The Trump Cult Doesn't Get It

The Trump Cult has one very big tell when it comes to the general election and it's their fall back position on everything.

Trolling.

They think they have liberals pegged as naive about Trump's chances in the general election. They assume that because we all thought Trump would lose in 2016 (as did Trump himself and most conservatives) that our predictions of him getting his ass kicked in the fall by any of the top candidates is the same naivete. It's not and here's why.

Trump barely won in 2016 by roughly 80, 000 votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He squeaked by. The Cult will have you believe that it was some sort of mammoth victory for them but, just like the "millions" that showed up for Trump's inauguration, it's pure fantasy.

Further, The Cult has to have the twice Obama voter go for Trump again this November or it ain't gonna happen. That one really causes some cognitive dissonance for them. They don't get that 2016 was a "fuck you" election and if anyone other than Hillary was the nominee, Trump would be running his own streaming service now and fleecing them for $8.99 a month. 2020 is going to be a different sort of election and not a repeat of 2016.

Any of the top contenders can wipe the floor up with Trump given his how detrimental his words and actions are to those twice Obama voters. They are sick of his bullshit and they will vote for Biden, Mayor Pete, Bernie or Warren. Honestly, they really only need a few votes in the Rust Belt and that's it. All of those candidates bring large constituencies with them and they are going to turn out to vote against Trump.

They did it in 2018. They did it in 2019 in red states. They will do it again this year.

The Very Predictable Iowa Caucus Disaster

Twenty years ago George Bush won the presidency by a single vote on the Supreme Court. Florida had botched the election by using punch cards in the polling booth, requiring voters to poke holes in a card, a card that was easily misaligned. The Court stopped a recount in Florida that would have almost certainly resulted in Al Gore winning the presidency.

It was clear then that there's only one valid way to register votes: on bubble sheets that can be quickly counted by mark-sense readers, or by humans if the machines aren't working, and to audit the machine-read results.

But companies saw a way to make a lot of cash: they sold the idea of using computers at the polls to a lot of states. This was a horrible idea, for dozens of reasons, but the main reason is this: elections only happen every year or two.

These computers are expensive and only get used for one or two days a year (or two weeks, in states that now allow early voting). The software is non-trivial and is only used once every couple of years, is difficult to test under actual conditions, and needs to be modified upon every use. Maintaining the hardware and operating system is a gargantuan job. All those computers are easy targets for hacking, so operational security is difficult at best, and impossible at worst. Worse, in every election since then there have thousands of complaints that the voting machines incorrectly count votes: touchscreens that registered a vote for a Republican when the voter selected a Democrat.

And all this is supposed to happen on city and county budgets, which are constantly hamstrung for cash, especially compared to things that happen on a daily basis, like fixing potholes and paying cops' and firefighters' salaries.

The last presidential election was severely disrupted by Russian hacking, and Donald Trump won because of that hacking.

So what moron decided they should write an app to register votes at the Iowa caucuses? What were they thinking? "Hey, let's give the Russians another chance to hack the election!"

To avoid that, they thought they could keep the app a big secret, and release it just before the caucuses to prevent said Russian hacking. What were they thinking? "Let's have an app that no one's ever seen and that's never been tested under life-like conditions decide who the next Democratic nominee is!"

To be fair, Iowa did have voters fill out presidential preference cards, so they should have a paper backup. But these are all administered in chaotic settings like high-schools gyms and cafeterias, usually by elderly people, so just how reliable is this system?

Then there's the problem with caucuses in the first place. Minnesota, where I live, used to have them for selecting the president, and in 2016 they were a disaster. Everyone wanted to go, and because everyone had to be there at exactly the same time, there wasn't even enough street capacity to accommodate all the cars going to the caucus: I sat in traffic in the same spot for 20 minutes until I finally I gave up and parked several blocks away.

Also, only certain kinds of people attend caucuses: party apparatchiks and driven, single-issue partisans. People just interested in selecting the candidate most likely to win are discouraged from coming.

For all these reasons, caucuses should be dropped in favor of presidential primaries that are run with the same rigor as general elections (rigor that should be improved with bubble-sheet voting). The selection of the next president should not be entrusted to party hacks and rabid pro- or con-abortion partisans browbeating their neighbors at caucus.

Minnesota has adopted such a presidential primary system, and all states should do so.

Republicans are having a field day with the Democrats' botched Iowa caucus. But the Republicans have completely abandoned democracy -- in Minnesota they completely prevented other candidates from running in the Republican primary, so Trump will be the only name on the Republican ballot -- just like the good old Soviet Union.

Minnesota will still have party caucuses to decide other issues and let candidates for local offices talk directly to the voters, but Minnesota Republicans refuse to announce where their caucuses will be, because they don't want anyone coming they don't control to bitch about Trump.

Finally, the idea that Iowa and New Hampshire should always get first shot at selecting the president is utterly bogus: those states do not represent the country in any meaningful way, and they should not get this outsized advantage that results from the extra attention that candidates pay them. There should be six to eight "Super Tuesdays" during primary season, and states should rotate among those every two years.

You Are A Traitor For Questioning It

A Projection of Cognitive Dissonance

Supporters of Donald Trump love to engage in projection. They accuse the rest of the country of doing the very thing they do. In the case of a recent comment by Kevin Baker, high priest in the Church of the Climate Denier, he illustrates how this works.

