Last Call For Brazil Nuts

Brazil has elected its Trump today in Jair Bolsonaro, and the number of democracies in the West falls by one as the country's new president has made it abundantly clear that his word is now the only law.

Brazil on Sunday became the latest country to drift toward the far right, electing a strident populist as president in the nation’s most radical political change since democracy was restored more than 30 years ago. 

The new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has exalted the country’s military dictatorship, advocated torture and threatened to destroy, jail or drive into exile his political opponents. 

He won by tapping into a deep well of resentment at the status quo in Brazil — a country whiplashed by rising crime and two years of political and economic turmoil — and by presenting himself as the alternative. 

“We have everything need to become a great nation,” Mr. Bolsonaro said Sunday night shortly after the race was called in a video broadcast on his Facebook account. “Together we will change the destiny of Brazil.”

If all these seems depressingly familiar, it's because it's 100% Trump's playbook.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s victory caps a bitter contest that divided families, tore friendships apart and ignited concerns about the resilience of Brazil’s young democracy. 

Many Brazilians see authoritarian tendencies in Mr. Bolsonaro, who plans to appoint military leaders to top posts and said he would not accept the result if he were to lose. He has threatened to stack the Supreme Court by increasing the number of judges to 21 from 11 and to deal with political foes by giving them the choice of extermination or exile. 

Mr. Bolsonaro, 63, a former Army captain who has been a member of Congress for nearly three decades, beat a crowded field of presidential contenders, several of whom entered the race with bigger war chests, less baggage, and the backing of powerful political parties. 

Part of the reason for his victory was the collapse of the left. Many cried foul after former President Luiz Inácio da Silva, the longtime front-runner in the race, was ruled ineligible to run after he was imprisoned in April to start serving a 12-year sentence for corruption and money laundering.

Bolsonaro's battle cry was "lock them up" and he did.  Now, the bloody purge of his enemies will soon begin.  There's no question how we got here, Bolsonaro's takeover is just one more domino in the end of democracy 

It's only going to get exponentially worse over the coming years unless we begin the turn back to sanity in 9 days.

Meat The Press, Con't

NY Times reporter Jim Rutenberg admits that after three years, the American media still has no idea how to handle Donald Trump, and that Trump continues to use the media as targets to beat up on a near-daily basis and will basically always get away with it.

The question is, is it working?

The short answer is yes. Increasingly, the president’s almost daily attacks seem to be delivering the desired effect, despite the many examples of powerful reporting on his presidency. By one measure, a CBS News poll over the summer, 91 percent of “strong Trump supporters” trust him to provide accurate information; 11 percent said the same about the news media.

Mr. Trump was open about the tactic in a 2016 conversation with Lesley Stahl of CBS News, which she shared earlier this year: “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you,” she quoted him as saying.

And with the president settling on “Fear and Falsehoods” as an election strategy, as The Washington Post put it last week, the political information system is awash in more misleading or flatly wrong assertions than reporters can keep up with. It’s as if President Trump has hit the journalism industry with a denial-of-service attack.

We have seen gross distortions aplenty during political low moments in this country. But something like the “Swift Boat” campaign against the Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 — with its accusations that the candidate had faked his war record — seems almost quaint in retrospect. That attempt drew scrutiny from major media organizations, and eventually led to broad condemnation, even from the candidate it was intended to benefit, President George W. Bush.

Now, partisan smears are a staple of every single news cycle. As crude pipe bombs were discovered at CNN headquarters and in mailboxes across the country, Mr. Trump’s supporters like the Fox Business anchor Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh and the conservative writer Ann Coulter asserted that the crime was a frame job by Democrats.

Before pipe bombs and the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings dominated the news, the main story was the migrant caravan — and it was accompanied by wild speculation on talk radio, social media and from opinionated personalities on Fox News. A myth went viral: the thousands of desperate Hondurans making their slow way toward the American border were players in a drama hatched by Democrats and funded by the right’s all-purpose villain, Mr. Soros, a notion Mr. Trump seemed to nod to at a rally in Montana.

Reporters respond by pointing out that these assertions have no basis in fact, just as they attempt to knock back Mr. Trump’s manufactured content by producing running tallies of his false statements — more than 5,000, says The Washington Post’s Fact Checker column.

Now and then journalists will resort to the L-word, “lie,” as The New York Times has done on occasion. Other frequent targets of the president’s disdain, CNN and MSNBC, have debunked his claims with onscreen headlines and endless panel discussions.

Such good-faith efforts, however, seem increasingly ineffectual. The president has succeeded in casting journalists as the prime foils on his never-ending reality show, much to the delight of those who cheer him on at rallies.

“He has succeeded in creating a daily narrative in which he is the central figure,” Steve Coll, the dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism and a staff writer at The New Yorker, told me. “And he uses props and invented opposition — whether they are migrants hundreds of miles from the U.S. border or the press right in front of him — to pursue this kind of idea he has about how his populism works.”

Again, the media has allowed themselves to be maneuvered into a position where 90% of Trump supporters don't believe a word they say, and more than half of everybody doesn't either. There are many reasons for this, the rise of online media that more easily manipulates people and that can be easily manipulated by people, increasingly corporate control of news outlets by a handful of companies, the consolidation of local newspapers and local TV news, and the massive layoffs in the news business over the last 15 years.  And all those actions were conscious choices.

In other words, everything the American media could have done in order to make themselves vulnerable to a proto-fascist demagogue like Trump, they did.  Trust in the media is in shambles means that not only are Americans being massively misinformed, it means there are Americans who know they are being fed lies, but the lies are convenient enough to allow them to hate who they want to, as Steve M tells us.

