Friday, May 20, 2016

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
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:
Willet Tweet Haiku
Justice Don Willet, bangs wife on Constitution, SCOTUS nod hates Trump
Willet Tweet Evangelicals
Jesus, these Evangelicals sure seem to cry a lot!
Willet Tweet Darth Trump
Plot Twist: The 2nd Death Star was built by illegal Bothan immigrants.
Willet Tweet GOP Con
“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]

Thursday, May 19, 2016

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

By

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.


Wednesday, May 18, 2016

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!”

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

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

Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) is flanked by his Secret Service detail before greeting supporters following a rally at Roger Williams Park on April 24, 2016 in Providence, Rhode Island. The Rhode Island primary is April 26.
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. 

Monday, May 16, 2016

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.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Rancher grows healthy, nutrient packed soil while running a profitable ranch/farm without chemicals

By JohnyCanuck

What a "Luddite" this guy is. He runs a profitable operation without spraying his fields with chemical poisons and artificial fertilizers and without buying patented GM seeds.

Doesn't he know he is rejecting the "scientific" approach to modern agriculture? How dare he have the gall to succeed by simply mimicking the processes of nature on his farm, and then have the nerve to tell other farmers they too can use the same methods to get themselves off the chemical agriculture treadmill, improve their own soils and still have a profitable farm.

Why, if his methods work, it would mean Monsanto and its big-ag partners are mostly full of bovine excrement. Hard to believe, I know.

 

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Republicans Only Care About Children Before They're Born

By Thom Hartmann



Indiana Rep. Todd Rokita wants to limit access to free lunch for poor children.

When it comes to children, Republicans are hypocrites.

They go on and on about how "pro-life" they are, but they really only care about "humans" before they're born. After that, they couldn't care less.

Case in point: the so-called "Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016," the brainchild of Indiana Rep. Todd Rokita that would decimate a key part of the federal free lunch program.

This bill is about as mean-spirited as it gets, and to understand why, you first need to understand something about how the federal free lunch program works.

Thanks to something called "community eligibility," students at certain schools automatically qualify to get a free lunch if 40 percent of their classmates live in poverty.

Although it may not sound like much, this is a really big deal.

Under community eligibility, high poverty schools no longer have to fill out the mountains of paperwork they'd normally have to fill out to get individual students enrolled in the free lunch program.

Everyone is enrolled, and as a result, these high poverty school are now free to focus on other problems like, you know, educating their students.

Sounds like pretty good idea, right? Not only are you keeping kids healthy, you're also cutting a lot of red tape.

That's something everyone can get behind.

Everyone that is, except for Representative Rokita.

Rokita's "Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016" would raise the poverty threshold necessary to participate in community eligibility to 60 percent.

Again this might not sound like much, but in the context of how the free lunch program actually functions, it's a really, really, big deal.

If Representative Rokita's bill becomes law, more than 7,000 schools serving almost 3.5 million students would be affected.

Those schools would no longer get to use community eligibility to automatically enroll all students in the free lunch program and would instead have to go back to the old application system, student by student, with its mountains and mountains of paperwork.

This isn't quite a death sentence, but for high poverty schools that are already struggling to deal with things like violence, drugs and broken homes, it's just another thing to deal with, and an unnecessary one at that.

Obviously, there's a certain amount of irony in the fact that Representative Rokita, a Republican, is pushing a bill that would create even more red tape.

But then again, Republicans have always been fine with "big government" if it means demonizing poor people.

So that's not that shocking.

No, the really shocking thing here is the fact that this is the same Representative Rokita who is 100 percent on board with House Republicans' kangaroo court investigation of Planned Parenthood.

That investigation, of course, is based on a total lie, and it's cost taxpayers' so much money that House Republicans have had to dip into Congress' reserve fund to help pay for it.

You really couldn't ask for a better example of the screwed-up priorities of so-called "pro-life" Republicans like Representative Rokita.

They'll go out of their way to protect a mass of cells that is only philosophically a child, but once it comes to real, live, breathing children, suddenly there's no money, suddenly cost is an issue, suddenly we need to talk about cutting spending.

And here's the thing: Republicans don't even really care about "unborn children" - the whole "pro-life" thing just a front.

Sure, some of them probably believe that abortion is the next Holocaust, but in the grand scheme of things, most of them know that all the outrage about Roe v. Wadeis just a way to keep the suckers in line.

