Last Call For Too Many Cooks

And former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg is making good on his threat to upend the Democratic 2020 primary by filing to enter the Alabama primary tomorrow.

Michael R. Bloomberg is actively preparing to enter the Democratic presidential primary and is expected to file paperwork this week designating himself as a candidate in at least one state with an early filing deadline, people briefed on Mr. Bloomberg’s plans said.

Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman, has been privately weighing a bid for the White House for weeks and has not yet made a final decision on whether to run, an adviser said. But in the first sign that he is seriously moving toward a campaign, Mr. Bloomberg has dispatched staffers to Alabama to gather signatures to qualify for the primary there. Though Alabama does not hold an early primary, it has a Friday deadline for candidates to formally enter the race.

Should Mr. Bloomberg proceed with a campaign, it could represent a seismic disruption in the Democratic race. With his immense personal wealth, centrist views and close ties to the political establishment, he would present a grave and instantaneous threat to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has been struggling to raise money and assemble a ideologically moderate coalition.

But Mr. Bloomberg could also reshape the race in other ways, intensifying the Democrats’ existing debates about economic inequality and corporate power, and offering fodder to the party’s rising populist wing, led by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who contend that the extremely rich already wield far too much influence in politics. Mr. Bloomberg has repeatedly expressed discomfort with certain policies favored by both Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders.

Howard Wolfson, a close adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, said on Thursday that the former mayor viewed President Trump as an “unprecedented threat to our nation,” and noted Mr. Bloomberg’s heavy spending in the 2018 midterm elections and this week’s off-year races in Virginia. Mr. Bloomberg, he said, has grown uneasy about the existing trajectory of the Democratic primary.

“We now need to finish the job and ensure that Trump is defeated — but Mike is increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned to do that,” Mr. Wolfson said. “If Mike runs he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist.”

Once again, Bloomberg has no shot whatsoever:

Mr. Bloomberg will have to move quickly if he is to compete in a serious way for the Democratic nomination. Beyond Alabama, several other states have filing deadlines in quick succession, including New Hampshire, with its crucial early primary. While he has maintained a cluster of high-powered advisers in New York, he would have to build a campaign from zero in the early primary and caucus states, and it may be difficult for him to qualify for the two remaining debates this year.

In a Democratic race, Mr. Bloomberg would face a battery of complicated questions about his political ideology and governing record. He has been a vigorous advocate for core liberal causes, like gun control and battling climate change. But as mayor Mr. Bloomberg also championed police searches that targeted black and Latino men; in an interview last fall, he defended his administration’s stop-and-frisk policing strategy and also expressed skepticism about the #MeToo movement.

He's just there to hurt Biden.

Trump Cards, Con't

Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward's book on the Trump regime will be out next week, and the excerpts of it are heart-stopping.  Donald Trump is so singularly unfit for office that replacing the congressional supporters has to be our top priority in 2018 and if that's not enough, replacing Trump in 2020.

A near-constant subject of withering presidential attacks was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump told Porter that Sessions was a “traitor” for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, Woodward writes. Mocking Sessions’s accent, Trump added, “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner. … He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

At a dinner with Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others, Trump lashed out at a vocal critic, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He falsely suggested that the former Navy pilot had been a coward for taking early release from a prisoner-of-war camp in Vietnam because of his father’s military rank and leaving others behind.

Mattis swiftly corrected his boss: “No, Mr. President, I think you’ve got it reversed.” The defense secretary explained that McCain, who died Aug. 25, had in fact turned down early release and was brutally tortured during his five years at the Hanoi Hilton.

“Oh, okay,” Trump replied, according to Woodward’s account.

With Trump’s rage and defiance impossible to contain, Cabinet members and other senior officials learned to act discreetly. Woodward describes an alliance among Trump’s traditionalists — including Mattis and Gary Cohn, the president’s former top economic adviser — to stymie what they considered dangerous acts.

“It felt like we were walking along the edge of the cliff perpetually,” Porter is quoted as saying. “Other times, we would fall over the edge, and an action would be taken.”

After Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward.

Mattis told the president that he would get right on it. But after hanging up the phone, he told a senior aide: “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.” The national security team developed options for the more conventional airstrike that Trump ultimately ordered.

I mean, Trump wanted to assassinate Bashar Al-Assad.  Mattis didn't do it.

One of them needs to resign before the week is out, and both of them should.

Last Call For Total Eclipse Of The Brain

They told Trump not to look directly into the sun without special glasses during today's eclipse, so naturally...

...he looked right into the goddamn sun without his special glasses.

Because he's Trump.

You can't tell a clinical narcissist not to do something, you know.

We're Not Even People To Eric Trump

So does Eric Trump represent the right as a whole, or the views of his father, when he told Sean Hannity last night that critics of the Trump regime don't even qualify as people to him?

