Individual mandate unconstitutional?

So says the appeals court.

Court strikes down Obamacare's individual mandate as unconstitutional

And what is the opposed argument in defense of its constitutionality?

Well, back when the flap started, it was this.

Defending the constitutionality of the mandate, the government’s primary argument was that Congress can require everyone to buy health insurance using its power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, because the failure to buy insurance shifts the costs of health care for the uninsured to health care providers, insurance companies, and everyone who does have health insurance.

. . . .

Justice Ginsburg (joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) agreed with the Chief Justice’s bottom line – that the mandate is constitutional under Congress’s ability to tax – even while disagreeing with his Commerce Clause conclusion; those four Justices would have held that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce to pass the mandate. 

Vlad's boy in DC

Trump's latest call with Putin raises more questions than it answers

Per Trump, the real bad guy and corrupt guy and enemy of the US is the president of Ukraine, and not the president of Russia.

That he takes this line is more important and more revealing than the Biden shtick.

He said what?

Joe Biden says he would consider a Republican for his running mate

Doddering off into senility, is he?

Almost as idiotically offensive to the true blue as Clinton's repulsive kiss of the Republican ass, "The era of Big Government is over."

What is Big Government?

The regulatory and welfare state.

The progressive state.

Everything built to tame capitalism and protect everybody who isn't a capitalist since McKinley's day.

Add it to the list

POTUS outs whistleblower.

Trump has now tweeted out the alleged identity of the whistleblower who anonymously accused him of abusing his office in a complaint that has since been broadly corroborated. 

Federal law protects the whistleblower from retaliation and POTUS just outed him.

People are fundamentally good? Americans are fundamentally good?

A mother was sentenced to 7 years in prison for injecting feces into her son's IV during cancer treatment

The Wolcott, Indiana, mother was arrested and charged in 2016 after she used a syringe to inject feces into her son's IV while he was undergoing cancer treatments at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. 

She knowingly placed him "in a situation that endangered the dependent's life or health," Marion County Superior Court documents said.

Alberts said her actions were meant to get her son moved from the intensive care unit to another Riley unit, where she believed "the treatment was better," the documents state.

Her son had been receiving treatment for leukemia since early August 2016 at the hospital, a Marion County police affidavit said. He was released and returned to the hospital a few days later, in early September 2016, with a fever, vomiting and diarrhea, according to the report.

Blood tests of the boy showed organisms that are normally found in feces caused a bacterial infection and sepsis, which an extensive medical evaluation could not to explain.

So, the presidency actually is an entry level job?

AOC for president? The buzz has begun

What, now?

Nah.

In the future, after some years or a decade or so in federal elective office, sure.

A little bit of the cursus honorem is good for a would be president.

Trump derangement syndrome

From the night of the election many of the more committed Dems have cast about for ways to get rid of the Duce, delegitimate his presidency, of even impeach him.

Their venomous hatred has been abundantly obvious to all.

But it is also abundantly obvious the president is exactly the stupid, ignorant thug, the mob boss, the political ass, the crook, the sexual predator, the instinctive racist, and the national disgrace they have always said he is.

And it is equally true that his crimes, at least as bad as Nixon's and in many ways similar to Nixon's, do justify removal from office.

The truth of the complaint that the Big Dog also deserved to be removed from office makes Trump no less worthy of removal.

But it does remind us payback is a bitch.

Dems can be as repulsively partisan as Reps

N.Y. Gov. Cuomo blocks some federal judges from officiating at weddings — because they might be Trump nominees

Payback is a bitch

Joe Scarborough is fine with the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump but he will not let  anyone get away with denying that Clinton, too, committed impeachable offenses.

It wasn't about Lewinsky so much as perjury before congress and in court, suborning perjury, witness tampering, and more.

A whole lot of Democrats in the senate seem to have been as impervious to evidence as today's senate Republicans.

And as unwilling to agree that the offenses involved deserved removal from office.

Like Scarborough, I always loathed the Big Dog.

But I suspect for opposite political reasons, if perhaps for very similar ones related to Clinton as a person, a human being, and a man.

Yes, I'm thinking a whole lot of Republicans believe, like Scarborough, that the Democrats' refusal to remove Bill from office was sheer partisan defiance of his manifest just deserts.

And that may provide them much peace of mind concerning their own current refusal to remove the Duce.

I could see this as a capital crime, if we Americans could be trusted with a death penalty.

A boy missing for more than two years found in the closet of a child pornography suspect

This is just too dangerous and repugnant.

And these leopards don't change their stripes, eh?

Or maybe tigers don't change their spots?

Obama is right, this bitch is wrong, and women and men are innately different.

You're not helping, Obama – just reinforcing myths about men v women

What do people with a byline have that most others don't?

A shitload of totally unjustified self-confidence.

Can we allow the Taliban their own state in which to aid and abet terror attacks, maybe nuke attacks, on the US?

The Israelis have been essentially fighting a forever war against unyielding and unrelenting Arab attacks aimed at their very existence for as long as Israel has existed.

Better a forever war than utter destruction, eh?

The Lessons of the Afghanistan Papers

While the anti-warriors are all gloating, and all, let's hope they don't lose sight of the genuine threat posed by an entire state controlled by as mad an Islamist ideology as that of ISIS, a Muslim terrorist movement we felt the need to deny control of its own state.

These people really and truly would nuke us if they could, and who is to say that with a little help from others who hate us equally and would love to cheaply put us in check they could not actually do it?

Remember the Axis of Nuts?

With all his stupid bluster, Trump has been totally unable to prevent North Korea from become a nuclear power with the actual capability of nuking the continental United States.

And also with his stupid bluster he has provided an occasion for Iran to resume efforts to join the nuclear club with the idea of at least holding the Great Satan in check.

How do we feel about the idea of Iran holding us in check?

Or North Korea, come to that?

The great thing about non-proliferation was that it kept the number of enemy states capable of keeping us in check - and so immune to the reverse - to a very small minimum, none of them actually crazy enough to nuke us in a purely aggressive move.

That moron Trump just absolutely doesn't see it.

There is so much he is just too stupid to see.

Only the top 4 are plutes. And only Bloomberg is not a merely piddling plute

The Net Worth Of Every 2020 Presidential Candidate

The worst thing he is doing is accelerate the destruction of the Amazon rain forest.

Brazil: Bolsonaro in homophobic outburst as corruption scandal swirls

But is it true?

The human hope in God, in Providence, in Karma, or in whatever it is, is that it will all be all right in the end.

The unbroken circle. Universalism. Karma leading everyone home.

That we are not abandoned, that nothing is lost, that no one is broken forever beyond salvation or repair.

And who could plausibly deny that such a thing, or such things, could be true, even absent any particularly convincing picture of what it or they might actually be like?

But are they?

Or is any of them?

Somehow?

a contingentia mundi

What need not exist cannot and would not unless made to do so by something that cannot not exist.

Alternatively, only what cannot not exist can exist without being made to do so by something other than itself that cannot not exist.

A crucial premise in any argument for the existence of God a contingentia mundi.

Contemporary atheism supposes it is false, and that to the contrary contingent things, a whole world of contingent things, or a contingent (possible but not necessary) world can exist without being made to do so by anything necessary.

(Some put the point by saying existence is de trop or absurd.)

Or at any rate they refuse to believe otherwise absent proof.

But if you can prove everything you're going in a circle, someone wise once said.

And anyway nobody can prove most of the philosophically interesting - indeed crucial - claims by which we live.

People who go in for that sort of thing might even claim the thing is epistemologically basic.