I want to know what percentage of the American public -- and, specifically, what percentage of the Republican electorate -- believes what's been reported about Cesar Sayoc. I assume that Democrats and independents will overwhelmingly say they believe what we've been told about him: that he's a Trump supporter who decided on his own to build and mail pipe bombs to people on the president's enemies list.

But what percentage of Republicans believe that? Is it even a majority?

A polling firm should lay out law enforcement's allegations and the conspiracy nuts' scenarios -- that Democrats or a certain billionaire Democratic donor paid the guy, or that the recipients sent the bombs to themselves -- and ask what respondents believe. Or the poll could ask whether law enforcement's story is true and then give doubters an open-ended chance to tell us their pet theories.

I think most Republicans will be doubters, or at least the number of doubters and "not sure" respondents will outnumber those who believe what law enforcement has told us.

That's exactly right.  Trump's lies are all the excuse bigots need to be bigots.

There is no longer shame in being a racist hatemonger in America when the elected leader of the country is arguably the most vocal example of one, and now that the trust in the news media has been lost, most likely irrevocably, there's little the media can now do to stop him.

You guys had your chance.  You blew it.  The time to ask these questions was in Summer, 2016.

Instead it became "But her emails."

The game's over, and we all lost.

Sunday Long Read: Kit Kat Crazy

A part of this week's New York Times Magazine "Candy Issue", here's the story of how Kit Kat bars became Japan's most beloved snack food in the 21st century, with flavors ranging from red bean bun to wasabi and everything in between.

The seven-story Don Quijote megastore in the Shibuya district of Tokyo is open 24 hours a day, but it’s hard to say when it’s rush hour, because there’s always a rush. A labyrinth of aisles leads to one soaring, psychedelic display after another presided over by cartoon mascots, including the mascot of Don Quijote itself: an enthusiastic blue penguin named Donpen who points shoppers toward toy sushi kits and face masks soaked with snail excretions and rainbow gel pens and split-toe socks. The candy section is vast, with cookies and cakes printed with Gudetama, Sanrio’s lazy egg character, and shiny packages of dehydrated, caramelized squid. It’s one of the few places where an extensive array of Japan’s many Kit Kat flavors are for sale. Though the chocolate bar is sold in more than 100 countries, including China, Thailand, India, Russia and the United States, it’s one of Japan’s best-selling chocolate brands and has achieved such a distinctive place in the market that several people in Tokyo told me they thought the Kit Kat was a Japanese product.

A Kit Kat is composed of three layers of wafer and two layers of flavored cream filling, enrobed in chocolate to look like a long, skinny ingot. It connects to identical skinny ingots, and you can snap these apart from one another intact, using very little pressure, making practically no crumbs. The Kit Kat is a sweet, cheap, delicately crunchy artifact of the 20th century’s industrial chocolate conglomerate. In the United States, where it has been distributed by Hershey since 1970, it is drugstore candy. In Japan, you might find the Kit Kat at a drugstore, but here the Kit Kat has levels. The Kit Kat has range. It’s found in department stores and luxurious Kit Kat-devoted boutiques that resemble high-end shoe stores, a single ingot to a silky peel-away sheath, stacked in slim boxes and tucked inside ultrasmooth-opening drawers, which a well-dressed, multilingual sales clerk slides open for you as you browse. The Kit Kat, in Japan, pushes at every limit of its form: It is multicolored and multiflavored and sometimes as hard to find as a golden ticket in your foil wrapper. Flavors change constantly, with many appearing as limited-edition runs. They can be esoteric and so carefully tailored for a Japanese audience as to seem untranslatable to a global mass market, but the bars have fans all over the world. Kit Kat fixers buy up boxes and carry them back to devotees in the United States and Europe. All this helps the Kit Kat maintain a singular, cultlike status.

The Kit Kat first came to Japan in 1973, but the first 100 percent, truly on-brand Japanese Kit Kat arrived at the turn of the millennium, when the marketing department of Nestlé Japan, the manufacturer of Kit Kats in the country, decided to experiment with new flavors, sweetness levels and types of packaging in an effort to increase sales. Strawberry! A pinkish, fruity Kit Kat would have been a gamble almost anywhere else in the world, but in Japan, strawberry-flavored sweets were established beyond the status of novelties. The strawberry Kit Kat was covered in milk chocolate tinted by the addition of a finely ground powder of dehydrated strawberry juice. It was first introduced in Hokkaido — coincidentally and serendipitously — at the start of strawberry season. Since then, the company has released almost 400 more flavors, some of them available only in particular regions of the country, which tends to encourage a sense of rareness and collectibility. Bars flavored like Okinawan sweet potatoes, the starchy, deep purple Japanese tubers, are available in Kyushu and Okinawa. The adzuki bean-sandwich bars are associated with the city of Nagoya, where the sweet, toasted snack originated in a tea shop at the turn of the 20th century and slowly made its way to cafe menus in the area. Shizuoka, where gnarly rhizomes with heart-shaped leaves have been cultivated for centuries on the Pacific Ocean, is known for its wasabi-flavored bars.

The most popular kind of Kit Kat in Japan is the mini — a bite-size package of two ingots — and Nestlé estimates that it sells about four million of these each day. In any given year, there are about 40 flavors available, including the core flavors — plain milk chocolate, strawberry, sake, wasabi, matcha, Tokyo Banana and a dark-chocolate variety called “sweetness for adults” — plus 20 to 30 rotating new ones. In August, Nestlé was preparing to release a shingen mochi Kit Kat, based on a traditional sweet made by the Japanese company Kikyouya, which involves three bite-size pieces of soft, squishy mochi packed with roasted soybean powder and a bottle of brown-sugar syrup, all assembled to taste. It seemed almost presumptuous for Nestlé to flavor a chocolate bar like shingen mochi, which is rooted in traditional Japanese confectionary, then stamp its brand on it and produce it en masse.