Eric Trump appeared on Sean Hannity’s show Tuesday night and lashed out at those who oppose his father’s administration, saying they’re “not even people.”

Hannity introduced the segment by complaining about the mainstream media floating “baseless Russian conspiracy theories” and what he described as Democrats on the Hill searching for “any evidence of collusion,” namely the investigation into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign’s ties to the Kremlin.

“I’ve never seen hatred like this,” Eric Trump said. “I mean, to me, they’re not even people.”

Eric Trump also called the recently elected Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez a “total whackjob,” then decried the increase in name-calling.

“We deserve so much better than this as a country,” Eric Trump added.

I mean I've said before on a number of occasions that Republicans consider Democrats, black folks, Latinx folks, Asian folks, LBGTQ folks, etc to be second-class citizens and even that we're viewed as less than human, but this is the son of the man in the White House publicly admitting on TV that he doesn't consider his father's critics to qualify as people.

We are nothing more than what, chattel?  Animals to be exploited?  Vermin to be exterminated by the Trump regime?  This is the son of the man in the Oval Office saying that basic human rights only belong to those who support Trump, and in some parallel universe where Chelsea Clinton said this about the people who go after her parents, there would be Republican lawmakers openly calling for her arrest, if not her public execution.

But this is Trump's America now.

Reality Is Stranger Than Fiction

If the Trump Regime's plan to go after leakers was designed to take the spotlight off Russian interference with our election systems, the first iteration has failed miserably as the Justice Department has all but confirmed now that Moscow used phishing attacks to infiltrate voter registration systems and to compromise election officials in multiple states ahead of last year's elections.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday charged a federal contractor with sending classified material to a news organization that sources identified to Reuters as The Intercept, marking one of the first concrete efforts by the Trump administration to crack down on leaks to the media.

Reality Leigh Winner, 25, was charged with removing classified material from a government facility located in Georgia. She was arrested on June 3, the Justice Department said.

The charges were announced less than an hour after The Intercept published a top-secret document from the U.S. National Security Agency that described Russian efforts to launch cyber attacks on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and send "spear-phishing" emails, or targeted emails that try to trick a recipient into clicking on a malicious link to steal data, to more than 100 local election officials days before the presidential election last November.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the case beyond its filing. Federal Bureau of Investigation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While the charges do not name the publication, a U.S. official with knowledge of the case said Winner was charged with leaking the NSA report to The Intercept. A second official confirmed The Intercept document was authentic and did not dispute that the charges against Winner were directly tied to it.

The Intercept's reporting reveals new details behind the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russian intelligence services were seeking to infiltrate state voter registration systems as part of a broader effort to interfere in the election, discredit Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and help then Republican candidate Donald Trump win the election.

The new material does not, however, suggest that actual votes were manipulated.

Multiple observations here:  first, the NSA analysis document on the Russians using phishing to get into voter registration systems is authentic, which means yes, the Russians did try to undermine confidence in our election infrastructure and got caught.  The notion that the Russians weren't behind this is now factually wrong and this confirms what we've known for months now.  We have a serious international problem on our hands.  The Russians messed with our elections, period.  How does fiddling with voter registration systems help Trump and the GOP?  Why that one's simple, guys. Purging the rolls of Democrats.  Particularly in say, zip codes where there's a heavy black and/or Latino presence in swing states like NC or Florida.  Or say...Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Second, the Trump regime must have known about this NSA report, and have made multiple attempts to lift sanctions on Russia anyway, despite the fact they knew the Russians tampered with at least one major voter registration logistics company and the election officials that used that company, which according to the story is VR Systems based in Florida...see point one above.  There was no bigger electoral prize up for grabs in 2016 than the Sunshine State, with NC close behind.  If Clinton has taken both of them, she'd be President right now.

Third, in their zeal to go after the leaker, a 25-year-old woman, all the Trump regime has done is authenticate the story.  They've also sent a message that Trump and Sessions are far more worried about protecting Russia here than our election systems, and the people who are coming forward with the truth.  They also need a colossal distraction from this week's Senate Russia hearings.

Fourth, The Intercept appears to have immediately burned their NSA source in Ms. Winner here through a combination of wanting to get this story out first, and being sloppy as hell on protecting its source from Trump and Sessions.  Considering all they went though to keep Ed Snowden safe, they sure screwed the pooch on protecting Reality Winner.  Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are very upset with The Intercept that they so "carelessly" exposed a source.

Fifth, her name is Reality Leigh Winner.  Somebody thought that was a good name. I have no words. You'd get thrown out of your editor's office if you came to them with an NSA leaker character in your fiction novel named that, and for good reason.  Of course, she's a flesh-and-blood person whose life is about to be utterly destroyed by Trump for political cover, so it's actually not as amusing as you think.