Another age would have said self-evident.

Plantinga once suggested the existence of God, itself, be regarded as epistemologically basic.

That might be a bridge too far.

The GOP impeachment of Clinton for a blowjob . . . .

. . . . was actually about perjury, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, sexual assault, and even rape.

So, really, what the Duce did doesn't rise to an impeachable offense?

PRESIDENT TRUMP IMPEACHED!!!

As expected, a majority of the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to impeach the Prez for high crimes and misdemeanors. 

The vote marks only the 3rd time in U.S. history the House approved articles of impeachment against the President.

Trump now joins Bill Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson way back in 1868 as the only presidents to be impeached.

Bill should have resigned or been removed, and it was right he was disbarred.

Democrats' claims about Trump, monarchy, dictatorship, and destruction of democracy are ridiculous.

But Republicans' claims that the pig in the White House did nothing wrong or at any rate nothing impeachable are contemptible.

That China trade deal

I hear it subordinates the national economic interest to Bozo's interest in buying back those farm votes.

After subordinating our national defense interest in Ukraine to his need to torpedo Joe Biden.

The Expanse. The new season.

Production values don't seem as good.

And why did Naomi get so butch?

Why did all but Amos and Bobbie so change their looks?

Even Avasarala, some.

And she seems to have a different husband.

OK, same husband, different actor.

Trump's PC of the right

I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it

Trump's own version of a PC attack on the First Amendment.

Delusions or Lies?

No, it's not that they are ignorant, or confused, or short on information, or misled by fake news.

They truly admire these guys and agree with what is most vicious in and about them and their programs.

The False Romance of Russia

Anne Applebaum joins those who try valiantly to hide - or evade - the ugly truth.

Just as well claim the Nazi voters didn't vote for all that mad, anti-Semitic, anti-Slavic, racist shit.

Or deny their profound and forthright embrace of state criminality, violence, and an agenda of war.

As for the ludicrous, glowing (at least in their terms) portraits of the enemy societies and their leaders by useful idiots of the left and, now, the right, they are not evidence of delusion but flat out dishonesty.

They are just flat out lies.

But I can't help but laugh.

She may be the only critic of this new idiotic and contemptible right who sees the grandfather role of Pat Buchanan.

And her exposé of Russian realities as well as the loony leaders of the pop stupid right is an extremely important piece.

She is the kind of conservative I admire, and I have loved her work for many years, now.

Not just her columns but her books.

Her excellent books.

There is hunting and there is, well, serial killing

Hunting animals you can and someone will eat is per se unobjectionable.

Killing maneaters is unobjectionable.

Trophy hunting is just killing for the love of killing. Or proving what big balls you have.

And intentionally hunting endangered species is not just killing an individual animal for the sheer deplorable love of killing, it is animal genocide, it is intentionally putting at further risk an already endangered species, not for any defensible reason (killing a polar bear in self-defense, say), but for its own sake.

Donald Trump Jr killed rare endangered sheep in Mongolia with special permit

On a hunting trip to Mongolia earlier this summer the president’s son Donald Trump Jr killed a rare species of endangered sheep. 

A permit for the killing was retroactively issued after Trump met with the country’s president, according to new reporting from ProPublica.

Trump was accompanied by security from both the US and Mongolia on the trip, the outlet reported. 

The argali sheep, with its large horns, is considered a national treasure there, and permission to kill one is “controlled by an opaque permitting system that experts say is mostly based on money, connections and politics”.

So, you think this is an accident? Not intended? Innocently stupid or stupidly innocent?

Trump’s use of a personal cellphone means Russia could have intel about Ukraine calls

The Duce and his crooked lawyer betraying secrets to their pal Putin in plain sight of all the world.

How dare he tell the truth?

Jesse Jackson, on the other hand, during his run for the nomination, always sounded like he was talking through a mouth full of mashed potatoes.

Michael Bloomberg under fire for calling Cory Booker 'well spoken'

Joe nails a Trumpist heckler

'You're a damn liar': Joe Biden lashes out at voter in Iowa

Remarkable how many people think Biden here revealed wicked, retrograde attitudes and that his remarks were gaffes.

How they are paying for those tax cuts by punishing the poor

Nearly 700,000 will lose food stamps with USDA work requirement change

The cruel, insulting, and unspeakably offensive rhetoric of the rich kicking the poor in the face.

“We’re taking action to reform our SNAP program in order to restore the dignity of work to a sizable segment of our population and be respectful of the taxpayers who fund the program,” Perdue said. 

“Americans are generous people who believe it is their responsibility to help their fellow citizens when they encounter a difficult stretch. That’s the commitment behind SNAP, but, like other welfare programs, it was never intended to be a way of life.”

Pelosi angrily rejects a question that slanders her with a Trumpist talking point

They cannot deny he did what he did and cannot convince anyone it wasn't illegal or it doesn't matter.

So it's all bullshit about Democrats hating him for his unexpected victory over Hillary that they wish out of hatred and resentment to delegitimate and overturn.

She's not one to make it easy.

Nancy Pelosi tells Sinclair reporter James Rosen: ‘Don’t mess with me!’

“Do you hate the president, Ms. Speaker?” the reporter, James Rosen from the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group, asked during Pelosi’s weekly press briefing at the Capitol.

“I don’t hate anybody. We don’t hate anybody. Not anybody in the world. Don’t accuse me,” she said, leaving the podium to approach Rosen and pointing at him as she spoke.

He then interrupted her, saying he was asking about a charge from a GOP lawmaker during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearing Wednesday that Democrats wanted Trump gone only because they didn’t like him.

“I did not accuse you. I asked you a question. Rep. [Doug] Collins yesterday suggested that the Democrats are doing this simply because you don’t like the guy. I think it is an important point,” he said, referring to the Georgia lawmaker, a fervent Trump backer.

He was as good as heckling her, making very sure to repeat the allegation to her face as provocatively as possible.

Pelosi then walked back to the podium and continued to lecture Rosen.

“This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that lead to the president’s violation of his oath of office. And as a Catholic, I resent your using the word hate in a sentence that addresses me,” she said, adding that she prays for Trump.

Mass politics

It could be said that an essential attribute of a successful regime in the age of mass politics is vulgarity.

But there is a considerable difference between the mere vulgarity of style and propaganda of the liberal regimes and the profound vulgarity of values of authoritarian and, even worse, fascist, racist, or Nazi regimes.

And right now many leading Western nations are sliding from the former toward the latter.

Are regimes, parties, or movements of the further left also committed to vulgar values?

Or is that another difference between them and regimes of the vicious right, from the merely authoritarian even to the totalitarian?

Questions that arise while watching on Amazon video Detective De Luca.

So like Trump it's scary

Brazil’s president claims DiCaprio paid for Amazon fires

Brazil’s president has falsely accused the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio of bankrolling the deliberate incineration of the Amazon rainforest.

Jair Bolsonaro – a populist nationalist who has vowed to drive environmental NGOs from Brazil – made the claim on Friday, reportedly telling supporters: “This Leonardo DiCaprio’s a cool guy, isn’t he? Giving money for the Amazon to be torched.”

The spurious accusation – for which Brazil’s president offered no proof – came 24 hours after Bolsonaro made a similarly unsubstantiated claim in a Facebook live broadcast.

“Leonardo DiCaprio, dammit, you’re collaborating with the burning of the Amazon,” Bolsonaro declared, accusing the actor of being part of an international “campaign against Brazil”.

