Memorial Day Crocodile Tears From Those Who Create Wars

By Walter Brasch

A few million Americans may be thinking about it, but won’t be celebrating Memorial Day. For them, there’s not much to celebrate or to remember.

They’re the low-wage employees who may have to work all three days, without overtime; about three million workers earn the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Many work 30 to 35 hours a week, just low enough that their employers don’t have to pay for insurance, holidays, or sick leave. The corporate CEOs, of course, will be enjoying the long weekend at their alternate vacation homes in the mountains, or along the coasts, or at off-shore islands where they have found banks willing to hide their money and avoid U.S. taxes.

Almost 600,000 persons are homeless on any given night. They are homeless for any number of reasons, but whatever reason, the reality is they are homeless—and the wealthiest nation in the world cheers $10 million a year pro athletes, but discounts social workers who have graduate degrees and are paid an average of about $46,000 a year.

The homeless live beneath bridges, in subway tunnels, on the streets, or if the shelters aren’t filled, in protected areas with cots for beds, and grocery carts for what few possessions they have. In Atlantic City, the homeless live beneath the boardwalk, unseen by hundreds of thousands who go into casinos, buy expensive dinners, and think nothing of dropping a few hundred or a few thousand dollars at gaming tables and slot machines. In urban cities, those with jobs and families walk by the homeless, as if they are invisible, sometimes erroneously thinking that even if the homeless get a dollar or two, they’d rush off to buy beer, liquor, or more drugs.

About 50,000 of the homeless on any given night are veterans, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Overall, more than 150,000 veterans are homeless during the year. The reasons for veterans being homeless are because of “extreme shortage of affordable housing, livable income and access to health care . . . lingering effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse, which are compounded by a lack of family and social support networks,”
according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. Under the Obama administration, which has focused upon assisting veterans, the number of homeless veterans on any given night has come down from about 80,000 six years ago, but even a few dozen homeless veterans are far too many.

Hundreds of thousands of veterans won’t be able to march in Memorial Day parades, or stand and salute the flag. They don’t have limbs, their muscles have atrophied because of extensive bed confinement, or they have other debilitating illnesses. About 2.2 million American veterans were injured during their service; about 1.7 million of them were wounded in combat, according to a Pew Research Center summary and analysis. About 200,000 military personnel who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder of have major depression, according to a study done by the Rand Corp. About 285,000 of the veterans of America’s most recent wars have suffered from traumatic brain injury. Among other injuries, according to the VA are chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, fibromyalgia, hearing difficulties, hepatitis, malaria, memory loss, migraines, sleep disorders and tuberculosis.

More than 120,000 Americans won’t celebrate Memorial Day; they died in combat during the Korean, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and Iraq/Afghanistan wars.

During this three-day weekend, Americans will grill steaks, burgers, and hot dogs; they will travel to relatives’ or friends’ houses, or take mini-vacations. The nation’s politicians—from small town council members to presidential candidates—will go from picnic to picnic, from rally to rally, and deliver poignant speeches about how much they care about the veterans who were injured or died for their country, and how much veterans mean to the country, while delivering the underlying message to vote for them in the coming election.

But, it is these politicians who, without hesitation, will quickly send American youth into war, and claim that killing people a half-world away somehow protects American citizens. And once Americans are in combat, these same politicians will complain about the cost of war, and vote against providing adequate funds for decent medical and psychological treatment for those who come home damaged.

Dr. Brasch, an award-winning journalist and the author of 20 books, is co-founder of the Northeast Pennsylvania Coalition for the Homeless. His latest book is Fracking America: Sacrificing Health and the Environment for Short-Term Economic Benefit.

Even more primary phenomena

Trump Exposes The GOP's Dirty Secret: They Build Everything By Nurturing White Rage

By Carol Anderson

For decades, GOP has used the war on drugs or voter ID laws as cover for race-baiting. Trump just blew their cover.

Paul Ryan is angry with Donald Trump, not so much for failing to espouse conservative values, as for exposing America’s dirty little secret—white rage: that deep-seated determination to block black progress in this country. For years, conservative politicians have relied upon the cover of high-minded principles and slogans—“protecting the integrity of the ballot box,” or waging a “war on drugs” — in order to cloak their determination to restrict African Americans’ citizenship rights. The racism fueling Trump’s campaign and his followers, however, is so overt, that it is undoing decades of hard covert work by the GOP.

When Trump didn’t immediately disavow an endorsement from Klansman David Duke; when the GOP front-runner condoned the beatings African Americans endured at his campaign rallies; and when 20 percent of his followers insisted that the Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery, was bad policy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s carefully stitched plan of “racism with plausible deniability” began to unravel.

Shortly before he died, Reagan’s strategist Lee Atwater explained the game plan of the Southern Strategy in a matter-of-fact clinical policy. “By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you, backfires,” Atwater emphasized. “So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. And you’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.” But Donald Trump doesn’t do abstract, and that is what has sent the GOP into a tizzy.

Nixon and Reagan mastered this by adapting to the new racial terrain carved out by the Civil Rights Movement. As Nixon aide John Ehrlichman explained to Harper’s Dan Baum in 1994, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be against black[s], but by getting the public to associate ... blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing” the drug “we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said.

“We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

But that lie was infinitely effective in driving policy. In 2008, the NAACP reported that “five times as many whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites.” Consequently, blacks comprising just 13 percent of the U.S. population made up “59% of those in state prison for a drug offense.” Packaged and sold as keeping neighborhoods and families safe, the Nixon administration’s well-targeted lie, which was expanded upon by Ronald Reagan, and taken up by Democrats such as Bill Clinton to prove that they could be “tough on crime, too,” has worked masterfully. Because many states disfranchise those with felony convictions, the Sentencing Project reports that 2.2 million African Americans or 7.7 percent of black adults have been legally stripped of their voting rights; as compared with 1.8 percent of the non-African American population.