How do you know? Well, if Republicans really cared about kids they'd stop their blockade of Medicaid expansion.

They'd also stop supporting the war on drugs that creates the school-to-prison pipeline. They'd stop turning our schools into profit-making engines for the billionaire class; and they'd stop trying to cut
Head Start, food stamps and welfare for single moms.

They'd also pass federal funding for Flint, Michigan.

The list goes on.

When it comes down to it, most Republicans don't give a rat's ass about US children.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Look at this goverment spy truck disguised as a Google Streetview car

By Mark Frauenfelder

Image: Matt Blaze/Twitter

Security researcher Matt Blaze noticed this vehicle in Philadelphia. It had a large Google Streetview sticker on the window, but Matt noticed a Philadelphia Office of Fleet Management placard on the windshield. He took a photo of the vehicle and tweeted it, along with the comment, "WTF? Pennsylvania State Police license plate reader SUV camouflaged as Google Street View vehicle."

The PA State Police read Matt's tweet and replied via Twitter, "Matt, this is not a PSP vehicle. If this is LPR [license plate reader] technology, other agencies and companies might make use of it."

The placard showing the vehicle is owned by the City of Philadelphia. Image: Dustin Slaughter The placard showing the vehicle is owned by the City of Philadelphia. Image: Dustin Slaughter

So, who is driving around in a vehicle disguised as both a Google Streetview car and is equipped with a license plate reader? Motherboard asked the office of Fleet Management, and got some more information:
A placard on the dashboard indicates that the SUV is registered with the Philadelphia Office of Fleet Management, which maintains city government’s 6,316 vehicles, indicating that the vehicle is being used by a local agency.
Christopher Cocci, who serves as the city’s fleet manager, and whose signature is on the document, says that the vehicle does not belong to the Pennsylvania State Police, which is known to use automated license plate recognition (ALPR), or the Philadelphia Parking Authority, a local agency that also utilizes ALPR.
So whose surveillance truck is it?
“All city vehicles such as police, fire, streets etc.…are registered to the city. Quasi [public] agencies like PPA, Housing Authority, PGW and School District are registered to their respective agencies,” fleet manager Christopher Cocci wrote in an email to Motherboard after reviewing photos of the vehicle. He also believes it to be connected to law enforcement activity.
Motherboard concludes that it is probably the city’s police department, not the state's. They've reached out to the Philadelphia Police Department but have not heard back from them.

Next Stop, The Twilight Zone: Romney Says Trump Disqualified For Not Releasing Tax Returns

By Jason Easley

Next Stop, The Twilight Zone: Romney Says Trump Disqualified For Not Releasing Tax Returns Mitt Romney, of all people, is claiming that Donald Trump has disqualified himself from the presidency by refusing to release his tax returns.

After Trump announced that he won’t be releasing any of his tax returns until after the election, Romney wrote on Facebook:
It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters, especially one who has not been subject to public scrutiny in either military or public service. Tax returns provide the public with its sole confirmation of the veracity of a candidate’s representations regarding charities, priorities, wealth, tax conformance, and conflicts of interest. Further, while not a likely circumstance, the potential for hidden inappropriate associations with foreign entities, criminal organizations, or other unsavory groups is simply too great a risk to ignore for someone who is seeking to become commander-in-chief.
Mr. Trump says he is being audited. So? There is nothing that prevents releasing tax returns that are being audited. Further, he could release returns for the years immediately prior to the years under audit. There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his returns: there is a bombshell in them. Given Mr. Trump’s equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it’s a bombshell of unusual size.
(Anticipating inquiries regarding my own tax release history, I released my 2010 tax returns in January of 2012 and I released my 2011 tax returns as soon as they were completed, in September of 2012.)
Mitt Romney, who stalled, made up excuses, and refused to release a full disclosure of his tax returns is running around claiming that Trump can’t be president because he won’t release his tax returns.

Birthers, like Donald Trump, attempted to demand Obama’s college transcripts in exchange for Romney’s tax returns.  As the presumptive Republican nominee, Romney blamed Obama for his refusal to release his tax returns. Romney refused to release even five years of tax returns.

Mitt Romney is not the person to be making the argument that Donald Trump is disqualified from the presidency because he won’t release his tax returns. In fact, Romney is one of the last people in the world who should be discussing releasing tax returns.

