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Showing posts from June, 2017

Voter Suppression Goes National

There has been a lot of attention to the recent request from Trump's new chair of his laughably titled " Election Integrity Commission," Kris Kobach, for every bit of information the States have on every registered voter in the country, but no one seems to be stating out in the open what is going on here. Kobach,  the Secretary of State of Kansas, has earned a reputation as the most vicious vote suppressor in the country.  Here is his latest plan to accomplish this.  As Kansas Secretary of State, he formed an alliance with 17 other Republican run States to share voter data.  Then, he used all the records from those States to compile a list of every single name that appeared on the list more than once.  Then, a little filtering to select for names that were more likely to belong to Black or Latino voters, and he was off to the races, declaring that every one of these duplicate names must represent a single person registering in multiple States.  That person was then flag

Wingnut Wrapup

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It's hard to compete with our brain damaged President when it comes to the wingnut lunacy, but here goes: Todd Starnes, Town Hall:  "Professor Calls White People "Inhuman" Well, mostly the rich ones. Larry Elder, Town Hall:  "Minimum Wage Laws are Destroying Jobs -- Just as Predicted" Larry lies, just as predicted.  A collection of anecdotes, deliberately misinterpreted statistics and out and out falsehoods- pretty standard fare from the right.  But Larry isn't done: "The now-defunct organization called the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now came to California years ago to gather signatures on a petition for a ballot measure to increase minimum wage." ACORN!  All that's left is for Larry to tie it all in to Benghazi and the death of Vince Foster, and maybe claim that Hitler was a liberal, and he will have hit the Conservative jackpot. Ann Coulter, Town Hall:  "The Left Has One More Argument: Kill The

Global Warming and the Mideast

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I want to link to a story from Daily Kos today, about a subject I have talked about periodically for a couple of years: "Deepening Fears As Evidence Confirms Risk That Middle East And N Africa Will Become Uninhabitable... There is now new evidence which is deepening scientific fears, advanced few years ago, that the Middle East and North Africa risk becoming uninhabitable in a few decades.  FishOutOfWater ,  warned a couple of years ago, that in Persia and other Gulf states people will be steamed alive. It won’t be much better in the rest of the Middle East or N Africa either. Lack of potable water, drought and heat caused by our relentless fuel emissions changing the climate of the entire bio-sphere for the worst. " My own crude, hardly scientific attempts to calculate how many people might be displaced by this climate change induced catastrophe resulted in a figure of 300 to 350 million people.  The more scientific calculations discussed in the article place the

The Humiliation Continues

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To keep up with my documentation of the fact that the hard right in this country is essentially a fiction, here is a photo, from Right Wing Watch, of this year's march on Washington by the National Organization for Marriage: The  person who posted this said they counted 48 attendees, including a number of small children. Again, I want to point out how many people on our side of things are still like children afraid of monsters under their beds, cowering in the face of a mirage.  Other than vast amounts of money from rich psychopaths which allow them to spread their lies, the right wingers have just about nothing.  There is really no huge "silent majority" behind them.  God knows, nothing can keep them silent for a minute; if they are silent it's because basically they don't exist.  It's long past time for every one of us to stand up for truth and decency, and not worry about being shouted down by a member of this loathsome, and minuscule pack of sorry

Life in the Greatest Country

I have decided that it is a good time to reiterate the general outlines of what I believe is going on in our country and the world.  Here is what I have believed at least since the time of Reagan, and which I still believe: The industrial revolution is not over.  Most people think this is something that began and ended in the nineteenth century, but what began with the elimination of virtually all agricultural employment, and  with it over 90% of the jobs that existed in the United States and Europe in 1800, continues today.  Technology has devastated industrial jobs and is now eating away at service and professional jobs that we all believed could never be replaced.  These jobs are not coming back.  There are never again, barring some sort of plague that wipes out three quarters of the earth's population, going to be enough "jobs," i.e. people getting paid to make money for other, richer people, to go around.  It has been obvious to me for four decades that this fact i

For Your Information

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Clearly a terrorist attack: Not a terrorist attack: I guess it depends on the cost of the vehicle you use to carry out the attack.  Under $50,000- terrorism.  Over $10 million- no.

ShipGhazi!

Now that seven American sailors died in a ship crash that occurred while Donald Trump is President, I am anxiously awaiting the years of demands that he be impeached, the endless Congressional hearings and the massive charges, heard on a daily basis, that this event makes it impossible that he be allowed to remain in the White House.  I know our Republican Congress will not disappoint me, right?