A sales clerk was restocking the Kit Kat display in Don Quijote when I asked her which were the most popular flavors. She shook her head. “They’re all popular,” she said. She gestured at the empty tunnels of matcha-, grape- and strawberry-flavored Kit Kats that she was filling as a small group of Chinese tourists carried armloads of glossy snack bags and boxes back to their shopping carts, undoing her work. An Australian father and son rushed by in a panic, their cart heaped with gifts to take back home. “Which one, Dad? Which one?” the child asked desperately, pointing to all the varieties. “It doesn’t matter,” the father shouted, as if the timer on a bomb were running out. “Just take one!”

Japanese Kit Kat bars are different.  Really different.  Not gonna lie.

But some of them are surprisingly good, so if you ever see these in your local Japanese food store or anime hangout give them a try.

Gabba Gabba Nope

I've said many times that social media networks have to get their stuff together before people get killed, but they're too lazy to self-police.  Now that eleven are dead in Pittsburgh, maybe people will start paying attention to people announcing they are going to hurt people on services like Gab, a social media platform for people kicked off other social platforms for being too bigoted.

Before Robert D. Bowers opened fire on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh Saturday morning, he posted a threat to the Jewish community online.

“HIAS [a Jewish non-profit organization] likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in,” he wrote. Just hours later, he killed at least 10 people and wounded others in what the Anti-Defamation League declared the deadliest against the Jewish community in the history of the United States.

Bowers didn’t make his anti-semitic statements on Twitter or Facebook or even Reddit, but rather on a small social network called Gab. It was founded in 2016 as an alternative to Twitter and other large social platforms, and indeed looks and operates similarly to Twitter, allowing users to follow and reply to each other, and to reshare short status updates.

But while Twitter, Facebook, and other mainstream social networks abide by ever-evolving sets of community standards, Gab allows users to say pretty much anything they want. Andrew Torba, the Silicon Valley Trump supporter who created it, said that he wanted to offer an alternative to mainstream social networks which he and others feel are biased against conservatives.

“What makes the entirely left-leaning Big Social monopoly qualified to tell us what is ‘news’ and what is ‘trending’ and to define what ‘harassment’ means?” he told to BuzzFeed News in 2016 explaining his decision to create the company. “It didn’t feel right to me, and I wanted to change it, and give people something that would be fair and just.”

Since then, Gab’s maximalist approach to free speech has made the network the de-facto home to extremist figures who have been booted off mainstream social networks for threats, inciting violence, or promoting racist, sexist, and anti-semitic ideas. While Twitter has banned extremist figures like Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, Alex Jones, and Andrew Anglin, Gab continues to welcome them and their followers with open arms. It has been called a “hate-filled echo chamber of racism and conspiracy theories” and “Twitter for racists.”

This has led to tension with some of the platforms hosting Gab amid increasing pressure for web companies to “deplatform” extremist groups and individuals. In 2017, the Gab app was banned from the Google Play Store for violating its policy against hate speech and in August of this year Microsoft threatened to stop hosting the platform on its servers over similar concerns. (Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday afternoon.) Shortly after Saturday’s shooting, Gab tweeted what appeared to be a notice from PayPal, saying that the payment-processing platform would be terminating its relationship with Gab “pursuant to PayPal’s user agreement.” Opponents of deplatforming argue that censoring extremist speech, actors, and platforms doesn’t stop, and in fact might incite, violence. “Free speech is crucial for the prevention of violence,” the Gab account tweeted Saturday. “If people can not express themselves through words, they will do so through violence. No one wants that. No one.”

That's the argument that Gab makes, that if Gab's not allowed to not only exist but to prosper, then crazies like Bowers will go straight to the violence part rather than just post anti-Semitic Pepe the Frog memes online, therefore you should want Gab around as a social media lightning rod, and also you should give the platform and guys like Andrew Torba lots of money, because they're effectively babysitting America's lunatics.

It's a fantastically cynical argument, and of course it insulates Gab from any possible culpability as an aside.  Pure glibertarian nonsense of the highest order.

Only of course, this time eleven people died.

I'm not stupid enough to think the Trump regime will lift a finger against Gab, but "monetizing hate speech" is nothing new, and the beast can be starved if all the sponsors and advertisers refuse to do business with them.

We'll see.

Last Call For Screen Passes In Silly Valley

The people who gave us the ubiquitous tech of smartphones, tablets, and screens everywhere with the internet on them are now mortally afraid that data will be the drug of choice for Generation Z, and they're banning their own creations at dinner tables, schools, and living rooms to the point where an army of nannies are now employed to give these kids a 100% no-tech childhood.

Silicon Valley parents are increasingly obsessed with keeping their children away from screens. Even a little screen time can be so deeply addictive, some parents believe, that it’s best if a child neither touches nor sees any of these glittering rectangles. These particular parents, after all, deeply understand their allure.

But it’s very hard for a working adult in the 21st century to live at home without looking at a phone. And so, as with many aspirations and ideals, it’s easier to hire someone to do this.

Enter the Silicon Valley nanny, who each day returns to the time before screens.

“Usually a day consists of me being allowed to take them to the park, introduce them to card games,” said Jordin Altmann, 24, a nanny in San Jose, of her charges. “Board games are huge.”

“Almost every parent I work for is very strong about the child not having any technical experience at all,” Ms. Altmann said. “In the last two years, it’s become a very big deal.”

From Cupertino to San Francisco, a growing consensus has emerged that screen time is bad for kids. It follows that these parents are now asking nannies to keep phones, tablets, computers and TVs off and hidden at all times. Some are even producing no-phone contracts, which guarantee zero unauthorized screen exposure, for their nannies to sign.

The fear of screens has reached the level of panic in Silicon Valley. Vigilantes now post photos to parenting message boards of possible nannies using cellphones near children. Which is to say, the very people building these glowing hyper-stimulating portals have become increasingly terrified of them. And it has put their nannies in a strange position.