The Republicans have dragged the American people into some kind of bizarre Twilight Zone where Mitt Romney is the moral compass of the GOP. The last thing that Republicans needed was their former tax dodging nominee telling their current tax dodging nominee that he has disqualified himself by not releasing his tax returns.

Every single day, the Republican Party manages to find a new way to make things worse for themselves.

We really have entered a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man, and it is called The Republican Zone.

Trump's White Nationalist Delegate: 'Whites Are So Afraid To Be Proud Of Their Heritage'

By John Amato

Donald Trump took a lot of heat when Mother Jones broke the news that a white nationalist named William Johnson was selected as a California delegate.

Even though Trump's campaign is blaming a data base error, it's probably too late for him to be removed.

Johnson went on CNN with Jake Tapper and discussed how it all happened.



Tapper then asked why he liked Trump, “Mr. Trump is the real deal. He will not govern by public opinion poll. He says what’s on his mind.”
"Right now in today's society, they're passing around the word racist, more and more. Everybody is being called a racist nowadays."
Usually, only racists are called racists, like skin heads, the KKK, Pat Buchanan and of course, white nationalists.

Tapper asked Johnson if he believed "the white race, or the European white race, is the superior race - is that your view?"

William Johnson continued, "“I believe that Western civilization is declining and dying out in every country around the world that has traditionally been white. Europe is being replaced by immigrants from Africa. America, the same thing’s happening here, and so I believe that we need to be aware of this precipitous decline in the white race. And it's good for people to be proud of your heritage, whatever heritage that might be, but particularly for white people because the whites now are so afraid to be proud of their heritage because they're called bad name.”

Damn, he sounds just like the character Tom Willis, in Law and Order episode called "Hate."

These are the types of people Donald Trump's campaign is really energizing.

George Zimmerman Proudly Auctioning The Gun He Used To Kill Trayvon Martin

By Karoli Kuns


George Zimmerman Proudly Auctioning The Gun He Used To Kill Trayvon Martin



If anyone could be more of a slime than George Zimmerman, I'm not sure who (besides Donald Trump, possibly).

In a stellar example of wingnut free enterprise, Zimmerman is auctioning off the gun he used to murder stand his ground against an unarmed Trayvon Martin as a "piece of history."

From GunBroker.com:
Prospective bidders, I am honored and humbled to announce the sale of an American Firearm Icon. The firearm for sale is the firearm that was used to defend my life and end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin on 2/26/2012. The gun is a Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm. It has recently been returned to me by the Department of Justice. The pistol currently has the case number written on it in silver permanent marker. Many have expressed interest in owning and displaying the firearm including The Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. This is a piece of American History. It has been featured in several publications and in current University text books. Offers to purchase the Firearm have been received; however, the offers were to use the gun in a fashion I did not feel comfortable with. The firearm is fully functional as the attempts by the Department of Justice on behalf of B. Hussein Obama to render the firearm inoperable were thwarted by my phenomenal Defense Attorney. I recognize the purchaser's ownership and right to do with the firearm as they wish. The purchaser is guaranteed validity and authenticity of the firearm. On this day, 5/11/2016 exactly one year after the shooting attempt to end my life by BLM sympathizer Matthew Apperson I am proud to announce that a portion of the proceeds will be used to: fight BLM violence against Law Enforcement officers, ensure the demise of Angela Correy's persecution career and Hillary Clinton's anti-firearm rhetoric. Now is your opportunity to own a piece of American History. Good Luck. Your friend, George M. Zimmerman ~Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum~
I wonder if he went out and stomped on Trayvon's grave, too.

Monsanto's Cancer Linked Pesticide Is Being Sprayed In New York City Parks

 
Over 2,000 locations across NYC have been sprayed.
 

New Yorkers who visit their local parks have likely been exposed to glyphosate, the controversial, cancer-linked main ingredient in Monsanto's popular herbicide Roundup. But the data about herbicide and pesticide spraying projects across the city isn’t adding up.

In May 2015, in response to the concerns of community activists and public health advocates, the city government released a report, “Pesticide Use by New York City Agencies in 2014,” detailing the use of pesticides by city agencies in 2014. According to that report, the city applied glyphosate 2,748 times.

