Donald Trump's "Grab'em by the pussy" tape to run on a huge screen for 12 hours near the Washington Monument.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

It was just a few minutes of audio and video, but it was so packed with vulgar, sexist and curse-laden language that some expected it to derail Donald Trump’s run for the White House. 

Now, just days removed from the one-year anniversary of the Access Hollywood tape’s release, a group devoted to fighting sexism wants to make sure President Trump and the rest of the country remember what he told Billy Bush while on a tour bus in 2005. 

The group, Ultraviolet, will splash the video across a screen almost 10 feet high and 16 feet wide set in between the White House and the Washington Monument on Constitution Avenue, and the images and the audio of Trump’s comments will run over and over Friday for 12 consecutive hours. The clip will start rolling at 9 a.m. EDT.

Wow, so that means this thing is currently running quite close to the White House.

I bet this is really making Trump's day.

Perhaps the one thing that will forever nag me is why this tape did not end Trump's candidacy the minute it hit the public airwaves?

Because it certainly should have. 

The "Trump Effect" is negatively affecting employee morale and workplace cohesion, while also hurting productivity in corporate America.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

Donald Trump’s abrasive style isn’t just making it hard to run the White House — it’s handicapping corporate America, as well. 

HR and leadership experts say a “Trump effect” has made a new norm of bad behavior, from dropping f-bombs to fudging details on resumes to spreading false rumors about co-workers, all of which stifles teamwork, dampens morale, and hurts productivity.

“It violates all the norms and the niceties of how one should behave,” said Gary Namie, director and co-founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute. “What it’s exposing is the very, very dark side of our society.” 

Career coaches report an increased willingness to engage in unethical behavior, like lying about past experience or performance in a job interview, or making a promise with no intention of keeping it. 

“It’s allowing individuals who may be on the fence when it comes to a moral compass to engage in bad behavior. It allows them to justify that behavior, it gives them an excuse,” said Roy Cohen, a career counselor and executive coach. “We expect people to take the high ground… that’s where the reversal seems to be happening. Bad behavior is almost a badge of honor,” he said.

The acrimony is fracturing workplace cohesion. According to an April survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, 46 percent of workers said their relationships with colleagues have deteriorated since the election last November.

Oh so it is not only the racists and xenophobes who came out of the woodwork during the campaign and after the election, now it is also sexists, liars, and vulgarians.

Well I'm certainly tired of all this winning, how about the rest of you?

The ugly argument over Open Carry has become significantly uglier.

Courtesy of Salon:  

Moms Demand Action, a group formed after the Sandy Hook shooting to crack down on gun violence, began pressuring the Kroger supermarket chain to prohibit “open carry” in its stores after gun extremists used Kroger stores to demonstrate their “rights.” Gun laws are lax in many states, and it can be legal to openly carry a firearm with no training, and, in some cases, no background checks. The Kroger campaign is the most recent in a string of corporate responsibility efforts in which mothers, flanked by other gun violence prevention advocates, have asked companies to tighten gun policies, arguing that the businesses have an obligation to keep their customers safe. 

Of course, gun extremists did not respond kindly to the Kroger campaign. What follows is a recounting of their disturbing tactics, from the shocking intimidation and harassment of unsuspecting commenters on Kroger’s Facebook page to right-wing media propaganda that disingenuously portrayed Kroger as being allies of the gun extremists. 

Secret Facebook groups such as “People Who Were Blocked by Moms Demand Action Demand Action Now” — which has well over a thousand members — disseminated gun rights propaganda and helped orchestrate attacks on individuals commenting on Kroger’s page. Some gun nuts combed the profile pages of people commenting in support of gun reform, harvested personal photos of them and Photoshopped them to include obscene or humiliating comments, before reposting the photos on Kroger’s page, or on other social media sites. Because Kroger frequently bans users who post that kind of content, the gun extremists created disposable fake accounts — sometimes using the name and profile photo of an opponent— to quickly dump posts without being held accountable. 

In one case, they found a photo of a woman’s preschool-age child and wrote on it, “My mom sucks more cock than Richard Simmons” and circulated it online. In another case, they grabbed a photo of a mother and her child and wrote “Big retard, little retard” on it before reposting it. One woman posted to Kroger a photograph of a receipt showing money she spent elsewhere, and gun extremists swarmed her post, with hundreds of responses, including comments like “what you could do is shut your god damned whore mouth,” “calm your tits,” and “fuck her right in the pussy,” which Kroger’s Facebook admin allowed to stand over a day later.

The article goes on to say that the approach of these extremists seems to be to attack protesters en masse and intimidate them into walking away from the debate. And that is some cases that is working.

There really is no way to have a reasonable disagreement with people like this, and since they literally view gun rights as something bestowed upon them by their creator they see all attempts to apply oversight to gun sales as an attack on their deeply held faith.

I think the first thing that anybody who wants to work toward creating responsible gun policies in this country needs to do is to develop a thick skin, and to recognize that the more hate and vitriol they attract the better they are doing their jobs.

Besides if we even prevent one more unnecessary death, isn't that worth being called a few ugly names on Facebook?