New MIT study suggests that people simply prefer fake news to real news.

Courtesy of The Atlantic:  

The massive new study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s existence—some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years—and finds that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor. By every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter, the study finds: Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories. 

“It seems to be pretty clear [from our study] that false information outperforms true information,” said Soroush Vosoughi, a data scientist at MIT who has studied fake news since 2013 and who led this study. “And that is not just because of bots. It might have something to do with human nature.”

.........

Though Vosoughi and his colleagues only focus on Twitter—the study was conducted using exclusive data that the company made available to MIT—their work has implications for Facebook, YouTube, and every major social network. Any platform that regularly amplifies engaging or provocative content runs the risk of amplifying fake news along with it. 

Though the study is written in the clinical language of statistics, it offers a methodical indictment of the accuracy of information that spreads on these platforms. A false story is much more likely to go viral than a real story, the authors find. A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does. And while false stories outperform the truth on every subject—including business, terrorism and war, science and technology, and entertainment—fake news about politics regularly does best. 

Twitter users seem almost to prefer sharing falsehoods. Even when the researchers controlled for every difference between the accounts originating rumors—like whether that person had more followers or was verified—falsehoods were still 70 percent more likely to get retweeted than accurate news. 

And blame for this problem cannot be laid with our robotic brethren. From 2006 to 2016, Twitter bots amplified true stories as much as they amplified false ones, the study found. Fake news prospers, the authors write, “because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.”

Well, that's disheartening. 

How do we actually reach and educate people who are conditioned to only respond to explosive headlines and hyperbolic content?

No seriously, I'm asking.

An editorial from the The Atlantic that we should ALL read.

Courtesy of The Atlantic:  

The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy. The problem is not just Donald Trump; it’s the larger political apparatus that made a conscious decision to enable him. In a two-party system, nonpartisanship works only if both parties are consistent democratic actors. If one of them is not predictably so, the space for nonpartisans evaporates. We’re thus driven to believe that the best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers, and of saving the Republican Party from itself, is to do as Toren Beasley did: vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former). 

Of course, lots of people vote a straight ticket. Some do so because they are partisan. Others do so because of a particular policy position: Many pro-lifers, for example, will not vote for Democrats, even pro-life Democrats, because they see the Democratic Party as institutionally committed to the slaughter of babies.

We’re proposing something different. We’re suggesting that in today’s situation, people should vote a straight Democratic ticket even if they are not partisan, and despite their policy views. They should vote against Republicans in a spirit that is, if you will, prepartisan and prepolitical. Their attitude should be: The rule of law is a threshold value in American politics, and a party that endangers this value disqualifies itself, period. In other words, under certain peculiar and deeply regrettable circumstances, sophisticated, independent-minded voters need to act as if they were dumb-ass partisans.

The title of this article is "Boycott the Republican party."

And that is exactly what the article is advocating.

For very good reason in fact.

As you can see from the article below, the Republican party is now the party of Donald Trump, and therefore also the party of Vladimir Putin.

This is NOT the Red Scare of the 1950's for which Joseph McCarthy was justifiably vilified.

Unlike that case there is overwhelming evidence that we are under constant attack from a foreign entity determined to turn us against each other, and to undermine our democracy.

If the Republican party is unable to recognize that, or protect us from that, they have no right to represent us in Washington, or even in local state offices.

Radiologist explains the difference between an AR-15 and a handgun.

Courtesy of The Atlantic:  

As I opened the CT scan last week to read the next case, I was baffled. The history simply read “gunshot wound.” I have been a radiologist in one of the busiest trauma centers in the nation for 13 years, and have diagnosed thousands of handgun injuries to the brain, lung, liver, spleen, bowel, and other vital organs. I thought that I knew all that I needed to know about gunshot wounds, but the specific pattern of injury on my computer screen was one that I had seen only once before. 

In a typical handgun injury that I diagnose almost daily, a bullet leaves a laceration through an organ like the liver. To a radiologist, it appears as a linear, thin, grey bullet track through the organ. There may be bleeding and some bullet fragments. 

I was looking at a CT scan of one of the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, with extensive bleeding. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage? 

The reaction in the emergency room was the same. One of the trauma surgeons opened a young victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, a semi-automatic rifle which delivers a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. There was nothing left to repair, and utterly, devastatingly, nothing that could be done to fix the problem. The injury was fatal.