However, according to data procured by a Freedom of Information Law request, the city has revealed only 2,000 locations of glyphosate use in 2014. Pesticide information related to Central Park and other areas that are managed not by the city government, but by nonprofit conservancies has not been made public.

Several environmental and community activist groups, including Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, Stop the Spray, and members of the Coalition Against Poison Parks, are pursuing legal action to “force the City to reveal all locations where it has been used."

According to the parks report, the city applied pesticides 162,584 times in 2014. Various city agencies used nearly 8,000 gallons ans more than 100,000 pounds of pesticides. Compared to 2013 levels, there was a 21 percent increase in insecticides by volume in 2014. What is of particular concern is the fact that, as the report states, "there was a 16 percent increase in herbicide use by volume, reversing a declining trend. Much of the change was due to a 9 percent increase in glyphosate products used.”

In March 2015, the World Health Organization, the U.N.'s public health agency, said glyphosate, which is widely used on genetically modified crops such as corn and soybeans, likely causes cancer

In its report, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, WHO’s cancer arm, classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans." IARC scientists found that the chemical "induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro."

They concluded that there was "sufficient evidence" that the herbicide causes cancer in non-human animals and "limited evidence" that it also causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans. They said that the primary exposure to glyphosate comes through diet, home use—Roundup is a popular consumer gardening spray for people who are not informed about effective nontoxic methods—and living near sprayed areas.

A study published in February in the journal Environmental Health found that glyphosate persists in soil and water longer than previously thought, and that human exposure to the chemical is rising. The chemical also has harmful effects on birds, fish, and other wildlife.

While there was an increase in glyphosate use in New York City in 2014 as compared to 2013, the amount is much lower than it was in 2009, when, according to the Parks Department, it was used "to control invasive species in remote, often wooded, parkland.” The increase in glyphosate spraying in 2014 may have been due to “forest restoration work [which] was again done by Parks and their contractors, accounting for a substantial proportion of the city’s glyphosate use."

(Above: graphic from “Pesticide Use by New York City Agencies in 2014,” report by New York City Parks Department.)

To help residents steer clear of the toxic areas, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, a performance-based activist group based in New York City, created a map charting the parks and public areas across the city that have been sprayed with glyphosate. The map was created using data provided by the New York City Parks Department.

New York isn't the only major U.S. city that sprays glyphosate. San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Seattle and Philadelphia also use the controversial herbicide. Some big cities, like Chicago and Boulder, as well as smaller cities like Richmond, California, and Takoma Park, Maryland, have instituted glyphosate bans.

The NYC Parks Department notes in its report that the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene “encourages the pursuit of alternative weed control methods that would reduce the need for these herbicides.” The city should follow its own advice and protect its citizens from this cancer-linked chemical.

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Wednesday, May 11, 2016

‘Your mic is hot!’: Sean Hannity screams for Geraldo to stop insulting Bernie during victory speech

By David Edwards

Fox News host Sean Hannity had to warn Geraldo Rivera on Tuesday that his microphone was still live and that the public was hearing insults he was uttering during Bernie Sanders’ victory speech.

After Sanders won the West Virginia Democratic primary on Tuesday night, Fox News host Sean Hannity announced that he would briefly air some of the candidate’s victory speech live.

“He’s so annoying,” Rivera complained as the broadcast cut to Sanders. “This guy is so annoying.”

“Your mic is hot!” Hannity exclaimed. “What are you saying?”

“That he’s so annoying,” Rivera repeated. “And people that think that his supporters go to Donald Trump are smoking dope.”

Watch the video below from Fox News.


Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Trump less popular than lice, still backed by GOP voters

Rachel Maddow presents the results of a new PPP poll which finds, among other things that Donald Trump is less popular than lice, and yet, contrary to media narratives about a party split, Republican voters are shown as likely to vote for him and even Republican politicians who said terrible things about him are eating their words and supporting him.



 

I would like to extend to Ed Rendell my most cordial invitation to go fuck himself

Democratic party insider Ed Rendell has some advice for Bernie Sanders supporters who show up to the upcoming convention. He wants them to “behave and not cause trouble." Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.

Monday, May 9, 2016

Senoras y Senores, Candidato Republicano Donald Trump

Posted by Rude One


Hey, Republicans, that buffoon up there is your candidate for president. Your voters want him. That fake motherfucker fake eatin' a bowl of fake Mexican food and claiming it's awesome represents the party of Ulysses S. Grant and Teddy Roosevelt. Shit, Donald Trump makes fuckin' Warren G. Harding look like a goddamn golden hero.