Bolsonaro’s unsubstantiated allegations relate to the controversial arrest on Tuesday of four volunteer firefighters whom local police accused – also apparently without evidence – of setting fire to the forest in order to boost fundraising efforts for an international NGO.

The firefighters were released on Thursday amid widespread public outrage at their treatment and questions over the police investigation.

On Thursday Bolsonaro’s politician son Eduardo claimed on Twitter that DiCaprio had donated $300,000 (£230,000) to “the NGO that set fire to the Amazon” and accused the conservation group WWF of paying the NGO about £13,000 for photographs of the burning forest.

. . . .

In August – as huge fires swept through the Amazon region sparking an international crisis – DiCaprio pledged $5m to help protect Brazil’s rainforests.

Too much for me, anyway

I think the fetus is entitled to protection when it resembles a small human being.

An unborn child, in fact.

But I am willing to accept legislation based on the idea it is entitled from conception since that's better than the baby killer position it is never so entitled.

This, however, is a bridge too far.

Ohio bill orders doctors to ‘reimplant ectopic pregnancy’ or face 'abortion murder' charges

Ohio introduces one of the most extreme bills to date for a procedure that does not exist in medical science

That it isn't done doesn't mean it can't be done.

He could just give the Taliban in Afghanistan carte blanche

He really believes most of what happens in the region is none of our business and no skin off our nose.

His totally shameless prioritizing of our business relationship with Saudi Arabia over the least interest in the domestic realities of the regime made that pretty clear, eh?

Trump Makes Surprise Afghanistan Visit, Says U.S. And Taliban Peace Talks Restarted

Why are O and his former team stabbing Joe B in the back?

Or are these reports mischievous Republican bullshit?

Obama Chides Biden over Failure to Connect to Iowa Voters: ‘You Know Who Really Doesn’t Have It? Joe Biden’

Other things more or less equal

10 years without pain can be 10 very good years.

20 years of agony is a diabolical punishment.

Just thinking where the opioïde controversy is going.

Nobody has any right to be surprised.

Trump wants to take his war criminal buddies on the campaign trail

His supporters will love this.

And the leadership of the Republican Party has already implicitly sign on.

Recall that they were the torture party when Dick Cheney - er, GW Bush - was president.

Trump did not start that.

Cheney went there right away, and a lot of the country, and especially the GOP, went there with him.

Trump last week pardoned both Lorance and Golsteyn. 

Lorance was serving a 19-year prison sentence for firing on unarmed civilians in Afghanistan, killing two; Golsteyn was charged last year with killing an Afghan bomb maker and burying the remains. 

Conservatives have rallied around the pair, suggesting they were unfairly punished for decisions made in the heat of battle, while critics, including some military members and veterans, have suggested the pardons are a slap in the face to those who have served honorably and give soldiers carte blanche to commit heinous acts. 

In perhaps his most contentious intervention in recent days, Trump ousted Navy Secretary Richard Spencer to protect Gallagher, who appeared poised to lose his Trident pin following his conviction this year of posing for a photograph with the corpse of an ISIS detainee he allegedly killed. 

He’d been acquitted of more serious offenses, including murder, but was still facing repercussions in the SEALs.

The thug in the White House

We have known since the 2016 campaign he approves of the third degree, police brutality, torture, and war crimes like murdering the families of terrorists.

His voters like him because they share those attitudes.

Trump issued direct order to halt disciplining of Navy Seal Edward Gallagher

Hitler's Nazis had a mass following. The Italian Fascists were a mass party.

Brutality was part of their appeal, and is still essential to the appeal of modern authoritarians and so-called "populists" in America, Europe, and around the world.

Lindsey Graham and others of the fucking bastard party are now talking about the need to cut, if not to outright privatize, Social Security and to cut Medicare benefits so money gathered by the relevant dedicated taxes can be diverted to deal with the shortfall in general tax revenues created by the Republican wet dream tax cuts so long wanted by the plutes and so well fronted by that pal of the common man, the forgotten man, Bozo the Liar, the Mini-Mussolini in the White House.

Plutes gonna plute.

An entire party whose central task is to fuck over everybody who isn't really, really rich, on behalf of those who are.

And they are delighted to find a front as effective as Trump.

They are like German and Italian plutes and capitalist sympathizers between the wars happy to find so effective a bulwark against the dreaded socialists and communists.

Warren and Sanders are, on this matter of excessive individual wealth, right, just as both Roosevelts were.

And I could live with a cap on individual private wealth.

Might be a good idea, like trust busting.

Too much individual wealth is also too much market power as well as too much political power.

And that's why Obamacare for all is better than Medicare for all.

Not a good idea for just one insurer to be effectively the only customer of all medical providers in the country, and that one under the direct, immediate, and constant control of bourgeois politicians of only weak, unreliable, minority, and limited loyalty to the masses.

Still, he's wrong to urge actual socialism as better than capitalism and she's right to urge what's needed is capitalism run by progressives for the social good.

All the same, a lot more Americans need to learn that Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, and libertarian ideology are just bullshit really handy for the plutes.

They need to stop thinking, in effect, that the rich have every right to screw them to the wall.

Marx was certainly right that the moral and political convictions of the many are to far too great an extent a duperie, a false consciousness, an ideological smokescreen that makes the 90% - or more like 99.99% - their own class enemies.

But this is not.

There is no reason for the 90% to accept any version of capitalism that doesn't work as well as possible for them.

Even such a capitalism will work just swell for the remaining 10%, don't you worry about that.

Not as much as they want, but then there is no limit to what they want.

It goes way, way beyond anything remotely like rational self-interest, except on the most ludicrous construals of what is or might be rational.

Homo homini lupus, not because of need, but because of human nature.

The idea that there is no human nature, that "socialist man" is a social creature so much superior to "capitalist man", is part of the bullshit the left, unwilling to face the horrid truth, have sold themselves.

That it's all nurture, the stuff that matters, and none of it nature.

What a little fucking twat Graham is

Lindsey Graham Begins Senate Investigation Into The Bidens

If Red John needed killing, what about Mao? Pol Pot? Guzman?

And Red John needed killing.

The most criminal White House gang since Nixon

And the most revolting president in living memory.

A devoted and devout Trumpist in six hours of testimony says they were all in on it, Trump, Pence, Pompeo, Giuliani, Mulvaney, and numerous others.

Gordon Sondland Directly Implicates Trump, Top Aides In Ukraine Shakedown

And the Republican Party is still committed to responding by screaming nothing but the most utter horseshit.

Baseless accusations, tawdry conspiracy theories, projections, absurd and irrelevant demands, character assassination, vicious denigration, and evil screams.

Sort of a Kavanaugh defense.

The entire party is a national disgrace.

Fucking banana republic, eh?

PS.

This is the Republican White House, today.

Trump clears the path for Likud and Greater Israel

Pompeo announces reversal of longstanding US policy on Israeli settlements

From the egregiously unstable moron in the White House.

Repugnant, repulsive, disgraceful filth, that man in the White House.

He is scum, a thug, a tool of Putin, a traitor to his country, and he belongs in jail.

He will never see the inside of a cell, but he belongs in prison for the rest of his sorry life.

He makes me much more ashamed of America than even Reagan or Nixon.

I would like to be able to vomit him up and out of the White House.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday announced a major reversal of the US' longstanding policy on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, rejecting a 1978 State Department legal opinion that deemed the settlements "inconsistent with international law."

The announcement, which breaks with international law and consensus, is the latest in a string of hardline, pro-Israeli moves that are likely to inflame tensions between the Trump administration and Palestinians and widen the divide between the Trump administration and traditional US allies in Europe.

