Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Hacker 'Guccifer 2.0' Releases More DNC Docs — Including Tim Kaine's Cell Number

The hacker or hackers who claim to have broken into Democratic Party systems released more documents Tuesday, including what appeared to be the personal cell phone of vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine.

"Guccifer 2.0" released over 670 megabytes of documents at a cyber-security conference in London Tuesday.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hacker-guccifer-2-0-releases-more-dnc-docs-including-tim-n647921

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Yes, half of Trump supporters are racist

By Dana Milbank

Hillary Clinton may have been unwise to say half of Donald Trump’s supporters are racists and other “deplorables.” But she wasn’t wrong.

If anything, when it comes to Trump’s racist support, she might have low-balled the number.

Trump, speaking to the National Guard Association of the United States’ annual conference here Monday afternoon, proclaimed himself “deeply shocked and alarmed” about Clinton putting half of his supporters in the “basket of deplorables”— as if anybody, especially Trump, could be shocked by anything this late in the campaign. How dare she, Trump said, “attack, slander, smear, demean these wonderful, amazing people.”

But this isn’t a matter of gratuitous name-calling. This election has proved that there is much more racism in America than many believed. It came out of hiding in opposition to the first African American president, and it has been welcomed into the open by Trump.

The American National Election Studies, the long-running, extensive poll of American voters, asked voters in 2012 a basic test of prejudice: to rank black and white people on a scale from hardworking to lazy and from intelligent to unintelligent. The researchers found that 62 percent of white people gave black people a lower score in at least one of the attributes. This was a jump in prejudicial attitudes from 2008, when 45 percent of white people expressed negative stereotypes.

This question is a good indicator of how one votes: Republican Mitt Romney won 61 percent of those who expressed negative stereotypes. And, when the question was asked during the 2008 primaries, those with negative racial stereotypes consistently favored Republican candidates — any of them — over any Democratic candidate in hypothetical matchups.

“There is plenty of overt white prejudice,” observes Simon Jackman, who directed the ANES until earlier this year and now runs the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. “Whites who reported prejudicial beliefs about blacks skewed heavily Republican in 2008 and 2012 — and they will in 2016.”

Clinton’s infelicitous “basket of deplorables” phrase, with echoes of Victor Hugo and Indian castes, takes its place alongside Romney’s “binders full of women” in the awkward pantheon and could only have been devised by a woman who previously gave the world “ladders of opportunity.” But for the large number of racists drawn to Trump, the shoe fits. 

In June, the Pew Research Center found that 79 percent of Clinton voters believe the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities is an important issue, while only 42 percent of Trump supporters feel that way. As I wrote previously, earlier Pew research found that Trump supporters were significantly less likely than other Americans (and supporters of other Republican presidential candidates) to think that racial and ethnic diversity improves the United States.

Research by Washington Post pollsters and by University of California at Irvine political scientist Michael Tesler, among others, have found that Trump does best among Americans who express racial animus. Evidence indicates fear that white people are losing ground was the single greatest predictor of support for Trump — more, even, than economic anxiety.

Few people embrace the “racist” label, so let’s help them. If you are “very enthusiastic” about a candidate who has based his campaign on scapegoating immigrants, Latinos and African Americans, talked of banning Muslims from the country, hesitated to disown the Ku Klux Klan and employed anti-Semitic imagery — well, you might be a racist. But if you are holding your nose and supporting Trump only because you think him better than Clinton, that doesn’t put you in the basket.

The new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds the two groups roughly equal: Forty-six percent of Trump supporters say they are “very enthusiastic” about his candidacy. The rest were “somewhat” or not terribly enthusiastic.

There were mostly the latter at the National Guard gathering in Baltimore. Donny Crandell, a pastor from Nevada who serves as a National Guard chaplain, figured the audience was 70-30 for Trump, but with few of the “deplorables.” Said Crandell: “I don’t think you’ll find a lot of military types who are core Trump fans. They just like him better than her.” That includes Crandell, who backed Ted Cruz and would prefer Marco Rubio to Trump, whose “meanness” offends Crandell. “But he’s the choice we have,” the chaplain told me. 

Trump, on stage, rejected any notion of racism, saying people who want secure borders “are not racists,” people who warn of “radical Islamic terrorism are not Islamophobes” and people who support police “are not prejudiced.” But moments later, he repeated the campaign slogan he borrowed from an anti-Semitic organization that opposed involvement in World War II.

“America First – remember that,” he said. “America First.”
That’s deplorable.

Twitter: @Milbank
 
Read more from Dana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Read more:
Greg Sargent: The American people agree with Clinton. Trump is a bigot.
 
Jonathan Capehart: This is what’s ‘deplorable’ about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and this campaign
 
Ed Rogers: The consequences of Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ and Obama’s ‘clingers’

Monday, September 12, 2016

Latest Polls Show Nominating Hillary Was A Huge Mistake

In a recent CNN poll, Hillary Clinton found herself losing to the maniac, bankrupt, lying, cheating, racist, xenophobic billionaire Donald Trump. Another survey about her trustworthiness showed a majority of Americans have serious concerns about her honesty.

Jimmy Dore breaks it down.

Using card tricks to find the truth about Trump

Ben Seidman is a professional magician based in Los Angeles, CA. He currently travels around the world performing over 200 shows a year at corporate events, private parties, theaters, and colleges. Ben designed magic and illusions for @CrissAngel, Mindfreak on @AETV; he was the Resident Magician at @MandalayBay in Las Vegas, and he starred in Magic Outlaws on @Travelchannel.

