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Showing posts from November, 2018

Wingnut Wrapup

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A disastrous week so far for our traitor in chief.  Let's look in on how the wingnuts are trying to lie all of this away. Let's just start out with this headline from the Washington Post: "Trump renews attacks on Mueller, asks whether probe will ‘just go on forever’ It will if you keep committing crimes forever, bucko. And the typo of the month, from the Wall Street Journal: “Vladimir Putin is president of Russia. An editing mistake erroneously identified him as Vladimir Trump in an earlier version of this article.” At this point, it might have been more accurate to say that Putin is the President of the United States. Now, back to our usual programming: Guy Benson, Town Hall:  "Analysis: What Does Cohen's New Guilty Plea Mean? We Have No Idea." No idea at all.  I mean, it's just a mystery...Maybe he is part of Trump's treason, maybe he was just joking.  I mean, either one could be true, right? "Let me just add that if t

Treason!!!!

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There is just no end to the abuse of his position committed by the President of the United States, no end to the contemptible behavior he is willing to engage in.  But today marks perhaps the most degraded public misuse of his power of all.  Today Donald Trump published the following graphic on Twitter: The President is demanding, in this graphic, the trial for treason, without a shred of evidence, of two former Presidents, a former Secretary of State, the special prosecutor who is investigating him, two former attorneys general, and a number of other people.  In brief, he is demanding the right to imprison or even possibly execute people for no other reason than their opposition to him, or their having been members of the opposing political party. Is there a person alive who can now deny that this man is trying to establish himself as a dictator?  When is the point that the members of his own party react in a decent manner and put a stop to all of this? Sad to say, the answer

A Little Trump Foundation News

I just loved this, from Talking Points Memo: "The Donald J. Trump Foundation took in no new money from outside groups last year and donated nothing, according to a 2017 tax return posted online Monday. Trump had promised before taking office to dissolve the foundation to avoid conflicts of interest with his duties as president." He promised to stop charitable giving, in order to " avoid conflicts of interest."  He did not, however stop dealing with the Russians or the Saudis, or to milk the Federal government for millions of dollars spent at his own businesses.  Well, I guess he has a point there.  As far as I can tell, Trump has no conflict of interest with the Russians and the Saudis.

Our Country Today

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Immigrant children being attacked with tear gas.  From what I have read, I understand that this is CS gas, a stronger version of tear gas than the CN gas normally used by police in the United States.  This gas was shot into a foreign country in what is unquestionably an act of war.  The use of CS gas against civilians in any circumstance has been classified as a war crime since the mid 1990's.  Trump has made all of us complicit in this war crime.  It is hardly the first time for a Republican President; don't forget the use of torture by the Bush administration.  That was unforgivable, but at least it was not directed toward children and their mothers. In the interest of full disclosure, during the Vietnam protest area, I was tear gassed many times, both with CN gas and a couple of times with CS gas.  CN isn't so bad; after the first couple of times it hardly slowed me down at all.  CS is another thing entirely, let me assure you.  It is extremely painful and almost to

Remembering Jerome Corsi

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Isn't he cute? Jerome Corsi has become the central figure of the week in the Mueller investigation.  You'd think that this would induce the media to look a little farther into his past.  But other than mentioning that he was the prime originator of the lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, little has been mentioned about him.  Here is a helpful list of a few of the other malignant smears Corsi has promulgated: Corsi was the author of the book Unfit for Command, which detailed a totally false account of John Kerry's record in Vietnam, where in fact he was a highly decorated officer, as his publicly available military records showed.  This smear, carried almost without pushback by the mainstream press, was responsible in large part for the re-election of George W. Bush. Corsi published a book in 2005 spreading a totally made-up horror story about Iran's supposed stockpile of nuclear weapons.  This makes him a seminal figure in today's current anti-Iran hy

Big News From Trump

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From the Washington Post, this news: "Trump says he’s finished writing answers to questions from special counsel Robert Mueller" And there you go.  If you think the real answers are going to be one bit more informative than this picture, or if you are deluded enough to think they will actually be written by Trump, rather than whatever lawyers he can threaten into lying for him, you haven't been paying that much attention to the news. Okay, okay, here's a picture of a Corgi dog to help erase the above from your mind: See, didn't that work?

A Thing of Beauty

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This graphic of Orange County, long considered the most Republican county in the State of California: A true work of art.  Apparently, in some cases, the French are wrong.  The more things change...the more they change.

Matching Signatures

I would like to make a point about the Republican ploy of using signatures that don't match to disqualify tens of thousands of Democratic votes.  I don't think this point has been made clearly enough: Has anyone out there signed their name exactly the same twice?  I mean, literally ever. None of us is a machine, and our signatures vary in minor ways every time we sign them.  This Republican strategy is nothing but a ploy allowing them to reject any ballot they want.  The vast number of people who have their ballots rejected are never even notified about it, let alone given a chance to contest this action.  This is a massive Republican vote rigging scheme, and needs to be seen for what it is.  Instead, most people are just writing it off as sour grapes, when in fact, at least in Florida and Arizona, this behavior has a strong possibility of stealing a governor's seat and two Senators.