“In the last year everything has changed,” said Shannon Zimmerman, a nanny in San Jose who works for families that ban screen time. “Parents are now much more aware of the tech they’re giving their kids. Now it’s like, ‘Oh no, reel it back, reel it back.’ Now the parents will say ‘No screen time at all.’”

Ms. Zimmerman likes these new rules, which she said harken back to a time when kids behaved better and knew how to play outside.

Parents, though, find the rules harder to follow themselves, Ms. Zimmerman said.

“Most parents come home, and they’re still glued to their phones, and they’re not listening to a word these kids are saying,” Ms. Zimmerman said. “Now I’m the nanny ripping out the cords from the PlayStations.”

I actually understand.  Tech has made the parents miserable, the 24-hour, 7-day leash from work is something I've been though and I wouldn't wish that level of anxiety on a kid, well, ever.  But the problem is these are the people that create the tech and get paid to make it as ubiquitous and widely available as possible.

They're telling their kids that no, you can't use this.  It'll ruin your life.  We're actually hiring somebody to enforce this rule.

What does that say about the rest of us?

Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump remains the most cancerous symptom of the diseased Republican party, because the problem is the party refuses to rein him in and say "no more".  The Never Trump cowards denounce Trump and some have even left the party, but refuse to take any responsibility for his rise or for the fact that 98% of his policies they still agree with and that they're fine with the direction of the remaining GOP. This means of course that nobody bothers to stop Trump when he decides to make an already volatile situation exponentially worse, as he headed to my old neck of the woods in Charlotte to scream at the enemies of the state that Cesar Sayoc tried to assassinate this week.

For two days, the president toyed with a bipartisan message and watched as the news cycle focused not on him, and not on the midterm elections, but on at least 14 explosive devices delivered to prominent Democratic figures.

By Friday, he had had enough.

As he left Washington for his latest campaign rally here, President Trump made it clear that he was no longer going to sit through another news cycle without President Trump at the center.

“The Republicans had tremendous momentum, and then, of course, this happened, where all that you people talked about was that,” Mr. Trump said to reporters about the bomb scares. “But now we have to start the momentum again.”

His supporters in North Carolina appeared to agree. When Mr. Trump took the stage at the Bojangles’ Coliseum, hours after Cesar Sayoc Jr., a Florida man with a lengthy criminal record, was arrested in connection to sending the devices, chants of “Build the wall” and “CNN sucks” had already rung out repeatedly.

“The suspect has been captured — great job — and is now in federal custody,” Mr. Trump said. “These terrorist actions must be prosecuted and punished to the full extent of the law.”

The president, who made a show on Wednesday of being “nice” as bomb scares were affecting several of his political enemies, resurrected some of his favorite political insults two days later. Taunts including “Crooked Hillary” and “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” were brought out once again in a pull-out-all-the-stops partisan effort 11 days before the midterms.

While Mr. Trump did spend a few minutes railing against the Democrats and their immigration policies — “A vote for Democrats is a vote for open borders,” he once again falsely claimed — he reserved special ire for the news media.

Touching on a “broader conversation about the tone and civility” of political discourse, the president said that “everyone will benefit if we can end the politics of personal destruction.”

He added, “The media has a major role to play whether they want to or not.”

He did not address the political leanings of Mr. Sayoc, 56, who was active in several pro-Trump Facebook groups and had attended at least one Trump rally, waving a “CNN Sucks” sign and wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. Mr. Sayoc’s van was covered in pro-Trump stickers. He turned up in Washington, again with the red hat, for Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January 2017.

But on Friday, Republicans, from Mr. Trump on down, made it clear that Mr. Sayoc was not one of them. In fact, the president said that the coverage of Mr. Sayoc’s political leanings was a result of the news media trying to pin the attempted bombings on his politics.

“We have seen an effort by the media in recent hours to use the sinister actions of one individual to score political points against me and the Republican Party,” Mr. Trump said. “The media has tried to attack the incredible Americans who support our movement to give power back to the people.”

Once again, Trump telling his screaming hordes that the Democrats are your enemy and that you will have to do something about them.  Once again, Trump telling his screaming hordes that the media is your enemy and that you will have to do something about them.  Once again, Trump telling his screaming hordes that those people are your enemy and that you will have to do something about them.

And so far in the last 72 hours, they did.

Just like Trump told them to do.

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Another act of domestic terrorism in America, another white male suspect taken alive, and eight people dead in a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue this morning.

Eight people have been killed and a number of others injured after a shooting situation at The Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill on Saturday.

KDKA’s Meghan Schiller reports that a suspect, a white male, has surrendered. The SWAT team had been talking with the suspect, and he was crawling and injured.

Police sources tell KDKA’s Andy Sheehan the gunman walked into the building and yelled, “All Jews Must die.” Sheehan confirmed that eight people were confirmed dead. Others had been shot but the extent of their injuries in unknown at this time.

Police have requested that residents stay inside their home as they exchanged gun fire with a suspected gunman.

President Donald Trump Tweeted his thoughts to the Pittsburgh area amid the tragedy.

When officers arrived, the gunman reportedly shot at them, forcing officers to use their vehicles as a shield. Three police officers were reportedly shot.

The shooting happened during weekly Shabbat services at the conservative Jewish Synagogue, the building was full was reportedly full of people for a Saturday service and police say they’ve received several calls from people barricaded inside the Synagogue.

This looks very much like as awful a hate crime as the shooting in Charleston three years ago where Dylann Roof killed nine black worshipers at an AME church, and just another reminder that in addition to the racial component of Trump's white nationalism, there's the religious component as well, where non-Christians, especially Muslims and Jews, are targets.