So, still delusional. I'm not sure what's going to happen to him when the cognitive dissonance strikes in November. He may vapor-lock. But I doubt it. His mastery of rationalization is remarkable, really.

This was in response to a recent post in which I stated the following.

The House was lost and will stay that way because of Trump. In fact, you guys are going to lose more seats there and the Senate as well. Heck, you’ve already lost state houses and governorships because you have hitched your wagon to a buffoon.

Let's take a look at a few key facts.

-The 2018 election flipped the US House back to the Democrats. This was an off year election and voter turnout approached 50%. They netted 40 seats and now have a 35 seat majority.

-Democrats flipped seven governorships in 2018. They flipped one in 2019 (Kentucky) and held on to another one in a deep red state (Louisiana).

-Democrats saw a net gain of five legislative chambers.So, Democrats had a net gain of five state government triplexes and Republicans had a net reduction of four triplexes. Democrats had a net gain of 308 state legislative seats and Republicans had a net loss 296 seats.

-Virginia is now entirely controlled by the Democrats who ran on gun safety. They are poised to pass sweeping new gun laws that are anathema to gun rights activists like Kevin.

Why did all of this happen? Two words.

Donald Trump.

His support was poison in all of these elections. People are tired of him and largely view him as yet another politician who breaks his promises. Remember the promise to drain the swamp? His recent actions with Ukraine, hiding his taxes, rolling back EPA standards, locking up children and generally acting like a king are all quite swampy.

It doesn't matter who the nominee is. Any of them are going to kick his ass in the fall. Of course, this assumes he will make it that far. I think there is a good chance he won't. I see him quitting, having health issues, or completely losing his shit when his tax returns are released in June of this year.

So, Kevin, why are YOU rationalizing the 2018 and 2019 elections? What's going to happen to YOU in the fall when cognitive dissonance strikes? After all, your Republican brain has been scientifically proven to have the most problems with cognitive dissonance. 

As always, I welcome a debate with you on any online platform if you ever decide to come out of your safe space.

Reason #524 Why Trump Should Be Impeached

Donald Trump was impeached because he tried to blackmail the president of Ukraine into phonying up some dirt on Joe Biden and his son, but that's not the only reason Trump should be removed from office.

His argument against impeachment has boiled down to this: removing him as president would be a national security risk.

The fact is, Trump is the nation's biggest security risk. Within a few months of assuming the presidency he had the Russians over to the Oval Office and blabbed a bunch of classified information, exposing an Israeli intelligence source.

He regularly has phone calls with dictators like Duterte of the Philippines and Erdogan of Turkey, stupidly blabbing confidential information in an attempt to impress them with his power. He discusses national security issues with international leaders in public at Mar a Lago, the same place where a Chinese spy was caught bugging the place.

And he is constantly being recorded by people he's working with, including Lev Parnas, the guy was helping Trump to extort the Ukrainians, Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and fixer, and Omarosa, who apparently was hired because Trump thought that would get him cred with African-Americans. The Daily Show has a humorous compendium of these security breaches, starting here at 9:46.

The secret recording that started this all was the one on the bus where he bragged about grabbing pussy. That impulse to brag and puff himself up is a disastrous character flaw in a president privy to the nation's most important secrets.

What isn't the CIA telling Trump, because they know he'll run off and call Putin to brag?

This man is the most incompetent person to ever hold the presidency. He cannot be trusted to keep his mouth shut about anything. Whether this is due to senility or an overweening urge to constantly try to impress people about how important he is, it doesn't matter.

This clown has got to go.

Climate Change Denier Won’t Leave Safe Space

In looking at the comments of his now disproven post regarding climate change, Kevin Baker is still incapable of leaving his safe space to face actual scientists who make fact based arguments. I get that he has a personal issue with me but to shut out reality that much and be so afraid to actually engage someone...anyone...who even has a rudimentary knowledge of science tells me that doesn’t really believe what he is saying and just peddling propaganda at this point. Speaking of which...

1. McConnell doesn’t have the votes to deny witnesses. Ain’t over yet, bub.

2. Assuming Trump makes it the election (doubtful for many reasons), he’s going to get his ass kicked by any of the top nominees.

3. The House was lost and will stay that way because of Trump. In fact, you guys are going to lose more seats there and the Senate as well. Heck, you’ve already lost state houses and governorships because you have hitched your wagon to a buffoon.

Dude, you are going to be in for a tough year if you keep defaulting to troll...

The President Is A Coward

The president of the United States is a coward. A fucking coward. I never thought I would say this about a person in that office but it’s true of Donald Trump. He and his fellow toadies in the GOP know that witnesses mean the truth will be impossible to ignore. Nixon may have been cowardly but at least he had the sack to resign.

I feel a great deal of pity for the people that still support him. They’ve traded the dignity of the office for a few extra bucks, judges who vote with liberals nearly half the time, and glee at trolling liberals.

Pathetic...

Climate Change Denier Pwned

As promised, I will be challenging Kevin Baker on his AGW denial. His most recent post puts forth four assertions. Here are each of them completely destroyed, one by one.

"Actual proof isn't necessary because by the time we have it it will be too late to fix"

This is several variations of nonsensical arguments, the taxonomy of which can be found here. The links are filled with mountains of evidence detailing all the proof that is necessary. For example, take a look at this link, "there is no empirical evidence." Click on the intermediate tab (you too, Kevin. You are a scientist, after all, right? You should be able to understand the language) and see the actual proof.

"The only solution is central planning by a world government run by our intellectual superiors."