The trick to pulling this off was subtlety; to mask overt racism with sincere concern for community safety. Nixon did it with “law and order,” Reagan with “the war on drugs.” But Trump’s jugular racism has no subtlety. In November 2015, Trump sent out a tweet to his 6.23 million followers that 81 percent of white homicide victims were killed by African Americans. Of course, it’s a lie; the same lie that drove Dylann Roof to get his country back by gunning down nine black people during Bible study. In fact, 84 percent of white murder victims are killed by whites. But to drive home his misbegotten point, the mogul placed a picture of a gun-toting black thug next to the statistics.

Trump’s take-no-prisoner style exposes in ways that no legitimate Republican front-running presidential candidate has in decades the racial lies behind the policies. That’s the problem the GOP really has with him.

The Republicans’ current crusade to “protect the ballot box” is a case in point. According to a 2012 Gallup poll, 89 percent of the GOP is white. As the Pew Research Center reported, minorities make up more than 30 percent of voters nationwide, a figure that is only growing. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham admitted, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Republicans have, therefore, tried to handle their demographic apocalypse by disfranchising African Americans and other minorities but doing so under the guise of stopping (virtually non-existent) voter fraud, using in-defense-of-the-nation language.

Todd Allbaugh, former chief of staff for Wisconsin state Sen. Dale Schultz (R), confessed that stopping voter fraud was not the point. “I was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters.” Another Republican, this time in Florida, admitted that the plan to significantly trim early voting in 2012 was racially-targeted: “I know that the cutting out of the Sunday before Election Day was one of their targets only because that’s a big day when the black churches organize themselves” and bring busloads of African American voters to the polls.

The results of the GOP’s ballot box shenanigans have been devastating. A recent study in 2016 by political scientists at the University of California-San Diego found the voter suppression laws throughout the United States dramatically decreased minority participation in elections because blacks and Hispanics are the least likely to have the types of identification the state requires. As a result, “turnout among Democrats in general elections dropped an estimated 7.7 percentage points, while Republican turnout dropped 4.6 percentage points.” More than that though, the study found “For strong liberals the estimated drop in turnout in strict photo identification states is an alarming 10.7 percentage points. By contrast, the drop for strong conservatives is estimated to be only 2.8 points.” Clearly, the plan is working just as effectively as “law and order” and the “war on drugs” did.

And similarly, Republicans have taken umbrage at the charge that these new voter laws are racially targeted.

So, when Trump says that he doesn’t want people and these “illegal immigrants” to just “walk in off the street” and “sneak through the cracks” to cast a ballot, and that “You have to have—and whether that’s an ID or any way you want to do it. But you have to be a citizen to vote,” he’s parroting contrived Republican strategy but being far too obvious about it. Just about as obvious as when he maligned Mexicans in the United States as drug mules, criminals, and rapists.

And that’s the problem. What the GOP is really mad about is that Donald Trump has made visible what many have tried so hard to hide.

Happy Memorial Day? 5 Times Republicans In Congress Screwed Veterans

By James Woods

This weekend, Americans will celebrate Memorial Day, and politicians will pay lip service to U.S. military veterans. It’s important to note that Memorial Day was originally started by freed black slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, who reburied Union war veterans killed in the Civil War, holding a special ceremony thanking them for their service. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed an official declaration of Memorial Day as a national holiday in 1966.

However, in recent years, Memorial Day has become the ONLY form of gratitude that our veterans can count on as the GOP has spent the last decade chipping away at the benefits and support afforded to our veterans when they return from deployment, while paying lip service to their struggles and heroism.

So this weekend, as members of the GOP stand behind podiums giving speeches in their home districts about the need for more funding to pay military contractors and to give missiles to Israel as part of their plan to continue the growth of “American exceptionalism,” please remember these instances of “gratitude” the GOP showed to our veterans by placing partisan politics above caring for our veterans.

1. Veterans Affairs Funding Bill (2015)

The House Appropriations Subcommittee, met with VA Secretary Bob McDonald to remove more than $1.4 billion in veteran services from President Obama’s proposed 2016 budget. Included in those cuts was more than $690 million earmarked for direct VA medical care and $582 million in VA construction projects.  As a result of the cuts, it was estimated that 70,000 fewer veterans would be able to receive needed care.

2. Women Veterans and Families Health Services Act (2014)

This bipartisan bill would have provided fertility treatment and counseling for severely wounded veterans and their spouses. However, the bill was killed before making it out of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee after Republicans proposed an amendment to prevent any involvement with Planned Parenthood.

The author of the bill, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), took to the floor of the Senate and made the following statement:

“Don’t take something that should be above politics, our sacred duty to our veterans, pull it down into the muck of petty politics. It is not fair to veterans and their families who have been hoping and praying for the opportunity to have children.”

3. Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act (2014)

This bill, proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders, was a piece of sweeping legislation that would have expanded healthcare and education for veterans. After clearing a procedural vote by a 99-0 margin, the bill was hijacked by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans who attached an amendment to the bill which would have levied sanctions on Iran.

While arguing over the proposed amendments, other Republicans took to the floor to raise concerns over the cost of the bill, and it was ultimately defeated with 41 of 45 Senate Republicans voting against the bill.

4. Veterans Jobs Corps Act (2012)

Originally submitted by democratic Representative Bruce Braley of Iowa, this bill would have established the Veteran’s Jobs Corps to provide gainful employment to more than 20,000 veterans through public works projects in their own communities at a cost of $1 billion over 5 years.

Ultimately, Senate Republicans blocked the bill because it was unpaid for…while simultaneously proposing a bill to increase military spending with no way to pay for it.

“We Republicans remain resolute in our commitment to deny the Democrats anything that looks like an accomplishment in an election year,” said Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

5. Homeless Women Veterans and Homeless Veterans With Children Act (2010)

Originally proposed to expand assistance for homeless women veterans and homeless veterans with children, as well as increasing funding for federal grant programs to address the issues surrounding homelessness amongst veterans, this bipartisan bill made its way through the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee with strong support from members of both parties.

However, the bill was promptly killed as Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, on behalf of Senator Tom Coburn, objected based on the cost of the program.

“If we don’t start paying for new programs and continue on our path to bankruptcy we’ll have a homelessness problem beyond imagination,” Coburn spokesman John Hart told HuffPost. “The old Washington excuse that it’s too hard to cut spending is undermining our troops, our veterans and our future.”