I mean, guys, I don't know how much more obvious Nazi comparisons have to appear past the point of shooting up a temple during service and yelling "All Jews must die" before we do something about getting America off this track, but in about 10 days if we don't get this done right, America's not coming back anytime soon.

It'll happen again and again and again.

The Face-Eating Leopard Party Ate Her Face, Guys

In probably the best example of "Literally anyone on Earth could have told you that your opinion was 100% wrong", Caitlyn Jenner admits that since Donald Trump wants to redefine her and every other trans person in America (and possibly the Earth) out of existence that she may have been wrong about supporting him in 2016.

These past two years under President Trump have given me the opportunity to reflect on a lot of topics that have come up in the LGBTQ community and in our nation. Some of these are thorny issues still worth discussing; many should have been settled long ago. As I’ve watched and pondered, my outlook has changed significantly from what it was during my highly publicized and glamorized early Caitlyn days, when my life as an out trans woman was just beginning.

Since then, I have learned and continue to learn about the obstacles our community faces, the politics that surround us and the places my voice can help. I have reflected on what my unique position of privilege means and how I can best use it to make a positive difference.

Following Trump’s election as president, I saw fertile ground for change within the Republican Party on LGBTQ issues. Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to claim to support this valuable, vulnerable community, and I was encouraged by the applause he received when he said at the Republican National Convention in July 2016 that he would stand up for the LGBTQ community. Poll after poll showed that Americans’ views on LGBTQ issues were changing for the better — and that this groundswell extended even to the voter base of the Republican Party. I was optimistic that this was how I could leverage my privilege for change.

I believed I could work within the party and the Trump administration to shift the minds of those who most needed shifting. I made many trips to Washington to lobby and educate members of Congress, other Washington policymakers and powerful influencers. These meetings were generally positive and almost always led to encouraging conversations. Despite the criticism I received from segments of the LGBTQ community for engaging with this administration, I remained hopeful for positive change.

Sadly, I was wrong. The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president. The leader of our nation has shown no regard for an already marginalized and struggling community. He has ignored our humanity. He has insulted our dignity. He has made trans people into political pawns as he whips up animus against us in an attempt to energize the most right-wing segment of his party, claiming his anti-transgender policies are meant to “protect the country.” This is politics at its worst. It is unacceptable, it is upsetting, and it has deeply, personally hurt me.

No matter how you feel about Caitlyn's gullibility, denial, self-hatred, whatever you want to call it, that last paragraph is absolutely correct.  She goes on to say that she no longer supports Trump (which, I mean, yeah) and that she does need to listen to others in the LGBTQ community (also, gigantic duh because they were screaming at her that she was wrong).

What I don't see in the opinion piece is the most important part: Jenner apologizing to the LGBTQ community for enabling Trump in hurting them.  The opportunity for a truly heartfelt apology and to beg for forgiveness was completely missed here.  Maybe that part comes later, and I'm not qualified to judge if she should be forgiven or not.

But I do know that most apologies contain an admission of responsibility as well as the willingness to take action to make the situation better, and while Jenner does show the latter, the lack of the former makes the whole thing ring hollow.

Bigger problem is this though, just just makes Jenner another Never Trump Republican who's still a Republican, which would also have rendered that apology completely useless, so a reminder to the newest member of the Never Trump brigade: if you think that a Mike Pence wouldn't continue this exact same policy, and that Republicans in Congress wouldn't support this atrocity, you're not just enabling the anti-trans bigotry, you are the anti-trans bigotry.

Have a nice day.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

With 10 days until the Midterms, Donald Trump plans to go all in on anti-immigrant racism next week in order to rally his fearful, hate-filled base.

President Trump is preparing to announce a sweeping border crackdown in a speech Tuesday, a week before the midterm elections, in which he is expected to invoke emergency powers to stop migrants from entering the United States and depict them as a grave national security threat, administration officials said Friday.

Trump is considering steps that would bar migrants from crossing the border and deny them a chance to apply for asylum in the United States, measures that legal scholars and immigrant rights groups say would contravene U.S. laws and international treaties, likely triggering challenges in federal court.

The president, undeterred, has been buoyed by rising approval ratings in recent weeks and eager to cudgel his Democratic rivals on border issues, depicting the migrant caravan moving through Mexico as a menace to U.S. security.

Administration officials with knowledge of the speech preparations said the exact measures Trump will announce remain under discussion, as attorneys from the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department and White House attempt to craft policies that put the administration on the least-vulnerable legal footing.

Trump plans to approach the speech as a chance to lay out his vision for an overhaul of immigration policies and border security, according to aides, eager to whip up his base and convince voters his party will take a firm stand on border security.

Democrats have accused Trump and Republicans of “fearmongering” on immigration ahead of the election.

“President Trump’s immigration policies have been a failure from day one,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “Unlike previous presidents, he has failed to work with our partners in the region, and we are seeing the consequences of his failure today.”

Trump will say he's going to seal the border and make a big production out of it, his base will buy it and go vote because they dream of the day when they can burst open heads like melons and they believe Trump will give them the chance to make that happen. 

Having such an order immediately blocked by a federal judge so that Trump can scream about the horde of evil brown people days before the midterms guarantees that the MAGAbomber gets off the front page too.

And if Hispanic or black folk get hurt or killed on the way to polling places as a result of the rhetoric, well that only means Trump is a manly man, doesn't it?  What they really want is for Trump to have to declare a national emergency and suspend rule of law, and then things get really fun, don't they?

Trump sure does love his autocrat playbook, because he's using every page in it on the way to his burgeoning dictatorship.

That Little Domestic Terroism Problem Of Ours, Con't

The MAGAbomber, as the suspect in the spate of dangerous packages this week mailed to Trump's enemies' list has been called on Twitter, has apparently been caught by law enforcement.