How does that feel, John McCain? Lindsey Graham? Kelly Ayotte? All you supposedly once-rational Republicans? How do you feel seeing your party's standard bearer acting like he's gonna stuff thousands of calories and a tub of lard into his fat fucking cheddar-colored face?

"I love Hispanics!" his tweet screams, which is an improvement on his Archie Bunker-esque "I love the Hispanics" that he's been saying in every stream of consciousness speech, like in Pennsylvania recently: "I love the Hispanics, and I’m going to get so many jobs for the Hispanics, for the African Americans, for people that can’t get jobs now."

Meanwhile, Trump has doubled down on his vision of a deportation force rounding up undocumented immigrants, no doubt going into the homes of immigrants here legally, to drag away parents and break up families. It's an effort that one center-right think tank has estimated would kick the American economy right in the nuts. It would "reduce real private sector output by 2.9 percent to 4.7 percent or $381.5 billion to $623.2 billion." Or, you know, cause a shitload of unemployment.

But, hey, jump on board the hateful white-supremacist train, Nikki Haley (who, in a mighty stand, said she'll support Trump but won't be his vice president), Mitch McConnell, and Senator Richard Burr. One thing is for sure: After Trump finishes that taco salad, he'll be ready to shit all over anyone who is near him. And then he'll get Chris Christie to wipe his ass.

Man, Republicans, you have fucked yourself hard.

Rob Reiner Has Serious Words For Donald Trump | Morning Blow | MSNBC

Filmmaker Rob Reiner joins Morning Blow to discuss his thoughts on Donald Trump, who he says is only taken seriously as a political candidate because Trump is a celebrity.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Suspect in KOP Kidnapping is Daughter of Pa. Republican Power Broker

Police say Cherie Amoore chatted up a mother at the mall, then walked off with her infant.



Cheri Amoore (left) is charged with kidnapping Ahsir Simmons (right)
Cheri Amoore (left) is charged with kidnapping Ahsir Simmons (right).

The sprawling King of Prussia Mall played host Thursday night to the kind of paralyzing terror that a parent of a small child hopes to never experience: getting momentarily distracted, and then finding an empty space where their child had just been.

7 week old Ahsir Simmons was taken from right under his mother’s nose inside the mall’s food court shortly before 5:30 p.m., authorities said. In this case, the culprit wasn’t a menacing figure who swooped in quietly from the shadows.

Cherie Amoore, 32, allegedly abducted the baby boy after bumping into his mother apparently at random, and then chatting her up pleasantly for a while, said Upper Merion Police Chief Tom Nolan.

Renee Amoore
Renee Amoore

Amoore is the daughter of Renee Amoore, the deputy chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party.
“She did befriend the mother. She walked around with them and then followed them into the food court,” he said. “At one point, when the baby started to fuss, [Amoore] picked up the baby and tried to calm him down. The mom got distracted with a phone call, and [Amoore] quickly left.”

It didn’t take long for panic to set in. Local police and the FBI responded immediately to the reported abduction, Nolan said, and photos of baby Ahsir were shared across social media and through local news outlets.

A blurry image of Amoore leaving the mall with the infant also made the rounds. She had apparently walked around the mall with him for at least a half hour, Nolan said.

Minutes turned into hours, each one filled with a growing sense of dread. Investigators ultimately tracked Amoore to her house in Tredyffrin Township, Chester County, at 10:18 p.m., according to Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele.
Baby Ahsir was unharmed. Amoore was apparently home alone with him.

“She freely admitted to taking the baby in the statement she gave to investigators,” Nolan said.

Steele described the incident as “every parent’s worst nightmare.”

Amoore was officially charged Friday with felony counts of kidnapping of a minor, unlawful restraint and related offenses. She was led handcuffed to an arraignment, wearing a purple hooded sweatshirt and purple sweat pants.

She remained quiet as a small crowd of reporters surrounded her, asking why she kidnapped the baby or if she felt any remorse.

Nolan said Amoore told investigators that in early February, she gave birth to a baby boy who soon passed away, and the loss fueled her impulsive decision to run off with Ashir.

Investigators haven’t been able to verify that claim, he said.