Finally, here's an off-the-wall thing here.  We basically knew all this stuff beforehand.  We knew that local/state election officials had been compromised, we knew at least one major voter registration logistics company had been phished, and we knew that the Russian goal was to undermine confidence in our election systems.

The question becomes why The Intercept would do this now, and burn a source so casually like this.  If you were the Trump regime, and you wanted to protect Russia and parade a leaker around in chains and an orange jumpsuit in order to terrify the press and other potential leakers, you would need, well, an obvious case of somebody leaking a Russia document that doesn't really say too much.  Yeah, I know, the Feds caught her pretty much right after she mailed the Intercept with the document and would have busted her anyway, but the Intercept didn't have to go to the NSA over this either.  Maybe it saved the Feds a little leg work, maybe it didn't.

But you would be forgiven if one might think that Team Double G were told to burn their source on purpose, days before NSA chief Mike Rogers and FBI Director James Comey are to testify under oath to the Senate.

Just saying.

Conn Baby Gone

The big story here in Kentucky today is the disappearance of Eric Conn, the trial lawyer who plead guilty earlier this year to more than a half-billion in Social Security fraud and was facing 12 years in federal prison.  Under house arrest, it seems Conn took off his monitoring device and fled the country.

The FBI office in Louisville issued a press release saying Conn had removed his electronic monitoring device in violation of his bond and that authorities didn’t know where he was. 

Conn pleaded guilty to stealing from the Social Security Administration and paying bribes to a judge to rubber-stamp disability claims for thousands of his clients. Conn remained free on bond pending his sentencing next month, but a judge had ordered him to be on home detention with electronic monitoring. 

Conn faced up to 12 years in prison. He had also been ordered to pay more than $80 million — $5.7 million to repay fraudulent earnings; $46.5 million to the Social Security Administration; and $31 million to the government and two whistleblowers who helped expose his wrongdoing and their attorneys. 

After Conn was arrested in April 2016, prosecutors argued he should have to stay in jail pending trial, partly because of the risk that he could flee.

Employees in Conn’s office had heard him say he would flee to Cuba or Ecuador to avoid criminal charges, and Conn had wired substantial sums of money out of the country at times, an FBI agent testified at one hearing. 

“If he were to leave, to cross a border, he could go to wherever he has stashed some money and flee,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Trey Alford said at the time. 

Conn’s attorneys pointed out that he had not fled even though he’d known for years that he was under investigation, and that he had substantial ties to home, including his elderly mother and teen daughter. 

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert E. Wier allowed Conn out of jail but set a number of conditions, including home detention with GPS monitoring at his large house in Pikeville. Wier also required Conn to pledge his home to secure a $1.25 million bond and to surrender his passport. 

Conn said at the time that he was not a threat to skip town. 

“Your trust is not misplaced,” he told Wier. 

The court issued an arrest warrant for Conn Saturday after he disappeared, according to the release from FBI chief counsel David Habich.

Despite the fact that the guy's name is literally "Conn" and he defrauded the government for nine figures, it amazes me that you get more prison time for carjacking a rusted out Dodge pickup than stealing half of one billion dollars, but that's America for you.  Meanwhile, maybe the Louisville FBI ought to figure out how this guy got away.

It's almost criminal.

Last Call For Assurance Insurance

Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin takes to a FOX News opinion column to lead the charge of the Trump-era response to kicking tens of millions off health insurance: five weeks in, Trump is the best POTUS ever and you can just shut up.

On a larger scale, President Trump shares the desire of most Americans to see the failed ObamaCare law repealed and replaced.

Voters took note that ObamaCare was a massive and highly complex law with many layers of bureaucracy. It should be no surprise that replacing it will result in some vigorous debate and, at times, disagreement.

The president made a brilliant choice when appointing Tom Price as Health and Human Services Secretary. As a former physician and congressman, Secretary Price brings much experience and knowledge to the health care issue. Now that he has been confirmed, we can begin to build consensus on how best to accomplish replacement of this disastrous law. 

Finally, President Trump can elaborate on his economic agenda and the positive response by investors to his pro-business vision. 

In Kentucky, we are meeting regularly with business leaders who are encouraged about our state’s recent passage of pro-business legislation and who are now considering our state as a possible location for expansion. Likewise, President Trump’s commitments to tax reform and deregulation have encouraged investors to propel the stock market to new heights. 

The president’s address to Congress can provide investors with more specifics of his economic agenda and, in so doing, confirm the optimism investors have expressed.
The Trump administration can be proud of these accomplishments and the impressive array of additional cabinet appointments, including Kentuckian Elaine Chao as Secretary of Transportation.