The doctor goes on to explain that the higher velocity of the Ar-15 bullets allows them to essentially rip through the human body and obliterate internal organs, and even cause enough damage that a victim can bleed out quickly even if no major arteries are damaged. 

In short though both a handgun and an assault rifle are designed to kill human beings, however an AR-15 is designed to ensure the death of its victims even if they receive prompts medical care.

So why in the hell would that weapon be available to individuals NOT entering a war zone?

Atlantic journalist lays out why Robert Mueller will never indict Donald Trump. Not what we want to hear, but he makes a good point.

Courtesy of The Atlantic:  

Mueller will not indict Trump for obstruction of justice or for any other crime. Period. Full stop. End of story. Speculations to the contrary are just fantasy.

(Yes, I wanted to stop reading right about here as well, but I urge you to at least read to the bottom of the post.)

He won’t do it for the good and sufficient reason that the Department of Justice has a long-standing legal opinion that sitting presidents may not be indicted. First issued in 1973 during the Nixon era, the policy was reaffirmed in 2000, during the Clinton era. These rules bind all Department of Justice employees, and Mueller, in the end, is a Department of Justice employee. More to the point, if we know anything about Mueller, we think we know that he follows the rules—all of them. Even the ones that restrict him in ways he would prefer they not. And if he were to choose not to follow the rules, that, in turn, would be a reasonable justification for firing him. So … the special counsel will not indict the president. 

What can Mueller do if he finds evidence of criminality involving the president? He can and will (as authorized by Department of Justice regulations) file a report on his findings with the attorney general (or, since Attorney General Sessions is, in this case, recused, with the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein). Rosenstein will then be faced with the important decision of whether and how to make that report public—whether to convey it to Congress or not; whether to release it publicly or not. The regulations are so vague (they say only that he “may determine that public release of these reports would be in the public interest, to the extent that release would comply with applicable legal restrictions”) that they, in effect, give Rosenstein plenary discretion to do whatever he thinks is in the best interest of the country. 

So, every time you read about the threat to fire Mueller, remember this—the critical actor in most future scenarios is not Mueller, but Rosenstein. Knowing Rosenstein personally, I have high confidence that he will make what he thinks is the best decision for the country—the same may not be true of his replacement (or of the replacement attorney general, should Sessions be fired). That, of course, is why the highly dubious “secret memo” prepared by House Republicans reportedly targets Rosenstein—even though he is a Trump appointee who advocated firing Comey, Trump supporters fear he will follow the rule of law.

Well that sucks.

It also could help to explain not only why Trump seems so convinced that the Mueller investigation will not end his presidency, but also why the Republicans are attempting to undermine Rosenstein.

If Trump replaces Rosenstein with his own guy, he could make sure that Mueller's findings, no matter how scandalous, will never see the light of day.

That means, and has likely always meant, that the only way to remove Trump from office is through impeachment.

And the only way to accomplish that is to flood the House and the Senate with as many Democrats as possible.

In other words it is up to us, the voters.

Mike Pence's wife finds Donald Trump "reprehensible...totally vile."

Mike Pence's wife Karen finds Donald Trump “reprehensible -- just totally vile," a former campaign aide tells @mckaycoppins: https://t.co/HTJr56F6Fd

— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) December 5, 2017

My first reaction to this was, "Who doesn't?"

But also if this is the case, and we all know that Pence is afraid to wipe his ass without his wife's permission, then why did she allow him to share the ticket with this pig?

The simple answer is power, and the possibility that if Trump is impeached that Karen Pence might become the First Lady.

Christian values are great and all, but they do not stand a chance against access to unfettered power and prestige.

Donald Trump Jr. communicated with Wikileaks via Twitter and appears to have done their bidding on a few occasions.

Courtesy of the Atlantic:  

Just before the stroke of midnight on September 20, 2016, at the height of last year’s presidential election, the WikiLeaks Twitter account sent a private direct message to Donald Trump Jr., the Republican nominee’s oldest son and campaign surrogate. “A PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” WikiLeaks wrote. “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who is behind it. Any comments?” (The site, which has since become a joint project with Mother Jones, was founded by Rob Glaser, a tech entrepreneur, and was funded by Progress for USA Political Action Committee.) 