Renee Amoore is the founder and president of the Amoore Group, an organization that includes three companies: Amoore Health Systems Inc., 521 Management Group Inc., and the Ramsey Educational and Development Institute, according to her biography on the Pennsylvania GOP’s website.

A woman who answered the phone at Renee Amoore’s house this afternoon identified herself as a relative, and said Amoore didn’t want to comment.

“Just pray for [Cherie],” she said. “And pray for the baby’s family.”

Nolan said child abductions — especially in crowded environments like a mall — are rare.

“You do hear of cases where a child wanders off, but in this one, the mom was right there,” he said.

Follow @dgambacorta on Twitter.

Let this sink in: The Republican Party has chosen a birther as its presidential candidate

By

This is happening, people. This is really happening. Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president of these United States. Let that sink in.

The hot takes will abound in the days and weeks ahead. Pundits will conduct the autopsy on Ted Cruz’s campaign. We’ll ask why John Kasich quit. We’ll question if there’s still any hope of a contested convention. We’ll express wonderment at how quickly and awkwardly the Republican establishment surrenders to Trump.

Pay particular attention to this storyline: Now that Trump has won, he’ll continue to shift the tone and approach of his campaign. It was announced a few weeks ago, for instance, that Trump was “shaking up” his campaign. He hired some veteran operatives and was preparing to “professionalize” his operation.

The plan, we now know, was to quietly change the way Trump comports himself in public. What we got, as The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza put it, was Trump 2.0. Trump 2.0 is kinder, more disciplined, less bigoted. He’s a candidate who, as Cillizza writes, “will show unbound delegates as well as party leaders and influencers that he can be magnanimous, that he can be a uniting force within the party.”

Although Trump has wavered in his execution, the pivot has been obvious. And now that he’s running virtually uncontested, you can expect more of this. During his speech last night, for example, there was no talk of Muslims and luxurious walls on the Southern border; instead, he focused on trade and a kind of half-baked economic nationalism. The rhetoric, though, was far less divisive. This is Trump transitioning to general election mode.

But here’s what everyone should never forget: No matter what Trump now says, he owes his entire political existence to bigotry. The inimitable James Carville recently wrote a piece making what will, increasingly, be a critical point:
“I’m a Catholic. I’ve seen enough baptismal water spilled to fill William Taft’s bathtub ten times over. But it doesn’t take a Catholic like me to understand the original sin of the Trump candidacy. His first act on the political stage was to declare himself the head of the birther movement. For Trump, the year 2011 began with the BIG NEWS that he had rejected Lindsey Lohan for Celebrity Apprentice, but by April, his one-man show to paint Barack Obama as a secret Kenyan had become the talk of the country. Five years later, Trump is nearing the Republican nomination.”
Birtherism is how Trump lunged into presidential politics. It was his first – and loudest – dog whistle.

And the thing about birtherism, in addition to being patently untrue, is that there’s no reason to believe it apart from bigotry. To support the theory is to announce, in the clearest possible terms, one’s own prejudices.

Again, Carville explains:
“Look, I understand that there’s plenty of craziness to investigate in our politics. Cruz believes that global warming is a hoax. Ben Carson claimed that the Biblical Joseph built the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Heck, once upon a time, George W. Bush famously thought the jury was out on evolution. But Trump’s birtherism is far, far more important – for two reasons. First, in my experience, when a politician says he doesn’t talk about an issue, that’s precisely what you should ask him about. Second, there’s another difference between being a birther and a flat-earther. It’s possible to believe the Earth is flat and not be a bigot, but it’s impossible to be a birther and not be one.”
Trump doesn’t want to talk about birtherism anymore – for obvious reasons. It’s bad public relations. The few times reporters have brought it up, Trump dodges or bullies his way out of it. “I don’t want to talk about that anymore,” he told Chris Matthews. But make no mistake: Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he embraced the birther movement. “I don’t think I went overboard,” Trump said in 2013. “Actually, I think it made me very popular….I do think I know what I’m doing.”

I can’t say whether Trump is a bigot or not, but I can say that he deliberately endeared himself to bigots. If you want to understand why Trump is the overwhelming favorite of racists, look no further than his birtherism. If you want to understand why 80 percent of Trump supporters believe the “government has gone too far in assisting minority groups,” look no further than his birtherism. If you want to understand why exit polls in Pennsylvania and New York and Wisconsin and Florida and Georgia and New Hampshire and Ohio show that the majority of Trump voters support his proposed ban on all Muslims, look no further than his birtherism.