This has been said by no one in the scientific community. It's a made-up crazy Internet lie put forth by people that have deep psychological issues with authority. Every time I ask for evidence of this, I get mouth foaming, anger, links that lead to looney web sites, and accusations of naivete.

People that accept the science of climate change want the public and private sector to work together to shift our energy usage to renewables. Carbon taxes would be a start. After that, it's up to the private sector. What Kevin hilariously ignores is that it's already happening. Sorry, buddy, but you don't get to play totalitarian fantasy games today:(

"People who oppose this are "deniers" who should be shut up at any cost"

False. And there really aren't many credentialed deniers out there, despite this other myth.

"There are too many people anyway, and a mass die-off would be good for the planet."

And the evidence of this is...where? In your ass? People say all sorts of crazy things on the internet, Kevin. You of all people should not believe everything you read on there:)

"the glaciers in Glacier National Park that were supposed to be gone this year are still running strong."

Wow, this is just a big fucking lie. 

In 2017, the USGS published a time series analysis of the glacier margins of the named glaciers of Glacier National Park . The areas measured are from 1966, 1998, 2005 and 2015/2016, marking approximately 50 years of change in glacier area. Scientists used aerial photography and satellite imagery to measure the perimeters of the glaciers in late summer when seasonal snow had melted to reveal the extent of the glacial ice. The data table shows that all glaciers have been reduced in area since 1966 with some glaciers having been reduced by as much as 85% by 2015. The average area reduction over the approximately 50-year period is 39%. Currently, only 26 glaciers are larger than 0.1 square kilometers (25 acres) which is used as a guideline for deciding if bodies of ice are large enough to be considered glaciers.

Seriously, what the fuck is the matter with you? When you read facts like this, does your head get all splodey and stuff?

"Michael Mann lost his defamation lawsuit because he still wouldn't release the raw data he used to produce his infamous "hockey stick" global temperature graph."

I've searched all over for this "loss" and the only thing I found was this. And this. From the second link...

Stay tuned to see whether the trial court ultimately agrees. This case began in 2012, and is unlikely to conclude any time soon.

Again, WTF are you talking about, Kevin?

Regarding the hockey stick nonsense, click here. 

While many continue to fixate on Mann's early work on proxy records, the science of paleoclimatology has moved on. Since 1999, there have been many independent reconstructions of past temperatures, using a variety of proxy data and a number of different methodologies. All find the same result - that the last few decades are the hottest in the last 500 to 2000 years (depending on how far back the reconstruction goes). 

Raw data is here. So, that's another lie torpedoed. 

Kevin, you are going to have to do much better than these weak assertions. That was too easy! 

Remember When The GOP Used To Care About The Environment?

Climate Change Challenge Rejected For Safe Space

I recently challenged science denier Kevin Baker to a debate on climate change. He commented on the challenge with his usual personal remarks (not allowed on this blog so it was not published) and declined the invitation. He also linked to a straw man argument that he and his commenters created about me that is 11 years old.

His comment made me reflect on the time I got voted off the blog (by one vote). In the voting post, a commenter remarked how they wanted Kevin's blog to be a place where they could retreat from the outside world (of facts) and just be free (of reality) or something like that. I've thought about that comment for a while and it always cracks me up. Even right-wingers need their safe spaces!

Kevin clearly needs such a safe space from the science of climate change but there is really no hiding from it. Climate deniers can make up whatever nonsense they want but it's all been refuted by the science. So, every time Kevin lies about climate change, I will be responding here and here on Reddit. I will use facts and peer-reviewed evidence to show that his assertions are completely wrong. He has an open invitation to respond but I don't think he will. As with many subjects, he engages with reasonable people outside his blog, doesn't like what he hears, and then retreats to his own blog to get back pats. Where is his mettle?

Sadly, he has allowed his personal emotions about liberals cloud his judgement and transform his views into an incoherent and paranoid mess. Worse, he is basically giving the middle finger to his own children and grandchildren who are going to have to live in a world with the number one threat (as identified by the Department of Defense) ignored due to adolescent feelings about authority.

The bottom line is that I'm going to call him on his bullshit about climate change whether he shows up to defend himself or not. He is welcome at any time to discover who understands the logic and reason of science and can defend it.

Where We Have Arrived

He Must Take It

Climate Change: There IS No Debate

For anyone who's over 40, there's simply no debate about climate change. It's happening, and it's completely obvious that it's happening from your own personal experience.

And I'm not talking about how things were in the good old days, when I was a kid and I had to walk uphill to school both ways. This is just since 1990.

I've been playing volleyball for more than 30 years. I play both indoors and out, and I've also been attending University of Minnesota volleyball matches.

When I started, the outdoor volleyball season started in May and ended in September or October. Now we regularly play from April to November, and several years we've been able to play from early March until early December. I usually stop playing outdoors in November not because it's too cold, but because the sun is so low I can't see the ball when it's served from south side of the court.

The women's NCAA volleyball season runs from August through December. When we started attending matches we had to drive through snow storms to get to half the matches. In the past 10 or 15 years there's barely any snow on the ground during the last two matches.

Since milder winters are perceived as a "good thing," a lot of people rationalize that climate change is not so bad and pretend it isn't happening. But just last week a flock of tornadoes killed people across the south. Tornadoes in Louisiana and Alabama in January! And this is becoming a regular thing. Come on, people, this is not normal!