The American people are not fooled by the media's non-stop negative narrative which is intended to overshadow the president's positive vision and his remarkable pace of significant achievements.

I mean, I thought Bevin was a small-scale grifter and basically in a protracted fight to fleece Kentuckians out of as much money as possible before he ends up getting investigated for fraud.  But he's hitched himself to the Trump Train and he's fully prepared to take the state careening into the canyon when the bridge to reality ahead is out.

Trump's "remarkable pace of significant achievements" is the most unerringly stupid thing I've seen written about the man so far.  Leave it to my idiot governor to be the one saying it.

Of course, it's Bevin who will take the guillotine when he gets done kicking a tenth of the state off Medicaid, but I'm sure he'll end up getting a nice job with either the Trump regime or with FOX News after his failed re-election bis in 2019.

The Bowling Green (Made-Up) Massacre

At this point we have a regime in charge of America trying to create a Reichstag fire event and they're not smart enough to be able to spell "Reichstag" correctly.

One of President Donald Trump's top White House advisers referred to a terror attack that never happened in an MSNBC interview that aired on Thursday night. 

Kellyanne Conway suggested that the so-called "Bowling Green Massacre" in Bowling Green, Kentucky, was one of the catalysts for Trump's executive order banning nationals from seven Muslim-majority states like Iraq. 

There was no such attack in the US. 

During her interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Conway described the false incident as two Iraqi refugees having come to the US, becoming radicalized, and masterminding the nonexistent attack. Conway offered no evidence to back up her claims and flatly suggested that "most people don't know ... because it didn't get covered."
Neither Conway, nor a White House spokesperson immediately responded to a request for comment. 

The only incident surrounding Iraqi refugees and Bowling Green, Kentucky, in recent history was a 2011 case in which two Iraqi nationals were indicted on federal charges on accusations that they tried to provide material support to terrorists and to al Qaeda in Iraq. 

The FBI's 2011 press release said that the two men, Waad Ramadan Alwan, 30, and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 23, were former residents of Iraq who lived in Bowling Green at the time of their arrests. Alwan was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison in and Hammadi received a life term in 2013, the FBI said. 

Despite Conway's allegations, there was no massacre in Bowling Green, and, according to the FBI's statement on the matter, there was no plan for a terror attack in that city.

I mean what kinda of obvious nonsense is this?  An administration spokesperson is on the news citing a terrorist attack that never happened as proof that we need the regime's unconstitutional policies to remain in effect.  This is completely off the map, guys. It's fake news at its utmost.

Conway's game is obvious to the point of derisions, but how long before the "Bowling Green Massacre" somehow becomes "real" in the eyes of Trump and his nutjobs?  Will the media dare to say "We're no longer booking her as she's a complete liar?"

Where we go from here will say a lot about whether or not America survives.

Duterte Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap Con't

Philippines President Manuel Duterte has gone from Manila's Trump to Manila's Hitler in the space of about three weeks, and I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not an act.

President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday that he would like to kill millions of drug addicts in the Philippines, defying international criticism of his country’s bloody war on narcotics and escalating his brutal rhetoric with a reference to the Holocaust. 

“Hitler massacred three million Jews,” Mr. Duterte said after returning to the Philippines from a trip to Vietnam, understating the toll cited by historians, which is six million. “Now there is three million, there’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” 

Killing that number of drug users would “finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition,” he said. 

Since Mr. Duterte took office in June promising a grisly campaign against crime and drugs, the Philippines has seen a surge in killings of drug suspects.

Well then.  Publicly advocating mass genocide as a final solution in the war on drugs seems a bit...much.

Philippine officials have counted about 3,000 deaths during the crackdown, about a third at the hands of the police. 

The police spokesman Dionardo Carlos said on Friday that the police had been overstating the number killed by the police. He said that the correct number was 1,120, not about 1,500, which the police had given earlier. He did not explain why the number had been revised. 

The police have also said that 1,500 nonpolice killings are under investigation and that hundreds of these also are believed to be drug-related. 

Responding to expressions of alarm about the killings from the European Union and other international bodies, Mr. Duterte said Friday that the European Union’s advisers on the issue were “pea-brained.” He criticized European officials for finding fault with his government while not doing enough to help migrants fleeing war-torn Middle Eastern countries.

“You allow them to rot, and then you’re worried about the death of about 1,000, 2,000, 3,000?” he said. 

Mr. Duterte complained that his foreign critics had depicted him as “a cousin of Hitler” and said that they were wrong to criticize him now that he was the country’s president. Doing so put all Filipinos “to shame,” he said. 

The president’s latest provocative remarks came days after he cast doubt on the Philippines’ longstanding military ties with the United States, announcing in Vietnam that the countries’ coming joint military exercises would be their last. Officials in his government later said that all military agreements with the United States were still in effect and that they were awaiting “clarification and guidance” from Mr. Duterte.