Black Friday exists but Thanksgiving doesn't.

The Nigger of the Narcissus

From the very beginning you wonder what the heck Conrad is doing or saying about race.

Finally, in Chapter 4, Jimmy Wait and Donkin are there to make more or less Nietzschean political points which do not as such reflect well on Conrad's contemporary acceptability, though it might be too harsh, reading him quite that way, and the storm is there to make the metaphysical points that maybe do and maybe don't.

One hell of a story eh?

And lovely English prose.

Inconvenient Truths

Fox News Legal Analyst Makes The Case For Trump's Impeachment

Judge Andrew Napolitano wound up and let fly on Monday on Fox News' companion site, Fox Nation.

Russian interference?

Not a bad guess.

Russia strongly favors Brexit and anything that undermines institutions of Western supra-national unity.

Hackers hit UK Labour Party with back-to-back cyberattacks

How Evo fell and why Maduro hasn't fallen

Bolivia's blunt message to leaders drunk on power

Bolivia crisis: Evo Morales says he fled as his life was at risk

Maduro's military stands in the way of a Bolivia repeat in Venezuela

OK, he's not always right. But this is right. This is the point of Brexit for Farage and Johnson and the Tories and the hard Brexiteers

NHS, workers' rights and safe food all at risk from Trump/Farage/Johnson alliance, claims Corbyn

Perfectly true.

Who is silencing the right?

The further and more aggressive right.

Donald Trump Jr walks out of Triggered book launch after heckling – from supporters

Donald Trump Jr ventured on to the University of California’s overwhelmingly liberal Los Angeles campus on Sunday, hoping to prove what he had just argued in his book – that a hate-filled American left was hell-bent on silencing him and anyone else who supported the Trump presidency.

But the appearance backfired when his own supporters, diehard Make America Great Again conservatives, raised their voices most loudly in protest and ended up drowning him out barely 20 minutes into an event scheduled to last two hours.

Who's triggered now? Seven times Donald Trump Jr out-snowflaked the left

He is just who you thought he was

And Trump relies on nobody as he relies on this guy regarding the entire issue of immigration and the Mexican border.

Trump adviser Stephen Miller injected white nationalist agenda into Breitbart, investigation reveals

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller shaped the 2016 election coverage of the hard right-wing website Breitbart with material drawn from prominent white nationalists, Islamophobes, and far-right websites, according to a new investigative report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Miller also railed against those wishing to remove Confederate monuments and flags from public display in the wake of Dylann Roof’s murderous 2015 attack on a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and praised America’s early 20th-century race-based, restrictionist immigration policies.

Emails from Miller to a former Breitbart writer, sent before and after he joined the Trump campaign, show Miller obsessively focused on injecting white nationalist-style talking points on race and crime, Confederate monuments, and Islam into the far-right website’s campaign coverage, the SPLC report says.

When the only defense of the constitutionality of X is that people have relied on it, well . . . .

Anyway, that was all one of the attorneys arguing Trump cannot kill the program had to say in response to Trump's reliance on the often expressed view not only of Republicans that the Obama era program is egregiously unconstitutional.

Daca case draws crowds to Supreme Court as justices consider program

Supreme court to rule on whether Trump can end Daca

Can't see the court buying that as a compelling argument.

It's full of conservative judges who are on record thinking Roe was wrong and should be overturned.

And that's it for her credibility

Nikki Haley plants a really juicy kiss on his royal ass.

Nikki Haley insists Donald Trump is 'truthful' as she returns to spotlight

Strip her claims of pro-Trump, sycophantic spin and you get core that sounds believable.

On Monday night Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state, hit back at Haley’s claim in the book that he worked to undermine aspects of Trump’s agenda in an effort to “save the country”.

“During my service to our country as the secretary of state, at no time did I, nor to my direct knowledge did anyone else serving along with me, take any actions to undermine the president,” Tillerson said in a statement.

“Once the president made a decision, we at the state department undertook our best efforts to implement that decision.”

Tillerson was responding to Haley’s claim that he and the former White House chief of staff John Kelly invited her to join their attempts to subvert the president on several contentious issues, including pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord, and moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

The latest major Trump resignations and firings

In his statement, Tillerson said Haley “was rarely a participant in my many meetings and is not in a position to know what I may or may not have said to the president”.

In her book, Haley claims the two advisers “confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country”.

If you want actual news, and world news at that, go to BBC

Not Fox, not CNN, and not MSNBC.

Satellite radio (BBC World Service) or cable TV (BBC World News).

The three big American cable channels are 24/7 nothing but Trump and the political war in America.

Gets a bit old, that.

Bolton hypothsizes

Reportedly, in a private meeting with Republican bigwigs, Bolton told them he believes Trump gave Syria and the Kurds to Erdogan for personal or business reasons having to do with him or with Turkey.

This ignores that he gave Syria and the Kurds to the Russians.

Bolton told the gathering of Morgan Stanley’s largest hedge fund clients that he was most frustrated with Trump over his handling of Turkey, people who were present said. 

Noting the broad bipartisan support in Congress to sanction Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan purchased a Russian missile defense system, Bolton said Trump’s resistance to the move was unreasonable, four people present for his speech said.

Bolton said he believes there is a personal or business relationship dictating Trump’s position on Turkey because none of his advisers are aligned with him on the issue, the people present said.

The rot now runs all the way down

Rank partisan solidarity is all Trump’s defenders have left

Probably taking a bribe, not offering one and not soliciting one, is the example cited in the constitution of what would count as a high crime or misdemeanor.

But never mind.

He was subordinating US foreign policy and congressionally authorized spending to his personal interest as a politician campaigning for reelection, holding congressionally authorized defense money for Ukraine for ransom, that being a very specific quid pro quo, that being the president of Ukraine publicly and with great fanfare launching an investigation, not at all called for by any known facts, into corruption on the parts of Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

And pretty much the entire body of Republicans in the US legislature is committed to defending that, and to defending him at every step of the way, with no matter what disgusting and low methods, of the impeachment process launched by Democrats in the House of Representatives.

When cartels are as dangerous as rebel guerillas they are no longer a police problem

Time for somebody in Mexico willing to do what was done in Peru against the Shining Path by Fujimori.

Civil war is not a law enforcement problem.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

I can't really see that having sex with an intern is an impeachable offense, though it was way worse than merely tacky.

But Trump's entire term has been an uninterrupted string of impeachable offenses, and the Republicans will give him a pass on all of them.

That is how far their republicanism and devotion to the constitution and the historic American republic are all fake news.

Eyes Wide Open

Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’

Denial is a coverup.

The party of denial is the party of triumphant selfishness on a sociopathic scale.

The very thing that makes democratic socialism utterly impossible and social democracy a heck of a push.

Denial is a coverup for that selfishness.

"Untold suffering?

"Yeah, but not mine.

"Not my problem, compadre."

Is the right just inherently more contemptuous of candor, truth, honesty, and honor?

In these times, it sure looks it.

Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

Why it's maybe NOT such a great idea

It sounds great, single payor socialized health insurance, Medicare for All, right up until you realize the very same Democrats who want this are already planning to starve the healthcare industry for funds beginning on the very first day.

If you want the country to have the best medical care, and if you want medical care to continue to progress and do ever more and better things for our health, then you DON'T want cheapo health care.

You want to be reality based? Then suck on that reality.

Top Democrats criticize Elizabeth Warren's Medicare for All plan

For the umpty umpth time, the voters chose Hillary. She has the mandate of the people.

The Electoral College chose Bozo.

He has their mandate.

