of arrows in one claw, cash instead of a branch in the other claw, and the text reads "45 es un títere" (Trump is a puppet, in Spanish) instead of "E pluribus unum."

How did the White House let something like this go? How could they not have vetted the presentation? What sheer incompetence not to!

Trump is a clown. Trump's staff is packed with clowns. His cabinet is packed with clowns, half of whom are only acting clowns because so many of his administration have been forced to resign for ethical violations, or have resigned in disgrace for beating their wives or getting pedophiles off with a slap on the wrist, or have been fired because they won't stoop to Trump's level.

This presidency is a dumpster fire. I'm getting tired of repeating myself, but these people are all idiots who don't know what they're doing and don't care how much they screw up the country. The Republican Party is complicit.

I only hope that they haven't damaged the Republic beyond repair.

The person who made this seal should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, right after Trump leaves office and is indicted for all the crimes outlined in the Mueller report.

The Art of Redirection

A recent article in my local newspaper regarding Representative Jim Hagedorn, a Republican representing the 1st Congressional District in the southern part of my state, caught my attention because of this quote.

Hillary [Clinton] would have stacked the Supreme Court with radicals who would have taken away our individual liberties. In the next go-round, you’re going to see nothing different.

Let’s be clear on this tactic. It’s the same one used by the Nazis in the 1930s. Accuse the other side of the very thing you intend to do and demonize them while doing it. So, it’s not that liberals are the radicals. They actually want to uphold the rule of law. It’s the conservatives who are radical and want to install judges who will rewrite the law to their liking.

The problem is that "conservative" judges aren't all they are cracked up to be. Invariably, they are quite reluctant to overturn precedent. This is particularly true of Chief Justice John Roberts. It seems to also be true of Neil Gorsuch. Conservatives just like to know that a member of their tribe is in there and most of them don't care after that.

Liberals, on the other hand, do care that a good judge who understands the rule of law serves as a federal judge. Remember, we aren't tribal like the right. Our goal is reality and the truth.

This Is My United States-What's Yours?

America at Its Best

As I write this it is 50 years to the minute since man first walked on the moon. I was only 11 years old, and it was long past my bed time when I watched Neil Armstrong descend the lunar module ladder and set foot on the surface of another world.

I was always a fan of the space program, but at that point pretty much everyone on the planet was united in awe of what human beings can accomplish when they put their minds to it. The men who landed on the moon were patriots, but they too understood that this accomplishment was much bigger than planting American flags on the moon. The plaque on the LEM's leg said it all:

Here men from the planet earth
first set foot upon the moon.
July 1969 A.D.
We came in peace for all mankind.

After the initial flush of excitement, landing on the moon became old hat, and the Apollo program was canceled with Apollo 17, after six moon landings (Apollo 13 experienced an explosion in a tank in the service module and its landing had to be canceled -- the crew barely made it back to earth).

There was another time when we all felt united by the space program -- a much sadder time. In January 1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing the whole crew. The mission had attracted a lot of attention in the press because a civilian, teacher Christa McAuliffe, was aboard.

It was horrible seeing the crazily winding plume of rocket exhaust on the screen, but the shock of the loss didn't really register in me until they showed a picture of the crew.

STS-51-L crew: (front row) Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair;
(back row) Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik

Three white guys, an Asian guy, a black guy and two women (one the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine). The Challenger crew represented the best of all of America. Not just entitled billionaires, white guys from Ivy League colleges, and hot-shot pilots.

This is what America is all about: anyone, from anywhere, can become an American and do anything if they work at it.

Now, that ideal has not always been met. And there are a lot of people these days who want to throw out that ideal completely, shut down our borders and kick everyone out of the country that they don't like.

The picture of the Challenger crew still brings tears to my eyes because of what it says about America when it's at its best. Donald Trump's Twitter account paid lip service to that ideal in a tweet a week after moving into the White House.

But it's clear that everything Trump has said and done since then has proved he doesn't believe any of it. He and his Republican lackeys represent America at its worst.

The Hillbilly Nuremberg

Welcome Those Who Flee Oppression

Anyone Can Be An American

Our Diversity Unites Us

Nativist and ethnic bigotry have been around since our country began. It’s not just nonwhites that been marginalized. The Irish, for example, have had a long history of being treated as subhuman. In Minnesota, Germans were persecuted during WWI simply because they were German. The CPS (Commission on Public Safety) patrolled the streets, arresting people for playing German music. The mayor of New Ulm was dismissed because he was German.