In 2015 Seidman appeared on Penn & Teller: Fool Us #pennjillette & @MrTeller, was voted Entertainer of the Year for @princesscruises, and Best Small Venue Artist for Campus Activities Magazine. He is @realjknoxville ‘s personal magic teacher and has performed for Robin Williams, @Zedd, @StephenMerchant, @wernerherzog, @RealCarrotTop, and @tomgreenlive. Ben has toured with @Ornyadams, @robertkelly, @tompapa, @AlonzoBodden, and @JeremyHotz.

This is my first political video featuring @realDonaldTrump in support of @HillaryClinton, @BernieSanders, @SenateDems and the other people I believe in. #vote #trump #realDonaldTrump #HillaryClinton

For dates and booking visit:
www.BenSeidman.com

 

Sunday, September 11, 2016

15 Teleportations & Time Travelers Caught On Tape

This video takes a look at 15 times in which alleged time travelers have been caught on tape.

These supposed instances of time travel have sometimes taken place in the form of teleportation, which to some is a common way in which time travelers travel to different times, whether it be the future or past.

Also, the video looks at modern objects found in some ancient art.

Joy Reid Drops The Hammer On Trump Advocate Lying About Clinton

The host repeatedly called him a liar before shutting him down.

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Forget the ‘Aleppo’ gaffe: What’s really wrong with Gary Johnson is his Ayn Randian worldview

By Greta Christina

Libertarian Presidential nominee Gary Johnson taunts Donald Trump on CNN (Screen cap)
“Well, I’m conservative, but I’m not one of those racist, homophobic, dripping-with-hate Tea Party bigots! I’m pro-choice! I’m pro-same-sex-marriage! I’m not a racist! I just want lower taxes, and smaller government, and less government regulation of business. I’m fiscally conservative, and socially liberal.”

How many liberals and progressives have heard this? It’s ridiculously common. Hell, even David Koch of the Koch brothers has said, “I’m a conservative on economic matters and I’m a social liberal.”

And it’s wrong. W-R-O-N-G Wrong.

You can’t separate fiscal issues from social issues. They’re deeply intertwined. They affect each other. Economic issues often are social issues. And conservative fiscal policies do enormous social harm. That’s true even for the mildest, most generous version of “fiscal conservatism” — low taxes, small government, reduced regulation, a free market. These policies perpetuate human rights abuses.

They make life harder for people who already have hard lives. Even if the people supporting these policies don’t intend this, the policies are racist, sexist, classist (obviously), ableist, homophobic, transphobic, and otherwise socially retrograde. In many ways, they do more harm than so-called “social policies” that are supposedly separate from economic ones. Here are seven reasons that “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” is nonsense.

1: Poverty, and the cycle of poverty. This is the big one. Poverty is a social issue. The cycle of poverty — the ways that poverty itself makes it harder to get out of poverty, the ways that poverty can be a permanent trap lasting for generations — is a social issue, and a human rights issue.

If you’re poor, there’s about a two in three chance that you’re going to stay poor for at least a year, about a two in three chance that if you do pull out of poverty you’ll be poor again within five years — and about a two in three chance that your children are going to be poor. Among other things: Being poor makes it much harder to get education or job training that would help you get higher-paying work. Even if you can afford job training or it’s available for free — if you have more than one job, or if your work is menial and exhausting, or if both of those are true (often the case if you’re poor), there’s a good chance you won’t have the time or energy to get that training, or to look for higher-paying work. Being poor typically means you can’t afford to lose your job — which means you can’t afford to unionize, or otherwise push back against your wages and working conditions. It means that a temporary crisis — sickness or injury, job loss, death in the family — can destroy your life: you have no cushion, nobody you know has a cushion, a month or two without income and you’re totally screwed. If you do lose your job, or if you’re disabled, the labyrinthine bureaucracy of unemployment and disability benefits is exhausting: if you do manage to navigate it, it can deplete your ability to do much of anything else to improve your life — and if you can’t navigate it, that’s very likely going to tank your life.

Also, ironically, being poor is expensive. You can’t buy high-quality items that last longer and are a bargain in the long run. You can’t buy in bulk. You sure as hell can’t buy a house: depending on where you live, monthly mortgage payments might be lower than the rent you’re paying, but you can’t afford a down payment, and chances are a bank won’t give you a mortgage anyway. You can’t afford the time or money to take care of your health — which means you’re more likely to get sick, which is expensive. If you don’t have a bank account (which many poor people don’t), you have to pay high fees at check-cashing joints. If you run into a temporary cash crisis, you have to borrow from price-gouging payday-advance joints. If your car breaks down and you can’t afford to repair or replace it, it can mean unemployment. If you can’t afford a car at all, you’re severely limited in what jobs you can take in the first place — a limitation that’s even more severe when public transportation is wildly inadequate. If you’re poor, you may have to move a lot — and that’s expensive. These aren’t universally true for all poor people — but way too many of them are true, for way too many people.

Second chances, once considered a hallmark of American culture and identity, have become a luxury.

One small mistake — or no mistake at all, simply the mistake of being born poor — can trap you there forever.

Plus, being poor doesn’t just mean you’re likely to stay poor. It means that if you have children, they’re more likely to stay poor. It means you’re less able to give your children the things they need to flourish — both in easily-measurable tangibles like good nutrition, and less-easily-measurable qualities like a sense of stability. The effect of poverty on children — literally on their brains, on their ability to literally function — is not subtle, and it lasts into adulthood. Poverty’s effect on adults is appalling enough. Its effect on children is an outrage.

And in case you hadn’t noticed, poverty — including the cycle of poverty and the effect of poverty on children — disproportionately affects African Americans, Hispanics, other people of color, women, trans people, disabled people, and other marginalized groups.