The mandate of, what?, 538 low flying political noodles?

Odd, which mandate cuts ice, eh?

The most usual defense of the EC and its power to defy the preference of the actual voters is that it is thus empowered to save us from the people's choice of some dreadful demagogue, making president in his stead some at least harmless politician, if not some admirable statesman.

I guess we won't hear much of that defense, any more.

But another might be that the EC, like the equal representation of states in the senate, intentionally insulates our political branches and institutions from all always or usually being overwhelmed by the same popular passions at the same time.

If we did not have such braking devices, imagine how much more power horrors like Trump might obtain from "wave" elections dominated by his supporters.

Or how much power underlying popular phenomena like the existence of so many deplorables all supporting the same sort of politician or agenda might gain in a single election or sequence of federal elections if they were all equally or too close to equally responsive to the - hopefully transient - passions of deplorable voters like the Trumpist Republicans.

Maybe that's an argument for both the EC and unequal representation in the senate that potentially survives the counter-example of Trump?

Who would waste an hour listening to their unendurable merde?

Louie Gohmert On Impeachment: 'Coup, Civil War And Guns'

Not exclusively appalling lies. Sometimes utter gibberish.

As quoted by Frances Langum.

“Never in the history of this country have we had such gross unfairness that one party would put armed guards with guns to prevent the duly authorized people from being able to hear the witnesses and see them for themselves,” the congressman griped.

Gohmert also complained about a whistleblower who brought alleged corruption to light.

“That’s not the kind of evidence that a coup should be based on,” Gohmert ranted. 

“If we’re going to have what they’re trying to legalize as a coup, we ought to have a right to see each of those witnesses.”

As was pointed out on MSNBC, when the Republicans of the senate vote to acquit because Trump's crimes and assaults on the constitution don't rise to the level of impeachable offenses they will give permission to every future president to behave like this dreadful, contemptible authoritarian thug who stops short of being an actual fascist only through not knowing himself, what he really believes, and what he really wants.

He is genuinely that stupid.

On the other hand, if they acquit on the excuse that we are close to an election, anyway, and they are putting the question in the hands of the people, they are deliberately accepting in advance that the reelection of Trump would have the same effect in licensing the crimes of the man himself and the like crimes of every future president.

The party that with such egregious mendacity and revolting hypocrisy pretends to love and revere the constitution and the republic it defined.

The party that strikes hammer blows at the constitution with every iteration of the dreadful bullshit they spread in defense of the enemy of the people, of democracy, and of the Republic in the White House.

The interwar European ruling classes in Spain, Italy, and Germany were so frightened of communism that they sponsored, in order of increasing horror, a Catholic traditionalist dictatorship, a Fascist dictatorship, and the Nazis.

Today, in America and in Europe, spooked by a leftward drift toward greater social democracy, they sponsor nationalist and racist thugs whose demagoguery wins power they use to further enrich the rich and further empower the powerful.

The real Trump rising

For the first three years the globalist, establishment types stopped him acting on his Buchananism.

Less and less, lately.

Donald Trump declares Syria ceasefire permanent and lifts Turkey sanctions

He's given both Syria and Turkey to Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump has announced that the US will lift sanctions on Turkey, taking credit for a ceasefire deal that should end Ankara’s attack on Kurdish-led forces – at the price of ending the Kurds’ dream of local autonomy.

The US president, who has come under withering criticism for abruptly withdrawing US troops – and paving the way for a deadly Turkish offensive against the Kurds – said on Wednesday that a “small number” of US troops would remain in Syria’s oilfields.

In a televised address on Wednesday, Trump emphasized that US troops were “safe” and said America would leave other powers to fight each other in the region.

He added: “Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.

Wednesday’s announcement came as Russian troops expanded their presence across north-eastern Syria, the result of an agreement between Ankara and Moscow.

Just a week ago, Trump announced a series of financial punishments on Ankara – including the reimposition of 50% tariffs on Turkish steel – after Turkey launched its attack on Kurdish-led forces in north-eastern Syria.

That offensive began hours after a phone call between Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in which the Turkish president, informed Trump of his plans, and understood the US president to give a green light.

“The government of Turkey informed my administration that they would be stopping combat and their offensive in Syria, and making the ceasefire permanent,” Trump said.

“I have, therefore, instructed the secretary of the Treasury to lift all sanctions imposed October 14,” he added.

“How many Americans must die in the Middle East in the midst of these ancient sectarian and tribal conflicts?” Trump said. “I am committed to pursuing a different course, one that leads to victory for America.”

Making the Justice Department's bad constitutional invention even worse.

Absolutely nowhere in the constitution does it say a sitting president cannot be indicted, prosecuted, tried, found guilty, or even fucking imprisoned.

That is all just sycophantic - c'est-à-dire ass-kissing - bullshit.

Nowhere.

And, really, if you're going to insist on invisible ink, shouldn't it be in support of some valuable constitutional feature rather than being, say, deliberately intended to undermine it?

Like, par exemple, the rule of law?

Trump couldn't be prosecuted if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, lawyer claims

And could this possibly scream "Guilty! Guilty!" one decibel more loudly?

Update, 102419, this morning on MSNBC Joe Scarborough damned forcefully the Justice Department's absurd doctrine, repeatedly and angrily.

So, Putin will get to occupy the Bosporus?

And the Turks are still in NATO?

Well, Trump doesn't give a shit about NATO, anyway.

Turkey announces new deal with Russia as US says its Syria ceasefire has succeeded

Eh bien. Dansez maintenant!

The Grasshopper and the Ant

And then the wives of the ant and the grasshopper fell ill, and needed to be sent to nursing homes.

Neither had suitable insurance; both applied for Medicaid.

For the grasshopper who had squandered his income over his entire lifetime of travel, partying, and festivities, it was a piece of cake.

Neither he nor his wife had a thing.

Medicaid granted!

But the ant and his wife had scrimped and saved all their lives, living on cold porridge and travelling no further than the next town, doing their best to provide for their "golden years".

They had to give up and sign over everything they had spent a life of sacrifice and prudence to save.

And only then, stripped as naked as the grasshoppers, but not having had the life of ease, riotous living, and heedless pleasure of the grasshoppers, were they given Medicaid.

"Gee," said the ant to himself. "It's as if the state wanted to punish the prudent, the provident, the industrious, the thrifty, the responsible, in favor of the altogether shiftless and thoughtless."

And the grasshopper looked over at the ant. And smiled.

But there are other questions one could ask about The Expanse.

Why are the Mormons so prominent in The Expanse?

Everybody asks that.

But why do the folks on The Expanse seem like the ethnic mix found in the US or maybe also Europe?

That's a crowd that looks a lot more like America than, say, Southeast Asia or Africa.

Hell, even the UN crowds look like a bunch of Americans salted with an extra dose of east and south asians.

And yet, not one character ever displays the slightest consciousness of ethnicity or race.

Mormons apart, nobody has loyalties other than to Mars, to the UN, or to the OPA and one or another of its many factions.

Nor are identities perceived or felt otherwise.

And why do so many people admire the Martians for being an entire culture and population united in devotion to a single end, terraforming their planet?

As though somehow entire populations devoting themselves, or more likely being devoted by the powerful among them, to a single goal is just admirable in itself, quite apart from the worth of the goal.

So many people so admire totalitarianism?

And yet it seems many people, reading the books, claim the authors are peddling some sort of libertarian ideology.

Don't see it, myself.

So, do they now regret the way the US ran away from the war in Vietnam?