I say all this because we are all in this together. When people like Trump and his followers create a checklist for what it means to be American, we ALL lose, no matter what the color of our skin. It’s our diversity that unites us.

How To Propaganda

The cleverest trick used in propaganda against Germany during the war was to accuse Germany of what our enemies themselves were doing.

Political propaganda in principle is active and revolutionary. It is aimed at the broad masses. It speaks the language of the people because it wants to be understood by the people. Its task is the highest creative art of putting sometimes complicated events and facts in a way simple enough to be understood by the man on the street. Its foundation is that there is nothing the people cannot understand, but rather things must be put in a way that they can understand. It is a question of making it clear to him by using the proper approach, evidence, and language.   ---Joseph Goebbels, 1934.

Conservatives Are All About Identity Not Ideology

A recent paper from Cambridge political scientists confirms many assertions made on this site over the years. Conservatives don't have any sort of ideological convictions. They say they do but really it's all about identity and blindly following an authoritarian leader. Ironic, considering they rip the left for this, once again pulling the Goebbel's like propaganda move of accusing an opponent of the very thing of which they are guilty.

Barber and Pope specifically chose positions that Trump had taken that were polar opposites. The study showed that if Trump advocated the position, regardless of whether it was a conservative one or a liberal one, conservatives loved it. “The fact that stronger conservatives are the ones most likely to react to the treatment — regardless of the ideological direction of the treatment — suggests that the nearly ubiquitous self-placed ideology measure is less a measure of principled conviction and more of a social identity,” write Barber and Pope.

This would be why the debt is no big deal now. Or tariffs are now cool. They have zero policy loyalty and massive party loyalty. Consider all the foaming at the mouth we see on a daily basis from right wing media regarding "liberal fascism" and government taking over our lives. It's only bad when liberals do it. But this?

Just fine and dandy. After all, Trump is their dictator and that makes it OK!

Trump's Attempt To Distract and Divide.

At this point in the presidency of Donald Trump, it's child's play to figure out why he makes racist comments. First, as the puppet of Vladimir Putin, he seeks to divide this country and making racial remarks is the best way to do it. Second, he's shitting himself right now over what might come out about him and Jeffrey Epstein. Third, Robert Mueller has now been given 3 hours to testify before Congress next week. He will undoubtedly repeat his previous assertions that the president was not exonerated from obstruction of justice and, in fact, should be investigated further.

Trump is such a classic con man playing the shell game that it surprises me that his cult followers aren't picking up on this. They are pretty enamored with his ability to troll liberals so it's not really that much of a stretch. My hope is that the media and the twitter outrage mob ignores the substance of what Trump tweeted and focuses on the overall reasons why he did it.

It's an act, folks, and it's all about distraction and division.

The Paradox of Tolerance

Sorry, Trump supporters and other conservatives. The problem isn't us. It's YOU. Stop being intolerant assholes and then we will accept you. Until then, we are going to call you on your bullshit every single fucking day.

The Logic of the Right

Socialism Is...

...the DEVIL. Or, in this case, yet another example of just how irrational the right is when it comes to an ideology they epically fail at defining or understanding. Check it out...

Reporter @EmmaVigeland: Do you think Joe Biden is a socialist?

Trump supporter: Yes.

Reporter: How would you define socialism?

Trump supporter: I define socialism as when you bring down your own country, your own race, because he’s not black.

🎥@TheYoungTurks pic.twitter.com/KWE7h3gXfR

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) July 6, 2019

Electric Cars Have Arrived

Electric cars are in the news today: almost half the cars sold in Norway in the first six months of 2019 were fully electric.

Well. That settles it. Since Norway is the country that Donald Trump immigrants to the United States should come from, we should all switch to electric cars.

But seriously, folks. If you were a Texan you might think it's a little odd that Norway is so into electric cars, since they are a major oil producer. But Norway borders the arctic, and it's totally clear to anyone who lives in the north that global warming caused by people burning fossil fuels is wreaking havoc on the climate.

The Norwegian people understand that some things are more important than lining oil company execs' pockets with more money.

The perceived problem with electric cars is that they take a long time to refuel. And this is true: it can take several hours to recharge the batteries. But how often does that really matter?

We bought a Kia Niro plug-in electric hybrid four months ago. It goes a paltry 26 miles on an electric charge before the gas engine kicks in.

I was skeptical about this short electric range. But in practice, we use almost no gas. In the last month, we used gas seven times. Most days we don't use any gas at all and our mileage readout looks like this:

999 mpg means that only the electric motor was used and no gas was burned. On the 25th we drove it in the morning, recharged it, then drove it in the afternoon.