Pelicans Guard Bryce Dejean-Jones Killed While Reportedly Breaking Into Apartment

By Daniel Politi

Bryce Dejean-Jones #31 of the New Orleans Pelicans drives to the basket during the first half of a game against the Los Angeles Lakers at the Smoothie King Center on February 4, 2016 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

 
New Orleans Pelicans guard Bryce Dejean-Jones died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen early Saturday morning. The Dallas Police Department said that the NBA player “kicked open the front door” to a Dallas apartment at 3:20 a.m. on Saturday morning and the man sleeping inside shot him.

According to the police statement:

The resident, who was asleep in the bedroom, heard the individual enter and retrieved a handgun. He stated he called out to the individual, but was not answered. As the individual kicked the bedroom door, the resident fired his gun. The individual left the apartment and collapsed in the breezeway. The individual was transported to a local hospital where he died from his injuries.

The Pelicans also issued a short statement confirming the news of the 23-year-old player’s death. "It is with deep sadness that the Pelicans organization acknowledges the sudden passing of Bryce Dejean-Jones," the statement said. "We are devastated at the loss of this young man's life who had such a promising future ahead of him. Our thoughts and prayers are with Bryce's family during this difficult time."

Dejean-Jones signed a three-year contract with the Pelicans in February. He played 14 games in the NBA, and averaged 5.6 points, according to Sports Illustrated.

Health Providers Spill Patient Secrets On Yelp

The vast majority of reviews on Yelp are positive. But in trying to respond to critical ones, some doctors, dentists and chiropractors appear to be violating the federal patient privacy law known as HIPAA.

 https://www.propublica.org/article/stung-by-yelp-reviews-health-providers-spill-patient-secrets

Trump turns down debate!

By roguevalley
 

Here is what happened. A Dem with a spine challenged a Nazi to a debate and dared him to step forward. HRC at the same time was home hiding because the Inspector General's report showed she was lying for over a year on her server fiasco.

The only grown up in this mess challenged Trump and showed him to be a coward, a blowhard and a sissy.

Bernie did that, not HRC who is still trying to absorb her 9% trustworthy rating v NINETY ONE PERCENT untrustworthy rating in the last poll.

Consider in that total that EVEN HER SUPPORTERS DON'T TRUST HER! Among the 91% who said she's untrustworthy were her 'supporters'.

Bernie showed what a DEMOCRAT looks like. HRC is still counting her fingers.

Donald J. Trump Statement on Debating Bernie Sanders

Based on the fact that the Democratic nominating process is totally rigged and Crooked Hillary Clinton and Deborah Wasserman Schultz will not allow Bernie Sanders to win, and now that I am the presumptive Republican nominee, it seems inappropriate that I would debate the second place finisher. Likewise, the networks want to make a killing on these events and are not proving to be too generous to charitable causes, in this case, women’s health issues. Therefore, as much as I want to debate Bernie Sanders - and it would be an easy payday - I will wait to debate the first place finisher in the Democratic Party, probably Crooked Hillary Clinton, or whoever it may be.

Copabanana again among Philly eateries asked to close by health dept.

By Sam Wood, STAFF WRITER

The health department usually inspects a Philadelphia eatery once a year. At Copabanana on South Street, however, sanitarians have dropped in six times since January and asked it to shut down twice.

The margarita and burger joint has a chronic problem with keeping food at safe temperatures. When perishable items are stored between 42 and 165 degrees Fahrenheit, toxic bacteria - the types that can cause food poisoning - can multiply quickly. On May 18 a sanitarian found calamari and coleslaw stored at 46 degrees, 5 degrees warmer than is considered safe. On April 18, Copabanana was cited for failing to reheat food items to 165 degrees for at least 15 seconds; raw chicken was found in the lukewarm danger zone. On Feb. 22, the list of improperly refrigerated foods included spinach dip, sour cream and octopus.

At other eateries asked to shutter their doors to fix health violations, the two most common violations included rodent infestations and not having a food-safety certified person present.

The eateries listed below were inspected between May 17th and 27th. Each inspection is generally regarded as a "snapshot in time" and is not necessarily a reflection of day-to-day conditions at the business. Most violations were corrected on site.

Included with each listing is an edited selection of infractions noted by health department sanitarians. Click on the restaurant's name to see a detailed report. Visit Philly.com/cleanplates for a searchable database of inspection reports.

If you suspect you've contracted food poisoning at a Philadelphia eatery or have a sanitation complaint, contact the health department at (215) 685-7495.

Manakash Cafe & Bakery
4420 WALNUT ST 19104
14 violations, 8 serious.
Food safety certified person not present; employee had open beverage container in food prep area; black residue, pink slime in ice machine; Windex stored with syrup for beverages; evidence of insect activity, roach and numerous flies; employees not wearing hair restraints. Inspected May 26.

Ed's Buffalo Wings
3513 LANCASTER AVE 19104
35 violations, 14 serious.
No person in charge present; food not protected from contamination; improper hand washing procedures; employee with dirty fingernails touched ready-to-eat food with bare hands; empty paper towel dispenser; food held at unsafe temperatures; employees not wearing hair restraints; general cleaning needed throughout facility. 17 violations addressed on site. Inspected May 26.

Gonzalez Grocery
1400 N 7TH ST 19122
19 violations, 7 serious.
Food safety certified person not present; empty paper towel dispenser; deli meats uncovered and unprotected from possible contamination; food held at unsafe temperatures; facility does not protect against entry of insects, rodents and other animals; cleaning needed in restrooms. 13 violations addressed on site. Inspected May 26.

Sunshine Food Market
4261 LANCASTER AVE 19104
26 violations, 8 serious
Food safety certified person not present; no soap and no sign in toilet room reminding employees to wash hands; 8 jars of expired baby food and 5 boxes of baby cereal; pink slime and black residue in ice machine; walk-in cooler holding food at unsafe temperatures; live cockroaches and evidence of vermin in basement. Inspected May 24.

New Good Brother Chinese Restaurant
2768 N 24TH ST 19132
15 violations, 3 serious.
Food safety certified person not present; thermometers not available; mouse droppings along floor perimeters. Inspected May 23.