So what does this have to do with fiscal policy? Well, duh. Poverty is perpetuated or alleviated, worsened or improved, by fiscal policy. That’s not the only thing affecting poverty, but it’s one of the biggest things. To list just a few of the most obvious examples of very direct influence: Tax policy. Minimum wage. Funding of public schools and universities. Unionization rights. Banking and lending laws. Labor laws. Funding of public transportation. Public health care. Unemployment benefits. Disability benefits. Welfare policy. Public assistance that doesn’t penalize people for having savings. Child care. Having a functioning infrastructure, having economic policies that support labor, having a tax system that doesn’t steal from the poor to give to the rich, having a social safety net — a real safety net, not one that just barely keeps people from starving to death but one that actually lets people get on their feet and function — makes a difference. When these systems are working, and are working well, it’s easier for people to get out of poverty. When they’re not, it’s difficult to impossible. And I haven’t even gotten into the fiscal policy of so-called “free” trade, and all the ways it feeds poverty both in the U.S. and around the world. (I’ll get to that in a bit.)

Fiscal policy affects poverty. And in the United States, “fiscally conservative” means supporting fiscal policies that perpetuate poverty. “Fiscally conservative” means slashing support systems that help the poor, lowering taxes for the rich, cutting corners for big business, and screwing labor — policies that both worsen poverty and make it even more of an inescapable trap.

2: Domestic violence, workplace harassment, and other abuse. See above, re: cycle of poverty. If someone is being beaten by their partner, harassed or assaulted at work, abused by their parents — and if they’re poor, and if there’s fuck-all for a social safety net — it’s a hell of a lot harder for them to leave. What’s more, the stress of poverty itself — especially inescapable, entrapped poverty — contributes to violence and abuse.

And you know who gets disproportionately targeted with domestic violence and workplace harassment? Women. Especially women of color. And LGBT folks — especially trans women of color, and LGBT kids and teenagers. Do you care about racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist violence? Then quit undercutting the social safety net. A solid safety net — a safety net that isn’t made of tissue paper, and that doesn’t require the people in it to constantly scramble just to stay there, much less to climb out — isn’t going to magically eliminate this violence and harassment. But it sure makes it easier for people to escape it.

3: Disenfranchisement. There’s a cycle that in some ways is even uglier than the cycle of poverty — because it blocks people from changing the policies that keep the cycle of poverty going. I’m talking about the cycle of disenfranchisement.

I’m talking about the myriad ways that the super-rich control the political process — and in controlling the political process, both make themselves richer and give themselves even more control over the political process. Purging voter rolls. Cutting polling place hours. Cutting back on early voting — especially in poor districts. Voter ID laws. Roadblocks to voter registration — noticeably aimed at people likely to vote progressive. Questionable-at-best voter fraud detection software, which — by some wild coincidence — tends to flag names that are common among minorities. Eliminating Election Day registration. Restricting voter registration drives. Gerrymandering — creating voting districts with the purpose of skewing elections in your favor.

Voter suppression is a real thing in the United States. And these policies are set in place by the super-rich — or, to be more precise, by the government officials who are buddies with the super-rich and are beholden to them. These policies are not set in place to reduce voter fraud: voter fraud is extremely rare in the U.S., to the point of being almost non-existent. The policies are set in place to make voting harder for people who would vote conservative plutocrats out of office. If you’re skeptical about whether this is actually that deliberate, whether these policies really are written by plutocratic villains cackling over how they took even more power from the already disempowered — remember Pennsylvania Republican House Leader Mike Turzai, who actually said, in words, “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

Remember former Florida Republican chairman Jim Greer, who actually said, in words, “We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us.” Remember the now-former North Carolina Republican official Don Yelton, who actually said, in words, that voter restrictions including voter ID were “going to kick Democrats in the butt.” Remember the Texas Republican attorney general and candidate for governor Greg Abbott, who actually said, in words, that “their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats.” Remember Doug Preisse, Republican chair of Franklin County (Ohio’s second-largest county) who actually said (well, wrote), in words, that Ohio Republicans were pushing hard to limit early voting because “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine.” (And no, the “read African-American” clarification isn’t mine — it’s his.) Remember… oh, you get the idea. Disenfranchisement is not some accidental side effect of Republican-sponsored voting restrictions. Disenfranchisement is the entirely intentional point.

And on top of that, you’ve got campaign finance laws saying that corporations are people, too — “people” with just as much right as you or I to donate millions of dollars to candidates who’ll write laws helping them out. When you’ve got fiscal policies that enrich the already rich — such as regressive tax policies, deregulation of businesses, deregulation of the financial industry — and you combine them with campaign finance laws that have essentially legalized bribery, you get a recipe for a cycle of disenfranchisement. The more that rich people control the political process, the richer they get — and the richer they get, the more they control the political process.

4: Racist policing. There’s a whole lot going on with racist policing in the United States. Obviously. But a non-trivial chunk of it is fiscal policy. Ferguson shone a spotlight on this, but it isn’t just in Ferguson — it’s all over the country. In cities and counties and towns across the United States, the government is funded, in large part, by tickets and fines for municipal violations — and by the meta-system of interest, penalties, surcharges, and fees on those tickets and fines, which commonly turn into a never-ending debt amounting to many, many times the original fine itself.