Trump’s success springs from this “original sin,” as Carville put it. Many of his supporters received the signal he sent in 2011 and have internalized it; they know – or think they know – that Trump is one of them. Not all Trump supporters are racists, of course, but a terrifying percentage are. And that’s no accident.

That Trump has catapulted to the top of the Republican Party, that he’s now the presumptive nominee, says a lot about the GOP and our country. He’ll very likely lose in an electoral landslide to Hillary Clinton, but that’s beside the point. His campaign has already done incalculable damage. He’s tapped into an undercurrent of bigotry and exploited it for political gain. The results of that will, unfortunately, survive his self-serving campaign. And no one, especially in the media, should let Trump forget that.

This article was written by Sean Illing from Salon and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

If you're an elected Democrat who is open to cutting Social Security, or Medicare or S.N.A.P., Fuck you.

By cali

It doesn't matter if you call yourself a Democrat. It's not excusable because you support marriage equality. It's not enough that you support reproductive rights. Being a social liberal isn't enough.

Period.

If you're an elected Democrat who leaves the door open to cuts in Social Security and the safety net, it won't go unnoticed.

And yeah, Fuck you.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Psychologists explain Trump: He's literally a narcissistic psychopath

The horrifying Donald Trump © Wonkette
 
As his presidential campaign marches on, with seemingly no scandal or gaff harming him in the least, millions of sane Americans have been asking, in the words of Henry Alford of Vanity Fair: "What exactly is wrong with this strange individual?"

Now, science has finally answered that question...

While there is no official clinical diagnosis of psychopathy, the textbook traits of it and related Anti Social Personality disorders like Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Sociopathy, are somewhat easy to spot once you know the signs.

The failure for there to be an official way to diagnose these disorders is due more to the fact that the individuals who have these traits are adept at masking them, or giving the answers to questions that psychologists "want" to hear.

Donald Trump is "remarkably narcissistic," according developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

"Textbook narcissistic personality disorder," clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis explained.

The Mayo Clinic explains "Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of ultra-confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism." They add that "a narcissistic personality disorder causes problems in many areas of life." The sufferer "may be generally unhappy and disappointed when you're not given the special favors or admiration you believe you deserve."

Clinical psychologist George Simon said that Trump is "so classic that I'm archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there's no better example of his characteristics." He conducts lectures and seminars on manipulative behavior exhibited by narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths - all related Anti Social Personality Disorders. "Otherwise, I would have had to hire actors and write vignettes. He's like a dream come true."

The Raw Story makes the following poignant observations:
Trump's shortage of empathy can be seen clearly by his stances on topics like immigration. Instead of recognizing that the data shows that most Mexican immigrants are not violent, but instead people simply looking for a place where actual opportunity exists, with a broad brush he claims that they are "criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc." 
In a similar vein, Trump has vowed to ban all Muslims from entering the country should he be elected. It appears that his lack of empathy has distorted his mind's ability to grasp the fact that the refugees he speaks of are actually seeking safety from the same murderous maniacs that he wants to keep out. Perhaps if Trump had relatives in countries like Syria and Iraq, he might understand the constant fear that most live under, and in turn become more willing to welcome them with open arms rather than leaving them to be slaughtered.

But a lack of empathy is just one part of narcissistic personality disorder. Just beneath the surface layer of overwhelming arrogance lies a delicate self-esteem that is easily injured by any form of criticism. We have all seen Trump unjustifiably lash out at a number of people with harsh and often extremely odd personal attacks. When he thought he had been treated unfairly by Fox News host and Republican debate moderator Megyn Kelly, he responded by calling her a "bimbo" and later saying that she had "blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever." In response to the strange, misogynistic comments Kelly said that she "may have overestimated his anger management skills." If the news host would have pegged him as a bona fide narcissist from the beginning she might have expected such shamelessly flagrant behavior.
Narcissism, Psychopath and Sociopathy used to be lumped together synonymously, under the banner of Anti Social Personality Disorder. But today the disorders are divided in subtle, nuanced, but very similar ways. There is a lot of overlap - in fact more overlap than not.

Carol Caldwell notes, in D.J. Trump, Psychopath, that "it's been attested to by psychologists and neurobiologists who study psycho- and sociopaths that the deadly syndrome can be seen in their eyes."