We have filled the tank five times since we bought the car. We bought it in Salt Lake City and drove it home to Minnesota. Equally impressive is the fact that the car's gas range is 600 miles on a full tank.

It's a small SUV that can hold a lot of stuff -- we put two bikes in the cargo area along with our luggage on the way back from Utah.

The average person who commutes less than 26 miles a day will see similar results. But even someone who commutes the average 32 miles a day (and I pity the fool...) would commute 3,200 miles between trips to the filling station. And if you can plug in at work, you would use no gas at all.

And that's with a 26 mile electric range. Cars like the Tesla and the Nissan Leaf have much longer ranges, and could go several days without having to recharge. Yes, it would be a hassle to drive from Salt Lake to Minneapolis with one of those cars. But how often do people do that?

Electric cars currently use lithium batteries, and the lithium supply is kind of wonky. Most of it comes from a mile-high desert in Chile. But there are new battery technologies in the works that may not use such a hard-to-get material.

In the long run, though, gas-powered cars should be replaced by hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles. The hydrogen should be produced by electrolysis, using electricity from wind power or solar cells, which is a great way of storing that energy for later use.

At this point, every family with two cars should be looking to replace one of their gas-powered cars with an electric vehicle. Not only do you reduce carbon emissions, but you save money as well -- in most areas electricity costs half what gas does.

Plus, electric cars make this cool futuristic sound when they move.

Do you mind if I play through?

Trump and His Cult Followers Are Fake Christians

Recently, President Trump tweeted this out...

I'm confused. I thought that he was a Christian as were his cult followers. The Bible is crystal clear on this.

"For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

--Matthew 25:35-45

So, fake Christians.

Worse, by turning away these folks and being all hatey and xenophobic, Trump and his cult are pushing these people into the arms of our enemies. We should be taking them in and helping them, not just because it's the right thing to do, but also because it's geopolitically advantageous. And we have a fucking labor shortage in this country!

What the fuck is the matter with these people?

The Trump Camps

It's time to start calling the immigration centers in the southern part of our country what they are: Trump Camps. He likes to see his name everywhere and recognizes the importance of labels, right? Because he made this issue the centerpiece of his campaign, he needs to own it.

So, more stuff like this...

How Phony Is Donald Trump?

Very Phony. It's all an act, folks

Being Informed

This one was for you, right-wing bloggers and commenters:)

Jesus and Gender

Trump Recants on Foreign Aid Statement

In a massive flip flop, President Trump recanted an earlier statement in which he admitted he would accept help from foreign agents if they offered dirt on his political opponents.

“Of course, you give it to the F.B.I. or report it to the attorney general or somebody like that,” Mr. Trump said on “Fox & Friends” in a telephone interview on Friday morning. “But of course you do that. You couldn’t have that happen with our country.”

Whew! Well, I for one am relieved and feel quite secure in knowing that our president would do the right thing now.

Trump Continues His Traitorous Ways

In an interview set to air Sunday on ABC, Donald Trump stated that he would listen to foreign government officials opposition research on political opponents. He went further to state that we would not necessarily report such an approach from a foreign government to the FBI. These statements represent further evidence that Donald Trump is in the game for himself and not for service to our country. What does this say about the people that support him?

It says they are selfish, vindictive, petty, and view liberals as less American than people that actually are not American. They are a cult of anger, hate and fear who are so far gone that they consider an act of treason to somehow be patriotic. Their support of this signals yet another example of how deeply authoritarian they are and how close we are to Germany in the 1930's.

Donald Trump has gone directly against his oath of office. It's time for him to be removed. Forcibly.

Abortion Is Here To Stay

Abortion foes may feel like they've scored some victories of late but a recent poll of the American people shows that 77% want Roe V Wade upheld. The simple fact is that when US citizens have things taken away from them, they don't like it. And the Roberts court is not going to overturn precedent.

Bill Clinton once famously said, "Abortion should be safe, legal and rare." I agree and that's my position. How we make it rare is the discussion we need to have right now and that needs to focus on the women who get the majority of abortions in this country, middle to upper class single white women in their 20's. Figuring out why they are so reckless and, quite frankly, dumb is the key here. Birth control is readily available everywhere and yet they have an unplanned pregnancy. Why?

We need to figure it out.

Gun Humpers Dealt Another Blow

The Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear a case regarding a ban on gun silencers, thus leaving a lower court ruling in place. States can continue to force registration for them or ban them altogether.