The next morning, about 12 hours later, Trump Jr. responded to WikiLeaks. “Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around,” he wrote on September 21, 2016. “Thanks.”The messages, obtained by The Atlantic, were also turned over by Trump Jr.’s lawyers to congressional investigators. They are part of a long—and largely one-sided—correspondence between WikiLeaks and the president’s son that continued until at least July 2017. 

The messages show WikiLeaks, a radical transparency organization that the American intelligence community believes was chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked, actively soliciting Trump Jr.’s cooperation. WikiLeaks made a series of increasingly bold requests, including asking for Trump’s tax returns, urging the Trump campaign on Election Day to reject the results of the election as rigged, and requesting that the president-elect tell Australia to appoint Julian Assange ambassador to the United States.

......

Though Trump Jr. mostly ignored the frequent messages from WikiLeaks, he at times appears to have acted on its requests. When WikiLeaks first reached out to Trump Jr. about putintrump.org, for instance, Trump Jr. followed up on his promise to “ask around.” According to a source familiar with the congressional investigations into Russian interference with the 2016 campaign, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, on the same day that Trump Jr. received the first message from WikiLeaks, he emailed other senior officials with the Trump campaign, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, telling them WikiLeaks had made contact. Kushner then forwarded the email to campaign communications staffer Hope Hicks. At no point during the 10-month correspondence does Trump Jr. rebuff WikiLeaks, which had published stolen documents and was already observed to be releasing information that benefited Russian interests.

First off Wikileaks "guessed" the password to a progressive anti-Trump website?

Yeah, right.

And secondly, Wikileaks was echoing the message from the Kremlin trolls for Trump to refuse to concede even if he lost the election?

Interesting.

Thirdly, gotcha Junior!

For his part Don Junior has already confirmed that these emails exist, though I am not sure he understands how devastating they will turn out to be for his father's claim there was no collusion with Russia.

Here is the entire chain of messages with @wikileaks (with my whopping 3 responses) which one of the congressional committees has chosen to selectively leak. How ironic! 1/3 pic.twitter.com/SiwTqWtykA

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 14, 2017

(There! Happy now? I gave you the emails.)

For instance Junior somehow got his father to tweet about the hacked Podesta emails 15 minutes after Wikileaks asked him to.

We've now updated the story with @ByronTau's great catch: @realDonaldTrump tweeted about the release of Podesta's emails *15 minutes* after @Wikileaks wrote to @DonaldJTrumpJr about it. https://t.co/pVGEBqmB9O pic.twitter.com/pOszShJ7JY

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) November 13, 2017

🤔 https://t.co/ZYk79Niw5a pic.twitter.com/3OpXf8ii1v

— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) November 13, 2017

As we now know the American intelligence community recognizes Wikileaks as an agent for the Kremlin.

In other words, smoke meet gun. 

So now Trump sets his sights on the 1st Amendment. Knew this was coming.

Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2017

Courtesy of The Atlantic:  

Frustrated with a set of damning reports about his relationship with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—including the nugget that Tillerson called him a “moron” (perhaps with an R-rated modifier)—the president offered a new suggestion on Twitter Thursday morning: Why not explore government censorship of the press?

Trump had been relatively quiet on Twitter for a few days, following the massacre in Las Vegas and his trip to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, but the Tillerson stories on Wednesday set off a new tirade of tweets against the press. Most of them are the standard “Fake news!” variety—never mind that there have been stories of Trump-Tillerson tension for months, and that multiple outlets have confirmed the “moron” anecdote—but the president is calling for something different here. He is suggesting that the Senate bring its investigative powers to bear on news reports that are, from all indications save Tillerson’s non-denial denial, entirely accurate.

Those of you who have been paying attention, may remember that this is not the first time that Trump has threatened the American press.

Courtesy of an NPR story from back in February 2016: 

Feeling maligned by the media, Donald Trump is threatening to weaken First Amendment protections for reporters if he were president and make it easier for him to sue them. 

“I love free press. I think it’s great,” he said Saturday on Fox News Channel, before quickly adding, “We ought to open up the libel laws, and I’m going to do that.” 

