Trump asks Ben Carson to say prayer before cabinet meeting

You may want to have a barf bag close by if you watch and listen to this hypocritical, nonsensical, prayer which is couched in praise of the scumbag, Trump, and pretends to give a damn about the country and its people.  Carson is heading up an agency he admits to knowing nothing about and that he wished would be disbanded.  He has in this situation proven once again that his religion is merely a cover for his own greed and need for power and prestige. 

For Carson to associate with Trump is to align himself with one of the worst human beings on the planet at the moment, a man who is a danger to the peace and prosperity of our country and the world, a man who has no understanding of the Christian religion or the Jesus it professes to preach.  These days, fundamentalist Christianity, of which Carson is a part, has become nothing more than a cover for the evil that humans would do.

And then Carson has the gall to conclude his pious paean to his pretend god by calling on the name of Jesus.  Hypocrisy abounds.  You just have to wonder what Mr. Kushner was thinking, even though Kushner is complicit in all the horrors that Trump and has dumped on our beloved country. 

Legal victory stops steal in ‘Bama! But,… Ballot-stuffing, an Alabama GOP habit, blocked… leaving Moore’s team with only nine other ways to steal it By Greg Palast Savor it.  This day, Monday December 11, attorney John Brakey won a court order – in Montgomery, Alabama no less – requiring every county to keep copies of their ballots after the vote tomorrow. Now, you may think that in a democracy, in the United States of America, in the 21st Century, you wouldn’t simply throw away ballots, announce a winner, and say, “trust us, we counted the ballots fairly.” But this is not exactly America, nor the 21st Century.  This is Alabama; Alabama after the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act. That only leaves THE OTHER NINE WAYS THE GOP IS STEALING THE ELECTION IN ALABAMA.   Before you read on about vote theft way down south in Dixie, get the full vote-heist story, captured on film in Alabama.  It’s in the post-election edition of the movie, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of the Stolen Election. No, it’s not the one on Amazon or iTunes.  This is the NEW update--#TrumpStoleIt edition, which will go commercial next year. But right now, you can ONLY get it by making a tax-deductible donation to the Palast Investigative Fund. Donate $20 or more and get the download. Or donate $50 for a personalized, signed DVD as a heartfelt thank you from me. Or you can simply support our work for any amount no matter how large or small. We didn’t get to Alabama by flapping our arms—we had to pay for tickets, cameras, lawyers, and feed our team of indefatigable detectives. It is our habit, by instinct and long experience to get to the places where news willbe made. Help us continue the hunt. Now, read on… So, any GOP ballot-stuffing plans are now in trouble. The TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) that Brakey won may stop what I call the “Baldwin Ballot Bandit” trick or, as my co-author Bobby Kennedy calls it, “good old ballot box stuffing.” Background:  In 2002, Gov. Don Siegelman won a close re-election. But, after the Associated Press announced the result, rural Republican Baldwin County locked the courthouse doors. Beginning at midnight, GOP officials claimed to have counted thousands of ballots that they mysteriously “found”—enough to flip the election.  No one was allowed to see those ballots—if they even existed. This is what the Brakey TRO intends to stop.  [For the full story of the Baldwin County Ballot theft, see “Stuffed,” by Bobby Kennedy Jr..  It’s chapter 28 of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, the 2016 edition of my bestseller.  Donate $50 for the book and I’ll sign it to you with my thanks.] So, how will they steal it?  Let me count the ways (nine of them). [Photo:  Palast trying to get into an Alabama DMV in Lowndes County—73% black.  Locked tight.] The ID con.  Within hours of the Supreme Court slicing up the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Alabama passed a law requiring all voters to have a photo ID from a DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles).  And the very next day, the state shut down almost every DMW in the ten Black-Belt counties. “Caging.”  It’s a felony crime, but that didn’t stop Judge Moore’s campaign chief, Brett Doster, from committing this vote theft crime for the George W. Bush campaign in 2004.  I know, because I have Doster’s own confidential emails. (How I got them – well, that’s another story. You’ll just have to read the book.) Here’s a bit of one of the emails.  Bobby Kennedy Jr explains how this ‘caging’ trick steals votes (from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy): Crosscheck.  In 2015 I got a call from Hank Sanders of Selma, Alabama.  His name was missing from the voter rolls.  That’s Senator Hank Sanders.  Despite his post, he’d been removed mysteriously.  I flew down and solved the mystery.  The perp:  Donald Trump’s operative, Kris Kobach of Kansas. Kobach created a list of 239,801 Alabamians he tagged as “potential” duplicate voters.  I got my hands on about a third of that list – how? don’t ask – and it’s overwhelmingly names of Black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters.  Yet, Alabama has arrested not one double voter.  It’s Jim Crow all over again. “Spoiling.”  The Alabama ballot has nothing on the ballot but the Senate race and, in some counties, a local referendum.  But it also has a box for “party-line” votes.  Vote for “Democratic Party” and also vote for the Democratic candidate, your vote can be tossed in the “spoilage” bin, not counted, because they can decide, arbitrarily, that you “over-voted” – voted twice.  It’s a technical gotcha that is used selectively…i.e. against Black voters. I saw the “over-vote” spoilage trick eliminate 700 Al Gore votes in Gadsden County, Florida in 2000.  (That’s more than the 537 votes that supposedly elected George W. Bush.) And I saw it again in November 2016 in Detroit, Michigan, where 70,355 ballots were not counted (in part, because of the same over-vote trick).  Throwing out those Detroit ballots gave Donald Trump a supposed 10,700 margin to win Michigan. OK, let’s review:  There’s Ballot stuffing Crosschecking Caging Spoiling Blocking (the ID con)… …and five more tricks, including that old GOP standby, purging “ex-cons” not allowed to vote.  Except I’ve yet to find an ex-con purge list that’s anything other than a con itself. I simply can’t describe every trick in this small space.  You’ll have to read the bookor see the film. There’s one certain way to stop these vote suppression games.  One candidate, named Barack Obama, told our team:  You can’t steal all the votes all the time.  Turn out so massively, they just can’t steal it. Martin Luther King Jr led 35,000 marchers over the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to the capital Montgomery.  Along the way, four marchers were murdered by the Klan.  But by time the marchers got to the capital, the Voting Rights Act was on its way into law. A young Hank Sanders was there.  Last year, making the film with him, the elder Senator Sanders demanded I walk over the Pettus bridge with him.  “You have to walk over the bridge every chance you get—because the right to vote is always in jeopardy.” We will see if enough Alabama citizens will cross that bridge tomorrow to overcome the trickery and flim-flam that Alabama calls an election.