Given all the problems the NRA is having, the ongoing victories by Moms Demand Action, and the multiple states that now have outright bans on assault weapons (e.g. New York, Connecticut, California), the era of expanding guns rights is now officially over. We have now entered the era of Gun Rights contraction. 

I hope it lasts a while:)

The Republican Brain Part Nine: Are Conservatives From the Amygdala?

The last time we looked inside Chris Mooney's insightful and amazing book, The Republican Brain (and I realized it's been far too long...*lowers head sheepishly*), we looked at some of the possible issues with his overriding theory. We poked holes in it and wondered if the science really held up. It did.

The next chapter is the fourth and final part of the "Nature" section of Mooney's book and is titled, "Are Conservatives From The Amygdala?" The short answer is yes, they are. The simple fact is that conservatives have a larger right amygdala and liberals have more gray matter located in their anterior cingulated cortex (ACC). What does this mean? It means that conservatives allow the amygdala, which plays a key role in our emotional responses to threats and stimuli that evokes fear, to drive their reasoning. Liberals' reasoning, however, is driven by ACC which has been shown to detect mistakes and errors, leading one to make a corrective response. This is also known as "conflict monitoring.

All of this was confirmed by multiple studies, beginning with an MRI study of 90 University College of London Students in 2011. A University of Nebraska-Lincoln study from the same year showed that conservatives had a more pronounced startle reflex. Another "political brain scan" study was conducted by Darren Schreiber of the University of California-San Diego in 2010. This study showed that political conservatives have much higher activity in the amygdala when perceived risks are thrown at them.

So, as Mooney notes on page 114, "All in all, that's a fair bit of evidence connecting conservatism to the amygdala." In so many ways, this explains Donald Trump. For as much of a dumb ass as he is, he knows how to appeal to fear. And there is plenty of it physiologically located in the brains of conservatives. It's why they follow him no matter what he does. They are completely driven by emotion, not logic. Of course, you can tell this is true because of their strategy of attacking liberals for the very thing they do all the time (see also: trolling).

But what about the other side? The ACC? In 2007, John Jost, David Amodio, and several other NYU neuroscientists showed that liberals have far more active ACC's and are able to weed out faulty information. This would be why liberals can't watch Fox News for more than a few minutes without cringing. They quickly recognize faulty information because of their increased gray matter in their ACC.

Since Mooney's book was published, there have been multiple studies along these same lines. Here's a study from 2016 that illustrates how conservatives are all about negative emotions. Here's another study (from 2014) that shows that single stimulus data can reliably classify liberals from conservatives. Dr. Hibbing has even created a political physiology lab at Nebraska.

Now that we know that political ideology is inherently explained by physiological differences, what next? Is there anything we can do to counter the negative effects of what conservatives are naturally experiencing? Yes. Towards the end of the chapter, Mooney notes that children's politics are set in motion at a very early age. This is where the nurture part comes in and that's where Mooney is going in his next section, Enter The "Environment": Turning Against Change.

*Please click on the tag "The Republican Brain" if you want to review my previous summaries. 

The Poison of the Alt-Right

The main story in today's Times illustrates just how much the alt-right is poisoning our country.  How familiar does this sound?

Mr. Cain, 26, recently swore off the alt-right nearly five years after discovering it, and has become a vocal critic of the movement. He is scarred by his experience of being radicalized by what he calls a “decentralized cult” of far-right YouTube personalities, who convinced him that Western civilization was under threat from Muslim immigrants and cultural Marxists, that innate I.Q. differences explained racial disparities, and that feminism was a dangerous ideology.

Reminds me a lot of the assholes from Kevin Baker's site. Make no mistake about it, folks, they are a CULT. And the propaganda they peddle is a great danger to our nation's security. They claim to be fighting for "freedom" but what they really want is an authoritarian state where they can subjugate anyone who they perceive as a threat.

Threats, of course, originate from most of the rest of us who want our society to evolve from the Neanderthal-like mentality they currently espouse. They are so petty and vindicative that making the world a better place somehow mushes up in their mind as a boiling pit of sewage. They can't see that it's their own personality disorder and ongoing mommy/daddy issues that cause them to see good things as evil.

Cain talks about being brainwashed. It looks likes it's time to start deprogramming...

Other Things That Have Heartbeats

The Great Nazi Make Believe Game

The next time someone you know or are debating on the internet under reacts to Trump and his supporters clearly behaving like Nazis, show them this video.

 

And then tell them to fuck off. We are on to them and will be D Daying their asses every step of the way.