Well, if you want to avoid the Hitler comparisons, perhaps one shouldn't openly say that you're going to emulate his actions.

Yikes.

Last Call For Marked By The Beast

Are we surprised that the same Donald Trump calling for an Eisenhower-era "Operation Wetback" style roundup of eleven million Latinos is now calling for a national database to identify and track the country's Muslim citizens?

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump believes that the war on terror will require unprecedented surveillance of America’s Muslims.

“We’re going to have to do thing that we never did before,” he said during a Yahoo interview. 

“Some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said. 

“Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy,” he added. “We’re going to have to do things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.” 

Trump would not rule out warrantless searches in his plans for increased surveillance of the nation’s Muslims, Yahoo reported Thursday. 

He also remained open toward registering U.S. Muslims in a database or giving them special identification identifying their faith, the news outlet added. 

“We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”

Closing mosques, tracking Muslims, perhaps giving them armbands to identify them?  Hey Republicans? This is your current front-runner for President saying this.

And I don't blame Trump for his racist idiocy, I blame the "moderate Republicans" for accepting this and supporting this and the voters for electing Republicans who don't have a problem doing this to fellow American citizens.

Time to reclaim your party and clean house, guys.  Or live with your racist, awful party's consequences.

Sunday Long Read: Twin Destinies

This week's Sunday Long Read is the story of two pairs of identical twins, mixed up at birth in Bogota, raised as two separate pairs of fraternal twins, and how they discovered each other.

They were two pretty young women in search of pork ribs for a barbecue later that day, a Saturday in the summer of 2013. Janeth Páez suggested that they stop by a grocery store not far from where her friend Laura Vega Garzón lived in northern Bogotá. Janeth’s boyfriend’s cousin, William, a sweet young man with a thick country accent, worked behind the butcher counter there, expertly filleting beef and cutting pigs’ feet that his customers liked to boil with beans. Janeth was sure he would give her and Laura a cut rate on the ribs.

As Laura walked into the grocery store, catching up with Janeth, she was surprised to spot someone she knew. Behind the butcher counter was a colleague from her job at Strycon, an engineering firm. She gave him a big wave. He hardly acknowledged her. ‘‘That’s Jorge!’’ she told Janeth. ‘‘He works in my office.’’ He was a well-­liked 24-year-old who worked a few floors up from her, designing pipes for oil transport, so she was surprised to see him waiting on customers in the shop.

‘‘Oh, no, that’s William,’’ Janeth said. William was a hard worker and rarely left that butcher counter, except to sleep. He definitely did not work at Strycon.

‘‘No, it’s Jorge — I know him,’’ Laura said. But he was not smiling back at her, which was strange. A few minutes later, he came out from behind the counter to say a quick hello, embracing Janeth. Janeth introduced him to Laura as William.

Laura was baffled: Why was Jorge pretending to be someone else? Maybe, she thought, he was embarrassed to be seen moonlighting this way — the bloodied apron, the white cap. Janeth insisted she was mistaken, but Laura was not convinced. It was almost easier for her to believe that Jorge was playacting as someone else, rather than that there could be two people who looked so much alike. It was not just their similar coloring or the high cheekbones. It was their frame, the texture of their hair, the set of their mouth and dozens of other details that Laura could not have readily identified but that she knew all added up to a rare likeness.

The following Monday at Strycon, Laura told Jorge about her funny misunderstanding with his double at the butcher counter. Jorge laughed and told her that he did have a twin, named Carlos, but that they looked nothing like each other.

At that moment, Jorge had before him sufficient evidence to suggest that his life was not what he thought it was, that his family was not what he thought it was. But there is a saying that Carlos, a man of many sayings, sometimes applied to Jorge: ‘‘The blindest man is the one who does not want to see.’’

Having been adopted myself at birth (along with two of my three siblings, who were adopted at ages 4 and 6) this story is fascinating to me.  I've always wondered if I ever had any biological brothers or sisters, and who they are.

A month later, Laura told Janeth that there was an opening in the drafting department at Strycon, and Janeth landed the job. Soon after, she saw Jorge for the first time and immediately understood Laura’s confusion at the butcher counter. The two men had the same soft brown eyes. Same bouncy, feet-­splayed walk. Same bright, flashy smile. She didn’t feel as though she knew Jorge well enough to bring the resemblance up with him, but she did show William a photo of Jorge; William laughed and showed it around the butcher shop but chalked it up to coincidence.

After six months, Janeth left Strycon for another job, but even then, whenever she and her boyfriend ran into William, she wondered if she should have told Jorge about his double. That question tugged at her until finally, on Sept. 9, 2014, a slow day at her new job, Janeth texted Laura an image of William to show Jorge.