The changes envisioned by the celebrity businessman turned Republican front-runner would mean that “when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money,” he said at a rally Friday in Fort Worth, Texas. 

Trump added that, should he win the election, news organizations that have criticized him will “have problems.” He specifically cited The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Make no mistake, Trump does not see himself as a president. He sees himself as a dictator.

And just like his idols Adolph Hitler and Vladimir Putin he has no patience with a press that insists on reporting accurately about him and his administration.

As suspected Donald Trump is using the presidency to gain more wealth.

Yesterday Trump's 2017 financial disclosure was released.

I started to read through it in order to write an in depth analysis, before realizing that I don't know shit about finances and going to the movies instead.

However there are others who did not sleep through their economics classes, and THEY have made some discoveries.

For instance The Atlantic discovered that Trump is using his office to make his properties more profitable:   

President Trump says he’s received tens of millions of dollars in income from the golf courses and resorts whose profile he boosted during frequent visits since taking office, according to filings released Friday by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. 

The 98 pages of financial disclosures offer a partial snapshot of Trump’s income and assets from January 2016 to April this year, as well as indications he’s reaped at least a partial windfall since his most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission last year. The filings offer less detailed information about his precise financial situation than would be obtained from his tax returns. Trump broke with modern precedents by refusing to release those returns on the campaign trail or during his presidency.

Properties that Trump frequently visited as president saw the largest boost in income. Trump claimed more than $37 million in income from Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach County resort in Florida he described as his “Winter White House,” as well as $20 million in income from the nearby golf club he owns in Jupiter, Florida. His claimed Mar-a-Lago income rose rapidly since his last two financial disclosures with the FEC: Trump reported more than $15 million in income from the resort in the 2015 report, followed by $29 million in the 2016 version.

So apparently while we were all criticizing Trump for constantly visiting golf clubs and resorts instead of working, he was in fact using his office to draw attention to them and make them more profitable.

Which, in my opinion, is actually much worse.

Here is a president who may be slow to respond to national disasters because he is too busy doing free advertising for one of his many commercial properties.

However the report is not all good news for Trump's finances, because we also learned that he owes hundreds of millions of dollars and may not be nearly as wealthy as he claims.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

President Donald Trump had personal liabilities of at least $315.6 million to German, U.S. and other lenders as of mid-2017, according to a federal financial disclosure form released late on Friday by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. 

Trump reported income of at least $594 million for 2016 and early 2017 and assets worth at least $1.4 billion. 

Only 1.4 billion in assets huh?

Now I'm sure that Trump would dispute this and claim that it only shows a portion of his "vast wealth," but until we see his tax returns this is really all we have to go on.

And having over 300 million in liabilities certainly does not speak well of his money management skills either.

Using the White House to make money, while lying about his wealth, and owing creditors over 300 millions dollars.

THAT is who the Russians, and of course deplorables, thought should run this country.

Yeah, that impeachment thing really cannot happen soon enough in my opinion.

Trump White House becomes obsessed with Russian probe while Capitol Hill Republicans resign themselves to watching the presidency end in disaster.

Courtesy of Politico: 

President Donald Trump has been aggressively working the phones since returning this weekend from his foreign trip, talking to friends and outside lawyers as he obsesses over the deepening investigations into his aides and Russia. 

Two White House officials said Trump and some aides including Steve Bannon are becoming increasingly convinced that they are victims of a conspiracy against Trump's presidency, as evidenced by the number of leaks flowing out of government — that the crusade by the so-called “deep state” is a legitimate threat, not just fodder for right wing defenders.

Still, Trump and his aides are starting to take the probes more seriously, seeking to establish a communications team dedicated to dealing with questions around the probe and beefing up his legal representation. And they've become more rattled by the idea that they don't know where the scandals are headed and who may be ensnared next.

That could be good news for the country, since a Donald Trump obsessed with the Russian probes, is a Donald Trump not actively screwing up the country.

Apparently the White House staffers have no idea what plan, if any, Trump has for dealing with all of this either:  

Aside from bringing in additional aides to handle the Russia probe, the president's senior aides say that his strategy for confronting the crises — or for pushing a stalled legislative agenda — remains unclear. 

Senior aides and long-time confidants admitted not knowing who Trump would hire, how safe the jobs of top staff are, what the White House's agenda is for the coming days, or what — if anything — they can accomplish.

