So how much damage has the Trump presidency inflicted on the country in just a little over six weeks? Wait, that much?

Together we'll destroy this country. That will show them, that will show them all.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Giants in telecommunications, like Verizon and AT&T, will not have to take“reasonable measures” to ensure that their customers’ Social Security numbers, web browsing history and other personal information are not stolen or accidentally released. 

Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase will not be punished, at least for now, for not collecting extra money from customers to cover potential losses from certain kinds of high-risk trades that helped unleash the 2008 financial crisis. 

And Social Security Administration data will no longer be used to try to block individuals with disabling mental health issues from buying handguns, nor will hunters be banned from using lead-based bullets, which can accidentally poison wildlife, on 150 million acres of federal lands. 

These are just a few of the more than 90 regulations that federal agencies and the Republican-controlled Congress have delayed, suspended or reversed in the month and a half since President Trump took office, according to a tally by The New York Times. 

The emerging effort — dozens more rules could be eliminated in the coming weeks — is one of the most significant shifts in regulatory policy in recent decades. It is the leading edge of what Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, described late last month as “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”

Almost every one of these guidelines and restrictions were carefully designed to protect every day citizens like you and me and now they are gone.

This is not even taking into account the new focus on rounding up undocumented immigrants, the Muslim travel ban, and the attempts to repeal Obamacare.

We have heard over and over again that "elections have consequences" but I don't think that has ever been more apparent than it is today.

Donald Trump rails against the kinds of FDA guidelines that might have saved the life of a customer who died after eating in one of his restaurants.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

Last Thursday, the Trump campaign issued—and then quickly deleted—a rant against the “FDA food police,” listing it as one of several “specific regulations to be eliminated” in his new economic plan. Among other things, the campaign whined about the Food and Drug Administration’s standards for “farm and food production hygiene,” safe cooking temperatures, and even “dog food.” 

But these are the exact safety measures that help prevent foodborne illness outbreaks like the one that affected the Purgatorio family in 1989. In fact, the Trump business empire has a long and illustrious history of food poisoning cases and safety violations. 

According to a 1991 Associated Press report, Kathleen and Thomas Purgatorio, then in their sixties, ate the “salmonella-tainted mousse” at a restaurant called Buffet by the Sea in Trump’s Castle Hotel and Casino on Oct. 16, 1989. Kathleen felt sick afterwards, Purgatorio-Howard recalls, but nowhere near as ill as her father who she told The Daily Beast “went from walking into the hospital to being in intensive care on a ventilator in a coma.” 

“He was in critical care from October to December,” Purgatorio-Howard recalled. “We brought him home. We kept him in the living room in a hospital bed. He was in distress the whole time and then, in January, he went back to the hospital and died.”

Purgatorio-Howard, along with others, sued Donald Trump and her case was settled for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Apparently over 100 people were sickened over a span of four days by that same mousse dish.

And this is not an isolated incident either.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

Trump-owned restaurants have been cited over the years for serving month-old caviar, expired veal stock and yogurt, and eggs, cream and sausages that had been stored at unsafe temperatures. 

“The DJT restaurant in the Trump hotel (in Las Vegas) is described on its website as ‘elegant’ and ‘in a class by itself,’” reported KTNV-TV in a 2013 “dirty dining” exposé. “It is indeed in a class by itself this week, receiving the highest number of demerits of all restaurants health inspectors visited.”

Newspaper reports from 1992 show Trump’s properties had “the worst track record for food-related health problems among Atlantic City’s 12 casinos,” with five salmonella outbreaks dating back to 1984. 

“We find it highly unusual that most of our problems in Atlantic City have been associated with the Trump properties,” a health department official for the city said at the time. “The physical part of the [establishments] is top-of-the-line but it all boils down to extremely poor food handling.”

This guy cannot even serve a brunch that does not potentially place his customer's lives at risk and yet he wants to run our country?

And you know that if he were to be President that he would ABSOLUTELY attempt to water down those FDA regulations. And cut taxes for big businesses, and relax EPA restrictions, and do every other thing in his power to make it easier for his businesses to make a higher profit.

Because let's face it, EVERYTHING this guy does is to benefit himself in some way, and he cares NOTHING for the American people.

So what if his contractors don't get paid for the work they provide?

So what if the customers in his restaurants get sick and die after eating in them?

So what if the American people suffer immensely under his administration?

All that ever matters is the bottom line, and the bottom line is how much money can he funnel into his bank account?

I have no idea how people are fooled by this idiot. And the fact that he was chosen as the candidate for the Republican party is an indictment of the GOP.