Wingnut Wrapup

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Man, the wingnuts have been boring lately, but I guess it's time to get back to their idiocy.  I've tried to leave out the worst of the bootlicking Trump-loving, so here's what's left: So, let's just start out with this important announcement: Christine Rousselle, Town Hall:  "American Student Released From North Korea Has Been In A Coma For Over A Year" So what?  Every Republican voter has been in one for years. Katie Pavlich, Town Hall:  "Hmmm: Special Counsel Mueller's Team Sure is Stacked With Democrat Donors, Including a Hillary Supporter" Whereas, according to people like Katy, the only ones qualified to comment on the state of the country are foaming-at-the-mouth right wing lunatics. Katie Pavlich, Town Hall:  "Is President Trump's $110 Billion Arms Deal For Saudi Arabia About To Get Blocked In The Senate?" No, Katie, for the simple reason that the "arms deal" was never anything but a gigantic li

Things We Don't Believe But Wish We Did

'In an exclusive interview with CNTV-4, Ivana Trumps claimed the American President is obsessed with the size of his genitals, and has already tested “every product on the market” in order to increase the size of his penis. “When we were married, he would take 5 or 6 different types of drugs at the same time and he used his penis pump twice a day. He would also measure his dick every night to see if it had grown.” According to the former model and socialite, he even overdosed twice, in 1989 and 1991, after ingesting more than 300 penis enlargement pills in a day. “He literally popped pills like candy. It made him sick and gave no results, but he kept taking more and more. It was one of the main reasons we got divorced.” She says the president still takes penis enlargement drugs, but has reduced and stabilized his consumption to approximately 45 to 60 pills a day."

Thanks A Lot, Bernie

You son of a bitch.  So, here's the end result of your malignant attempt to purloin the Democratic party's apparatus to advance your own agenda.  Here's what happens when you preach to your ignorant Berniebots that the two parties are just the same; that Hillary is just as malignant a criminal as Trump, that what you get from one party is exactly the same as what you get from the other- people who give up and go out and do something as stupid as anything that the most vicious Trump supporters could ever think of. Well, here's James T. Hodgkinson, a white old guy with a gun who is indistinguishable from the worst sort of  violent, rage filled Trump-NRA crackers, but he is one of yours.  Own him, Bernie, because you created him, in your obsession to steal the Democratic Presidential nomination. And on top of everything else, here is what we get, thank you very much, Bernie:  Yesterday, we saw the Attorney General lie, evade, distort the truth and do everything else h

Degradation

Did any of you have a chance to see some of the highlights of the "cabinet meeting" that Trump had broadcast today on national television?  Trump forced each cabinet secretary to praise the wonderful job that Trump is doing, or to put things another way, he forced them, in order to keep their jobs, to go in front of the whole world and tell the most shameless lies about what every one of them must know is the worst Presidency in our history, by an immense distance.  Thus, Trump managed to bathe himself in the most disgusting display of sick narcissism that the country has been forced to endure yet, and at the same time engage in an act of the most brutal bullying, forcing long standing public figures to humiliate themselves in order to avoid being savaged by him. There has never, I feel safe in saying, been such a degraded performance by a President in the entire history of our country; in fact, nothing has ever come close. It is a very stupid thing for various Democrats

Wingnuts on the March

Well, I'm not going to make much of this, but this weekend was to have been the occasion of a massive number of huge demonstrations by right wing racists against "Sharia law."  As always, almost nobody turned out for any of these events.  The one in New York, or the one in Washington, for example, seem to have attracted only a few dozen participants.  Right wing sources are claiming a massive turnout of 200 or so in two places; Orlando, Florida, one of the cracker centers of gravity of the whole country, and San Bernardino, California.  The Orlando one may have attracted two hundred people, waving Nazi and Confederate flags, and chanting "one people, one land," a clear reference to the Nazi slogan of "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrerer."  So, good for you, Florida people.  I can't find any pictures remotely indicating a crowd of 200 in San Bernardino, so we'll just chalk that one down as one more right wing lie. Anyway, if it wasn't for my

Where Did Green Eagle Go?