This is, for all intents and purposes, a tax. It’s a tax on poor people. It’s a tax on poor people for being poor, for not having a hundred dollars in their bank account that they can drop at a moment’s notice on a traffic ticket. And it’s a tax that disproportionately targets black and brown people. When combined with the deeply ingrained culture of racism in many many many police forces — a police culture that hammers black and brown people for the crime of existing — it is a tax on black and brown people, purely for being black or brown. But Loki forbid we raise actual taxes. Remember the fiscal conservative mantra: “Low taxes good! High taxes bad!” High taxes are bad — unless we don’t call them a tax. If we call it a penalty or a fine, that’s just peachy. And if it’s disproportionately levied by a racist police force on poor black people, who have little visibility or power and are being systematically disenfranchised — that’s even better. What are they going to do about it? And who’s going to care? It’s not as if black lives matter. What’s more: You know some of the programs that have been proposed to reduce racist policing? Programs like automatic video monitoring of police encounters? An independent federal agency to investigate and discipline local policing, to supplement or replace ineffective, corrupt, or non-existent self-policing? Those take money. Money that comes from taxes. Money that makes government a little bit bigger. Fiscal conservatism — the reflexive cry of “Lower taxes! Smaller government!” — contributes to racist policing. Even if you, personally, oppose racist policing, supporting fiscal conservatism makes you part of the problem.

5: Drug policy and prison policy. Four words: The new Jim Crow. Drug war policies in the United States — including sentencing policies, probation policies, which drugs are criminalized and how severely, laws banning felons convicted on drug charges from voting, and more — have pretty much zero effect on reducing the harm that can be done by drug abuse. They don’t reduce drug use, they don’t reduce drug addiction, they don’t reduce overdoses, they don’t reduce accidents or violence that can be triggered by drug abuse. If anything, these policies make all of this worse.

But they do have one powerful effect: Current drug policies in the United States are very, very good at creating and perpetuating a permanent black and brown underclass. They are very good at creating a permanent class of underpaid, disenfranchised, disempowered servants, sentenced to do shit work at low wages for white people, for the rest of their lives.

This is not a bug. This is a feature.

You don’t have to be a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist to see how current U.S. drug policy benefits the super-rich and super-powerful. It is a perfect example of a “social issue” with powerful ripple effects into the economy. And that’s not even getting into the issue of how the wealthy might benefit from super-cheap prison labor, labor that borders so closely on slavery it’s hard to distinguish it. So people who are well-served by the current economy are strongly motivated to keep drug policy firmly in place.

Plus, two more words: Privatized prisons. Privatized prisons mean prisons run by people who have no interest in reducing the prison population — people who actually benefit from a high crime rate, a high recidivism rate, severe sentencing policies, severe probation policies, and other treats that keep the prison population high. It’s as if we had privatized fire departments, who got paid more the more fires they put out — and thus had every incentive, not to improve fire prevention techniques and policies and education, but to gut them.

Privatization of prisons is a conservative fiscal policy. It’s a policy based on the conservative ideal of low taxes, small government, and the supposedly miraculous power of the free market to make any system more efficient. And it’s a policy with a powerful social effect — the effect of doing tremendous harm.

It’s true that there are some conservatives advocating for criminal justice reform, including drug policy reform, on the grounds that the current system isn’t cost-effective. The problem with this, as Drug Policy Alliance Deputy State Director Laura Thomas points out: When you base policy decisions entirely on whether they’re cost-effective, the bottom line will always take priority.

Injustice, racism, corruption, abuse — all of these can stay firmly in place. Human rights, and the human cost of these policies? Meh. Who cares — as long as we can cut government spending?

6: Deregulation. This one is really straightforward. Deregulation of business is a conservative fiscal policy. And it has a devastating effect on marginalized people. Do I need to remind anyone of what happened when the banking and financial industries were deregulated?

Do I need to remind anyone of who was most hurt by those disasters? Overwhelmingly poor people, working-class people, and people of color.

But this isn’t just about banking and finance. Deregulation of environmental standards, workplace safety standards, utilities, transportation, media — all of these have the entirely unsurprising effect of making things better for the people who own the businesses, and worse for the people who patronize them and work for them. Contrary to the fiscal conservative myth, an unregulated free market does not result in exceptional businesses fiercely competing for the best workers and lavishly serving the public. It results in monopoly. It results in businesses with the unofficial slogan, “We Don’t Care — We Don’t Have To.” It results in 500-pound gorillas, sleeping anywhere they want.

7: “Free” trade. This one is really straightforward. So-called “free” trade policies have a horrible effect on human rights, both in the United States and overseas. They let corporations hire labor in countries where labor laws — laws about minimum wage, workplace safety, working hours, child labor — are weak to nonexistent. They let corporations hire labor in countries where they can pay children as young as five years old less than a dollar a day, to work 12 or even 16 hours a day, in grossly unsafe workplaces and grueling working conditions that make Dickensian London look like a socialist Utopia.

And again — this is not a bug. This is a feature. This is the whole damn point of “free” trade: by reducing labor costs to practically nothing, it provides cheap consumer products to American consumers, and it funnels huge profits to already obscenely rich corporations. It also decimates blue-collar employment in the United States — and it feeds human rights abuses around the world.

Thank you, fiscal conservatism!

This list is far from complete. But I think you get the idea.

Now. There are conservatives who will insist that this isn’t what “fiscally conservative” means.

They’re not inherently opposed to government spending, they say. They’re just opposed to ineffective and wasteful government spending.