My personal experience jibes with what scientists have been telling us: spring is arriving almost a month earlier, screwing up all sorts of natural cycles. The melting permafrost in Alaska and Russia is destroying entire towns because the very ground they're built on is melting because of global warming.

There's no debate about climate change. It's happening, right here, right now, and it's having drastic effects on our infrastructure, plants, animals, and human beings.

Anyone who says different is just lying.

But that's par for the Republican course.

Climate Science Debate Challenge

The Church of the Climate Denier has a high priest and his name is Kevin Baker. It's hard for me to understand how someone who is an engineer and clearly understands how science works is so completely irrational about the science of climate change. Clearly, his emotions about liberals and "elites" have turned him into a person who embraces nonsense and ignores the peer-reviewed evidence.

As a result of his delusions, I am formally issuing a challenge to him and any of the commenters on his site to bring their assertions about climate change to this thread on Reddit. There I will debate the science of climate change and refute any points brought by anyone. I will use actual science to back up my assertions and expect Kevin and anyone else to do the same.

Now, I realize that Kevin and his merry band like to live in a bubble of self-referential confirmation. The outside world (aka reality, facts) can be a scary place. So, if no one shows up, fair enough. I get why people need to be coddled and I certainly don't want to trigger anyone so they have to go to their safe space (his blog).

Yet I felt I had to say something as a person of science. The out and out lying has to end. And the world needs to understand what they are up to...

Fuck the Liberals!

The Second Amendment is About Groups of People, Not Individuals

The second amendment to the US Constitution reads:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Let's note that the word "Militia" is plural and it's capitalized. Why? At the time the second amendment was written, the British had a standing army the likes the world had never seen, at least not since the era of the Roman Empire. Standing armies weren't a thing. In fact, they were quite frightening to people because that meant an OCCUPYING AND CONQUERING FORCE.

So, it makes sense that the colonists would want a defense ("being necessary to the security of a free State) against that, hence a Militia, or their own standing army. The fact that it's capitalized means it's an organized force of many people defending the US government.

The latter half of the amendment also has a plural word. "People." Not "person." Not "individual." People, as in a group. This is about a group of people organized in defense of the State in a Militia. And they need to be well regulated which meant, in 17th-century language, well trained.

Before we move forward to modern times, let's take a look at some historical context. Colonists were required to purchase their own guns in case they had to report for duty in the militia. States could not afford to buy any sort of arms. Each state had its own version on the right to bear arms. James Madison, who wrote the second amendment, used these as a guide as he was composing the national version. Here are some examples of the state versions.

Virginia

The people have a right to keep and bear arms;… a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the Community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the Civil power.

New York

That the People have a right to keep and bear Arms; that a well regulated Militia, including the body of the People capable of bearing Arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State.

Pennsylvania

The people have a right to bear arms, for the defence of the State; and, as standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.”

It's quite clear that Madison, in writing the second amendment, was thinking about militias standing in defense against standing armies. Considering that both he and Jefferson banned guns on the campus of the University of Virginia, they were clearly not talking about an individual right to own a gun. A person could own a gun while serving in a militia.

One need only look at the third amendment to the US Constitution for further context.

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Again, we see the fear of standing armies. People look at this amendment today and don't really think much of it, assuming it's out of date and no longer applicable. But this was a big deal for the colonists who wanted to keep the standing, British army at bay.

It's crystal clear that as we look at the second amendment in our modern era, the original intent was based on being armed WHILE SERVING IN A MILITIA. Ironic, considering that the people that foam at the mouth the most about "original intent" are completely ignoring it here.

We now have our own standing army. It defends us quite well. And if for some reason, it became a tool of a tyrannical government, there is very little that a few handguns or even an AR-15 could do. They have drones. Discussion over. I will add that I see the more likely scenario of our armed forces splintering in which case, again, the need for ordinary citizens to have firearms is still not necessary and causes more harm than good.

Imagine if tens of thousands of people died from Islamic terrorism every year. Or ecoli from lettuce. A national emergency would have been declared long ago and action would have been taken. The religious belief that has metastasized around the second amendment must be eradicated. The United States loses 80 citizens a day to gun violence because of a small minority of our citizens'irrational fervor about guns. They consistently lie about the historical context of the right to bear arms and use fear to propagate unnecessary insecurity.

Fight their lies with this truth.

Why Trump Will Lose This Year

The Best Writer On Quora

The best writer on Quora is Lee Thé. With 22 million views on his content, his reach is unparalleled and his influence is enormous. The best part about all of this is he is completely dedicated to destroying the Trump cult. His answers in the politics section are concise and perfect in their accuracy. Responding to the question, have Trump’s tax cuts failed the average American, Mr. Thé wrote,

Like all Republican tax cut laws since Reagan, regardless of who they help or harm in the short run, they’re massive and unfunded. The Republican politicians tell the people taxes are bad, tax cuts are good. They never tell mention what the taxes pay for. They never mention the economic chaos that ensues when the deficit has to be paid for. The strategic goal of massive, unfunded tax cuts is the elimination of the social safety net. The excuse is the deficit created by the tax cuts. The justification is equating the social safety net with socialism (oh the horror), and equating that with Soviet communism.

The devil is in the details. According to Politifact.com’s analysis, “every income group pays less in taxes in 2019, but the benefits flow disproportionately to wealthier taxpayers. And by 2027, every income group below $75,000 will see a tax increase, while only those income ranges above $75,000 will still see a cut.”