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, now out as major motion non-fiction movie: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of the Stolen Election (the brand new, updated, post-election edition).  Stay informed, get the signed DVD, a signed copy of the book companion or better still - get the Book & DVD combo. Support The Palast Investigative Fund and keep our work alive. Become a monthly Contributor. Or support us by shopping with Amazon Smile. AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchases to the Sustainable Markets Foundation for the benefit of The Palast Investigative Fund and you get a tax-deduction! More info. Follow Palast on Twitter | Like Palast on Facebook | Forward to a friend  Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter Share this with    Copyright © 2017 Greg Palast, All rights reserved. You are receiving this Newsletter because you are a subscriber. Our mailing address: (Check donations are payable to: SMF (our fiscal sponsor) Memo: Palast Fund Greg Palast 3357 Cahuenga Blvd W, #13 Los Angeles, CA 90068 Add us to your address book

The President Declines Time's Offer to be Man of the Year

The president is crazy.  But you knew that!  I'm just not sure how many people realize how crazy he really is or is becoming.

Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars, speaks of Trump's dementia.  I don't know that she's a psychiatrist, but I think her diagnosis is right on, if incomplete.  I think it's more than just dementia; I think he's so crazy, they could re-write the book on insanity.

The dementia comes into play because he wrote that while Time magazine was considering him to be its Man of the Year, he declined as it would have meant interviews and stuff and would have taken him away from his regular job of screwing up the country.

Time magazine, however, said the prez is mistaken.  In other words, the oaf is a liar. 

Because he's such a liar and a freaking loon, it's important to laugh at him because that chips a bit of his power away every time. 

Here is the picture used by Ms. Madrak for her article and some other pictures that were shared in the comments section.

[P.S.  It appears he did make the cover of Mad magazine!]

Please read Ms. Madrak's article HERE.

The New GOP

Note:  I have no idea as to who put this together, but it does represent, I believe, the direction of today's Republican Party and its leader, dTrumpf.

CNN & The Fraudulent President

CNN's Hilarious "Reponse" To Trump's Twitter Tantrum

This short video by Mark Humphries of SBS Viceland (an Australian tvnetwork) was made in only 10 hours, he told Buzzfeed. It has since gone viral, on YouTube, and also on Facebook, where this version above by Occupy Democrats now has over 4 million views. Source: AdNews SBS has spoofed the now infamous Trump versus CNN…

North Koreans Send Mr. Warmbier Home

It's difficult to know exactly what a college student like Otto Warmbier was doing in North Korea a year and a half ago.  I've read that he was on a tour. What tour? And why?  Was college too easy for him he just had to visit this country that is notorious for coughing up fake "crimes" in order to hold Americans in prison?  I mean, really.  If you want to visit a country go to France for Christ's sake!

He "confessed" to the crime of stealing a propaganda poster saying he was put up to it by a member of his church who promised him money to buy a car.  We know that such a confession was probably coerced.

But it does raise the question of the church connection.  There have been, as I recall, several religious groups who have attempted to do "missionary" work in North Korea even though the government bans such activity.  And some of those missionaries went missing, some went to prison.

Of course, fundy Christianists, will do anything for Jesus.  Anything goes if it's for the Lord.

So, what's the deal?

And then, daddy Warmbier immediately praised the Trumpster and put a knock on Obama even though Obama socked North Korea with some pretty hefty sanctions after the son was put in jail.

Ironically, Otto is just the sort of person Trump says he wants to ban from this country: a religious fanatic who does not respect our country's laws. 