Bullshit. Do they really think progressives are in favor of wasteful and ineffective government? Do they think we’re saying, “Thumbs up to ineffective government spending! Let’s pour our government’s resources down a rat hole! Let’s spend our tax money giving every citizen a solid-gold tuba and a lifetime subscription to Cigar Aficionado!” This is an idealized, self-serving definition of “fiscally conservative,” defined by conservatives to make their position seem reasonable. It does not describe fiscal conservatism as it actually plays out in the United States. The reality of fiscal conservatism in the United States is not cautious, evidence-based attention to which government programs do and don’t work. If that were ever true in some misty nostalgic past, it hasn’t been true for a long, long time. The reality of fiscal conservatism in the United States means slashing government programs, even when they’ve been shown to work. The reality means decimating government regulations, even when they’ve been shown to improve people’s lives. The reality means cutting the safety net to ribbons, and letting big businesses do pretty much whatever they want.

You can say all you want that modern conservatism in the United States isn’t what you, personally, mean by conservatism. But hanging on to some ideal of “conservatism” as a model of sensible-but-compassionate frugality that’s being betrayed by the Koch Brothers and the Tea Party — it’s like hanging onto some ideal of Republicanism as the party of abolition and Lincoln. And it lends credibility to the idea that conservatism is reasonable, if only people would do it right.

If you care about marginalized people — if you care about the oppression of women, LGBT people, disabled people, African Americans and Hispanics and other people of color — you need to do more than go to same-sex weddings and listen to hip-hop. You need to support economic policies that make marginalized people’s lives better. You need to oppose economic policies that perpetuate human rights abuses and make marginalized people’s lives suck.

And that means not being a fiscal conservative.

This Is What Denial Looks Like, Joe Scarborough Edition

By Frances Langum






It's a week of denial for Joe Scarborough.

On Thursday's Morning Joe, former Republican speechwriter Elise Jordan had the cojones to admit that with the failure of Gary Johnson to recognize where Aleppo was and what it meant, Republicans might be faced with the necessity of voting for Hillary Clinton:

"I think what is also is so disturbing about Governor Johnson's answer is his aloofness to what this humanitarian tragedy is. We are trying to forge a post-Bush administration, Republican foreign policy, and as people are trying to respond to what is the Republican foreign policy without the -- having to move to a more realistic path, I think people expect more from our leadership when it comes to addressing the humanitarian tragedies around the world. We can't be completely immune and aloof and say that we're not going to have any role whatsoever. and that Russia can go and do whatever they want. and we don't care about chemical weapons, essentially."

I'm going to stop laughing at her belief that the Republican Party beyond Trump actually cares about "policy," and applaud her for at least acknowledging that there IS a humanitarian crisis in Syria and that everyone of every political stripe should at least show some human compassion about it.

Mika Brezinski acknowledged this too, but then got to the critical political question facing Republicans:
MIKA: So where does that leave you, like, pulling the lever today? That leaves you all voting for Hillary Clinton or not voting.
ELISE: It does.
MIKA: Thank you for being honest.
Joe just can't handle that honesty, though. He flips out on Mika and defends his party by saying something "might happen" with Hillary Clinton in the next two months.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: What you're trying to do is what you're trying to do every day, force Republicans to say they are going to vote for Hillary Clinton.
MIKA: I'm forcing Republicans to tell the truth about exactly what their options are.
JOE: So a lot of people are just as offended about voting for Hillary Clinton, as they would be offended for voting for Donald Trump, as they are offended this morning voting for Gary Johnson. I know a lot of Republicans who are going to leave the top blank and vote for Republicans straight down the line.

MIKA: I guess that's the other option.
JOE: You are not going to get them in early September to sign a blood oath to you, a life-long Democrat, that they are going to vote for Hillary Clinton. Because right now most Republicans I talk to say they are either going to vote for Gary Johnson, (that's off the table now) or they are going to leave it blank and vote for Republicans down the line.
MIKA: Okay, but Joe, I mean, this is -- us here, Willie, Barnicle, you, me, Elise, we are talking honestly, okay? What happened with Gary Johnson here also happens with Donald Trump every time he goes on TV. ...You have two candidates out of three who don't know enough to be President. You have a third who is deeply flawed, perhaps, if I were to take Elise's point of view, and it's still at least knowledgeable, at least -- we're dealing with what offends you more.
JOE: But 55 percent of Americans think that other candidate that you are trying to force Republicans to vote for in early September should -- yes, it is about you, because you are trying to force every Republican that comes on to say that they have to either vote for Hillary Clinton or they don't love their country! 55 percent of Americans told ABC news in a poll they thought she should have been indicted. So it is not -- it is not as clean as you are trying to make it. I will tell you again, a lot of Republicans I speak to say they are not going to vote for anybody on the presidential line."
I'm assuming Joe has spoken to two or three Wall Street Banker gym buddies, his brother, and a couple associates in Boca Raton.

Friday, September 9, 2016

Minnesota Dems sue to get Donald Trump off the ballot

By Rebecca Shabad

Minnesota Democrats filed a lawsuit Thursday to try and get Donald Trump’s name removed from the state’s ballots, according to multiple reports.

They argue that the state’s Republican Party failed to nominate 10 alternate electors for the state’s 10 electoral college votes at their state convention in May.

State law says that electors and alternate electors must be nominated at an official state convention.

On Aug. 24, the state’s GOP called a special meeting -- a state convention -- to pick 10 people to fill the seats of 10 alternate electors, the report said.

Democrats accuse Republicans of missing the Aug. 29 deadline to comply with state law and hold a state convention to name the electors and that the secretary of state had no authority to put Trump and GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence on the ballot.

Trump’s name was added to the state ballot at the last minute, and the Democrats now want a judge to direct the secretary of state to decertify Trump and Pence from appearing on the ballot.