Almonte Mini Market
883 N 5TH ST 19123
14 violations, 7 serious.
Food safety certified person not present; food residue in hand wash sink; 12 expired containers of baby food; food residue on slicer. Inspected May 23.

Dim Sum Garden Philly
1020 RACE ST 19107
25 violations, 5 serious.
Mouse infestation, droppings on floor perimeter, shelves, in bowls and canned goods; kitchen hand wash sink blocked by buckets; bean sprouts stored under raw chicken; food held at unsafe temperatures; frozen chicken thawing at room temperature in sink; inaccurate thermometer on display case; clean and sanitize shelves and work table in food prep area. 48 hour closure ordered May 19.

The Bakeshop on 20th
269 S 20TH ST 19103
Food safety certified person not on premises. Patron observed with a dog at cashier ordering station. Inspected May 19.

George's 9th St. Lunch
1007 S 9TH ST 19147
10 violations, 3 serious.
Evidence of rodent activity in kitchen, mouse droppings in storage area, on floor throughout kitchen area, on slicer, under sinks; employee observed touching bread and cooked eggs with bare hands; no soap at hand wash sink; person in charge didn't use gloves while working with ready-to-eat foods; cigarette butts in kitchen under hand sink and trash can. Inspected May 18.

Copabanana/Hurricane
342 SOUTH ST 19147
12 violations, 6 serious.
Employee consuming drink at food prep station; calamari, raw shrimp and coleslaw at unsafe temperatures; hand wash sink blocked by trays; employees not wearing effective hair restraints. Previously asked to cease and desist on Feb. 22. Inspected May 17.

Almonte Family Grocery Store
1770 MASCHER ST 19122
21 violations, 5 serious.

No hot water; improper hand washing procedures; no soap at sink; accumulated residue on slicer; foods held at unsafe temperatures; customers in kitchen food prep area; cat in basement; overflowing garbage in trash container; restrooms need to be cleaned. May 17.

samwood@phillynews.com
215-854-2796 @samwoodiii

No Consoles For Old Men - Ageism In The Game Industry

In this timeless blog, veteran developer David Mullich writes how, after a long career encompassing many highly-regarded games, "no game studio or publisher seemed willing even to give me a phone interview."

The great Trump overload

Hello Pot, Meet Kettle.

By Juanita Jean

I gotta tell you something. Republicans are smoking way too much weed. I have proof.

Newt Gingrich is calling Mitt Romney incompetent. Yeah.

Newt says that Romney’s attempt to derail Trump was “pathetic” and “not particularly effective.”

“It’s pathetic… I don’t know what happened to Mitt, but it is weird; it is bizarre,” Mr. Gingrich said in an interview with reporters and editors of The Wall Street Journal, commenting on the 2012 presidential nominee’s attacks on Mr. Trump. “Having a guy like that go berserk in public makes you wonder what his problems are.”

As I recall, Gingrich was one of the original candidates in 2012 and was also the first or second to drop out. That was pathetic – joyful for me – but pathetic nonetheless.

Gingrich wants to be Trump’s vice presidential candidate. That means they will have 7 wives between them, which is kinda amazing since they are running in the Jesus First political party.

Admit it, you’re enjoying watching these grown men line up to kiss The Donald’s butt.

I do. Boy howdy, I do.

Crossposted at juanitajean.com

Sanders Ahead of Trump by 15 Points, Hillary Just by 3

By Alexandra Rosenmann

 

A major national poll has some surprising numbers in it. 

 

A shocker. A new NBC News/Wall St Journal poll has Bernie up 54 to 39 over Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, according to the same poll,  Hillary Clinton no longer has a double digit lead over Donald Trump like she did just a month ago - her lead over Trump is just 3 points.

On the other hand, while less than a quarter of likely Republican voters backed Trump a month ago, he’s since gained 14 points. Only 66% percent of Sanders supporters say they’d vote for Clinton in November, which her supporters say will rise if Sanders drops out. After all, that’s what happened on the Republican side. But 17% of Sanders supporters have already vowed to vote for Trump if Clinton is the nominee - a greater margin than Clinton had of Republican voters when Cruz and Kasich remained in the race.

Hillary Clinton wins with all the demographics that Trump loses with painfully. In a general election, she would win African American voters 88% to Trump’s 9%. Still, with other demographics - such as women and young people - Sanders would defeat Trump by a greater margin.

Just last week, Bernie Sanders told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell he was the stronger candidate to defeat Donald Trump. “The case we’ll make [with the super delegates] is that I am the stronger candidate. It’s not just the polling. Our campaign is the campaign bringing in working class people,” Sanders said.

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Trump Plays Fantasy SCOTUSball, Picks Judge Who Hates Him

By Dominic Gwinn

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee and Dark Lord of the Sith Donald Trump climbed atop his podium to announce his potential SCOTUS picks yesterday, and they were pretty much the same wingnuts and religious zealots the GOP’s been ramming and cramming down our throats for years.

Trump/Scalia, BFF’s 4 LIFE!

 

Disregard the fact that Trump was never, ever, ever going to put his teeny little hands together, pray to the angry spirit of Ronald Reagan, and do the bidding of Reince Preibus, those were all just fancy-talkin’ brain words! Suggestions of ideas he might potentially consider after maybe putting some serious speculative thought towards an actual policy platform.

“The following list of potential Supreme Court justices is representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value and, as President, I plan to use this list as a guide to nominate our next United States Supreme Court Justices.”

Out of the 11 names put forward to replace the fat, bloated corpse of Justice Antonin Scalia, ONLY eight were men, but don’t fret, ya’ll!

The rest were the same, regular old white people endorsed by the batshit fringe groups, like the Federalist Society, who make sure that all 10 Commandments are prominently displayed in front of local courthouses.

Of the nominated judges, six were appointed to federal appeals courts by The Decider, George W. Bush, and five were appointed by Republican Governors to state Supreme Courts.