Tragedy in Alexandria

Tragedy in Alexandria

(A guest post by Bob Poris)

What a tragedy!  If one of the baseball team’s members did not have mandatory armed protection from the Capitol Police as a member of Congress,  the shooter would have killed a huge number of spectators, visitors, etc, as no security is usually provided at such events.

The shooter had selected the Republican team only! He was a political junky that hated Republicans! What a sad state of affairs in which we find ourselves. It is worse than the old days when Senator Joe McCarthy claimed without evidence that the government had been infiltrated with Communists.  McCarthy was cheered on by too many representatives on both sides of the aisle.  Suddenly people working as teachers and in government jobs were being required to take loyalty oaths if they wanted to keep their jobs!  Eventually McCarthy was exposed as a phony and a drunk who had no proof to back up his claims. I remember my wife being hassled because she objected to her patriotism being questioned. Fortunately she was not fired, but she was given a rough time by some of the other teachers.

Our current political enmity makes it too easy to fool some of the population with such claims even to this day.  Back then they had not come up with “fake news" and generally political candidates were not referred to as liars or crooks, etc., without with any evidence.  Of course in those days we still had real investigative reporters. Fox News and other pure propaganda outlets did not dominate the media as they do today. Maybe the people were smarter and candidates for office were selected by real pros and not by very rich people with outsized propaganda skills.  Many people do not know who or what “Soros” is or the essence of his politics.  What we've got are "single word scandals" backed up by no facts even after years of hearings with no guilt ever established.  Think "Benghazi"!

We are constantly being made fools of by those with the money to buy up huge segments of the various media outlets.  Once upon a time there were restrictions on the percentage of people or corporations who could get licensed to own more than one outlet in any area so there was never a total monopoly as there is today in our media. The competition worked well and the people had many competing choices to find the "truth."

Did anyone learn anything after listening to all the hours of the recent hearings in Congress? Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, and other witnesses refused to answer questions; even "YES" or "NO" questions without any valid  legal reason.  They refused to answer question because they didn't think they should yet did not bother to ask for executive privilege.  If we did that we'd have been held in Contempt of Congress and would be forced to respond.

What's going on here?  As this rate, we might never learn the truth about the interference in our voting system by the Russians which even Putin jokes about. It doesn’t matter which party was involved.  If laws were broken we need to know what happened and who was responsible!  The winners of the last election seem to think they can do whatever they wish without consequence.  They don't seem to deem it important that a foreign country interfered in our electoral process!

I think we should all want to know what happened so that we can prevent it from happening again in the next election.  We do know that some politicians walked away with lots of money from the Russians under the direction of Putin, who we know controls such things in Russia.

We have never had the protests we see now and the distrust, and confusion, within the Oval Office and our political parties. Apparently we did not learn enough from Watergate and the whole mess with President Nixon. It did happen here and can happen again and maybe is happening now. We must care or it will be too late to correct!  Our system is in deep trouble and few have the ability to act before it is too late.  Our grandchildren did not live through the Nixon years, but many of us did and we know how our survival as a democratic country is at risk.

Our political leaders must understand that if we do not work together it may soon be too late to keep it together, too late to stop the assault on our democracy, too late to halt our descent into becoming just another American "banana republic."


[A word about Bob Poris.  Bob is a veteran of WWII.  He was wounded while serving in the submarine  service.  He is 90 years old and has been actively working for sanity in our political life for most of those 90 years.  Bob has, as it is said, "seen it all."  He loves this country and while he does not put flags on his car or wear his heart on his sleeve, he's more of a patriot than most of the whiners and armchair politicos who voted into office the incompetent fools currently inhabiting the White House and Congress.]

Trump and the Air Traffic Control System

The orange-headed monster now wants to "privatize" the air traffic control system.  You may remember when another president, mentally unstable, did away with the air traffic control union. That sent prices sky-rocketing, service went to pot, airlines merged, and the people have been suffering ever since.  His name was Reagan and he was not a good president so don't believe those Repugnicans who want to sanitize him and endow him with sainthood!


Why is Trump doing this?  First of all it's to take attention away from the Russia scandal which may blow him out of the water.  Secondly, follow the money.  We all know that Trump is probably the most ignorant and stupid man ever to sit in the Oval Office.  We know he knows nothing about the air traffic control system but is being fed a pile of crap from people who will make tons of money if his privatization plan takes effect.

So, who will benefit?  The airlines first of all.  And that's why the airlines are for it with the exception of Delta.  The others to benefit will be those who have an interest in getting the government off their back and letting them operate with less regulation.

What we should be doing is taking control of our own destiny.  The airlines should be run by the government!  And while we're on this topic, why should a few companies make billions/trillions of dollars from our natural resources? It seems to me that the government should own these businesses, which include all the natural oil and gas operations.  They government should rake in those profits, not a handful of private owners.

Trump can totally destroy this country within a few years if Congress allows him to do it.  Next it will be the Post Office.  The Congress has already stacked the deck against the post office by requiring it to put away enough funds to run the operation for many years ahead of time.  No other company or government operation has to do that.  And then Republicans in Congress whine about how the Post Office operates in the red.