Do 70% of the benefits from Trump's tax law benefit top 1%?

Bait…and switch.

Trump’s supporters have been tricked into selling their birthright for a mess of pottage

Mic drop. 

The Roaring 20's

via GIPHY

A Special Thanks

Nikto and I would like to thank everyone for reading our little small-town blog in 2019. We started off a few years ago with just a handful of readers and now, thanks to exposure on Twitter, Quora, Medium and Reddit, we average between 500 and 1000 readers every day.

2020 is going to be a crazy year in terms of politics. A sitting president will be running for reelection after being impeached and having a Senate trial. Will he make it through the year? Or will they find him emotionally exhausted and jibbering to himself with his thumbs on his Twitter feed? We can't wait to find out!!

"Conservative" SCOTUS Judges Vote With Liberals Nearly Half of the Time

Take a look at this graphic.

See, now what I can't figure out is why conservatives are so hell-bent on Kavanaugh. He is more liberal than Roberts! In fact, when you really look at the cases, 7 of the 9 judges barely move into the red area at all. Where is all that originalism I keep hearing about all the time?

I submit that they don't really care how the people they support vote. They just want them to be "conservative" whatever the fuck that means. It's pure tribalism.

Trump's Best Words 2019

Wow. Seriously, Trump supporters, this is your guy?

What Doesn't Refute Science

When I Was Your Age...

Deprogramming The Cult

There is a new poll out that shows the highest number of Americans that want Trump impeached and removed from office that we have seen thus far. 51% of those who responded want him out while 43% do not want him out. The more interesting numbers show that 54% show that the Senate should call additional witnesses who were blocked from coming to testify by Trump himself.

Further and far more significant, 46% of American strongly disapproves of the job Trump is doing while only 27% strongly approve. That tells me that Trump is fucked in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Something else of note is Trump's numbers among independents. 48% approve of the articles of impeachment while only 41% disapprove.

Taken all together, we are beginning to see how much trouble Trump is in if 51 senators vote to hear from Bolton, Mulvaney and Pompeo. I think several other senators want to flip as well given the reality of their political lives if they don't. Susan Collins and Corey Gardner are already likely to not make it. Joni Ernst and Martha McSally are also in trouble. Even Mitt Romney might be the man of integrity he is and vote for more witnesses and, ultimately, removal.

And then we have this...

Living in Two Worlds

Check out the list of issues that are on voters' minds and how they rank their importance? Could we be any different?

Conservatives, seriously, your top priorities are

1. Don't impeach Trump
2. Don't ban guns
3. No slavery reparations
4. Build a Wall

Compare this to liberals.

1. Don't separate immigrant children
2. Impeach Trump
3. No ban on abortion
4. Don't build a wall

The party of "fuck you, keep away" compared to the party of compassion and law. Good grief...

Trump Costing US Billions of Dollars

The future of energy is renewable. Period. Donald Trump and the rest of the AGW deniers are costing the US billions of dollars in the race of this emerging market.

The withdrawal could lock U.S. businesses out of a huge portion of the rapidly growing global market, already worth an estimated $164 billion, that seeks to put an economic price on the greenhouse gases warming the planet — a potential economic loss causing concern among American-based companies such as the food and candy maker Mars.

...the push to reduce the world’s carbon pollution is also creating major economic opportunities. Those include trading systems, already present in parts of Europe and the U.S., in which companies essentially buy and sell the right to pollute — a setup that gives polluters an economic incentive to cut back while generating new income for businesses that help clean the atmosphere.

Yep, it's that fucking bad. And guess which countries are filling up that market and making money?

Republicans Are Closet Authoritarians

How To Intellectually Dominate Someone Who Says, "We are a republic, not a democracy."

Ever been in an online discussion about politics, majorities and minorities, and someone (usually a libertarian) will say something like, "We are a republic, not a democracy," to sound all smart and stuff? Well, Ryan McMaken has a solution for you! He tells you what they are really saying...

"I don't like your idea, and since it involves aspects that are democratic or majoritarian, I'll invoke the republic-not-a-democracy claim to discredit your idea." 

or

"A majority of the population appears to support this idea, so I will invoke the republic-not-a-democracy claim to illustrate that the majority should be ignored."

and then he proceeds to tell you how to get them to STFU. Enjoy the entire piece. It's simply wonderful.

The Cult of Both Sides Pwned

“The phrases “they’re all the same” or “everybody does it” are thrown around loosely in order to deflect criticism of indefensible behavior. And yes, of course, I’m referring to President Donald Trump. Some of my Republican friends try to excuse or rationalize Trump’s dishonesty, vulgarity and immorality by saying all politicians do it. They are guilty of employing false equivalency.

 If I’m a murderer and you drive over the speed limit, you wouldn’t claim we’re the same since we both broke the law. Similarly, it is not accurate or fair to equate a serial liar — a cheating, philandering, bribing narcissist — with the exaggeration and occasional dishonesty of traditional politicians. Trump is in a league of his own, bereft of decency, unique in his level of depravity. Equating him with other politicians is not only false, it is dangerous.”

---RYAN PULKRABEK, MINNEAPOLIS

Trump Admits He Is Totally Full of Shit

Finally, Donald Trump has opened his big fat yap about something you'd think he'd know everything about: excrement. The man is so full of bullshit, you'd think he'd start turning orange. (Um, wait a second...)