Do they retrospectively regret all those "collaborators with US imperialism" we abandoned in the fall of Saigon, in 1975?

They?

Democrats joining Republicans in unanimously deploring the betrayal of the Kurds and the abandonment of Syria.

To be fair, it amazed me at the time how many supporters of the war did not mind at all the abandonment of thousands and tens of thousands of Vietnamese supporters of the US effort to a horrible fate.

I opposed the war but also was deeply ashamed of the betrayal of so many whom we had actively induced to rely on us.

In truth, we could not save everyone who had at least hoped for our victory - that would have been most of the people of South Vietnam - but we could and should have saved those publicly in any way associated with our participation in that war.

Tens of thousands though that would have been.

Because we were responsible for at least some of them sticking their heads up, daring so long to resist the reds, and we had promised them all they could count on us.

Why didn't the Brits give British passports to the entire population of Hong Kong when they agreed to turn over the colony to Beijing?

Why didn't the Commonwealth countries agree to accept them all as refugees, sharing them out among themselves more or less proportionately to their own part in the total population of the Commonwealth?

How was their failure to do any such thing not a shocking betrayal?

Not that they - the Vietnamese or the Hong Kong Chinese - would all have agreed to leave their homes.

But the invitations should have been extended.

Hillary's letter is hilarious!

'Don't be a dick, OK?' Hillary Clinton tweets parody of Trump Erdoğan letter

Hillary tweets a bogus letter from JFK to Khrushchev during the missile crisis.

Dear Premier Khrushchev, 

Don't be a dick, OK? 

Get your missiles out of Cuba. Everybody will say, ‘Yay, Khrushchev! You’re the best!’ But if you don’t everybody will be like ‘what an asshole’ and call your garbage country ‘The Soviet Bunion’. 

You’re really busting my nuts here.  

Give you a jingle later.  

Hugs,



John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

The centrality of Christian clericalism to the true Republican agenda

'A threat to democracy': William Barr's speech on religious freedom alarms liberal Catholics

Prominent liberal Catholics have warned the US attorney general’s devout Catholic faith poses a threat to the separation of church and state, after William Barr delivered a fiery speech on religious freedom in which he warned that “militant secularists” were behind a “campaign to destroy the traditional moral order”.

. . . .

In the hallways of the justice department in Washington, there has been a similar furor among some Catholics employees who answer to Barr. 

“I was shocked by the speech and all this fire and brimstone,” said a senior department career official who considers himself a devout Catholic, speaking on condition that he not be identified for fear of losing his job.

“At least it helps me understand why Barr has been so willing to put his own reputation on the line to defend Trump so fiercely in every battle,” beginning with the congressional investigation that is likely to end in the president’s impeachment, he said. 

“Trump is Barr’s imperfect vessel in serving a much higher cause: the gospel.”

. . . .

He [Barr] warned that Catholicism and other mainstream religions were the target of “organized destruction” by “secularists and their allies among progressives who have marshalled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry and academia”.

He insisted that “the traditional Judeo-Christian moral system” of the United States was under siege by “modern secularists” who were responsible for every sort of “social pathology”, including drug abuse, rising suicide rates and illegitimacy.

. . . .

The reaction to Barr’s address came as another Trump cabinet member, secretary of state Mike Pompeo, was drawing fire from civil liberties groups over the state department’s decision this week to promote his recent speech titled Being a Christian Leader on the department’s online homepage.

The speech by Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, was delivered on Friday, the same day as Barr’s speech, to a meeting of the American Association of Christian Counselors in Nashville.

“It’s perfectly fine for secretary Pompeo to be a leader who is a Christian,” the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State said in a statement. 

But the decision to promote Pompeo’s speech on the department’s official website sends “the clear message that US public policy will be guided by his personal religious beliefs”.

Republican voters will never turn on the Duce. But will the pols?

They chose him above 17 Republican politicians not in spite of what he was but because of what he was.

And is.

They chose a mob boss instead of an actual political leader, knowingly and joyously.

They are fine with him behaving like a mob boss, right out in plain sight.

So Republican pols can turn against him only despite the clear preference of Republican voters, and they will be punished by those voters.

Yeah, it's scary, too.

Proliferation is an especially bad idea in certain especially unreliable parts of the world

Turkey fired on U.S. special forces in Syria. It's absurd that it still has U.S. nukes.

Yup.

But not more so than that Pakistan should have nukes. Or, for that matter, India.

But when US forces were detailed to seize Pakistan's nukes the NYT saw fit to blurt the story at the cost of making the raid impossible.

Self-righteous, liberal fucking New York Times.

Totally and completely wrong

The Affluent Society

He advanced the absurd thesis that innovation driven by competition was a myth, and that what competition actually inspired was only cosmetic and meaningless, "marginal differentiation".

Think tail fins on cars.

Not that it doesn't inspire that.

But it also does, and also did, inspire actually significant innovation.

It's not all a fake, this virtue of capitalist market competition.

He's right and he hasn't got a prayer

Still, I made an online donation.

A couple of decades too early for the world to be facing the economically and politically shattering consequences of robotics and AI.

But it's good someone sees it coming, and talks it up.

Andrew Yang

Basic Income

It does not occur to me that basic is a reason to eliminate or diminish Social Security.

There is no reason people with private pensions, savings, or other assets should lose them. So why people enrolled in America's public pension plan?

Ditto Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

And the existence of basic is perfectly compatible with that of any public or private insurance scheme or none.

Nor should basic merely equal the official definition of poverty.

It should be sufficient all alone to enable a life better off than that.

And for the fun of it, a lucid proof that the Basic of the Expanse is not what's meant by a Basic Income.

Credit to Bregman for calling this to my attention.

Or maybe Bertrand Russell with his more than a century old defense of "the vagabond's wage", which I read so many years ago.

Considerably more pressing, now, though, given any degree of accuracy in Yang's dystopianism regarding robotics and AI.

Tulsi vs Hillary

Like president Trump, Tulsi Gabbard is objectively pro-Russian and Putin's agent.

But unlike Trump, Ms. Gabbard has not yet comported herself in public in such manner as to lend overwhelming credence to the proposition that she is also subjectively pro-Russian and Putin's agent.

Interesting question which Hillary actually meant to assert.

Tulsi Gabbard on Hillary Clinton claims: "She knows she can't control me"

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) responded to Hillary Clinton's suggestion that she is Russia's "favorite" 2020 candidate, by saying Clinton was attempting to "undermine" her campaign, and that she "knows she can't control me," reports CBS.

Not a denial and not a defense.

Hillary Clinton implies Tulsi Gabbard is "the favorite of the Russians" in 2020

"I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She's the favorite of the Russians."

The truth is Hillary did not name her at all.

But everybody knew whom she meant, since she was neither the only nor the first to point out the problem.

Tulsi Gabbard on the issues, in under 500 words

So, the Democrats are never going to want to do this?

Uh, to investigate a political opponent? Like, uh, some prominent Republican?

And they will never want a foreign government to help out by, say, confirming the contents of some phone conversation?

Would they never offer a quid pro quo to encourage such help?

And if it isn't always an election year, it's always damn close, is it not?

By the way, are not treason, bribery, and all high crimes and misdemeanors, well, crimes (Article II, Section 4)?

Every last blessed one?

So, quote Hamilton from the Federalist Papers or from his grocery lists all you want, the actual text of the constitution specifies impeachable offenses must be crimes.

Not that I want to be a blue nose about it.

Justice in America

An innocent man pleaded guilty to a drug charge to get out of jail.