Our schools are already in trouble with that evil witch, Devos, heading up the department of education.  She has lived her whole life with but one goal; to turn our education system private so that all of our schools promote fundamentalistic Christianity! That's her plan and she working hard at it as of this writing!  She starts with Charter Schools which are a complete con and are a direct threat to the public school system.  Study after study has shown them to be less effective than our public schools and to be a monumental drain on public school funds!

So, when Trump says let's privatize something, run the other way.  Do whatever you need to do to stop him.  It won't be good for the country in any way but will put more stress on an already ailing system.

Finally, remember that almost everything Donald Trump has done down through the years has led to bankruptcy and hurt thousands of people.  He is a failed businessman.  He has not created anything for a long time; but merely franchises his name, which god willing will be worth nothing in the near future!

And, by the way, although we  hope that Comey will say the right words and the chicken-hearted Repugnicans will be left with no other option but impeachment, remember that Pence is not much better.  He's not as crazy as Trump but his core beliefs are rotten to the core and will benefit the rich and create more problems for the middle-class and the poor.  The environment will continue to be threatened and are economy will go down the toilet.

It's a no-win, no-win situation.  Except for the fact that Trump is actually crazy and it's certain that whatever he does will hurt our country and its people.

The GOP Must Take Responsibility for Trump | The Resistance with Keith O...

John Oliver's Magnum Opus: Trump Russia Is 'Stupid Watergate'

I literally watched this episode three times. The first time blew me away with the flood of the recollection of the stunning events. The second time was to reassure myself I'm not going completely nuts, but by the third viewing, I started to relax and realize that this madness has to end. Well worth the time.…

A Bible Verse for Every Situation

Okay, first you have to click on the "Read more..." sentence.  Then the photo will come up.  Click on the photo.  That will bring up the video and you can go from there.

Comedian (and obvious pastor's kid) John Crist has that relative who has a Bible verse for everything that happens... Wait 'til she gets to "Apple Computers." Open thread below...…

Time Magazine's Cover

For once, the MSM gets it right.  Time magazine's latest cover shows the White House morphing into the Kremlin.

George Will on Trump's "Disability"

Our intellectually-challenged president pretending to drive a truck

I've never cared much for George Will in that he has without fail spouted and defended Republican political theory for years.  But, he has finally written something that makes sense and is important.  The fact that Will would pen this essay indicates the severity of our situation for it is inconceivable he would write anything like this about any other Republican president.

Please read the whole article, which appeared in The Washington Post:

It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about President Trump’s inability to do either. This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence.

In February, acknowledging Black History Month, Trump said that “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.” Because Trump is syntactically challenged, it was possible and tempting to see this not as a historical howler about a man who died 122 years ago, but as just another of Trump’s verbal fender benders, this one involving verb tenses.

Now, however, he has instructed us that Andrew Jackson was angry about the Civil War that began 16 years after Jackson’s death.


In other words, our president is a complete ignoramus!  But please read the entire article HERE.

It was never about healthcare; it was about making the rich richer!

[Photo by Reuters] 

[Photo by Getty Images]

Republicans in Congress were overcome with glee when the non-healthcare bill scraped its way through the House by a meager 4 votes! Republicans in Congress hold to the belief that the government should make them and their friends rich or richer and ignore the needs of the rest of the population (especially the minorities and immigrants) and thus they could not contain their joy at literally killing many thousands of our American citizens which is what the healthcare bill will do!

Look at the photos!  Notice not just the unrestrained joy, but the fact that almost without exception the pictures show white men, the majority of which we know to be millionaires.

These are the people who want to take healthcare away from 24 million of our citizens - our children, parents, siblings, grandparents, great-grandparents, friends, as well as the poor, the mentally challenged, and those stricken with catastrophic sickness. 

The mindset of these Republican nogoodniks was summed up in a comment made by a Congressman just the other day to the effect that people are poor and sick because they do not bother to take care of themselves, ergo they are undeserving of healthcare.

But in the end we find it really hasn't been about healthcare at all.  Republicans don't give a damn about healthcare.  If there was a way to pass a healthcare bill which would provide coverage from birth to death and provide the rich huge tax cuts, they would jump all over it.

What this is all about is making the rich richer at the expense of the least of those among us. Many of these clowns call themselves followers of Jesus.  If their Jesus was indeed a real person and is now in heaven looking down upon them he must be again in tears, begging the "Father" to be merciful for they know not what they do.

But they do know what they do.  And what the healthcare bill does, other than drag many Americans screaming and crying from their homes to funeral homes is give the rich massive tax cuts.  Or, as the New York Times put it, "billions and billions" in tax cuts.

This should be no surprise.  Trump told us he saw the presidency as a means of increasing his fortune and he's doing just that.  But an important side effect was that Republicans everywhere rejoiced for they finally got "permission" to do what they've been doing right along - running the government in such a way that they and the wealthiest among us can expand their portfolios exponentially on the backs of the middle-class and the poor.  Trump, their god and savior, showed them it's okay to be corrupt - to lie, steal and cheat.  He's been doing it for years and lives in houses adorned with gold.  Well, except for the White House but now, I understand, he's taking bids to wrap his desk in gold leaf. 