Naturally, Barry Bamz sicked Josh Ernst on an eager press gaggle to lay the smackdown on Donald’s Judicial Legion of Doom. Earnest said he’d “be surprised if there are any Democrats who would describe any of those 11 individuals as a consensus nominee,” pointing out that’s exactly what Orrin Hatch had called Judge Merrick Garland in 2010.

Then he reminded the Senate, once more, to do its damned job and give Garland a hearing.

Our personal favorite of the Trump Crop is fast-tweetin’ Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, because this guy’s got some serious huevos:

Justice Don Willet, bangs wife on Constitution, SCOTUS nod hates Trump

Jesus, these Evangelicals sure seem to cry a lot!

Plot Twist: The 2nd Death Star was built by illegal Bothan immigrants.

“I’ve felt a great disturbance in The Force…”

Justice Willett has been firing off against Trump since last year, and he hasn’t really stopped, which is Double-Plus Good considering he is now being eyeballed to tell us what we can and can’t do with unborn babies, public sector unions, and immigrants.

Now that some advisor has no doubt informed Trump of Willett’s tweets, we’ll assume he’s not at the top of the list; the real question is whether the new “more presidential” Trump can refrain from starting a Twitter war with one of his own handpicked (cough!) potential nominees.

[Politico / NYTimes]

How A Failing MSNBC Gave Rise to America’s Premier Progressive News Site: The Young Turks

By Sydney Robinson

It’s an oldie but a goodie!

In this clip from the 2011 version of The Young Turks, host Cenk Uygur explains why he turned down a different role on MSNBC in favor of continuing to build his online progressive empire which he had begun just a few years before.

Seeing the sort of drivel which Comcast-owned MSNBC turns out daily now and the scores of liberal commentators they have scorned and tossed aside, we know without a doubt that Cenk made the right choice.

As more people wake up to the reality of corporate media and the growing conservative vein in MSNBC, more people flock to online outlets like The Young Turks. In this way, MSNBC is giving a gift to progressive online outlets, but not willingly.

We should all be grateful for that day in 2011 when Cenk said “no thanks” and instead continued to provide non-corporate, progressive news to a massive and loyal audience online.

Watch.

How 3 Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud

By David Dayen

AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File

In this July 2, 2008, file photo a foreclosed home is seen for sale in Sacramento, California. 

Below is an excerpt from Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud, published on May 17 by The New Press.

There is a rot at the heart of our democracy, rooted in a nagging mystery that has yet to be unraveled. It gnaws at people, occupies their thoughts, leaves them searching for answers in the chill of the night. Americans want to know why no high-ranking Wall Street executive has gone to jail for the conduct that precipitated the financial crisis.

The oddest thing about the predominance of the question is that everyone already assumes they know the answer. They believe that too many politicians, regulators, and law enforcement officials, bought off with campaign contributions or the promise of a future job, simply allowed banker miscreants to annihilate the law in pursuit of profit. But they must not like the explanation very much, because they keep asking why, as if they want to be proven wrong, to be given a different story.

Maybe they don’t like the implications of a government that lets Wall Street walk. It does too much violence to the conception of the country they have in their mind, with its ideals of justice and fairness. It explains the dis-empowerment people feel in the face of a rigged economic and political system, with differing standards of treatment depending on wealth and power. It engenders a loss of faith in core institutions, turning our democracy into a sideshow, where the real action happens offstage. It inspires people to don tri-cornered hats and protest crony capitalism, or pitch camp at the base of Wall Street and refuse to move. It generates a profound anxiety, for if bankers can bring the economy to the point of ruin and get away with it, what’s to stop them from doing it again? It makes our economy seem too fragile, our laws too impotent.

Or maybe people just want the details filled in, to confirm their suspicions, so they can point fingers at those who created this two-tiered system of accountability. There must be a set of facts that prove we’re living in a new Gilded Age, where holders of prodigious wealth guide government policy the way a string guides a marionette. There must be a smoking gun.

Those details are available, but not where most chroniclers of the financial crisis have ever cared to look. They usually take a ten-thousand-foot view, recounting stories of the hubris of bank CEOs or tracking the swashbuckling, without-a-net exploits of those tasked with stanching the bleeding. But few have offered the perspective of millions of ordinary Americans, the ones who never visited a Wall Street office tower or a Washington conference suite, and who endured most of the suffering that resulted from the crash. At ground level, the crisis was not a cautionary tale of greed or an adventure plot: It was a tragedy, too casually hidden from view.

Starting in 2009—as the crisis raged—three of these ordinary Americans decided to take on this mystery for themselves, to fill in those details, to understand what Wall Street perpetrated and why. In so doing, they played a significant role in uncovering the largest consumer fraud in American history.

They didn’t work in government or law enforcement. They were not experts in real estate law. They had no history of anti-corporate activism or community organizing. They had no resources or institutional knowledge. They were a cancer nurse, a car salesman, and an insurance fraud specialist, and they were all foreclosure victims. While struggling with the shame and dislocation and financial stress that foreclosure causes, they did something extraordinary: They read their mortgage documents. Wall Street’s scheme was not hidden but readily apparent in millions of pieces of documentary evidence, and to be a whistle blower, you just had to pay attention. 


All whistle blowers are a little bit crazy. They obsess over things most people overlook. They see grand conspiracies where others see only shadows. In this case, these whistle blowers, armed with only a few websites and a hunger for the truth, found that the mortgage industry fundamentally ruptured a centuries-old system of U.S. property law; that millions of documents generated to foreclose on people’s homes were phony; and that all those purchasing a mortgage in America were taking a gamble that they would be tossed onto the street with nothing, even if they made every payment and played by the rules. Virtually everyone to whom they presented this information reacted the same way: “That can’t be true.” Right up until the day the banks admitted it.

These three—Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak— unearthed another layer of the mystery, too. After they exposed foreclosure fraud and forced the nation’s leading mortgage companies to stop repossessing homes, they saw firsthand the unwillingness of our government to deliver any consequences. In fact, walk into any courtroom today and you will see the same false documents, the same ones Lisa, Michael, and Lynn exposed, used to foreclose on homeowners.