Laura went upstairs to piping to get Jorge’s reaction to the photo. Jorge, smiling, took a look at her phone. He swore. ‘‘That’s me!’’ he said. He stared at the image.

William was wearing a yellow Colombian soccer jersey, practically a national uniform on the day of big matches. Jorge often wore one just like it, which made it all the more apparent just how thoroughly the young man in the photo looked like him. A friend was walking by Jorge’s desk, and Jorge flagged him down for a second opinion.

‘‘Tell me what you think of this photo,’’ he told his friend, handing him the phone.

You look fine, the friend said.

‘‘Except it’s not me,’’ Jorge said. He could not stop staring at Laura’s phone.

Jorge gave up on getting any work done. He sat down with Laura in the office kitchen so they could talk. Maybe his father, who was never more than an occasional visitor to their home, had another child he never mentioned. Jorge started flipping through more of William’s Facebook images, now on his own phone. Uneasily, he noted one of William in a butcher’s smock, looking just the way Jorge did on the rare days he had to wear a lab coat. He glanced at a picture of William holding a shot glass, a friend by his side.

Jorge moved to his desktop computer so he could see the images more closely. He clicked once more on the photo of William and the friend holding shot glasses. Now that the image was large, he could examine what he had failed, incredibly, to notice when he looked at the photo on his phone. He leaned in close, his nose practically touching the screen. The man’s hair was slicked up like a rooster’s crown, and the shirt was all wrong. But there was the full lower lip and thick brown hair that Jorge knew well. The buttons on the man’s shirt were straining slightly at the hint of a potbelly, in a way that was intimately familiar. Jorge felt a rush of confusion, and then his stomach dropped. The friend sitting next to his double had a face that Jorge knew better than his own: It was the face of his fraternal twin brother, Carlos.

This is an amazing story, so set some time aside for this one.  It's well worth it.

The Totally Moderate Rand Paul

Remember, Rand Paul's big selling point is that he's a moderate, a Republican who supports criminal justice reform and legalization of marijuana.  The fact he's a standard right wing nut job on most other things doesn't seem to matter, and the fact that he's a screaming tinfoil-hatted douchebag on everything else certainly doesn't seem to get enough play.

As this government-bashing tea partier moves toward a White House bid, journalists scrutinize his every wiggle and whisper. But one core component of his political personality has largely escaped exploration: The senator is close to being a full-blown conspiracy theorist. 

In 2010, before winning his Senate seat, Paul sat for an interview with Luke Rudkowski, a libertarian YouTube personality who specializes in quizzing political leaders about the plot to establish a "one-world socialist government." Rudkowski asked what Paul knew of the Bilderberg Group, a collection of government and business leaders whose annual conference is a favorite target of conspiracy-mongers. Paul replied, "Only what I've learned from Alex Jones." That's right: Alex Jones, the radio host who claims that Bilderberg is a key part of a global plot to create a "scientific dictatorship" that will exterminate the "useless eaters," a.k.a. 80 percent of the human population.

Rand Paul is nuts.

Paul had his own conspiracy theory about 9/11. In speeches in 2008 and 2009, he warned about the influence of military contractors and zeroed in on Halliburton, the corporation that Dick Cheney headed before becoming vice president. Cheney, he noted, opposed the advance of American troops into Baghdad when he was defense secretary during the first Gulf War. Yet as veep he changed his mind because, Paul explained, the war would benefit Halliburton with a "billion-dollar no-bid contract."

Rand Paul is bug nuts.

Paul also has embraced one of the conspiracy theories promoted by his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul: that leaders from the United States, Canada, and Mexico are seeking to merge their countries into a socialist megastate that would issue the "Amero" currency to replace US and Canadian dollars and the Mexican peso. (Anti-feminist campaigner Phyllis Schlafly and Jerome Corsi, who led the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign, are among the key proponents of this idea.) 

At an appearance for his father's 2008 presidential campaign in Bozeman, Montana, Rand Paul was asked what steps his dad would take to thwart the scheme to impose a North American superstate. The first thing to do, he said, was "publicizing that it's going on" and pushing Congress to "stop it." He insisted the Amero push was "a real thing" but cautioned, "If you talk about it like it's a conspiracy, they'll paint you as a nut. It's not a conspiracy, they're out in the open about it. I guarantee it's one of their long-term goals—to have one sort of borderless mass continent." He did not specify who "they" were.

Hey guys?

Rand Paul is completely effing nuts.

But he's still a contender?

Last Call For Twin Bees

It hasn't happened in 52 years, but last night's Scripps National Spelling Bee final ended in a tie.

Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe correctly spelled so many words Thursday that the Scripps National Spelling Bee had to declare them both winners.