It's not now and never was about health care.

Another Order From the Tinpot Dictator and His Acolytes

It is being reported today that all monitors in the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) must display FOX News.  Any monitors displaying CNN must be changed immediately.

This is another egregious example our tinpot dictator striving to exercise his power over all aspects of our lives and our government, allowing for no dissent from his yuge and intelligent viewpoints!

It is also, of course, another indicator of our slide down that slippery slope toward becoming a Third-World Banana Republic.

The damage this monster has caused in just 100 days is catastrophic.  We may never be able to recover because "we" have become a nation or ignoramuses and have therefore elected a Congress filled with ignoramuses and cronies of the rich and powerful.

Chris Hedges Characterizes Our Present Situation: We are being ruled by idiots

Chris Hedges, writing for Truthdig, says we're experiencing a "reign of idiots," and the chief idiot is Donald J. Trump.

The article begins thusly:

The idiots take over in the final days of crumbling civilizations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars that bankrupt the nation. Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programs for the poor, and project economic growth on the basis of myth. Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil and the air, slash jobs and depress wages. Idiot bankers gamble on self-created financial bubbles and impose crippling debt peonage on the citizens. Idiot journalists and public intellectuals pretend despotism is democracy. Idiot intelligence operatives orchestrate the overthrow of foreign governments to create lawless enclaves that give rise to enraged fanatics. Idiot professors, “experts” and “specialists” busy themselves with unintelligible jargon and arcane theory that buttresses the policies of the rulers. Idiot entertainers and producers create lurid spectacles of sex, gore and fantasy.

I couldn't have said it better, but you need to read his entire article to understand all of the complications and implications of the "reign of idiots."

Click HERE.

Which one is the craziest?

Which one of these two crazy people is most likely to start a nuclear war which would, of course, kill everyone on earth and make the earth uninhabitable for hundreds of millions of years?

Would it be this goofball, Kim Jong-un, the president of North Korea?

Or would it be this deranged tool, D. Trumpf, the president of the United States?

Are you sleeping well lately?

Jesus, Alabama, Presbyterians, Cops and Guns

Because It's Aladamnbama, Where They Have Weaponized Jesus

Holy crap. The Alabama Senate has voted to allow a church to form its own police force. Lawmakers on Tuesday voted 24-4 to allow Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham to establish a law enforcement department. The church says it needs its own police officers to keep its school as well as its more than 4,000 person…

Heads Up Trump Supporters!

Open Thread - A Message For Trump Supporters

Funny and informative! I plan to hold this in my Twitter arsenal, too. Open Thread below....…

Trump's Insanity is Unraveling the World!

The world has never been a peaceful place.  While there were periods of relative peace, overall it's been mostly wars and rumors of wars since time began.

The United States has many serious problems but for the last decade or so it's been difficult to address these problems because our former president, Barack Obama, was forced to deal with an obstructionist Congress, states that were out-of-control, stupid and indifferent governors, state legislatures, mayors, city council, school boards, etc.

The Christian right has in recent years reared its ugly head and the rest of us have paid and are paying a terrible price as they work to decimate scientific knowledge, public schools, common sense, the Constitution, indeed the Commonwealth as we have known it for the past 200 plus years.

However, in spite of all the problems, some of us have felt, perhaps naively, a sense of safety. We had a president who struggled to do the right thing against unbelievable odds, but through it all, we knew him to be an intelligent, decent human being, who would not go off the rails on some whim, no matter how provoked he was.  And he was provoked!


Unfortunately, our new president is insane.  I mean that in a clinical sense.  He's not just sort of nuts, he is certifiable.  I'm not a psychologist but I do have an graduate degree in counseling and he portrays in his person most if not all of the characteristics of an insane person.

What he has done in his first 100 years is turn back the clock 100 years; he has unsettled the world.  We can no longer wake up in the morning knowing that our president is not going to start a nuclear holocaust which will destroy the earth and everything on it. We know he might do such a thing while laying about at Mar-a-Lago because he claims he ordered the Syrian strike while having dinner there with a foreign visitor!


Here are some specifics:

* Many of his appointees come from Wall Street and are the same persons responsible for the great financial melt-down of 2008.  His Treasury Secretary is none other than "Foreclosure King" Steve Mnuchin who is reputed to be without either conscience or feelings and is responsible for foreclosing on more than 36,000 homes.  This does not bode well for people struggling to pay off big mortgages.

* Trump has chopped off all efforts to deal with global warming.  His head of the EPA is Scott Pruitt, who has fought to kill the EPA for years, who denies the fact of global warming or at least that humans are responsible.  It will not be long before our coastal cities will be under water but global warming has many other global effects, damaging farmer's crops and helping to destroy the seas upon which our planet depends for life.

* His Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, known as a "king of bankruptcy," is a fan of increased coal use which will increase global warming and continue to decimate the lives of thousands of people living in southeastern states.