“We are letting others dictate entirely how we are perceived," one White House official said. “The calendar changes every day. There is no rhyme or reason to a lot of it.”

I would suspect that Trump has no idea what to do about any of this, and probably knows for a fact that things will only get worse from here.

And it is unlikely he will get much help from Capitol Hill.

Courtesy of The Atlantic: 

For the Republicans running the government, Capitol Hill has become a workplace with extremely poor morale. The moderates fear for their careers, while the conservative true believers see little to hope for. When the liberal magazine Mother Jones credited Representative Justin Amash of Michigan with being the first Republican to raise the possibility of impeachment, the office of Representative Carlos Curbelo of Florida called to request a correction: Curbelo had gone there first. 

But for the most part, his party has not openly turned on Trump. What would be the point? Behind closed doors, a longtime House Republican staffer told me, a few lawmakers still wholeheartedly defend the president; among the rest, there are differing degrees of fatalism. One group thinks it is possible to fight through the crisis, while another is resigned to “a long slow death,” as this staffer put it, potentially culminating in a Democratic-controlled House beginning impeachment proceedings in 2019. “This is like Reservoir Dogs,” the staffer said. “Everyone ends up dead on the floor.”

Well there's a graphic image for you.

However it also means that the Republicans, who immediately started pushing through policies to undermine and repeal various social programs, may become too uncertain about the future to risk putting their names on any new bills which might come back to haunt them in the next election cycle.

And that could be good news indeed.

The Atlantic explains why Trump scandals are good for Vladimir Putin.

Sort of obvious that Putin has reaped exactly what he set out to sow in the first place.

He has dramatically undermined American democracy and demonstrated his own power at the same time.

And his success is currently being supported and defended by the very Republicans who spoke out so harshly against the Soviet Union back during the Reagan Administration.

They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, I wonder if anybody has taken the temperature inside the White House lately?

Putting to rest the argument that Hillary Clinton lost because she ignored the Middle Class. She didn't.

Courtesy of The Atlantic:

In the days after her shocking loss, Democrats complained that Clinton had no jobs agenda. A widely shared essay in The Nation blamed Clinton's "neoliberalism" for abandoning the voters who swung the election. “I come from the white working class,” Bernie Sanders said on CBS This Morning, “and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to where I came from.” 

But here is the troubling reality for civically minded liberals looking to justify their preferred strategies: Hillary Clinton talked about the working class, middle class jobs, and the dignity of work constantly. And she still lost. 

She detailed plans to help coal miners and steel workers. She had decades of ideas to help parents, particularly working moms, and their children. She had plans to help young men who were getting out of prison and old men who were getting into new careers. She talked about the dignity of manufacturing jobs, the promise of clean-energy jobs, and the Obama administration’s record of creating private-sector jobs for a record-breaking number of consecutive months. She said the word “job” more in the Democratic National Convention speech than Trump did in the RNC acceptance speech; she mentioned the word “jobs” more during the first presidential debate than Trump did. She offered the most comprehensively progressive economic platform of any presidential candidate in history—one specifically tailored to an economy powered by an educated workforce. 

What’s more, the evidence that Clinton lost because of the nation’s economic disenchantment is extremely mixed. Some economists found that Trump won in counties affected by trade with China. But among the 52 percent of voters who said economics was the most important issue in the election, Clinton beat Trump by double digits. In the vast majority of swing states, voters said they preferred Clinton on the economy. If the 2016 election had come down to economics exclusively, the working class—which, by any reasonable definition, includes the black, Hispanic, and Asian working classes, too—would have elected Hillary Clinton president.

The Atlantic goes on to report that it appears the reason that Trump did as well as he did is because he essentially promised people whatever they wanted to hear.

Rather than talking about the economy and jobs in a broad sense, Donald Trump promised that he would protect the jobs of each and every person who came to his rallies. A promise that there is no way in hell he could ever keep.

If Hillary Clinton made a mistake it was by telling the truth, while many much preferred the lies spilling from the orange anus shaped mouth of Donald Trump.

Hillary Clinton did not fail to make her argument to the Middle Class, it's just that many in the Middle Class failed to understand the truth in what she was saying.