She observes that "the eyes are described as affect-less, what we would call cold, or eerily blank in one-on-one or televised exchanges. The sociopath is described as charming, out-going, intelligent, cunning, winning without warmth, but adaptable to whatever human kindness you telegraph to them. 
 
As we well know, many of them ascend to top positions in major industries, I might mention Wall Street and banking, heads of Hollywood studios, and members of Congress. On the street levels of everyday life, they work their wiles into all kinds of jobs, by falsifying resumes to fit the careers they are after. One area of human endeavor they seem less adaptable to is refined senses of humor."

Dr. Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry and the director of the master's of bioethics program at Columbia University notes that the American Psychiatric Association says that it is unethical for psychiatrists to comment on an someone's mental state without having examining them personally. But as Alford notes, "you don't need to have met Donald Trump to feel like you know him; even the smallest exposure can make you feel like you've just crossed a large body of water in a small boat with him." "He's very easy to diagnose," psychotherapist Charlotte Prozan explained. "In the first debate, he talked over people and was domineering. "He'll do anything to demean others, like tell Carly Fiorina he doesn't like her looks," Alford explains.

Trump's characteristic "You're fired!" catchphrase highlights his brutal lack of empathy, as does his hyper-willingness to deport immigrants, even though two of his wives have been immigrants.
Mr. Trump's bullying nature—taunting Senator John McCain for being captured in Vietnam, or saying Jeb Bush has "low energy"—is in keeping with the narcissistic profile. "In the field we use clusters of personality disorders," Michaelis said. 
"Narcissism is in cluster B, which means it has similarities with histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. There are similarities between them. Regardless of how you feel about John McCain, the man served—and suffered. Narcissism is an extreme defense against one's own feelings of worthlessness. To degrade people is really part of a cluster-B personality disorder: it's antisocial and shows a lack of remorse for other people. The way to make it O.K. to attack someone verbally, psychologically, or physically is to lower them. That's what he's doing."
Wendy Terrie Behary, the author of Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed, says that, "Narcissists are not necessarily liars, but they are notoriously uncomfortable with the truth. The truth means the potential to feel ashamed. If all they have to show the world as a source of feeling acceptable is their success and performance, be it in business or sports or celebrity, then the risk of people seeing them fail or squander their success is so difficult to their self-esteem that they feel ashamed. We call it the narcissistic injury. They're uncomfortable with their own limitations. It's not that they're cut out to lie, it's just that they can't handle what's real."

Comment: Narcissists are not capable of feeling shame. Their sense of grandiosity is always present. Read "A Structural Theory of Narcissism and Psychopathy" to get an idea of the physiological framework behind narcissism and psychopathy.

Michaelis explains that Trump is "applying for the greatest job in the land, the greatest task of which is to serve, but there's nothing about the man that is service-oriented. He's only serving himself."

Prozan notes that Trump "keeps saying he could negotiate with Putin because he's good at deals. But diplomacy involves a back and forth between equals."

Dr. Klitzman added, "I have never met Donald Trump and so cannot comment on his psychological state. However, I think that, in general, many candidates who run for president are driven in large part by ego. I hope that does not preclude their motivation to govern with the best interests of the public as a whole in mind. Yet for some candidates, that may, alas, be a threat."

Could Trump be helped by clinical treatment?

"I'd be shocked if he walked in my door," Behary said. "Most narcissists don't seek treatment unless there's someone threatening to take something away from them. There'd have to be some kind of meaningful consequence for him to come in."

Gardner added that "for me, the compelling question is the psychological state of his supporters. They are unable or unwilling to make a connection between the challenges faced by any president and the knowledge and behavior of Donald Trump. In a democracy, that is disastrous."

With someone who is so clearly a Narcissistic Psychopath holding the reigns of power, there are numerous issues of concern for the American people. Just this week, Trump said that he would make it illegal for the media to harshly criticize him. He has similarly advocated for illegal and unconstitutional "ID badges" for Muslim Americans, as well as banning Muslims from immigrating to the United States.

Having a man like this seize control of the nation's policies, police, and military is something that endangers us all. Help SPREAD THE WORD because our future, freedom and maybe even lives depend on making sure Donald Trump doesn't get into office and carry out the fascist policies he has promised to!