* Trump believes in deregulation and in a recent interview with Fox Business News bragged about how he is in process of deregulating everything, which he thinks will help boost the economy.  It won't do that, but it will make our food and water unsafe to eat or drink.  It will make our drugs deadly to take.  It will make our highways and byways dangerous to drive.  It will allow the predator plutocrats who now run the country to take the rest of us for a financial ride which will end for many in death and despair.

* Trump is an "America First" kind of guy who has concluded that it is his right and responsibility to ensure that the rest of the world follows our lead in all things.  We have sent missiles into Syria which seemed to have no impact at all except to kill a bunch of people and make our relationship with Russia, always a shaky one, even more difficult.

Trump has in 100 short days turned most of the world against us and has increased the chance of war with several countries, including one also led by an insane person with nuclear weapons, North Korea.

* Minorities of whatever stripe are scared to death - literally in many cases, as Trump and his henchmen seek out aliens to jail and/or deport.  It matters not to them if families are struck asunder or if little children are stripped from their parents.  These people, led by that swaggering little criminal, Jeff Sessions, (doesn't he remind you of Himmler?) are almost identical to the jack-booted Nazi thugs throwing Jews on the trains all across Europe in the 1940s.

* Public education is on a death watch.  The person in charge, a "born-again" Christian with more money than god, hates public education and has worked all of her life to destroy it and she is now in process of doing just that.  Teachers everywhere wander into their classrooms in the mornings wondering what fresh hell they will face that day from faceless, hostile bureaucrats.

* Those of us who depend on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all also swirling in fear amidst a variety of rumors that these lifelines will soon be taken from us by nefarious monsters in Trump's White House and with Trump's blessing.  We have learned quickly that in spite of Trump's promises to the contrary those rumors may well come true for Trump does not keep his promises; in fact, part of his insanity is that he doesn't even remember his promises!


If you can't sleep at night, it's a sign that you are a sane and sensible person.  But remember you're not alone.  There are millions of us in the same boat.  And we need to keep bailing to stay afloat which means working to rid ourselves of this insane monster inhabiting the presidential offices.

Sean Spicer Wins Award

Thanks to Professor Chaos for this fine award.

Anti-Semitism in Washington

According to the Huffington Post, Trump did not attend this year's seder in the White House.  He was meeting with his generals, probably planning WWII or a nuclear holocaust because, well, he can.

The fact that he did not attend the seder may not seem like much in and of itself.  He may have had better things to do. That's hard to imagine, however, considering that he spends very little time in the White House doing his job.  In fact, 

Trump would rather travel - mostly between Washington and Mar Lago.  If this continues, by the end of the year, Trump will have spent more on travel than Obama spent in his eight years in office!

But not attending the seder points to a more serious matter.  Trump and his father were known anti-Semites when they were in business together in New York City and at one point had to pay significant fines for not allowing Jews to live in their apartment buildings.

Not much has changed, in spite of the fact his son-in-law in an Orthodox Jew and his daughter, Ivanka, converted to the Orthodox brand of Judaism.

Trump has surrounded himself with white supremacists, people who are out and out anti-Semites, and who have for years  paraded their anti-Semitism openly and proudly.  Trump was and is supported by anti-Semitic groups such as the KKK.  He is considered "their man" in the Oval Office.

Jews in this country should be concerned.  Jews have been persecuted, mainly by Christians, ever since the common era began and the Christian church evolved out of the teachings of St. Paul (notice it did not evolve out of the teachings of Jesus, and in many cases, preached the opposite of what Jesus taught).  It is unlikely that this anti-Semitic streak endemic to Christianity will ever change.  Over two millenia, Christians have murdered Jews by the millions!  

Trump claims to be a Christian which should make Jews very worried.  Trump is not a Christian by any definition of Christian that I can find, thus as with the rest of his life, this claim, also, is fraudulent.  

But wrap that claim around the fact that Trump is a fan of Adolf Hitler and we have a problem.  According to Trump's wife, Melania, the Donald kept a copy of Mein Kampf by his bedside and referred to it often.  We have seen how Trump has copied Hitler by his outright lies and his denial of those lies.  That was a method Hitler applied often.  Trump's need for idolization and adoration is quite like Hitler's similar needs.  The "victory rallies" that Trump set up around the country, months after he had won the election is another example of Trump borrowing from the Hitler playbook.  

Steven Reisner has written an important article for the Huffington Post (4/9/17) titled, "Trump Has Taken A Page Straight From The Hitler Playbook."  What follows is a small piece of that article but I would suggest strongly that you read the entire article.

Toward the conclusion of the article, Reisner says this:

So when Trump stokes ethnic hatred by painting an immigrant ethnic group as criminals, rapists, and drug dealers (in much the same way that Nazi propaganda highlighted Jewish crimes); creates a special Office on Victims of Immigrant Crimes; and calls for a weekly report to "make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens," it does not feel like a leap to harken back to Hitler's creation of a special Office of Racial Policy, and the order from Hitler's Minister of Justice that called on prosecutors to "forward a copy of every [criminal] indictment against a Jew to the ministry's press division."