If he were to win the election that would be an indictment of our whole country.

Robyn O'Brien on kids and food allergies from GMO's. This is one of those videos that you must see, no excuses.

I apologize ahead of time for how much this information is going to bother you today, but not for providing the information to help educate you on the fact that American food suppliers are literally poisoning us, and our children, in the name of higher profits.

My daughter only occasionally insists that I post something on this blog, but she was so adamant about this one that she badgered me for hours to make sure I watched it and then that I shared it with all of you.

I can tell you unequivocally from my experiences working with children for the last thirty years that  Robyn O'Brien's observations are dead on concerning the explosion of nut allergies that have been identified in young children. I assume that most of us grew up in this country and can remember only a handful of children with severe allergies and perhaps NONE who were deathly allergic to nuts. (At least I can remember none, but my daughter numbers among those who I know today.)

In the bigger picture this also speaks to the fact that the Republican talking point that businesses do NOT need consistent and comprehensive regulations is false. Rather than being self regulating, and keeping the best interests of their customers in the forefront of their decision making, they instead treat the consumer as collateral damage on their way to higher profits.

Rick Perry gets very angry at editorial cartoon which points out that his lax regulation policies resulted in the death of 14 fellow Texans. So sensitive!

So the editorial cartoon is above, you can decide for yourself if it is in good taste or not, but it does clearly point out that Governor Perry has often bragged about the fact that businesses come to Texas due to fairly watered down regulations, and that. curiously enough, is also being blamed for the explosion of that fertilizer plant.

Now did old Perry take that lying down? Oh hell no!

He done wrote a letter to the paper that featured it:It was with extreme disgust and disappointment I viewed your recent cartoon. While I will always welcome healthy policy debate, I won't stand for someone mocking the tragic deaths of my fellow Texans and our fellow Americans. Additionally, publishing this on the very day our state and nation paused to honor and mourn those who died only compounds the pain and suffering of the many Texans who lost family and friends in this disaster. The Bee owes the community of West, Texas an immediate apology for your detestable attempt at satire. -- Gov. Rick Perry, Austin, Tex.

Interesting. 

However I have to wonder that if, after a disaster of this magnitude, Perry will start to see the common sense in making sure that businesses which manufacture products that might go boom, poison the atmosphere, or leak into the ground soil or streams are properly regulated for safety?

Or was the EPA perhaps one of the branches of government that Perry famously forgot to list when asked which ones he would get rid of if elected President?

THIS is why we love Elizabeth Warren!

Yesterday the Senate had a hearing asking federal regulators why they were allowing banks caught laundering to remain in business and why none of the employees of those banks had seen the inside of a federal prison?

Here is how Senator Elizabeth "New Sheriff in Town" Warren handled her turn to grill the regulators:  

All of the regulators said they were working on improving regulations and enforcement and protested that it was up to the Department of Justice—not them—to decide whether prosecution was appropriate. (The Justice Department did not have a witness at the hearing.) They were reluctant to weigh in on whether they thought HSBC should have faced trial, even though they consult closely with the DOJ on bank activities. That infuriated Warren: 

"The US government takes money laundering very seriously for a good reason. And it puts strong penalties in place… It's possible to shut down a bank... Individuals can be banned from ever participating in financial services again. And people can be sent to prison. in December, HSBC admitted to... laundering $881 million that we know of... They didn't do it just one time... They did it over and over and over again… They were caught doing it, warned not to do it, and kept right on doing it. And evidently made profits doing it. Now, HSBC paid a fine, but no individual went to trial. No individual was banned from banking and there was no hearing to consider shutting down HSBC's actives in the US.... You're the experts on money laundering. I'd like your opinion. What does it take? How many billions of dollars do you have to launder for drug lords and how many sanctions do you have to violate before someone will consider shutting down a financial institution like this?"

David Cohen, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at Treasury, responded that his department had imposed on HSBC "the largest penalties we've imposed on any financial institution." 

Warren got annoyed. "I'm asking: what does it take to get you to move towards even a hearing to consider shutting down operations for money laundering?" she said. 

Cohen kept evading and Warren got more annoyed. "I'm not hearing your opinion on this," she said. "What does it take even to say, 'here's where the line is'? Draw a line, and if you cross that line you're at risk for having the bank closed." 

Cohen said he had views, but couldn't get into it. 