Of course we have to add that fact to the fake news stories, the Russian hackers, and the FBI sabotage as well.

Max Weiss over at HuffPo listed all of the things he blames for Hillary's "defeat" including misogyny, fake news, and Bernie Sanders but does NOT include Hillary Clinton in that list:

She won every debate. She came up with well thought out, concrete plans to govern. She carried herself with dignity and grace, despite all the endless, misogynist shit that was hurled at her. She was nothing short of heroic.

Exactly. 

At the start of this election cycle way back in 2015 I was a lukewarm supporter of Hillary's. But by the time we reached election day I was an honorary "nasty woman" doing everything I could to spread the news that she was uniquely qualified for the job of leading this nation.

I did not come to that conclusion based solely on my disgust with her opponent, I came to that conclusion based on what a bad ass she turned out to be. 

I make this point because it is important historically for us to remember that we did not run a deeply flawed candidate in 2016, but rather that the campaign against her was unprecedented in the fact that it used the illegal activities of a foreign government, the intrusion of the FBI, very likely some vote tampering, and the ignorance of a large segment of the American population to beat her.

And yet, despite all that, Hillary still won the popular vote by over 2.5 million.

If it looks like a Nazi, sounds like a Nazi, and salutes like a Nazi, well that right there is a Trump supporter.

Courtesy of The Atlantic: 

“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” 

That’s how Richard B. Spencer saluted more than 200 attendees on Saturday, gathered at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., for the annual conference of the National Policy Institute, which describes itself as “an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.” 

Spencer has popularized the term “alt-right” to describe the movement he leads. Spencer has said his dream is “a new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans,” and has called for “peaceful ethnic cleansing.” 

For most of the day, a parade of speakers discussed their ideology in relatively anodyne terms, putting a presentable face on their agenda. But after dinner, when most journalists had already departed, Spencer rose and delivered a speech to his followers dripping with anti-Semitism, and leaving no doubt as to what he actually seeks. He referred to the mainstream media as “Lügenpresse,” a term he said he was borrowing from “the original German”; the Nazis used the word to attack their critics in the press. 

“America was until this past generation a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity,” Spencer said. “It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.” 

You know I saw a few Trump surrogates making the point that these people do not represent the majority of Trump supporters by any means, but I don't think that's true at all.

After all Donald Trump came to national attention by calling into question the first black President's legitimacy to hold that office.

There are suggestions that his father was a member of the KKK.

Ex-wife Ivana Trump claimed that Trump slept with a collection of Hitler speeches by his bed.

And he has risen to power by targeting certain groups, in this case Muslims and Mexicans, and used hate to attract followers who are almost exclusively white and believe they lost this country to the immigrants and brown people.

So is Donald Trump a Nazi?

For all intents and purposes, yeah I think he probably is.

After all he is clearly the leader of the "Alt Right" and they have now revealed their true selves.

Welcome to Germany in the 1930's.

"How American Politics went insane." An article that every American voter needs to read.

Like Trump, Bernie Sanders appealed to the antipolitical idea that the mere act of voting for him would prompt a “revolution” that would somehow clear up such knotty problems as health-care coverage, financial reform, and money in politics. Like Trump, he was a self-sufficient outsider without customary political debts or party loyalty. Like Trump, he neither acknowledged nor cared—because his supporters neither acknowledged nor cared—that his plans for governing were delusional. 

Trump, Sanders, and Ted Cruz have in common that they are political sociopaths—meaning not that they are crazy, but that they don’t care what other politicians think about their behavior and they don’t need to care. That three of the four final presidential contenders in 2016 were political sociopaths is a sign of how far chaos syndrome has gone. The old, mediated system selected such people out. The new, disintermediated system seems to be selecting them in. 

That is only two paragraphs in an exceeding long article which explains how our current anti-establishment ideas about choosing candidates, implementing policies, and reforming government are actually causing long term harm to our country.

Author Jonathon Rauch, dives deep to explain how things such as party leaders, pork barrel spending, and political compromise, which are all widely derided in today's politics, were actually good for the country and helped to keep in running relatively smoothly until recently.

I found the article to be very informative and somewhat empowering as it reinforced many of the points that I have made here on IM about  the problems with political revolutions and uncompromising partisanship.