A man in Florida with a lengthy criminal record was arrested Friday in connection with the suspected mail bombs sent to high profile figures, authorities said.

The arrest came after law enforcement responded to two more devices on Friday — one in Florida, the other in New York — pushing the total number of packages found by authorities to 12. All of the devices were sent to people who have criticized or clashed with President Trump, and while none have detonated, officials have been on high alert and worried about whether more could be delivered.

The suspect has been identified as Cesar Sayoc, 56, according to a law enforcement official. State records show he had a criminal record dating back decades, including a past arrest for making a bomb threat.

These run-ins with law enforcement date back at least to an arrest for larceny when Sayoc was 29 years old, according to state records. Other charges of larceny, grand theft and fraud soon followed across the southern part of the state. In 2002, the Miami police arrested him for a bomb threat, a felony. Sayoc pleaded guilty without trial and was sentenced to probation, the records show.

According to the police report, Sayoc called Florida Power and Light, a power company, in August 2002 and threatened to blow them up.

“It would be worse than September 11th,” Sayoc said, according to the police report, which also said Sayoc threatened the company’s representative with physical harm if his electricity was turned off.

And of course, he's a registered Republican and a die-hard Trump fan who apparently had a white van covered with pro-Trump, anti-Democratic propaganda and he regularly went after liberals on social media.

Sayoc—who was named by several national media outlets as the man authorities arrested Friday in connection with the attempted bombings—tweeted frequently from what appears to be his account: @hardrock2016.

The account and his Facebook profile, which feature pictures of Sayoc, 56, at Trump rallies, also contain some of the same images plastered to Sayoc’s van, including flags for Florida’s Seminole tribe and collages of pro-Trump and anti-CNN meme stickers.

The Facebook account is almost exclusively pro-Trump content, including pictures and videos Sayoc purportedly filmed at one of the president’s political rallies. And the Twitter feed is littered with far-right conspiracy theories or violent threats aimed at some of President Trump’s most outspoken critics.

He appears to have repeatedly tweeted about George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist who has long been the target of far-right, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

At one point, Sayoc purportedly wrote “you will vanish” in a tweet aimed at the billionaire. Soros received a suspicious package at his Westchester County home on Monday—the first of at least 12 mailed to liberal public figures this week.

Other tweets falsely claimed the February 2018 mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was a false-flag operation orchestrated by Soros and his liberal allies.

It's weird how all of these domestic terrorists and mass shooters over the last couple of years are all registered Republicans who voted for and loved Donald Trump, hated liberals and the media, believed and spread conspiracy theories, and resorted to deadly violence in order to "win".  It's almost like Trump's rhetoric is gasoline on a bonfire and that Trump shares some responsibility for his legion of orcs howling for blood.

I mean it's not like the guy goes around the country regularly calling for violence against and prosecution of people he considers to be his political enemies, right?

 

Another #MeToo Moment, Con't

Only slightly behind the Trump regime and Congress and Hollywood as far as places where powerful men abuse women and have gotten away with it is Silicon Valley, and perhaps the tech industry is the worst at dealing with it.  Case in point, the latest NY Times bombshell report on legendary former Google executive Andy Rubin, the man behind the company's multi-billion dollar Android mobile operating system, and how his firing from the Big G involved a $90 million golden parachute and a 4-year cover-up.

Google gave Andy Rubin, the creator of Android mobile software, a hero’s farewell when he left the company in October 2014.

“I want to wish Andy all the best with what’s next,” Larry Page, Google’s chief executive then, said in a public statement. “With Android he created something truly remarkable — with a billion-plus happy users.”

What Google did not make public was that an employee had accused Mr. Rubin of sexual misconduct. The woman, with whom Mr. Rubin had been having an extramarital relationship, said he coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room in 2013, according to two company executives with knowledge of the episode. Google investigated and concluded her claim was credible, said the people, who spoke on the condition that they not be named, citing confidentiality agreements. Mr. Rubin was notified, they said, and Mr. Page asked for his resignation.

Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years, said two people with knowledge of the terms. The last payment is scheduled for next month.

It gets worse.  Much worse.

Mr. Rubin was one of three executives that Google protected over the past decade after they were accused of sexual misconduct. In two instances, it ousted senior executives, but softened the blow by paying them millions of dollars as they departed, even though it had no legal obligation to do so. In a third, the executive remained in a highly compensated post at the company. Each time Google stayed silent about the accusations against the men.

The New York Times obtained corporate and court documents and spoke to more than three dozen current and former Google executives and employees about the episodes, including some people directly involved in handling them. Most asked to remain anonymous because they were bound by confidentiality agreements or feared retribution for speaking out.

The transgressions varied in severity. Mr. Rubin’s case stood out for how much Google paid him and its silence on the circumstances of his departure. After Mr. Rubin left, the company invested millions of dollars in his next venture.

Sam Singer, a spokesman for Mr. Rubin, disputed that the technologist had been told of any misconduct at Google and said he left the company of his own accord. Mr. Singer said that Mr. Rubin did not engage in misconduct and that “any relationship that Mr. Rubin had while at Google was consensual and did not involve any person who reported directly to him.”

While Mr. Rubin’s exit from Google after an inappropriate relationship was previously reported, the nature of the accusation and the financial terms have not been disclosed.

Silicon Valley is broken.  Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, all these trillion-dollar companies are just too big and too powerful, and as we now know, too morally rotten to be allowed to continue. 

They must be broken up.

StupidiNews!