An Oklahoma man who pleaded guilty to trafficking cocaine last week had his conviction dismissed days later after lab results determined the white substance he was arrested for having was not drugs.

It was in fact powdered milk he had gotten from a food pantry, he told a judge.

. . . .

Jason Lollman, a public defender in Tulsa, told NBC News that he's accustomed to clients pleading guilty — even if they're not — to get out of jail because otherwise they're "forced to sit in and wait" before and during their trial.

"The cash bail system, posting cash bail, is a problem," Lollman said. "If they can’t afford an attorney, they're not going to be able to post bond to get out."

There have often been "times where I’ve actively talked a client out of taking a plea bargain," Lollman said. But "if the client wants to take that plea, I really can’t stand in the way of it."

"Sometimes it’s like we, the attorneys, have more stamina than the clients do," he added. "But that’s because we’re on the outside and they're in jail."

Specifically, Lollman's colleagues have relayed to him that the Oklahoma City Jail, where Gregg was held, is a "generally awful jail."

Isolationist, anti-globalist Trump

'It's not our border'

In other words, "Fuck do I care?"

Which could be exactly what he told Erdogan on the phone, when asked.

‘They have a lot of sand to play with’

“It’s not our problem,” Trump said during a White House photo op. “They’ve got a lot of sand over there ... There’s a lot of sand they can play with.”

He added that the Kurds are “not angels," even though the Kurdish forces were the primary American ally in the battle against ISIS and al Qaeda militants.

Trump also repeated a Turkish talking point when he asserted that a Kurdish political party in Turkey are terrorists.

OK, they're just fucking lying

Defenders of Trump who claim to believe in his innocence or the guilt of Bidens Joe and Hunter, or that he is not Putin's agent.

Donald Trump Has Single Handedly Brought ISIS Back From The Dead

Every bit as much as the fakers who claimed to believe "Hillary is just as bad".

Bullshit.

Smoke behind which to hide frank and knowing support of this unutterably contemptible, criminal, racist thug they wanted to put in the White House for the sake of their fucking tax breaks and their war on progressivism.

What can one say?

Activists defiant as Uganda proposes death penalty for gay sex

The Ugandan government's plan to reintroduce a bill that could impose the death penalty for homosexuality is being met with defiance from the LGBTQ community in the East African nation, activists told CNN.

Ugandan Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo, in an interview with local media Thursday, said present laws criminalizing gay sex - which in theory can come with a life sentence - were not tough enough.

When asked by a presenter on local NTV why the bill is being introduced now, Lokodo said, "The penal code only criminalizes the act [gay sex]. ...Now we're saying anything, like recruitment, promotion, exhibition...amounts to committing a crime against that law."

Trump v the courts

Trump's losses mount in stunning day of setbacks

Five federal courts dealt blows to President Donald Trump on Friday just as the limits of his legal strategy to block an impeachment inquiry became clear.

So, were they all Democrats?

It amounted to a challenging end of a challenging week for Trump, who remains consumed by an impeachment crisis that is clouding his presidency.

Within moments of each other, a career diplomat began painting a damning portrait of the President's foreign policy to lawmakers just as Trump lost his appeal in a federal appeals court to stop a House subpoena of his tax documents, which he's guarded fiercely since refusing to make them public as a candidate.

Then, in rapid succession, judges in New York, Texas, Washington state and California sided against Trump administration initiatives meant to limit immigrants from entering the country -- both through a physical barrier and by raising the requirements on migrants seeking legal status.

Friday night, the man in charge of executing much of Trump's immigration agenda, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, submitted his resignation to the President as the legal setbacks mounted. 

Long in the works, and by all accounts unrelated to the court decisions or the impeachment crisis, the move nonetheless fueled a sense of an administration in flux. 

McAleenan was the fourth person to serve in that post since the Trump presidency began.

How did this even happen?

A Nobel prize that dishonours the victims of genocide

Liberal intolerance

O'Rourke says churches against gay marriage should lose tax benefits, draws backlash

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke said Thursday that churches and other religious institutions that oppose same-sex marriage should lose their tax-exempt status, taking the Democratic presidential debate into uncharted — and controversial — territory.

A little too aggressive a blow in the culture war, I think.

And as for the tax break, it's unconstitutional and should be ended.

Efforts to deny churches or churchmen the freedom to declaim upon political issues at will are also unconstitutional.

Trump in La. Every day a more revolting disgrace to America

Trump blasts ‘bulls–t impeachment’ inquiry at rally

Wretched, sickening scum.

Look who got forced out

Shep Smith, Fox News’ Most Vocal Donald Trump Critic, Abruptly Announces He’s Quit

While wrapping up the Friday, October 11, broadcast of his daily 3 p.m. Fox News show Shepard Smith Reporting, host Shep Smith announced that it was his final show for the network. 

Smith was a stalwart of Fox News’ hard news division and in turn, was President Donald Trump’s most vocal critic and on air fact-checker at a network largely criticized as a satellite office of the White House press shop. 

Smith has worked for Fox News for 23 years, since the it launched in 1996.

“Recently I asked the company to allow me to leave Fox News and begin a new chapter,” Smith said on air. “After requesting that I stay, they graciously obliged. 

"The opportunities afforded this guy from small town Mississippi have been many. 

"It’s been an honor and a privilege to report the news each day to our loyal audience in context and with perspective, without fear or favor. 

"I’ve worked with the most talented, dedicated and focused professionals I know and I’m proud to have anchored their work each day—I will deeply miss them.”

The announcement was abrupt and appeared to shock Smith’s colleagues, including Neil Covuto and John Roberts. 

Here’s a clearly unsuspecting Covuto uttering a breathless “whoa” before saying that he’s “a little stunned and heartbroken” immediately after the 3-to-4 p.m. handoff.

. . . .

Smith was a nonpartisan journalist at a network whose news division seemed to be undermined by the primetime opinion hosts who regularly espouse conspiracy theories, Pro-Trump propaganda, and especially in Tucker Carlson’s case, white nationalist talking points.

. . . .

Smith’s exit follows a secret meeting Attorney General William Barr held with Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch earlier this week, as reported by The New York Times. 

Although it’s unknown what was actually discussed at the meeting, the president has recently directed his rage against the network for airing unfavorable polls and unflattering news regarding the impeachment inquiry.

A rep for Fox News told The Hollywood Reporter that the decision to leave the network was entirely Smith’s.

Trump in Minneapolis outdid himself

The most horrible president imaginable still loved by his deplorables

Surpassing himself in vicious, lying vulgarity.

A thug, a crook, a mob boss, and a pig.

For every means there is an end . . .

.  .  .  that would justify its use.

That seems to be the universal conviction of the principals on The Expanse.

And it is truly a sincere moral view.

A long way from the all but universal left commitment to Just War theory - because of or despite its dependence on the Doctrine of Double Effect - and the idea of war crimes.

Moral bookkeeping without God

The Expanse, season 3.

Asked if a truly good act at the end of life can make up for some or all of the evil done earlier, Ashford, a soi-disant atheist, says he likes to think so.

Make up for without make up to.

Universal sexism

It appears the universal conviction of popular culture that for a woman in authority to get the necessary respect her underlings must address her as a man.

They must call her not "Ma'am" but "Sir", not "Boss" but "Boss Man".

Catherine the Great, Queen Elizabeth I ("Gloriana"), the Queen Empress Victoria, Golda Meir, and Mrs. Ghandi would all have found this conviction profoundly sexist and misogynist.

As do I.

Don Quixote

Phooey. He was not a fighter for lost causes, but for imaginary ones.