President Obama won Minnesota in both 2008 and 2012.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Wells Fargo caught creating ‘ghost’ accounts to steal millions from customers

By Zach Cartwright

Wells Fargo, one of the world’s biggest banks, just got caught in an elaborate scheme charging customers for bank accounts they never signed up for.

CNN Money reported Thursday afternoon that the bank fired approximately 5,300 employees who opened an estimated 1.5 million unauthorized bank accounts and cards. Customers charged for those accounts were never notified of their existence. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced it would fine the bank $100 million for the scam — the largest fine the agency has ever imposed. Workers were incentivized to scam customers in order to net year end bonuses.

“The Bank had compensation programs for its employees that encouraged them to sign up existing clients for deposit accounts, credit cards, debit cards, and online banking,” the CFPB wrote on its website. “According to today’s enforcement action, thousands of Wells Fargo employees illegally enrolled consumers in these products and services without their knowledge or consent in order to obtain financial compensation for meeting sales targets.”

According to the CFPB, accounts were maintained by Wells Fargo employees secretly moving customers’ money from existing accounts into the phony accounts, and then subsequently charging those customers for having insufficient funds in their original accounts.

Credit card accounts opened by Wells Fargo employees without customers’ consent also resulted in annual fees, in addition to interest charges and late fees. CNN Money reported that bank employees submitted 565,443 applications for credit cards on customers’ behalf without their knowledge or consent, dating back to 2011.

“We regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request,” Wells Fargo said in a public statement.

In addition to the $100 million fine levied by the CFPB, Wells Fargo may have to end up paying up to $85 million in additional fines and penalties, as well as an estimated $5 million in refunds to customers who were scammed.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Hillary Clinton Gets Gored



Hillary Clinton in Ohio last week. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

Americans of a certain age who follow politics and policy closely still have vivid memories of the 2000 election — bad memories, and not just because the man who lost the popular vote somehow ended up in office. For the campaign leading up to that end game was nightmarish too.

You see, one candidate, George W. Bush, was dishonest in a way that was unprecedented in U.S. politics. Most notably, he proposed big tax cuts for the rich while insisting, in raw denial of arithmetic, that they were targeted for the middle class. These campaign lies presaged what would happen during his administration — an administration that, let us not forget, took America to war on false pretenses.

Yet throughout the campaign most media coverage gave the impression that Mr. Bush was a bluff, straightforward guy, while portraying Al Gore — whose policy proposals added up, and whose critiques of the Bush plan were completely accurate — as slippery and dishonest. Mr. Gore’s mendacity was supposedly demonstrated by trivial anecdotes, none significant, some of them simply false. No, he never claimed to have invented the internet. But the image stuck.

And right now I and many others have the sick, sinking feeling that it’s happening again.

True, there aren’t many efforts to pretend that Donald Trump is a paragon of honesty. But it’s hard to escape the impression that he’s being graded on a curve. If he manages to read from a TelePrompter without going off script, he’s being presidential. If he seems to suggest that he wouldn’t round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants right away, he’s moving into the mainstream. And many of his multiple scandals, like what appear to be clear payoffs to state attorneys general to back off investigating Trump University, get remarkably little attention.

Meanwhile, we have the presumption that anything Hillary Clinton does must be corrupt, most spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation.

Step back for a moment, and think about what that foundation is about. When Bill Clinton left office, he was a popular, globally respected figure. What should he have done with that reputation? Raising large sums for a charity that saves the lives of poor children sounds like a pretty reasonable, virtuous course of action. And the Clinton Foundation is, by all accounts, a big force for good in the world. For example, Charity Watch, an independent watchdog, gives it an “A” rating — better than the American Red Cross.

Now, any operation that raises and spends billions of dollars creates the potential for conflicts of interest. You could imagine the Clintons using the foundation as a slush fund to reward their friends, or, alternatively, Mrs. Clinton using her positions in public office to reward donors. So it was right and appropriate to investigate the foundation’s operations to see if there were any improper quid pro quos. As reporters like to say, the sheer size of the foundation “raises questions.”

But nobody seems willing to accept the answers to those questions, which are, very clearly, “no.”

Consider the big Associated Press report suggesting that Mrs. Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors while secretary of state indicate “her possible ethics challenges if elected president.” Given the tone of the report, you might have expected to read about meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators or corporate fat cats facing indictment, followed by questionable actions on their behalf.

But the prime example The A.P. actually offered was of Mrs. Clinton meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who also happens to be a longtime personal friend. If that was the best the investigation could come up with, there was nothing there.

So I would urge journalists to ask whether they are reporting facts or simply engaging in innuendo, and urge the public to read with a critical eye. If reports about a candidate talk about how something “raises questions,” creates “shadows,” or anything similar, be aware that these are all too often weasel words used to create the impression of wrongdoing out of thin air.

And here’s a pro tip: the best ways to judge a candidate’s character are to look at what he or she has actually done, and what policies he or she is proposing. Mr. Trump’s record of bilking students, stiffing contractors and more is a good indicator of how he’d act as president; Mrs. Clinton’s speaking style and body language aren’t. George W. Bush’s policy lies gave me a much better handle on who he was than all the up-close-and-personal reporting of 2000, and the contrast between Mr. Trump’s policy incoherence and Mrs. Clinton’s carefulness speaks volumes today.

In other words, focus on the facts. America and the world can’t afford another election tipped by innuendo.

Monday, September 5, 2016

Donald Trump Does Detroit



So, after weeks of preaching his sinister sermon of black pathology to mostly white audiences as part of his utterly fake “black outreach” — which is in fact the effort of a bigot to disguise his bigotry — Donald Trump finally brought his message before a few mostly black audiences.