• The FBI continues to hunt for leads as more suspicious and dangerous packages have turned up mailed to prominent Democrats and vocal Trump regime critics.
• Two decades after Matthew Shepard was kidnapped and killed for being gay, his remains will be interred at the Washington National Cathedral.
• Saudi Arabia has changed its story on the murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi once again, now saying that his death was premeditated and not unintended.
• The pharmaceutical lobby is coming down hard on Donald Trump's proposal to lower drug prices by calling it "socialized medicine" that will lead to prescription shortages and cost lives.
• CBS has ordered a Star Trek animated series for its streaming service that will take the series to a new "frontier": comedy.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Time to check in with Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball team of election prognosticators as the 2018 midterm elections are now under two weeks away, and while Sabato sees Sen. Heitkamp's seat in North Dakota as vulnerable, the rest of the Senate map remains in play with Florida, Missouri and Indiana as true toss-ups that Dems must defend, and two GOP tossups that are vulnerable in Nevada and Arizona.  Texas and Tennessee remain in play for the Dems to pick up, as do Montana and WV for the GOP to go after.

On the House side, Sabato sees 20 pickups for the Dems and 2 for the GOP, 18 of the 23 pickups the Democrats would need, still leaving 20 GOP seats as tossups and 1 Dem tossup, and a staggering 33 more GOP leaners that could be picked off compared to just 2 for the Dems.  Longer shot races still find 29 more likely House Republican seats in play, with only 10 Dem likely seats in the same condition.  The Dems are in excellent position to retake the House.

Having said all that, it's the gubernatorial races that could be the most surprising.

The highlights of this week’s ratings changes come in the gubernatorial races, where we’re moving three additional races into the Toss-up column, giving us a whopping 10 races where we don’t see a favorite with less than two weeks to go. Red states Kansas and South Dakota go from Leans Republican to Toss-up, while Gov. Kate Brown (D-OR) moves from Leans Democratic to Toss-up.

Notice that these are all states with decided federal political leans where, nonetheless, the federal minority party may have a chance to steal a governorship. In the case of the minority parties in Oregon and South Dakota, gubernatorial wins would break very long losing streaks: A Republican has not won a governor’s race in the Beaver State since 1982, and a Democrat has not won such a contest in the Mount Rushmore State since 1974. A key ingredient in the potential upset bids of both state Senate Minority Leader Billie Sutton (D-SD) and state Rep. Knute Buehler (R-OR) is that they both can point to mainstream (for their respective states) positions on abortion: Sutton does not support abortion rights, Buehler does. Our sense is that both races are very close. Buehler is running against Brown’s management of the state; Sutton is running against Rep. Kristi Noem (R, SD-AL) as a Washington insider.

When it comes time to pick these races, as we will, it may be hard to go against the ingrained federal partisanship of each state. But they are very much in play.

The same goes for Kansas, where Democrats have won the governorship recently — for instance, former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS) won in 2002 and 2006 before becoming President Obama’s secretary of Health and Human Services. If this race was just a head-to-head contest between Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) and state Sen. Laura Kelly (D), Kelly probably would have an edge. But the presence of independent former 2014 Senate candidate Greg Orman has pushed this race into something of a tie, although some Republicans believe Kobach is a little bit ahead. Kelly has to hope Orman, who attracts something around 10% support, performs worse than that on Election Day, as often happens to third-party candidates. Kelly has the support of several prominent Kansas Republicans against Kobach, who is from the more conservative wing of the party. One challenge for Kelly: In a socially conservative state, she’s pro-choice on abortion.

One other change this week: Gov. Gina Raimondo (D-RI) has seemed very much in trouble throughout the cycle, but polling has shown her taking a stronger lead against her 2014 opponent, Allan Fung (R), as well as former state Rep. Joe Trillo, an ex-Republican who is running as a pro-Trump independent and splitting the vote in a way helpful to the incumbent. A group backed by the Republican Governors Association recently stopped running ads in the Ocean State, signaling that Raimondo’s path to a second term is clearer. We’re moving Rhode Island from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic.

So now we’re left with 10 gubernatorial Toss-ups, a situation similar to four years ago, where many gubernatorial races (although fewer) were up in the air at the same point of the cycle.

A quick word on all the current Toss-ups:

Of the three races we just moved to Toss-up, Kansas seems like it might be the likeliest to flip, but we also remember how embattled Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) was left for dead in 2014 but won anyway. However, that year featured a GOP-leaning national environment, whereas this one does not. If one goes by the polls, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers (D) may be a tiny favorite over Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI). The same is true of Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum (D) in his open-seat Florida race against former Rep. Ron DeSantis (R, FL-6), as well as state Attorney General Janet Mills (D) in Maine, where she faces businessman Shawn Moody (R) and a couple of independent candidates who may hurt her more than Moody. We don’t have even a slight lean at this point in Iowa, Nevada, and Ohio. In Georgia, we think a runoff is likelier than not.

One final note: Late last Friday, Gov. Bill Walker (I-AK) dropped out of the Alaska governor’s race. He remains on the ballot but his exit makes former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy’s (R) position a little less secure against ex-Sen. Mark Begich (D). We moved that race from Likely Republican to Leans Republican, but it remains the GOP’s best opportunity to win a governorship the party currently does not hold.

Overall, Democrats are going to net governorships, and perhaps many, but a lot of the individual races remain up in the air.

Oregon is always unpredictable, as is Alaska, and it's a shame that Ben Jealous isn't getting more help in Maryland against Larry Hogan.  But for Kansas, Iowa, and South Dakota to be in play right now really feels good.  Dems are already poised to pick up Michigan, New Mexico, and Illinois, and it's entirely possible that Dems could pick up eight more seats, vitally important going into 2020 and the Census.

We'll see.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

It's starting to look more and more like right-wing operative Roger Stone is the link between Russian intelligence actions to influence the 2016 contest and the Trump campaign, and that he's most likely going to prison for the rest of his life.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office has obtained communications suggesting that a right-wing conspiracy theorist might have had advance knowledge that the emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman had been stolen and handed to WikiLeaks, a source familiar with the investigation told NBC News.