Free Enterprise In Action

Here are the headlines of two stories that ran on the same page in the Los Angeles Times today: "Goldman Sachs Malaysia Scandal Expands" "Goldman balks at handling Space X loan" Carried right next to each other without a suggestion of irony.  Goldman Sachs would not invest $500 million in the company of perhaps America's greatest industrial innovator, but it was willing to invest $6.5 billion with a pack of Malaysian crooks. And this is the most influential financial organization in the country.  There is a virtual revolving door between its corporate suites and high government positions.  Here is a partial list of Goldman alumni that work for Trump: Stephen K. Bannon, chief strategist to the president and a former Goldman banker Gary D. Cohn, director of the National Economic Council and Goldman Sachs president Steven T. Mnuchin, Treasury secretary and Goldman partner James Donovan, nominee for deputy Treasury secretary and Goldman partner Dina

Donald Trump Appoints Monstrous New Attorney General

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But of course, who would expect anything different...imagine an Attorney General whose contempt for the law makes the execrable Jeff Sessions look not so bad in retrospect.  Well, we've got him. Wimp trying to look like a thug. Trump has, in apparent open defiance of the law,* named one Matthew Whittaker to be our new "interim"  Attorney General.  Whittaker was a failed candidate for a county judgeship before he was snatched up by Trump, given an administrative role in the Justice Department, based apparently solely on his open opposition to the Mueller probe, and here he is, a year later, serving as Attorney General.  Here is some more information about him. First, from an article at Daily Kos, which I most urgently suggest you read, some other information beyond the fact that he has attacked the Mueller investigation repeatedly: "Whitaker was behind a secretive group that stepped in to protect members of the Trump campaign from allegations of meetings w

And That Didn't Take Long

Bye bye Mueller, hello impeachment. Of course, maybe the Democrats should just let it all pass.  The Washington Post is already paving the way for that view: "Ms. Pelosi, wisely, declined to take the bait, reiterating her determination to use subpoena power if necessary but insisting Wednesday that oversight “does not mean we’ll go look for a fight.” She would be well advised to stick to that measured approach, because the country does have recent experience with the excesses of investigation (does Benghazi ring a bell?) and the harm it can do to the atmosphere for legislation. In contrast to the attitude Mr. Trump exhibited Wednesday, Ms. Pelosi’s remarks suggest that she has the capacity to learn from experience." The mainstream press, which showed next to no scruples about the Republicans using their control of Congress to conduct an endless series of "investigations" into what everyone knew were utterly baseless conspiracy theories, now has discovered

A Warning

To those of you who think your anxiety will get a break after tomorrow:  The rest of this year is going to be a time of almost unimaginable abominations from the Republican party, and this is particularly true if Democrats take control of the House. If Dems do win the House, the next two months will be the last time (at least for two years) that the Republicans will be in absolute control of the entirety of the Federal Government, and their rich backers will expect them to use that time to push through as much filthy, antidemocratic, corrupt legislation as the can.  Here are a few things I expect to see between now and the new year:  Another massive tax cut aimed at the very top tenth of a percent of the nation, combined with effective tax increases on everyone else, massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, rules for renewable energy with no purpose but to make it too expensive to be competitive, elimination of the already weakened protections for minorities and wome

Mr. SMITH Goes To Washington

We are all familiar with the legendary SMOTI, the Stupidest Man On The Internet, aka Jim Hoft, whose website Gateway Pundit befouled itself again this week when one of his "reporters," one Jacob Wohl, made an utter fool of himself with one of the most colossally stupid lies ever heard, when he convened a press conference to allege that Robert Mueller forcibly dragged a woman out of a hotel bar in New York (in plain view of the other customers, apparently,) forced her up to his hotel room and then violently raped her, finishing with telling her his name and telling her that he was the head of the FBI, so she had better keep her mouth shut.  Boy, that beats Judge Kavanaugh's youthful dalliances by a long shot.  Well, the details of this almost incomprehensibly incompetent plot have received a great deal of coverage in the blogosphere, so I won't rehash them here.  For those who want to know more, I suggest this article from Wonkette, which pretty much takes a perfect

The Truth About the Birthright Citizenship Nonsense

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." -U. S. Constitution, Amendment 14 Before getting to my argument, I would like to remind you of a little history.  The absolute nature of this provision, which allows for no exceptions, exists for one reason:  by the time of its passage, in 1868, it was already clear that Southern dead enders were engaged in serious attempts to strip former slaves of their citizenship.  The law was passed to prevent this.  Its absolute character is  a result of the racist inclinations of many white Americans, and it is that racism, therefore, which bears the blame for the consequences of the fourteenth amendment.  Had these white people done the decent thing and truly reconciled with the victims of slavery, this amendment would have never been necessary; if they don't like it, it is their own fault that it exists. Well,