Why? Because there weren't enough words left on the competition's list for them to keep facing off until only one was left standing.

In the bee's final round, Hathwar, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Painted Post, New York, correctly spelled the word "stichomythia" -- dialogue especially of altercation delivered by two actors.

Sujoe, a 13-year-old seventh-grader from Fort Worth, Texas, correctly spelled the word "feuilleton" -- part of a European newspaper.

You win at life when you make the National Spelling Bee run out of words to spell. B-A-D-A-S-S.

It's the first time the bee has ended in a tie in more than 50 years. The last time there were co-champions was in 1962, organizers said. Ties also ended the bees in 1950 and 1957.

"I think we both know that the competition was against the dictionary, not against each other," Hathwar said on ESPN after the win. "I am happy to share this trophy with him."

And like any great national champions, they got a shoutout from POTUS.

Congrats to Ansun and Sriram, the incredible co-champs of the #ScrippsNationalSpellingBee. You make us all proud! -bo
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 30, 2014

Well done.

Last Call

Politico's Ken Vogel picked a fight with the wrong guy...Nate Silver.

Polling guru Nate Silver and Politico investigative reporter Ken Vogel lobbed angry messages at each other Friday on Twitter over, of all things, whether to call something a “clarification” or a “correction.”

At issue was an article Silver had written for the New York Times about GOP strategist Karl Rove’s new Conservative Victory Project, which was formed to back electable Republican candidates in order to win back a majority in the Senate.

After the article was published, Silver updated the piece and appended a clarification to the end explaining the change. Vogel thought that note should have been labled a “correction” instead, and he took to Twitter to complain. Silver fired back, and the battle was on.

“At this point you’re just being a troll and misleading your Twitter followers about what I wrote,” Silver wrote to Vogel. “Grow up.”

“I’m happy to have a debate about this in any forum you chose, but please try to stick to the merits & avoid name calling,” Vogel responded.

This isn’t the first time Silver has sparred with someone at Politico. In late November, he said the news outlet covers politics like sports but “not in an intelligent way at all.” Politico media reporter Dylan Byers also wrote critically of Silver ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

Responding to the spat, Silver told TPM in an email on Friday: “I’ve been pretty jetlagged and had forgotten that the first rule of the Internet is ‘don’t feed the trolls.’ Was a mistake for me to get involved on Twitter.”

True, but it's fun to beat up WIN THE MORNING.  Hell, I do it whenever possible, but picking a nerd fight with the High King of all Political Wonks?  Bad idea, Vogel.

Read the play-by-play after the jump:

Another Dead Shot Situation

It's a good thing America has 300 million firearms, so that only bad guys get hurt.

Police say a 75-year-old man in Dallas is being charged with Capital Murder after he allegedly shot and killed two neighbors because they had dumped dog feces on his porch.

According to The Dallas Morning News, Chung Kim had repeatedly complained to management at Sable Ridge Apartments that Michelle Jackson and Jamie Stafford, who lived above him, had dumped dog feces on his porch and allowed their dog, Selena, to urinate on the upstairs balcony which dripped down to his patio.

Tension finally boiled over on Monday when Kim was on his patio and shot 31-year-old Jackson multiple times as she stood on the patio above him, police said. He then reportedly went upstairs and shot Stafford, who was also 31, as he was trying to escape. After Stafford fell from the second floor, Kim is accused of going back downstairs and shooting him again.

Of course Second Amendment, so FREEDOM. 

"But Zandar, none of the existing gun control laws on the books could have stopped this senseless murder," you'll say.   And people still die from drunk driving accidents, but nobody ever says "Well, you can't stop drunk driving deaths with laws so why have laws involving drunk driving?"  Furthermore, nobody has large paranoid cults of people screaming "Obama is coming to take my booze!" when this stuff happens, either.

Oh, and has anybody asked if the 75-year old guy had an XBOX yet?  I'm sure it was the fault of video games, right?

Rand Paul: Gordian Knothead

My junior senator's logic causes me actual, physical pain at times.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who describes himself as a libertarian, said Wednesday that he opposed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) because it could unintentionally result in same-sex marriage becoming legal.

“I believe in traditional marriage,” he said during an interview with Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association. “I really don’t understand any other kind of marriage. Between a man and a woman is what I believe in, and I just don’t think it is good for us to change the definition of that.”

Paul noted that his state, Kentucky, had approved a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage. He said he was “not sure” about DOMA, but warned the federal law could result in conservatives losing “the battle for the whole country.”

Paul said marriage rights should be decided state-by-state rather than nationally so that “urban centers” couldn’t dictate the law.

To recap, Mr. Small Government here seems to think that it's not only good but completely necessary for the government to define what marriage is and then enforce it.   The guy is totally okay with legislating his beliefs on other people, but only at the state level, so that nobody in the federal government can tell him he's wrong to do so.  This makes him a "Libertarian".