I play my language game very seriously because, as a Jew, I know that when one group is targeted, we must see all groups as targeted.  As a Jew, I know that when bystanders ignore one outrage and then another and another, they become complicit and less likely to protest as time goes on.  As a Jew, I know better than to confuse my current privilege with safety.  And as a Jew, I know that when they come for the aliens, the Muslims, the Mexicans, when they come for the [fill in the blank], they come for me.

Operating by the seat of his pants

The hypocrisy of da Trumpf is well-documented, so it should not come as a surprise when he is shown to be an even bigger hypocrite than originally suspected, but damn it, it does.

Da Trumpf has been especially concerned that no Syrian refugees (whether man, woman or sick child) sneak their way into this country.  Terrorists, you know. Thus the infamous "ban."  Photos of destitute, ill, starving mothers and their children made no impression on Trump's miniature heart.

The ban was, of course, up-front hypocritical.  The countries on the damn ban list had not been a threat to this country and had never engaged in a terrorist act on our soil.  Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, not on the list, have been and continue to be, terrorist threats.  The Saudis financed Osama bin Laden and the majority of those muck-ups involved in the 9/11 disaster were from Saudi Arabia.

[Which reminds me:  I don't think we've ever gotten a decent explanation from George W. Bushki as to why he saw fit to provide the means for Saudis all over the US to exit the country ASAP after the 9/11 attacks.  We can surmise it was because he knew Saudis were involved even though he hadn't bother to read the intelligence reports provided to him just before the attacks, or we can guess that it was because he and daddy and their friends had been sleeping with the Saudis for years and were involved in all sorts of intricate deals which involved what we know as petroleum.]

Back to the ban.   Saudi Arabia was one of seven countries left off the ban list in which Trump and Co. have significant investments!  There is nothing coincidental about that!

Back to Syria.  Why would da Trumpf decide to send missiles into Syria when he had said all along he would never do such a thing?  We know that what Trump says is meaningless because his brain, even smaller than his heart, allows him to utter all sorts of nonsense, none of which he understands and none of which makes sense.  That's why his lies so often catch up with him.  He can't remember, for example, that he was opposed to military action in Syria.

What changed?  Da Trumpf claims it was the pictures in his mind of mothers and children killed or damaged by chemical weapons supposedly used by the Syrians.  Okay, stop laughing.  We know he doesn't give a damn about Syrian mothers and kids, chemically attacked or not!

So, why did he order the missile barrage?  Well, he needed a distraction.  This whole Russia business was liable to upset his presidential apple cart and he couldn't have that.  Plus, his presidency has turned out to be one of the worst jokes ever played on the American people and the world, and he has no clue where to begin to straighten things out because the only "order" he ever had to utter was "You're fired!" on his make-believe reality show.

He needed a big distraction.  The heat was becoming unbearable in that Oval Office and it was a bitch way down in Palm Beach.  What better way to send the media and everyone else into a manufactured frenzy and get their minds off the massive failure of his presidency than to pretend he cares about mothers and kids in Syria and send in missiles to punish those who perpetrated the chemical attacks.

What the hell.  Violence is terrible.  Let's kill those responsible!

And finally, da Trumpf being the child that he is, wants, like Bushki wanted, to be a "war prezident"!  So, the easiest way to do that is to escalate things in the Middle East by sending missiles into Syria.  And his military advisers are all "hawks" who know that if reality ever strikes this country, their massive budget will be shrunk by at least 75% -- ergo, they need wars.

We can only hope the Russians are not as crazy as our despotic wanna-be dictator.  As those in the know have explained, da Trumpf has moved the Doomsday Clock ... down to 2 and 1/2 minutes to midnight.

But's that's science and our presidential bozo operates by the seat of his pants.


[The phrase, "by the seat of your pants," means, according to the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, to do something "without the necessary experience or ability."]

Another White Supremacist in the White House

Sebastian Gorka, A Nazi Sympathizer By Any Other Name....

The Trump administration is full of hate. Pick your ethnic group, any one and you'll find there's a Trump official that either once belonged to an organization that condemned them or still does. From nationalists to alt-righters, from the KKK to Breitbart, they all have two common characteristics: they are all white supremacists and they all…

Open Thread - Trump [Redacted]

The clever folks at The Slot/Jezebel took Trump's "I'm the President and you're not" interview with Time Magazine... ...and redacted statements that could not be verified as true. Here you go. Check out the rest of it. Open thread below...…

Trump and Treason

The following statement by Michael Moore appeared today on

the Huffington Post.  I couldn't have said it any better 

and Mr. Moore is right on.  

We are, indeed, in the midst of a national emergency with a 

person who appears to be a felonious traitor in the White House!

The Democratic Party needs to declare a National Emergency. For the first time in our history, the President of the United States and his staff are under investigation for espionage. This announcement, by the head of the Trump-friendly FBI, is a shock to our democracy. The Democratic leadership in the House and Senate needs to bring a halt to all business being done in the name of this potential felony suspect, Donald J. Trump. No bill he supports, no Supreme Court nominee he has named, can be decided while he is under a criminal investigation. His presidency has no legitimacy until the FBI - and an independent investigative committee -- discovers the truth. Fellow citizens, demand the Democrats cease all business. "The American people have a right to know if their President is a crook." -- Richard Nixon

Addendum:  It appears that contrary to his own words and the words of Trump, Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, was indeed working directly with Putin and the Russians to extend Russia's influence in the U.S.  One way to do that, of course, was to get Trump elected.