He spoke Friday to a handful of African-Americans in North Philadelphia, and as described on philly.com, told them that “he is not a bigot, and blamed the media for portraying him that way, according to people who attended a private event.”

No sir, stop right there. We are not going to allow any deflection or redefining of words here. You are a bigot. That is not a media narrative or a fairy tale. That is an absolute truth. No one manufactured your bigotry; you manifested it.

You have proudly brandished your abrasiveness, and now you want to whine and moan about your own abrasions. Not this day. Not the next day. Not ever. You will never shake the essence of yourself. Your soul is dark, your character corrupt. You are a reprobate and a charlatan who has ridden a wave of intolerance to its crest.

You were a chief birther against President Obama. You have maligned Mexicans and slandered Muslims. You have treated women with disdain. You have mocked the handicapped. You have displayed a staggering lack of basic knowledge about governance. You have applauded dictators. You have encouraged the assault of protesters at your rallies.



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Donald Trump in Detroit on Saturday. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

You are a prime example of the worst of humanity. You are what happens when incuriosity meets intolerance.

You are not to be praised for your fourth quarter outreach, but reviled for it, because it contains contempt, not contrition.

Trump wants to demonstrate to white moderates that he’s not a dyed-in-the-wool racist and to demonstrate to his base that he’s unafraid to walk through the valley of the shadow.

Then on Saturday, Trump traveled to Detroit and visited with a church congregation, or at least with a fraction of that congregation, judging from an image of the nearly empty venue.

Before Trump read his remarks, he said, “I just wrote this the other day knowing that I would be here, and I mean it from the heart.”



That’s the first thing that sounded like a lie. The New York Times reported last week that Trump’s advisers had gotten the questions Trump was supposed to answer during an interview in Detroit and prepared a script for him. What makes us think that they didn’t also write his pandering speech?

He told the gathering, “Our nation is too divided,” while not acknowledging that he is a principle source of that division. He said: “We talk past each other, not to each other. Those who seek office do not do enough to step into the community and learn what is going on.” And yet he never acknowledged that until now, when his poll numbers have dipped and worrisome numbers of people said they believed he appeals to racism and bigotry, he has avoided coming into the black community like one might avoid the plague.

The speech was feather-light on policy, but what was there was just repackaged Republican claptrap that reinforced negative perceptions about liberalism and blackness.

Trump said, “I believe we need a civil rights agenda of our time, one that ensures the rights to a great education and the right to live in safety and in peace and to have a really, really great job, a good-paying job, and one that you love to go to every morning.”

Translation: I want to further weaken public education through more charters and vouchers. I want to flood your neighborhoods with more police because you can’t control yourselves. I want you to stop freeloading, get off welfare, and get a job.

Everything about this spectacle was offensive: that a black pastor had invited this money changer into the temple to defile it; that Trump was once again using the objects of his aggression for a last-ditch photo-op; that news media continue to call this an “outreach to black voters,” when it’s clearly not.
Trump has no real chance in Detroit, and he knows it. During this year’s Michigan primary, Trump got just 1,679 of the total 132,602 votes cast in the city of Detroit.

But again, the citizens of Detroit — or black people in general — are not the intended audience for this pageant of perversity. You can’t earnestly court the black vote while at the same time your party is enacting laws in multiple states to suppress the black vote. The whole thing is a logical fallacy.

Trump closed his speech in Detroit by quoting a passage from First John, Chapter 4 in the Bible: “No one has ever seen God but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

I too would like to close by quoting a passage from 1 John 4: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

Everything about Trump reads to me as false, and I hope that on Election Day, America exercises the gift of discernment.

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Obama Allows More Oil Drilling And Fracking Than Any President And Then Preaches About Climate Change?!

By

Under the watchful eye of Democratic president Barack Obama, fracking has grown substantially, a massive oil pipeline was nearly approved, trade deals have been approved without blinking an eye, and oil drilling has continued on a massive scale.

Despite his label of eco-friendly, the president we now enjoy has lifted barely a finger in the fight to reduce America’s footprint on the earth, or work toward slowing climate change.

Despite all he has done to encourage the U.S.’s abuse of the land, the president is not above a symbolic gesture used to maintain his image as a peace-loving, eco-friendly world leader.

The president is set to make an announcement on Thursday about a group of programs worth $40 million which will help island nations and communities worldwide who are slowly being devastated by the effects of climate change.

Though doing little to prevent more disaster in the future, the president is more than willing to treat the symptoms of the planet’s illness when it directly affects humanity, while doing nothing to treat the disease – and it is malignant.

Thankfully, the president plans to head to China soon to formally agree to the terms made during the global climate summit held at the beginning of this year, though it has become clear by now that even the strictest measures agreed-upon at that event will not be enough to slow the effects of global warming on vulnerable communities.

Read more about this story at The Huffington Post.

Friday, September 2, 2016

Trump “Interview” At Black Church Exposed As Propaganda Designed To Fool Voters

By Jason Easley

Donald Trump has taken what was supposed to be an appearance in front of an African-American congregation in Detroit and turned into a scripted interview that will be edited for broadcast by his own campaign. 

Trump “Interview” At Black Church Exposed As Propaganda Designed To Fool Voters
The New York Times reported:

Instead of speaking to the congregation at Great Faith Ministries International, Mr. Trump will be interviewed by its pastor in a session that will be closed to the public and news media, with questions submitted in advance. And instead of letting Mr. Trump be his freewheeling self, his campaign has prepared lengthy answers for the submitted questions, consulting black Republicans to make sure he says the right things.