It also reminded me of a discussion I had with my daughter about Bernie Sanders during which she said that she admired him because he never compromised his values.

My response to her, and I think I wrote about it here as well, is that while it is great to have strong values, a politician who refuses to compromise is a politician who will never get a damn thing accomplished.

I told her that I found the idea of electing ANY President who thinks that they can force through their agenda without considering the obstruction they will face from their opposition, to be very a troubling thought indeed. Even IF I was in agreement with that President on most issues. 

That is also why I was never really on board with the so-called Bernie political "revolution," which seemed for all intents and purposes to be a left leaning version of the Tea Party.

If the Democrats start electing anti-establishment, extremely partisan, candidates to send to Washington, not only will that fire up the right wing fringe even more, but it will simply pour more concrete into the political machinery of DC resulting in an even worse situation than the one we face right now.

If such a thing is even possible.

So definitely take the time to read this article.

Yes it is a little long, but it is also very thought provoking, and probably the shot of reality that a lot of American voters need right now.

Rape Culture in Alaska

The Atlantic has a long and incredibly detailed report of rape and sexual assault in Alaska that will literally depress the hell out of you.

However I think it is an important article and I urge all of you to read it.

Here are a few of the lowlights:  

In its short history as a state, Alaska has earned an unnerving epithet: It is the rape capital of the U.S. At nearly 80 rapes per 100,000, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, Alaska’s rape rate is almost three times the national average; for child sexual assault, it’s nearly six times. And, according to the 2010 Alaska Victimization Survey, the most comprehensive data to date, 59 percent of Alaskan women have been victims of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, or both. 

But those numbers, say researchers, just skim the surface. Since sex crimes are generally underreported, and may be particularly underreported in Alaska for cultural reasons. “Those numbers are conservative,” says Ann Rausch, a program coordinator at Alaska’s Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. “They’re still staggering.” 

The causes of the violence are complex and entrenched. Government officials, law enforcement personnel, and victim advocates note the state’s surfeit of risk factors, from an abundance of male-dominated industries, like oil drilling and the military, to the state’s vast geography, with many communities that have no roads and little law enforcement. “There are so many factors that tip the scale for Alaska,” says Linda Chamberlain, executive director of the Alaska Family Violence Prevention Project. Not the least among them: the lack strong law enforcement presence, or support services of any kind, in remote towns like Tanana. “It’s easier for perpetrators to isolate their victims and not get caught. And for people not to get help.”

The reason that so many sexual assaults are not reported is also fairly unique to Alaska:

While few victims deny that sexual assault and domestic violence should be punishable crimes, the public shaming of an elder or father or brother is a big deal in a village where everyone is related—either by blood, or by a lifelong relationship just as binding. “Everybody knows who’s doing what,” Erickson told me. “It’s common river knowledge. Who’s the molester. Who’s the abuser.” But families struggle to protect one another and their lives going forward, knowing that anyone they offend will be at the post office the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. Winters are long, brutal, and dark, and in a tight-knit, tiny community, connected to most of its income, medical care, and law enforcement only by airplane, conflicts often simmer in silence. Flights aren’t cheap; when tensions build, there’s no place to go. 

For that reason, family members often blame the victims, or the friends of victims, who attempt to report a crime, out of fear of losing material support, or a vital link in a precarious web of familial structure. When a young man from Tanana was accused of sexually abusing several village children a few years ago, some of his relatives verbally attacked the woman who turned him in, saying, “Shame on you. He had his whole life in front of him and you’re going to ruin it.” 

The cold hard facts are that men are more highly regarded in native villages than are women, who even today are seen as second class citizens, and less deserving of support then the men who hunt and fish for food to feed the village or work to bring money home to the local economy.

That's why, as I pointed out earlier, Sean Parnell's "Choose Respect"  is of no real value.

This problem is deeply ingrained in parts of Alaska society, and the ONLY thing that will make a significant difference is to spend a significant amount of money to create educational programs that will set up shop in these far flung villages, and more law enforcement professionals who are assigned the task of  making sure that predators are punished and victims are protected.

But I can tell you right now that the Republicans up here have no intention of spending money that will not create a return on their investment, and protecting the women who are NOT their own wives and daughters is of little interest to men who see natives as little more than savages, and who could not care less what happens in communities that many of them will never visit.