But it turns out that he doesn't know shit about shit. Last week the Oracle of Mar a Lago had this to say:

“We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms, where you turn the faucet on — in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea because you could never handle it — you turn on the faucet, you don’t get any water,” [geeze, this guy is so inarticulate and incoherent] he said Friday at a White House meeting about small businesses and reducing red tape.

Mr. Trump also noted that “people are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once” and that “they end up using more water,” according to a transcript of the discussion.

When Donald Trump says "people," he means Donald Trump. Apparently the notorious germophobe is totally full of shit, and needs to flush the toilet 15 times every time he takes a dump.

The reason there are rules mandating low-flow toilets and shower heads is that water shortages are rampant in many parts of the country, particularly in the Southwest, California and Montana. There's a thing called "senior water rights," which means that if you build a new house, the guy who owns the old farm up the river has the right to stop you from watering your lawn. Or even flushing your toilet, if the previous owner of the land didn't use water for that. It's really a bogus law, but it's endemic out west.

Even in places where there's plenty of rainfall, the deep underground aquifers that supply many suburbs (like mine) with drinking water are being completely drained, and those aquifers literally take millennia to replenish.

The average person urinates six to eight times a day. Defecation rates are more variable, ranging from three times a day to three times a week. Since people urinate between two and 14 times as often as they defecate, water usage should be optimized for urination.

You don't need much water to flush urine: the 1.6 gallons used in low-flow toilets is way more than enough. Frequent bowel movements are also likely to have lower stool volume, and require less flushing. Yeah, some bowel movements might require two, three or four flushes (but 15? Gimme a break!), using three to six gallons.

But so what? Instead of wasting the five to seven gallons of water that old-style toilets used every time you take a leak, just flush the number of times needed. If the "average" person urinates six or seven times more frequently than defecating, they're using only 10 gallons of water a day with a low-flow toilet, as opposed to 30 to 40 gallons as was the case with older toilets. Does it really make any sense to for every American needlessly flush 15,000 gallons of water down the toilet every year to satisfy Donald Trump? That would be four and a half trillion gallons of water!

In some countries toilets have two flush modes: one that uses a small amount of water and another that uses more. But why bother with that gimmick when you can just flush again if needed? One improvement in toilet design that's clearly necessary is a way to make the porcelain slicker, so that excrement and stains just don't stick. We definitely need to make toilets easier to clean, now that Trump is kicking all his undocumented maids out of the country: heaven forbid he'd have to clean his own bathroom!

Come on, Republicans. Don't you long for the days when a president didn't say something completely stupid and make a fool out of himself five, six, seven, ten times a day? Trump is making it so easy for the guys on late night TV to ridicule him. Just impeach him and save yourselves the embarrassment of having to defend his every stupid tweet and utterance...

By the way, it was a Republican, George H. W. Bush, who signed the original 1992 law mandating the 1.6 gallons per flush standard. Not all Republicans are horrible wastrels.

The Russification of the GOP

Ronald Brownstein from the Atlantic has a great piece up about the Republican Party. Essentially, conservatives have become stooges for Putin and his propaganda. Clearly, they view their fellow Americans (in this case, Democrats) as a greater threat than Russia, who is still trying to undermine our global hegemony.

As I have been saying for years now, conservatives are traitors. Time to put on trial and sent to federal pound me in the ass prison.

The Cult of Donald Trump

Best Sales Quarter in Years For Gun Grabbers, Dick's Sporting Goods

Remember when Dick's Sporting Goods decided to stop carrying assault rifles and high capacity magazines? The NRA and their mouth-foaming supporters tried to put them out of business. Well, they just had their best sales quarter in years.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Crickets From The Right On The Naval Base Shooting

Why in the actual fuck is a Saudi Air Force guy training at a Naval base on US soil? I mean, I get that Trump loves the Saudis but I figured even an idiot like him would remember that 14 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. Saudis and our airplanes aren't a good idea. Not at all.

It was nice to see, though, how easily he could obtain a firearm. Terrorists who want to attack our country need look no further than gun rights supporters for help in killing Americans. Yet another reason why those assholes should be Gitmo'd.

Why Aren't Men Included In New Abortion Laws?

Using Your Religion Against You

When I was a kid in the 1960s my mom was a Jehovah's Witness. She had been recruited by a woman going door-to-door for the Watch Tower Society. My dad didn't like it, for some good reasons (Witnesses are opposed to blood transfusions and discourage interaction with non-Witnesses), and for some bad ones (they condemn certain sex acts that my mom didn't want to do in the first place -- and yeah, it's weird that my mom told me that when I was a kid).

My dad went to the church closest to his real estate office and sought advice. The pastor told him that the Bible says the wife must obey the husband. My father battered my mother with this argument endlessly: "But the Bible says!" he would intone, even though he didn't believe in God or the Bible. Eventually she relented and quit the Witnesses.

The Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult, and it's a good thing my mom got away. The Watch Tower Society is  infamous for predicting the end of the world is nigh. They predicted some form of Armageddon would come in 1878, 1881, 1914, 1918, 1925 and 1975. My mom was caught up by the Witnesses in the late Sixties and early Seventies, when they were pushing the "World-Wide Jubilee."

We didn't go to church, but before joining the Witnesses my mom sent us kids to an evangelical "Good News Club" at a neighbor's house, where we sang songs, did crafts, had treats and studied the Bible.