Writing blog posts, like doing anything else, requires a belief that, in at least some minuscule, tiny way, you are helping steer things in a better direction. Well, I have pretty much given up on that.  The Republican party has succeeded beyond its wildest hopes in building an electorate that is absolutely immune to any facts, any reason, any thought of human decency.  And they have taken over, and intend to do what they want.  This has been clear enough, but is even more so after we have witnessed the ease in which they were able, with the collaboration of the mainstream press, to turn James Comey's testimony, by far the most shocking official indictment of a President's behavior in the entire history of the country, into a victory for Trump, in the eyes of his supporters. And describing our nation's swift progress from a sort of a democracy to an oligarchic despotism, with only the barest pretense of being anything else, is useless, because the people who might read

The Truth Nobody Dares to Speak

At least nobody I have heard, anyway. So, Congress called all these big National Security guys from the Trump administration to testify about whether Donald Trump tried to get them to betray their country in order to crush public knowledge of Trump's treason.  And guess what?  Big surprise, every one of them refused to say a thing, because letting the American people know what happened would just be way beyond the pale. Well, here is the truth that no one will utter:  If a single one of these miserable excuses for human beings could have honestly said that Trump did not attempt to bully him into perjury and obstruction of justice, he would have been shouting it from the steps of the Capitol twenty four hours a day.  No one would have needed to force them to speak. Every one of them knows that he sold the country down the river, but none of them will speak, because each of them is afraid that the minute they open their mouths they are going to be set upon by the Republicans

Watergate?

Watergate was, as they say, a "third rate burglary," a cheap political dirty trick. This story is about the worst kind of treason against the United States, perpetrated by the President of the United States. Yet people still are asking, "Is it as bad as Watergate yet?" That's like asking if World War II was as bad as the last time you got a parking ticket.

The Circus Is Coming to Town

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!  Just when you thought Donald Trump couldn't think of a better way to make a mockery of our government and our legal system, this news is breaking: "Donald Trump 'plans to live-tweet former FBI Director James Comey's testimony Mr Comey is scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on 8 June - in public and closed door sessions - to speak about the ongoing FBI investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign team and Russia as well as possible Russian interference with the US election." God in heaven above, we are going to have a closely controlled situation laying out the evidence, governed by rules refined over hundreds of years, and the chief suspect is going to abrogate to himself the right to spread to the whole country his side- excuse me, his lies about the story- with absolutely no control on what he says.  Is this what passes for justice in our country now, when a Republican is involved?  And yo

A Comey Warning

So Trump is apparently declaring that he is not going to use executive privilege to stop James Comey from testifying on Thursday.  Now, why do you think that is, given the certainty that Trump would do anything, no matter how abominable, to get what he wants? Well, maybe he has something even dirtier up his sleeve.  That's always a possibility, of course, but here is what I have been afraid of all along.  So many liberals seem to have totally forgotten that it was Comey who really stuck the knife in Hillary Clinton's back, knowing perfectly well that the story he has retailed in public was a cheap lie, provided to him by the Russians.  There is no one on earth that Trump is more indebted to, for putting him in the White House.  Do you really believe that this life long Republican hatchet man really suddenly got religion and turned on Trump?  If so, he'd be the first Republican in a hundred years to do that. I'm afraid that Comey and the rest of the Republicans have

Pittsburgh or Bust.

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Bust, I think we can pretty safely said.  I've been away for a couple of days, but just to keep my self-appointed task of reporting on the inevitable failure of right wing protests and marches complete, I want to show a couple of representative pictures from this week's "Pittsburgh or Paris" march in Washington, D.C., which was financed by the Republican party and promoted in the media by Donald Trump himself (not that he showed up, of course; he went to play golf instead.)  So, take a look: Really, I'm not being selective here.  I have always adopted a policy of showing the largest groups of people I can find at these wingnut events, confident that the truth is humiliating enough for them; and this event was no exception.  Based on what I saw, I cannot believe that this event attracted even a hundred participants, despite its systematic promotion by the Republican party.  Once again, I want to point out the very real evidence that the right in this country

Treason- What We Know Now

Here is a brief summary of what we know about the connection between the Trump administration and the Russians: 1.  We now have evidence of about thirty contacts between the Trump campaign and transition team with the Russians, all conducted in secret, and all denied vehemently by Trump and his spokesmen, until every one of them was proven to have taken place.  Not one single person will talk openly about what happened in these conversations. 2.  Trump has engaged in repeated behavior which can have no intent except to benefit Vladimir Putin and Russia, at the expense of our own country: We learned today that after he took office, Trump immediately made an effort to remove American sanctions on Russia: "According to the report, top Trump administration officials tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow. This horrified staffers, wh