As America searches for understanding amid the perversity of the financial crisis, they should know that there were a few determined people, far from the corridors of power, who tried to write an alternative history, one where the perpetrators of fraud get rounded up and put away. But the same democracy that allows ordinary Americans to collaborate and organize and build a movement allows their deep-pocketed opponents to use the tools of entrenched power to counteract it. And we have to reckon with the fact that, in our current system of justice, who you are matters more than what you did.

Michael Redman, one of these whistleblowers, sat next to me one night as he told me his story, and said over and over again, “I don’t believe your book. I lived through it, and I don’t believe it.” I will forgive readers their skepticism, as even a protagonist in the tale shares it. It is unbelievable. That doesn’t make it untrue.

A Knock at the Door

February 17, 2009

The sun crept down over the Intracoastal Waterway, separating Palm Beach from its companion cities to the west. With the proper nautical chops, you could navigate from Norfolk, Virginia, to Key West through this shore-hugging water highway bordering open ocean, down through the Great Dismal Swamp, under the Hobucken Bridge, across the marshy lowlands of South Carolina and Georgia, and through the Mosquito Lagoon Aquatic Preserve, on the Indian River near the city of Edgewater.

Eventually you would hit Palm Beach, located on a 16 mile long barrier island of manicured lawns, ritzy mansions, and precisely fashioned grains of sand, a place where American ingenuity and truckloads of money summoned paradise out of the Atlantic. A few miles inland, amid vacationers and part-time snowbirds seeking refuge from winter winds up north, a car motored down Route 80 to tell Lisa and Alan Epstein that their bank wanted to take their home away.

Florida felt the worst of the Great Recession’s force, a financial hurricane that spared almost nobody, not even in paradise. This was one of the “sand states,” warm-weather regions of the country with economies disproportionately based on real estate. Home prices in Florida, Arizona, California, and Nevada surged more than 264 percent from 1998 to 2006. Over half of all subprime mortgages written in 2006 were issued in these four states. “Sand states” turned out to be an accurate description of the market’s feeble foundations, as prices crumbled and industries that supported and sustained the bubble washed out.

In fact, Florida suffered two waves of foreclosures. The first engulfed those who purchased or refinanced mortgages at the height of the bubble, in 2004, 2005, and 2006. While tagged as “irresponsible,” these homeowners actually suffered from inadvertent timing and susceptibility to predatory lending. When prices sank, borrowers went “underwater”—owing more on the mortgage than the homes were worth. They couldn’t sell or refinance to escape, and many couldn’t afford the payments to begin with. This led to defaults, even in Palm Beach.

Then came the second wave, relentless ripple effects from unemployment in real estate, construction, and pretty soon everything else, swallowing those who paid their mortgages effortlessly for years. Suddenly hundreds of thousands of Floridians needed help, and help was slow to come. 


So it was not uncommon to find cars like the four-door sedan motoring past West Palm Beach’s shiny subdivisions. Process servers contracted by “foreclosure mill” law firms, so named because they pumped out foreclosures the way a textile mill would fabrics, made their daily rounds here, unsmilingly handing homeowners legal documents and informing them that as a result of their failure to pay their mortgage promptly, their lender would place them into foreclosure.

By early 2009, one in 22 Florida homeowners had received some sort of filing like this, such as a notice of default, court summons, auction sale, or foreclosure judgment—nine times the historical average. Local sheriff’s deputies used to deliver the papers, but there were now too many to handle.

So the foreclosure mills had to hire private contractors; it represented one of the few recession-era growth industries in the state. 


Nobody on either side of the transaction felt particularly good about it. The process servers greeted eyes filled with tears, faces lined with desperation. The full force of post-recession fury at Wall Street malfeasance and personal tragedy refracted onto them. Though business boomed, it was shit work, the misery beat. In fact, you can almost understand why some contractors ducked the emotional tumult by resorting to “sewer service”—a popular scam where they would simply throw envelopes in front of the home, technically fulfilling their obligations while ensuring that the homeowner would not see the complaint or know to show up for court. This was illegal, but it also carried the benefit of being way faster than actually knocking on the door, increasing volume—and profits.

Sensing opportunity, some process servers and foreclosure mills even invented fake recipients of foreclosure papers. In Pasco County, Judge Susan Gardner found numerous charges for serving papers to “unknown spouses” and “unidentified tenants.” One process server in Miami listed 46 defendants on a single property, racking up $5,000 in fees. He claimed he had to serve everyone in the state with the same name as the homeowner, in case one of them was the real defendant. Every two-bit business in Florida had its own way of skirting the edges of the law to get ahead; this was a particularly crude one.

As for the homeowners, news of foreclosure tore through their front door like a wrecking ball. Taking a family’s house involved taking their spirit and snuffing it out like a candle, the bright light fading into smoke. Millions of Americans who thought they gained a foothold in the middle class, a clear pathway to wealth and economic security, absorbed the collateral damage of a fatal miscalculation on Wall Street.

This evening’s pageant of process serving would come to rest at 607 Gazetta Way, in an unincorporated area near West Palm Beach, a classic post-boom development of oversized properties on small lots. Built in 2006, the three-bedroom, two-bathroom, one-story home with a clay tile roof and yellow siding was wedged between a collection of larger properties all painted the same, as if the builder decided yellow was the optimal color to convince buyers to take the leap. Inside the house, the Epstein family had no warning of their impending visitor.

Lisa Epstein sat on a ledge in the master bathroom, hospital scrubs rolled to her knees, her daughter Jenna kept upright in the bathtub by a reclining baby seat. Lisa’s brown hair was pulled back with her trademark multicolored scarf, the kind you would see in the 1970s, maybe on Rhoda or The Bob Newhart Show. She had blue eyes, soft features, and a laugh you could hear across a crowded room.

When she got excited she got very loud. But at the moment she focused on her daughter in the tub.
Blond-haired, big-eyed Jenna had been born with a mild form of spina bifida. Her spinal cord was tethered at the base, something that could generate motor control problems as she grew. The child would turn two in March; surgery had been scheduled for April. And Lisa could think of practically nothing else, ministering to Jenna at nearly every waking moment. As a cancer nurse, she worked with families coping with the stress of a sick child. Now she was experiencing the same emotions: consumed by the same yearning to keep her daughter comfortable, and at stray moments wondering how this beautiful creature could be marked for affliction.