But the most important Bible lesson came from my father, who didn't believe in the Bible at all: he showed me that the entire purpose of religion is control. My father controlled my mother by using her own beliefs against her. The same way religion has been used to control people since time immemorial. It's not an opiate, as Marx would have it, as much as a yoke to keep the people pulling the ruler's plow.

Religion has always been a favorite tool of dictators for keeping the population in line: today in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran with Islam, Russia with the Orthodox Church. In the past, Chinese emperors with Confucianism, Japan with Shinto (which deifies the emperor), Medieval Europe with Christianity, which stipulated that kings ruled by divine right.

Tyrants had a fling with Communism in the 20th century, but it just doesn't work. True communism states that everyone is equal, that the working man has dignity, that everyone should have a voice in the operation of the commune. That's a hard sell when everyone on the Central Committee is a rich fat cat and your kids don't have shoes or food.

Religion, on the other hand, is extremely hierarchical. It preaches that you should suffer in silence and mindlessly obey those at the top, rendering unto Caesar, etc. The Bible is full of stories about kings who commit vile acts of murder and slavery, yet still enjoy God's support.

And this is where we get to the point: religious conservatives are all in for Donald Trump, even though he is the most corrupt, immoral, mendacious, sclerotic, vengeful, petty, cruel, greedy, hate-filled, immature, boastful, blustering, narcissistic, irreligious, gluttonous, racist, sexist, back-stabbing, money-laundering, mobbed-up, emolument-soaked, pussy-grabber/president this country has ever seen.

Oh, sure, religious conservatives pretend to deny Trump is all these things. But everyone knows what kind of scumbag he is. And yet his religious supporters don't care. "He's the modern King David," they intone, as though a Biblical analogy for sinfulness excuses all crimes.

“God uses imperfect people through history. King David wasn’t perfect,” Rick Perry said, before relating that he’d told the president that he embodies “God’s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government.”

But as Eliot Cohen points out in his article in The Atlantic, Trump is no King David. For all his faults, David was a man of God, even though he was consumed by his other passions. He felt guilt and remorse. He repented and confessed. And he could actually read and write poetry!

Trump is utterly without conscience. He will not admit error, much less repent, confess or ask God for forgiveness. He does not or cannot read. His only use for religion is use it to control his supporters. He is bent on revenge and the accumulation of wealth (usually at the same time). He lies incessantly, without surcease, to sow chaos and confusion and hatred.

Trump supporters often claim that they hate liberals because liberals think they're so much smarter than conservatives. It's not so much that liberals think conservatives are stupid, it's that Trump plays them for fools (constantly telling lies that are demonstrably false and committing dozens of clearly unethical, immoral and illegal acts), and they go along with it. Some Trump supporters might be naive or misled or truly stupid, but that means the rest are complicit in Trump's perfidy. Which is far worse than being merely stupid.

And besides, it's Trump who is constantly telling us how much smarter he is than everyone else, when clearly he knows nothing about anything, especially religion (Two Corinthians, anyone?).

The David analogy plays right into this. Trump supporters claim he is an imperfect vessel of God's will, like King David. But his followers are being played for fools again, because they have forgotten (or never knew, as I didn't) what David's ultimate fate was:

As Cohen sums it up:

Nor does God (or man, for that matter) simply disregard David’s sins or dismiss them as peccadilloes that might perhaps merit private punishment but no public reaction. David lusted after Bathsheba, the wife of one of his soldiers, the Book of Samuel relates. He arranged to have her husband, Uriah the Hittite, placed in the front of a desperate attack. He died, and the king carried off the widow. Not quite murder, perhaps, but a foul and tricky deed.

In the next chapter, Nathan the prophet stormed into the royal palace, and told the startled David a story about a rich man who has stolen a poor man’s ewe. When David expressed indignation at the villain of the tale, Nathan thundered at him, “You are the man!” And then followed David’s doom, intoned in the name of the God of Israel:

“And so now, the sword shall not swerve from your house evermore, seeing as you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.” Thus says the Lord, “I am about to raise up evil against you from your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your fellow man, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it in secret but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.”

David confessed and repented, but the doom came nonetheless. His son Absalom revolted against him, he was chased from his throne (which he recovered after much hardship); he was humiliated by his inferiors; and he ends his days in the midst of another son’s revolt, decrepit and apparently impotent. David’s sin was not only a private sin, and it did not receive a merely private punishment. Nor did he alone suffer: His humiliation included a revolt that turned his kingdom upside down, and led to waves of political murders even after his death. Apparently, the Ancient of Days was not willing to let bygones be bygones. 

Conservatives: please, please, please don't let Trump use your own religion to lead you away from what you know is the righteous path. Because he is not one of you. He is just using you to escape prosecution for decades of tax evasion and money laundering for the Russian mob.

In the end, Trump's reign will be just as disastrous as David's.

Sunday Message

Trump Triumphant

Whither TV?

Recently Disney debuted its Disney+ streaming service, which launched a plethora of stories in the press about "streaming wars," like this one.

As someone who has always hated the way Comcast operates (lousy service and constantly jacking up prices), I'm glad to see these new options.

Streaming services are either supposed to sound the death knell for cable and broadcast TV, or start a bloody massacre among streamers like Netflix, Disney+, HBO Now, Apple TV and Amazon as they spend billions of dollars on new programming to attract customers.

Many are afraid that quirkier cable channels like AMC (home to hit shows like Madmen, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, etc.) and BBC America (home to Orphan Black and Killing Eve) will go away when people cut the cord.