It makes hm a moron, too.  Sadly, as I mentioned, it also makes him my representation in Washington DC.

This makes me sadder than you will ever, ever know.

Newtown-ian Physics

So what happens now in the wake of Friday's mind-numbing tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut?

A heavily armed gunman killed 26 people, including 20 children from 5 to 10 years old, in a rampage at a Connecticut elementary school on Friday, one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

The gunman - who according to a media report carried four weapons and wore a bulletproof vest - was dead inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, state police Lieutenant Paul Vance told a news conference.

Vance said authorities found 18 children and seven adults, including the gunman, dead at the school, and two children were pronounced dead later after being take to a hospital. Another adult was found dead at a related crime scene in Newtown, he said, bringing the toll to 28.

President Obama's response to a wounded nation was excellent:

A visibly emotional President Obama offered his condolences to the victims and families of an elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn. at the White House on Friday.

"We’ve endured too many of these tragedies these past few years," Obama said, appearing to wipe away tears from his eyes.

"We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," he added.

So what can be done?  As Dave von Ebers reminds us in the wake of two vitally important SCOTUS cases decided in the last few years,  any new gun control legislation will be difficult to create, much less pass a GOP-led House.

For what it’s worth, I’d like to see a comprehensive federal gun control statute that encompasses all those principles, too, although the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, popularly referred to as the “Brady Bill,” contains some of those provisions.

But, of course, as my fellow liberals should know (and if you don’t know … why don’t you know?!), the Supreme Court has made that difficult to accomplish. In two recent cases – District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290 (June 26, 2008), and McDonald v. City of Chicago, No. 08-1521 (June 28, 2010) – Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution creates an individual right to keep and bear arms, which, although not unlimited, prevents both the federal government (Heller), and state and municipal governments (McDonald), from imposing the most direct (and perhaps draconian) form of gun control: Outright bans on handgun ownership.

Indeed, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down earlier this month Oak Park, Illinois' anti concealed carry gun control law as a direct violation of the precedent set by Heller.

“The Supreme Court has decided that the amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside,” Judge Richard Posner wrote in the court’s majority opinion. “The theoretical and empirical evidence (which overall is inconclusive) is consistent with concluding that a right to carry firearms in public may promote self-defense.” 

So, given that the Executive cannot simply mandate gun control, the Legislative will not pass gun control, and  the Judicial has said gun control violates the Second Amendment, exactly what should Obama do to magically fix this problem?

I'm all ears.  If you want to stop guns, go after the manufacturers and the lobbyists.  Period.  Guns are a product, sold in the US.  They have arguably the most powerful product lobby on Earth.  You're going to need to start with them.

That time has come.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

The Mayans were on to something.



We're all doomed.

How To Secede At Business Without Really Trying

Texas?  You have another Lone Star State-sized problem on your hands over this "secede from the union" nonsense.

In Texas, talk of secession in recent years has steadily shifted to the center from the fringe right. It has emerged as an echo of the state Republican leadership’s anti-Washington, pro-Texas-sovereignty mantra on a variety of issues, including health care and environmental regulations. For some Texans, the renewed interest in the subject serves simply as comic relief after a crushing election defeat. 

But for other proponents of secession and its sister ideology, Texas nationalism — a focus of the Texas Nationalist Movement and other groups that want the state to become an independent nation, as it was in the 1830s and 1840s — it is a far more serious matter. 

The official in East Texas, Peter Morrison, the treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party, said in a statement that he had received overwhelming support from conservative Texans and overwhelming opposition from liberals outside the state in response to his comments in his newsletter. He said that it may take time for “people to appreciate that the fundamental cultural differences between Texas and other parts of the United States may be best addressed by an amicable divorce, a peaceful separation.” 

The online petitions — created on the We the People platform at petitions.whitehouse.gov — are required to receive 25,000 signatures in 30 days for the White House to respond. The Texas petition, created Nov. 9 by a man identified as Micah H. of Arlington, had received more than 116,000 signatures by Friday. It asks the Obama administration to “peacefully grant” the withdrawal of Texas, and describes doing so as “practically feasible,” given the state’s large economy. 

Last I checked this problem was settled about 1865 or so, and frankly this whole thing is getting silly.  Republicans lost an election, not a war.  If 116,000 Texans want to be shown the door over losing an election, well good luck to you.

Which side hates America now, huh?

Meanwhile, In Evil Mirror Universe...

Taegan Goddard grabbed some screenies of the Romney transition team website pages, in case he won.




And remember, in an unknown number of evil, awful alternate realities out there, this is happening right now.

You prevented this, America.  I like you a lot now.