Lisa was 43, a nurse, a wife, and a new mother. She had only lived in the house two years. And her live was about to change forever.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

She did not hesitate for a second. “That’s about the house, Alan!” she yelled out to her husband.

“They’re from the bank, and it’s not good news!”

The Folly Of Aspiration

Here’s the Thing So Many Americans Can’t Grasp About Bernie Sanders

The U.S. likes to brand itself 'the land of opportunity'—yet our poster boys for innovation go to Harvard

By Pete Ross 

 

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders. (Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

Watching this year’s presidential nomination process from Australia has been a very interesting affair.

I can’t say I’ve followed every single speech or piece of news, but I’ve certainly kept abreast of what is going on and have seen plenty of articles and commentary from people on my feed putting their opinions forward. What interests me the most are the people and media pundits who emphatically denounce Bernie Sanders and his supporters. The reasons all generally boil down to the fact that he is the reincarnation of Karl Marx and he wants to turn the U.S. into a communist state. That he is so far left of center that he’s basically off the chart.

For those people, here’s a reality check.

Around the rest of the world, Mr. Sanders represents a point on the political spectrum that is mildly left of center. His “wacky” ideas of free (and we’ll get to that term a bit later) education, free healthcare, regulating banks and corporations and so on are all actually staple ideas of many of the happiest and most prosperous countries in the world.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at the happiest countries in the world index for 2016. The U.S. doesn’t make the top 10—but almost every single country that does has the kind of policies Mr. Sanders is promoting at some level.

Looking at the other candidates, Hillary Clinton would in most countries be considered right of center, not left. Donald and Ted? Man, those guys are so far right of center you couldn’t plot where they exist—they’re pretty much off the spectrum.

But back to Bernie. Throughout the nomination process, Bernie’s critics always seem to be asking the wrong questions. The most common one I see is “how is he going to pay for all of this?” This question misses the point entirely. Even if economists say that he can’t, does that really invalidate everything he’s aiming to achieve? If he can’t pay for all of it and the only thing that actually gets passed is universal college education and a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, is that such a horrible thing? Why does it have to be so all or nothing? That’s why it also baffles me when people say that they don’t want the kind of revolution Mr. Sanders is pushing—the reality is that even if he is swept to victory, the amount of change he’ll actually be able to implement won’t be half of what he wants to do.

The other elephant in the room is that the current political status quo is to spend over half a trillion dollars per year on the military. So you’re against universal health care or college education because you don’t think it can be paid for, but you’re happy for your government to spend that amount of money on your military when the last time you actually had to defend yourselves was over two centuries ago?

When you’re willing to sacrifice so many of the best parts of a socialist democracy in order to fund a military juggernaut that has to go out looking for things to shoot, your priorities are ridiculously lopsided.

The War on Terror started with over 3,000 people being killed in a terrorist attack on your own soil. It has since cost the U.S. over 5 trillion dollars—money that could have been used to save far more lives than were lost in the first place, if they had been provided with adequate health care.

The other nonsensical argument I often hear is that government needs to be smaller, and Bernie will make it bigger by running all these programs. First of all, more government programs means more jobs for people. Considering government jobs usually come with pretty decent conditions, that’s undoubtedly a good thing, because from where we sit, your working conditions are some of the worst in the developed world. No days paid vacation in your first year? Only a week per year after that, and that’s assuming your boss even lets you go on vacation.

Jesus, no wonder Gallup polling shows over 85 percent of you are disengaged and miserable at your jobs. But hey, as long as you can afford a Cadillac (if you can afford a Cadillac), it’s all good.

Here’s the big thing about Bernie that makes so much sense to the rest of the world, but not to a lot of you. Our earliest ancestors formed tribes so we could hunt more efficiently and protect one another.

We moved on to villages, then cities and finally nations for mutual benefit. We can do more together than alone, and when we band together we can put safety nets in place so if people are unlucky and get struck down, we can all help them back up. That way no one has to live in fear of losing out in the lottery of life. That’s what social democracy is, and those of us who live in them recognize that what we have is pretty damn great.

So when we talk about “free” healthcare, for example, we know it isn’t free and are happy to accept it. We recognize that the good of many outweighs the selfish wants of the individual. It’s easy to tell someone that if they want health care then they should pay for it, until you are the one that gets struck down by misfortune and has to pay through the nose because the government has privatized everything.

We also recognize that, while it might be more difficult to reach the stratospheric heights of billionairdom here, it can be done with a lot of hard work. That extra work is worth it, because our society has a baseline standard of living provided by our government with our tax dollars.

All of this ignores the massive elephant in the room: that your corporations, banks and politicians have no qualms about being socialist when it suits them.

Do we still bitch that we’re paying too much in tax? Sure, who doesn’t? But most of us made peace with high taxation long ago because it means:

1. We won’t lose our job and get bankrupted by the hospital bill if we get sick
2. We can attend university for a reasonable fee, not leaving us saddled with horrific debt
3. We can work a minimum wage job and actually survive on the income
4. We have a real shot at moving up in society if we work hard

America likes to brand itself as “the land of opportunity,” but from elsewhere in the world, the cost of that opportunity is shockingly high. It looks more and more like the land of oligarchy, where those with privilege move higher and higher up more and more easily, and those below have to scramble with all their might, sacrificing everything and never making a bad decision to even have a shot at being upper middle class.

And if you don’t get there? Well you shouldn’t have made that bad decision that one time, it’s your fault. Christ, even your poster boys for innovation and striking it rich—Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates—went to freaking Harvard. Land of opportunity, huh? Yeah, when the next Facebook is founded by a guy working out of a college dorm at Indiana State, you might be able to say that without irony.

You guys have lost so much since Reagan came to power. We fight to keep all our benefits—you should have heard the uproar a couple of years ago when our government tried to institute a fee of $5 to go to the doctor instead of it being for free. The government scrapped that idea very quickly. All of your benefits have already been given away so those at the very top can take a little bit more. I could scarcely believe my ears when I heard that your government repealed estate tax not long ago—because God forbid people inheriting huge sums of money should have to give some of that up for the good of society.