But I'm not so sure that's the case.  Streaming services like YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV and Sling Orange + Blue offer those same channels and most live local channels for much less than Comcast. These streaming services also provide video on-demand (VOD) for shows previously broadcast on these channels. VOD doesn't allow skipping commercials, which should make advertisers happy.

There's a lot of hand-wringing that streaming services will force people to choose which shows they watch because they can't afford to subscribe to all the streaming services. Some people are even saying that this new paradigm will cost people more than the Comcast model did, because they'll have to pay for five or six or ten different services, at $7 to $15 bucks a pop.

But that's hard to believe: Comcast bundles are usually more than $100 a month. With services like YouTube TV, HBO Now, Disney+ and Netflix, you can get significantly more TV for less money.

And if you're concerned about cash flow, remember that you don't need to subscribe to streaming services on an ongoing basis. You can pick them up and drop them as new content appears and you finish watching it.

Want to see the new Watchmen or His Dark Materials but don't feel $15 a month is worth it? Subscribe when there's a month left in the season, binge the previous episodes and everything else you like in the catalog, watch the final few episodes in real time, and then let the sub lapse. Or use the free trial (usually a week) to binge-watch the whole season at once. These services are always eager for subscribers, and will frequently offer you another free week within a few months.

Yes, it's true, if you want to be one of the cool kids and be up on every show, it will cost you a lot of money (and time!). These big companies count on laziness, impatience and peer pressure to fill their coffers.

Will there be a streaming service massacre? Maybe. Will there be further consolidation, along the lines of the Disney/ABC/Marvel/Fox mergers? Probably. But the market for these entertainments is world-wide, and even if people only subscribe a few months out of the year, we're still talking hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

I see a place for all these streaming services, the cable channels, local TV channels, and content providers who actually make the shows we want to watch. What I don't see is a place for giant corporations like Comcast who use their monopoly power to overcharge customers physically tied to their cables.

And as long as Disney+ doesn't try to become the next Comcast, more power to them.

Bloomberg? No. Just No.

Mike Bloomberg, former Republican mayor of New York and billionaire owner of a major news organization, announced that he is running for the Democratic nomination for president.

There are a ton of reasons why Bloomberg shouldn't be running for the Democratic nomination.

1) He's too old. At 77, he's the same age as Joe Biden, who also shouldn't be running because he's too old. There's a better than 4% chance he'll be dead before inauguration day, and a better than 1 in 4 chance he'll die before the end of his first term.

2) He has a horrendous conflict of interest. Bloomberg News has announced that it will not investigate Bloomberg during the campaign, nor will it investigate his Democratic opponents. But it will still publish stories about his opponents from "credible journalistic institutions."

This is pure bull. Bloomberg flunkies can still print flattering stories about him from the New York Times, and ignore the unflattering ones, and vice versa for the other Democratic candidates.

And what happens if Bloomberg wins the nomination? Will Bloomberg News stop researching stories about his Republican opponent, Donald Trump? To be fair, they'd have to stop printing stories about the presidential race, international diplomacy and the economy because those topics involve Trump.

The only way to avoid a conflict of interest is for Bloomberg to sell his company, which is which Trump should have done.

Trump's conflicts of interest constantly undermine his every decision. Did he pull troops out of Syria because it was best for the United States (which it clearly wasn't, for dozens of reasons), or did he pull out because Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan threatened two Trump hotels in Istanbul? And, as it turned out, Trump didn't actually pull the troops out of Syria, he just moved them to oil fields, allowing Turkey to invade and kill and capture hundreds of Kurdish fighters who had stood by the United States in Iraq and Syria for decades.

Basically, every international, national and economic news story involves the president at some level. Bloomberg News would have to cease publication to avoid a conflict of interest if Bloomberg won.

3) We don't need another billionaire running for president. Yeah, Bloomberg would be better than Trump. Pretty much anyone would be. The problem with billionaires is that they are terrible at dealing with human beings. They are used to buying everything they want and bulldozing through people with their money instead of working with them.

Trump's wealth is the core of why he is such a horrible president and person.

4) Bloomberg's flip-flopping from Democrat, to Republican, to independent, then back to Democrat, is fishy. As is the way he got the New York mayor's office two-term limit removed so he could serve a third term.

5) The only one who wants Bloomberg to be president is Bloomberg. No Democrats want him. His racist stop-and-frisk policy in New York (which he recently characterized as a mistake, and for which he apologized) alienated a large segment of the Democratic party, including blacks, Hispanics, and anyone who isn't a racist.

Yeah, Bloomberg has done some good work on gun policy. But he would serve this nation far better continuing that project than injecting yet another wild card into a Democratic field that already has too many candidates.

The 2016 Republican field had too many candidates, and look how that turned out. If Bloomberg does win the Democratic nomination, Republicans will (hypocritically) claim he bought it. And Russia will use Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk disaster on Facebook and Twitter to even more successfully convince blacks and Hispanics to stay home as they did in 2016.

If Bloomberg wants what's best for this country, he should let the primary process play itself out and let the American people choose the Democratic nominee by popular vote, then help level the playing field during the general election by making contributions to counter the Republican PACs funded by corrupt billionaires like Sheldon Adelson.

He can keep his interest in Bloomberg News, and the organization can continue the important work of reporting the truth, countering the lies spewed by the Russians and Fox News, which has become just another propaganda outlet for Vladimir Putin and his puppets, which now include Donald Trump and nearly the entire Republican Party.

Your Party Sucks

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.