James S. A. Corey didn't know that? Neither of them?

Everybody thinks this will happen.

Is Trump’s Syria Policy about to Loose 12,000 ISIL Terrorists on the World?

But why would the Kurds be stupid enough to release ten or twelve thousand of their most skilled, most determined, most relentless enemies, very possibly upon themselves?

So, does the smart money expect the Kurds to simply massacre these folks?

Asked about this, by the way, the Duce shrugged and said something to this effect about those ISIS fighters.

"Well, they're going to Europe, not to America. Europe is where they want to go."

Update 10/10

About 10,000 are Iraqis and Syrians, the others from various other countries, some in Europe.

Trump repeats the lies they are going to Europe, alliances are easy to make, and our NATO allies in Europe are just ripping us off, they are delinquent in their military spending and owe us hundreds of billions.

He reiterates the damning truth that the Kurds did nothing for us on D-Day, or at any time in WWII.

The Republican defenses of the Duce are utterly shameless horseshit and beneath contempt

"Regicide"

"Sedition"

"The Democrats will destroy our country."

When are Republicans going to realize they are trashing the constitution and the republic for fucking Donald Trump?

White House says it will not comply with impeachment inquiry

Gratitude without providence

Or, "Count your blessings and be glad of them" for atheists.

Epicurus advises that in old age, infirmity, or ill health we take pleasure in the grateful recollection of past times of pleasure and happiness, rather than bemoaning our current miseries or short and awful prospects.

But there is no providence in Epicurus' view, and so this is not a case of being grateful to, but only of being grateful that.

There need not be anyone to thank, you see.

And that is a most interesting observation, from a man who died so painfully.

No nukes!

Utility Giant Sets Up Critical Test For Top 2020 Democrats On Nuclear Power

If the Dems are the environmentally responsible party they need to make it clear they will have no truck with the dirtiest of dirty power sources.

After Borat I never would have expected The Spy

Sacha Baron Cohen.

The brass of the man

So, people are not supposed to find it unspeakable for Trump, Trump, to call Joe Biden corrupt.

What people?

The people who insisted in 2016 that Hillary was a despicable as Trump. All of whom voted for Bozo.

Update.

I just saw a Trump ad - the first I have seen - for the 2020 campaign. On MSNBC.

America is a stupid country that elected Reagan twice and GW twice.

What does that tell you about 2020?

The Expanse series

Why do 2 guys living in New Mexico write in Brit English?

"Lift" for "elevator", for example.

What justice for our betters looks like

Not that we are surprised.

A once-acclaimed attorney who paid $75,000 to cheat on daughter's ACT sentenced to 1 month in prison

A crime in public is still a crime. A crime boss acting in public is all the more egregiously a crime boss.

Not just Ukraine, Trump now calls for China to probe Bidens

What the media not in his corner and Democratic blogs claim is proof he is a narcissist is proof he is a psychopathic (sociopathic?) criminal like the Al Capone character of The Untouchables.

Why they prefer to hit him with a shrink-speak label they have to explain every time they use it to just calling him the crime boss and thug he is, citing exactly the same proofs, something that would need no explaining, is a mystery of the liberal mind.

Our contemporary, and not

By ch 43 or so, the portrait of the whore Nancy's love for and complete subjection to Sykes, her pimp, her lover, and the animal whose shameless violent attacks may yet kill her, is full.

Oliver Twist.

Barr knows what Trump wants, and is just the right man to give it

DOJ joins Trump lawsuit seeking to block release of his tax returns

The Justice Department is joining President Donald Trump in his legal battle to block the release of his tax returns to state prosecutors investigating the Trump Organization, according to court papers filed Wednesday.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is seeking eight years of Trump's personal and corporate tax returns as part of a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization over hush money payments made to two women who have alleged affairs with Trump before he became president.

Trump's lawyers to the Court: the Duce is above the law

The president’s lawyers filed a lawsuit in federal court late last month seeking to block the subpoena. 

The suit says Vance isn’t entitled to the returns and a sitting president cannot be criminally investigated.

Sanders is out for a while, and probably just out

And that's not today's big news.

Bernie Sanders Treated For Chest Pain; Campaign Events Canceled

Al Capone in the White House

Remember the character of Al Capone as depicted in the film, The Untouchables?

That's the guy the Electoral College - absolutely not the American voters - put into the White House in 2016, with a lot of help, per the entire US intelligence community, from Vladimir Putin.

Not an authoritarian or even populist politician, really. Just a psychotic, narcissistic thug.

Alligators and snakes in a moat at a wall along the Mexican border.

Glass blades at the top to lacerate the flesh of people trying to climb over.

Border guards instructed to shoot to kill, or at least maim, desperate migrants crossing unauthorized.

Withholding half a billion in aid to Ukraine, intended by Congress to help them resist aggression by Putin's Russia.

Making it abundantly clear to Ukraine's president, in a phone call Mike Pompeo was on and an aide of Mike Pence was on, that if he wants that money he had better dig up dirt on Joe Biden's son for Trump's 2020 campaign.

Using Pence, Pompeo, and Barr to solicit from foreign governments aid in casting mountains of discredit on the idea Russia did anything to aid Trump's 2016 campaign and would aid or is aiding his 2020 campaign.

Denouncing the unknown whistle blower as a spy and demanding he be outed and punished as spies once were, by the death penalty.

Denouncing Adam Schiff, dubbed "Shifty Schiff", as a liar and a traitor who ought to be forced to resign.

If I were not an atheist I would be praying, nightly, for his happy death.

Like Big Al in The Untouchables, he lies, he glories in a sycophantic section of the press that loves him, he spreads the disease of political corruption all around him.

If you have been watching the news these last few days and have not seen this, there is something very wrong with you.

Perhaps you are a Trumpist.

Update.

All of this was made possible by the idiotic excess of democracy that passed the power to choose their candidates from the party professional pols to the primary voters and caucus going activists.

Trump is proof that the process is too democratic.

A lesson everyone has absolutely refused to learn.

Why they glory in egregious lies

Why Europe’s new populists tell so many lies – and do it so shamelessly

Politicians have, of course, always dissembled, but the traditional political lie was designed to cover up an unpalatable fact. 

No one wanted to be caught lying. 

If accused, they had to explain (“I didn’t inhale”, “I am not a crook”, “not … with that woman”, the dossier wasn’t “sexed-up”) and they might then fall from grace, face a public inquiry, or indulge in that staple of political redemption exercises, the televised apology.

Populist lying, by contrast, is designed to be seen – it is the opposite of a cover-up. 

In the populist playbook, lying itself is glorified; it is an instrument of subversion, its purpose to demonstrate that the liar will stop at nothing to “serve the people”. 

The lies are signals that these politicians are not bound by the usual norms of the liberal democratic elite. 

Liberals have virtue signalling – populists have outrage signalling. 

This is the politics of appealing to the gut over the brain.

. . . .

Populists have been quick to turn the value placed on authenticity to their advantage. 

Not by striving to be truthful, but by demonstrating that they are authentic (or instinctively connected to the experience of “the people”, who are authentic) to the point of not caring about being shown to be liars – as long as the lies are told “in the interest of the people”. 

They tend to either sweep away the evidence that they lied with great nonchalance (well, I might have said that, but so what?), or flaunt the lie to show their chutzpah, their willingness to game the system – and to highlight the supposed hypocrisy or stupidity of whoever is being deceived.

The populist authenticity is not so much about being as good as you claim to be, but about being as shamelessly bad as people might imagine you could be. 

Shamelessness is populism’s debased form of authenticity.