"It's somewhere beyond $881 million in drug money," Warren concluded on her own, and went on to spell out the injustice of it all. "If you're caught with an ounce of cocaine, you're going to go to jail... But if you launder nearly a billion dollars for international cartels and violate sanctions you pay a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed a night."

Usually after posting something like this I would write some words either criticizing or complimenting the subject of the article, but I am literally sitting here with my jaw hanging open, so feel free to fill in the dead space while I attempt to recover from the awesomeness of this exchange. 

Michelle Obama attends the funeral of young girl gunned down on the streets of Chicago little more than a week after performing at the inauguration.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

By the hundreds, mourners filed into the pews of a crowded church on this city’s South Side on Saturday, clutching one another, weeping and wearing buttons adorned with the smiling face of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl whose death has come to represent the miserable cost of gun and gang violence. 

“She is a representative not just of the people in Chicago, she is a representative of people across this nation who have lost their lives,” said Damon Stewart, Ms. Pendleton’s godfather, as he urged people not to politicize her death. 

An array of Washington officials — the first lady, Michelle Obama; Arne Duncan, the education secretary; and Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House adviser — were among dignitaries sitting in the front row. Ms. Pendleton, a member of her high school’s majorette team, traveled to Washington to perform during President Obama’s inauguration festivities only a week before she was fatally shot here. 

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has met with the girl’s family and spoken emotionally of her dreams for her future, attended, too, as did Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, who had alluded to Ms. Pendleton in his State of the State address. 

As an emerging national debate about firearms has focused largely on mass shootings in places like Newtown, Conn., Ms. Pendleton’s death last month became a symbol for a different element of gun violence — urban and often quickly forgotten. Ms. Pendleton, a student at King College Prep high school, was shot Jan. 29 as she sat after school in a park, about a mile from Mr. Obama’s Chicago home, with friends — a group that the police say was probably mistakenly swept up in the cross-fire of a gang fight. 

In Chicago, people said they viewed the sudden rush of attention on Ms. Pendleton as a needed shift in the consciousness of the nation’s third-largest city, which experienced more than 500 homicides in 2012, many of them from gun violence, and 46 more deaths since the start of 2013. If the city had grown inured at times to the stories of gang-related shootings, largely on the South and West Sides, Ms. Pendleton’s death appeared — at least for now — to have reawakened many people, even those in more upscale neighborhoods away from the worst of the violence and far beyond Chicago.

Yet another senseless death. And this one had nothing to do with assault weapons. Like the majority of gun deaths in this country she was murdered with a handgun.

You know the gun control advocates are taking great pains to tell the pro-gun people that they are not "coming for their guns." But you know I personally have no such compunction.

I have very little respect for the 2nd Amendment these days and would have very little problem with seeing it dramatically changed or repealed altogether. I know that is never going to happen, but that does not make me want it any less.

The real problem with guns in this country is that there are too goddamn many of them! They are fucking everywhere!

I cannot fathom the rational which seems to say that if having one gun makes you safe, than having an arsenal makes you even safer. How does that compute? What are these people frightened of?

Oh that's right, they are afraid of their government.

But not the one that started tapping their phones, or lied them into two wars, or trashed their economy. No THAT government was perfectly fine, it was only when the guy with the dark skin took up residence in the White House that suddenly guns started flying off the shelves by the thousands.

But he problem with having more guns in the hands of so-called "responsible citizens" is that those same people store their weapons in their glove compartment, in their closet, or stuff it under their mattress.  And then some unsavory sort steals it from them, and the next thing you know some young girl, with her whole life in front of her, gets gunned down on the streets.

If your right to own a gun infringes on our right to raise our children in a safe environment, guess which one has to go?

Earlier today somebody made the point that there are more deaths by car accidents than by guns. And that is true.

However the main purpose of cars is for the sake of transportation, NOT to deal death.

What's more you have to pass a test in order to be issued a license to operate a vehicle, when you purchase a car it has to be registered in your name, not to mention that there are safety laws which dictate how fast you can drive one and that also require you to wear a seat belt while driving one, and if you are caught operating one under the influence of drugs or alcohol your right to have one GETS TAKEN THE FUCK AWAY!

So let's compromise. We keep the 2nd Amendment in place, but we have to adopt the same safety measures and regulations that dictate a person's right to operate a motor vehicle on the highways and byways of this country.

If you agree with that, then you are a undoubtedly one of the millions of reasonable gun owners. If not, then you are either a criminal, a paranoid anti-government zealot, or somebody with a mental deficiency, which to me means you should never have access to a gun, of any kind, in the first place.

And yes the government should then most definitely take away your guns.

I'm just saying.