An eight page draft script obtained by The New York Times shows 12 questions that Bishop Wayne T. Jackson, the church’s pastor, intends to ask Mr. Trump during the taped question-and-answer session, as well as the responses Mr. Trump is being advised to give.
….
The interview will be aired about a week later on the Impact Network, Bishop Jackson’s Christian cable television channel. The official said several Trump aides would be working with the network to edit the taped interview so that the final version reflected the campaign’s wishes.

It now makes sense why Trump decided not to address the congregation and banned the press from the event. Donald Trump will use the scripted interview as propaganda. Trump couldn’t take the risk of having journalists at the event who would blow the whistle on the con that he is trying to pull.

When a campaign is editing an interview so that the final product reflects their wishes, that’s not journalism. It’s propaganda.

This tactic is straight out the Roger Ailes school of presidential campaign media production. The Trump campaign doesn’t want their candidate to face real African-American voters, so they are designing a set piece and hoping that the media gets fooled into covering it as real news.

The Trump campaign thinks the free press should behave like state-run media, and staged propaganda interviews such as this one are an escalation of Trump’s war on the First Amendment.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Rush Limbaugh Says Donald Trump Is A Liar And We Need To Vote For Him

Posted By Rude One

Corpulent, multi-divorced sea cucumber Rush Limbaugh apparently still has a radio program. 
 
Limbaugh, like Ann Coulter, is desperately clawing at the ledge of relevance, trying to prevent his final fall off the cliff and into the Pat Buchanan Valley of the Lost, and he thinks that the number one priority in Uhmerka is to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president. 
 
He is so committed to this and to electing corpulent, multi-divorced cartoon Donald Trump that, today, on his show, Oxy the Walrus's Spunkorama of Incoherent Rage, he told his listeners, in so many words, "Don't be fucking dumb twats. Of course Donald Trump was a fuckin' liar who never meant that he'd deport all the stinky illegals. Vote for him for Uhmerka."

The actual quote ain't that far off: "I never took him seriously on this," and, as far as Trump's idiot hordes of voters who did believe him, "They still don't care! My point is they still don't care! They're gonna stick with him no matter what." 
 
And why is that? 
 
Because the evil whore of Babylon, Hillary Clinton, will get her whore germs all over this beautiful country just like Nigger Obama got his nigger germs everywhere and the country will be flushed down the toilet like one of those icky tampon things that women have to put up their hoo-has or something.

Again, the actual quote ain't that far off from the hyperbole there: " I don't care what the options are. Anybody but Hillary Clinton. Anybody but more of what we have had the last eight years...We're losing our country. Our country's being torn apart. Our country's being disassembled right before our very eyes by people who have that as their objective. And it's working on people like Colin Kaepernick, by the way. It's working on a whole lot of otherwise innocent people who are being radicalized each and every day by hatred for this country, which is absurd." Do the whore and the nigger have no shame? They are making innocent footballers become politically aware, and if the footballers become woke, then rape-by-Hottentot can't be that far behind. Why won't Obama stop jizzing in the face of Lady Liberty? Why won't Hillary stop twerking on Uncle Sam?

But, no, really, it's so much wiser to vote for the person that you just fucking admitted has been lying to the faces of millions of people. It's so much better to trust someone you are saying is a shameless fraud. That is surely the better path for Uhmerka.

Rush Limbaugh has been fucking the corpse of the dead past for decades now. It's time to stomp his sausage fingers and make him plunge away.

Trump Hides From The Press While Bailing On Talk To African American Congregation

By Sarah Jones

Donald Trump has backed out a speech to an African-American congregation in Detroit. He will be attending services at the church, but the press has been banned from attending.
Trump Hides From The Press While Bailing On Talk To African-American Congregation “What in the hell do you have to lose?” indeed.

This sentiment has been Donald J Trump’s way of wooing the African American voters to his ticket.

When that proved futile, or rather when college educated whites started fleeing because they didn’t want to be associated with a racist, Trump’s handlers decided he’d embark upon a “I’m not a racist!” publicity tour.

First stop? Detroit.

But now the Detroit stop has been downgraded from speaking to the predominantly black congregation to attending a service at the church, followed by a one-on-one interview with Bishop Wayne T. Jackson.

Which the press is also not invited to.

The Detroit Free Press reported “Trump won’t be speaking to the black congregation at Great Faith Ministries International during the 11 a.m. service. And his Saturday interview with Jackson on the church’s Impact Network — which will not be open to the public or the news media — won’t air for at least a week after the event.”

Just a few days ago, the Trump campaign issued a press release claiming that the Republican would be speaking to the congregation. My bold: “Mr. Trump will answer questions that are relevant to the African American community such as education (including HBCUs), unemployment, making our streets safe and creating better opportunities for all. He will then give an address to outline policies that will impact minorities and the disenfranchised in our country. Citizens around the country will see, as I’ve have seen, the heart and compassion Mr. Trump has for all Americans, which includes minority communities whose votes have been taken for granted for far too long.” – Pastor Mark Burns”

So the part Trump is cutting out is the address, during which he was going to outline policies that would allegedly impact minorities.

Shocking, not shocking.

Because Trump’s unplanned trip to Mexico – an erratic addition to the Statesman Not a Racist Tour, is also a risky venture and that’s probably why Trump closed off access to the press corps following him.

Trump isn’t going to let the press in and Trump isn’t really going to give an address about policy, which might involve some preparation. So Trump won’t be speaking to African Americans at all.

He’ll be taking questions from the Bishop for a TV show to be aired in a week.

The Detroit “address” is looking more and more like nothing but cover for charges of racism.