And all of this ignores the massive, massive elephant in the room: that your corporations, banks and politicians have no qualms about being socialist when it suits them. They’ll happily put their hands out for subsidies that they don’t need to make billions more that won’t be taxed—or when they tank your economy and the rest of the world’s economy they’ll complain that they’re too big to fail before taking all your hard earned money. None of them went to jail or even attracted regulation from the establishment politicians. Instead, they just got more money to continue as before.

And yet, so many of you continue to engage in pointless arguments over why your taxes should pay for healthcare, university and other social goods, when they are already paying for those at the top to continue polluting and disrupting the economy.

But fuck Bernie. He’s just a commie, right?

Peter Ross deconstructs the psychology and philosophy of the business world, careers and every day life. You can follow him on Twitter @prometheandrive. He lives in Australia. 

Forsaken By God And GOP, Evangelicals Have The Sads

Posted by Rude One

Apparently, evangelical Christians are feeling abandoned by the Republican Party.

Like a wealthy businessman who tosses aside a wife in order to marry a younger woman, the GOP - in the form of its voters - has decided to shit-can the usual boring old politicians who kissed the Jesus's ass and gone with a dick-waving hedonist who couldn't give a single shit about the Bible even when he tries.

Yeah, the poor Christ-lovers have the sads over Donald Trump, and they're sounding like pussy atheist liberals over it. Said one God-fearing woman, "I really do feel like in the future I would hate to look back and say, ‘I voted for Hitler.’ I feel like that may be what is happening if I vote for Trump."

Yes, Father, you have forsaken them. Trump even attacked one of the leaders of the creepy conservative Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore, for the thought-crime of questioning the racist statements coming from the Republican nominee. Thus tweeteth Donald, "Russell Moore is truly a terrible representative of Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for. A nasty guy with no heart!" Trump only has one cheek, apparently.

One GOP activist says that Christian conservatives are gonna take a mulligan on this whole goddamned election: "I think they will probably stay home. That’s what I’m hearing. That’s what happened four years ago, that’s what happened eight years ago.” Of course, should Trump pick a beloved son or daughter of the godly people to be his running mate, well, that's another matter.

Richard Viguerie, the longtime right-wing fluffer who is shockingly still alive, explained, "He needs to prove to us that he’s worthy of our support."

Oh, silly old fuck, Donald Trump doesn't need to prove a damn thing. That's the whole point of his campaign. The man has already said he ain't changing his tone, he's doubling down on all the things he believes, including that transgender people should be able to use whatever shitter they want, and he doesn't give a happy monkey fuck about outreach. Hell, he'll just tout the support of Jerry Falwell, Jr. and other leaders and groups in the movement, and he'll say how everyone can say, "Merry Christmas" or some such shit and promise to buff Bibi's balls and make Israel great again, and that'll be just enough Christian idiocy to please the yahoos.

But, mostly, fuck you, evangelicals. You sold your souls to the greedy, pandering politicians to fight for you in the bullshit culture wars. You ignore people who actually want to do things that Jesus talked about, like helping the poor and the sick and the oppressed, in favor of false prophets and sinners who get you to believe the lie that you'll get rich by making the rich richer, and that's fine as long as they hate them some queers and abortion, the twin baubles you are tossed as your presumptive leaders rob you blind, turn you into willing hypocrites, and tell you it's all God's will.

Right now, you're actually thinking about voting for the vulgar serial adulterer. And if you feel, as one pastor said, "abandoned by our party," well, shit, it was never really your party. You were just the marks for a bunch of con men, starting with Ronald Reagan.

And as long as they abided by your hatred of difference and progress, you let them go on conning you. Now, in Trump, you finally have to face a candidate who can barely find the time to pay you lip service, let alone give you the blow jobs you're used to.

Congratulations, motherfuckers. Get on your knees. Not to pray. Now it's your turn to blow.

The Majority of Today's Elected Democrats Are Moderate Republicans

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/chomsky-todays-democrats-are-moderate-republicans

Keith Ellison QOTD On Trump: 'He's Not Even Sincere About His Own Bigotry'

By Heather



Rep. Keith Ellison on ABCs This Week with the quote of the day on the dangers of a Trump presidency and the non-stop lying where he refuses to acknowledge the anger and bigotry he's been more than willing take advantage of to fuel his campaign.

KARL: Well, I guess you're not going to be giving anybody a pass.

REP. KEITH ELLISON (D), MINNESOTA: Well, absolutely not. But I think Paul Ryan needs to be -- needs to consider his own credibility here. He has said -- and I appreciate him saying this -- that there shall be no religious test for people coming into this country.
He called the idea un-American. He called it un-American. How you going to turn around and say, OK, well, it's sort of American.

Paul Ryan has in his own integrity to protect. And I hope he protects it carefully because it is a long-term --

(CROSSTALK)

COLE: I think he's already demonstrated he will protect that integrity.

ELLISON: Well, we'll see. You know, I mean, he said -- he said he was open to immigration reform. This guy wants to build a wall and build it higher. As a matter of fact, I mean, I think that the stakes are incredibly high for everybody here.

Trump has suppressed press freedom. He has said punch people in the face. He has made open appeals to racism and he has tried to persecute religious minorities. This is dangerous to the whole republic. And I think people ought to take it a whole lot more seriously. It's bigger than an election, in my view.

KARL: OK. But let's listen to what Trump said about these campaign proposals. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Look, anything I say right now -- I'm not the president. Everything is a suggestion, no matter what you say, it's a suggestion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ELLISON: It just goes to prove that he even lies about his own bigotry. He doesn’t -- so he says he doesn’t know who David Duke is. When he, 10 years before, had denounced David Duke. But when it was in his interest to play coy in the Louisiana primary, he acts like, oh, I don't know who David Duke is. He's not even serious about that.

He has openly appealed to banning Muslims. He didn't say people from the Muslim world; he said ban Muslims and now he's acting like, oh, I didn't really quite mean it that way.

He's not even sincere about his own bigotry. And that is his core strength, that he's --
(CROSSTALK)
ELLISON: -- a truth-teller and authentic. He's neither one of those.