And the best part of our "health insurance plan" ...

...we're going to screw 24 million Americans out of health care!  

[Image from Reuters]

The War Mongers are Back

Trump warned us, but most people weren't listening.  Like Bush II, he wants to be a "war" president.  This often happens to people who have never put on a uniform or have found a method, while in uniform, to remove themselves from danger.

Trump's tiny little fingers have waggled their way into setting us up for another war or multiple wars.  He's proposing a budget which will give a 50 billion plus addition to an already bloated military budget!  (At the expense of hundreds of programs which benefit our country and its people.)  Notice also how we are suddenly being warned about countries dangerous to our health.

Iran is on the list, but Iran's been there for a long time.  Iraq is back.  Unfinished business is what it's being called.  We're still in Afghanistan and it doesn't look like we'll pull of out of that country anytime soon as the Taliban is surging once again.

Now we've got boots on the ground in Syria with the promise of more direct intervention in the near future.  Our war mongers never learn a thing.  And the war mongering Trumpites chant in unison, "We must defeat ISIS!"

Rex Tillerson, the slimey former CEO of Exxon and currently our Secretary of State, is threatening a pre-emptive strike against North Korea.  Does he not know that the man leading North Korean is an genuine psychopath who will send missiles into American cities?

Tillerson must be crazy himself.

Or a war monger!

And why is it that Saudi Arabia always gets a pass even though it is one of the most undemocratic societies in the world and it was mostly Saudis that were responsible for 9/11?  The answer is oil, but you knew that.

And notice how friendly our leadership is with Russia and Putin.  What's that all about?  Are we going to fight Russia's wars?  Putin headed up the deadly KGB for Christ's sake and is one of the most frightening humans on earth!

One thing you can be sure of:  the ones crying for war are NOT the ones who will be fighting.  It will be mostly the minorities, the poor, and those who have nobody looking out for their interests.

The really fearsome thing is that el prezidente does not seem to comprehend nuclear war.  As he builds up our arsenals (after years of difficult negotiations to reduce nuclear weapons) he waggles his tiny little fingers as he flirts with the notion that there is such as thing as a "small" nuclear conflict and/or we can survive a nuclear war.  He is an idiot.  Nuclear war means total destruction for everything on the planet.

Will our representatives do their job and remove this moron from office before it's too late?

The Greediest Americans? Our Politicians!

The following was sent to me by a friend and is so good and so on target I felt it my responsibility to pass it on.  If only it would be read and understood by the millions of Americans living in middle America whose views of life and love have been warped beyond help by FAUX News, Rush Limburger, and other nogoodniks.

Alan Simpson, the former senator from Wyoming, said that senior citizens are "the Greediest Generation," and compared Social Security to a milk cow with 310 million teats.

Patty Myers, who lives in Montana, took umbrage at this typical Republican monster, and decided to help Simpson sequester the truth from his addled Republican brain.

She begins thusly:  Hey Alan, let's get a few things straight!!!!!!

1.  As a career politician, you have been on the public dole (tit) for FIFTY YEARS,

2.  I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 years (since I was 15 years old.  I am now 63.)

3.  My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.

4.  Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you and "your ilk" pulled the proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing retirement and moved the goal posts for full retirement from age 65 to age, 67.  NOW, you and your "shill commission" are proposing to move the goalposts YET AGAIN!

5.  I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from Day One and now "you morons" propose to change the rules of the game.  Why? Because "you idiots" mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an extent that you need to steal our money from Medicare to pay the bills.

6.  I, and millions of other Americans have been paying income taxes our entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again.  Why?  Because you "incompetent bastards" spent our money so profligately that you just kept on spending even after your ran out of money.  Now, you come to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay off YOUR debt.  To add insult to injury, you label us "greedy" for calling "bullshit" to your incompetence.  Well, Captain Bullshit, I have a few questions for YOU.

1.  How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during your pathetic 50-year political career?

2.  At what age did you retire from your pathetic political career, and how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the American taxpayers?

3.  How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance?

4.  What cuts in YOUR retirement and healthcare benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or as usual, have you exempted yourself and your political cronies?


It is you, Captain Bullshit, and your political co-conspirators called Congress who are the "greedy" ones.  It is you and your fellow nutcase thieves who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream from millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers.

And for what?  Votes and your job and retirement security at our expense, you lunk-headed leech.  That's right, sir.  You and yours have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of advancing your pathetic political careers.  You know it, and we know it, and you know that we know it.

And you can take that to the bank, you miserable son of a bitch.  No, I did not stutter!

P.S.  And stop calling Social Security benefits "entitlements."  "WHAT AN INSULT!!  I have been paying in to the SS system for 52 years!  It's my money - give it back to me the way the system was originally designed and stop patting yourself on the the back like you are being generous by doling out these monthly checks!