Mueller's team has spent months investigating whether the conspiracy theorist, Jerome Corsi, learned before the public did that WikiLeaks had obtained emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers — and whether he passed information about the stolen emails to Donald Trump associate Roger Stone, multiple sources said.

Mueller's investigators have reviewed messages to members of the Trump team in which Stone and Corsi seem to take credit for the release of Democratic emails, said a person with direct knowledge of the emails.

The source and other people familiar with the matter say they have seen no evidence suggesting either man played any role in the hacking or release of the emails. Stone adamantly denies doing anything but passing on information already in the public domain.

Mueller's spokesman, Peter Carr, said the office had no comment. Corsi and his lawyer, David Gray, declined to comment.

There is zero doubt at this point that WikiLeaks was used by Putin's merry band of saboteurs as a clearing house for Russian intelligence operations and information.  There is zero doubt at this point that the Russians stole DNC emails through phishing.  There is zero doubt at this point that WikiLeaks was given those emails to distribute in order to cost Hillary Clinton the election.

If Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone knew these stolen DNC emails were coming from WikiLeaks beforehand, then they are the connection between Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign.

We also now know that Stone wanted to reward WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with a Trump pardon, and that Stone was pushing Trump to give Assange one in direct exchange for WikiLeaks' help in winning the election.

In early January, Roger Stone, the longtime Republican operative and adviser to Donald Trump, sent a text message to an associate stating that he was actively seeking a presidential pardon for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange—and felt optimistic about his chances. “I am working with others to get JA a blanket pardon,” Stone wrote, in a January 6 exchange of text messages obtained by Mother Jones. “It’s very real and very possible. Don’t fuck it up.” Thirty-five minutes later Stone added: “Something very big about to go down.”

The recipient of the messages was Randy Credico, a New York-based comedian and left-leaning political activist who Stone has identified as his backchannel to WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign—a claim Credico strongly denies. During the election, Stone, a political provocateur who got his start working for Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign, made statements that suggested he had knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to publish emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and other Democrats, and his interactions with WikiLeaks have become an intense focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian election interference. As Mueller’s team zeroes in on Stone, they have examined his push for an Assange pardon—which could be seen as an attempt to interfere with the Russia probe—and have questioned at least one of Stone’s associates about the effort.

Assange has not been publicly charged with a crime in the United States, though the Justice Department has investigated WikiLeaks over its publication of classified material and and role in releasing emails pilfered from Democratic targets by hackers working for Russian intelligence. Last year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions described arresting Assange, who for the last six years has taken refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy to evade criminal charges in Sweden stemming from a rape allegation, as a “priority.” Justice Department prosecutors have considered charges against Assange since 2010, when WikiLeaks released more than a quarter million diplomatic cables.

Credico says that Stone repeatedly discussed his effort to win a pardon for Assange. At one point, he notes, Stone claimed that he was working with Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News personality and former New Jersey Superior Court judge, on a plan in which Napolitano would float the idea on his show or directly to President Donald Trump. Napolitano said in a statement that he “categorically denies” working with Stone to secure a pardon for Assange.

Stone confirmed the pardon effort, though declined to answer specific questions. “I most definitely advocated a pardon for Assange,” he said in an email. He also said that he had “most certainly urged my friend Andrew Napolitano” to support an Assange pardon.

This is about as obvious as a conspiracy gets:  Russia steals DNC (and RNC!) emails, they give the emails to WikiLeaks, they inform Stone what's coming, Stone tells Trump.  When the Access Hollywood tapes drop, within hours the counterattack is the DNC email leak that wipes the story of Trump's massive history of criminal sexual assault off the front page.  Trump goes on to win the election, and in return Stone works to get WikiLeaks founder Assange a pardon.

That's just part of the huge mess, but a big part.  And Mueller has all this evidence on Stone, Corsi, and WikiLeaks.  Obstruction of justice abounds, Stone is in the middle of it all.

Stay tuned.

Deportation Nation, Con't

The party of separating refugee kids from their parents and keeping them in cages in detention camps seems to think that martial law on the southern border is going to be a political winner for them in a couple weeks.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) suggested that President Donald Trump might have to declare martial law along the southern border of the United States to prevent a large group of Central American refugees and migrants from entering the country.

Gohmert appeared Tuesday on the “Todd Starnes Radio Show,” a Fox News program, to discuss the so-called migrant caravan, a group of thousands of migrants currently en route to the United States to seek asylum or residence.

Starnes called the group of mostly Honduran nationals a “mob.”

“If, in fact, this mob heads towards California, what’s gonna happen then?” Starnes asked Gohmert. “Because [Democratic governor] Jerry Brown will welcome them. You know it’s a sanctuary state. Do you think the president will allow that to happen?”

“I don’t think the president will allow that to happen,” Gohmert replied, suggesting that Trump could send troops to the borders over Brown’s objections and that the California governor would be committing treason by aiding the migrants.

“This has got to be so massive, I mean, you might have to declare martial law along the border,” Gohmert said. “And the Democrats have been to stupid to realize that encouraging this caravan they may actually empower the president to do things they never wanted.”

When Starnes asked Gohmert what “martial law” would look like, the congressman responded that it would mean “federal troops coming in and being at the border, and if anyone tried to stop them, they could be dealt with.”

“You would probably need federal law enforcement to be there to arrest any Americans who might try to stop it,” he elaborated. “The military needs to have their weapons pointed towards Mexico and not toward the American people, but it may be that we have to have enough federal law enforcement, and maybe we have to have the National Guard if Jerry Brown is going to force the issue ― but I hope and pray he won’t be so stupid as to try to stop the U.S. government from enforcing our border because then we’re talking treasonous-type acts.”

I know picking on Louie Gohmert, arguably the most ignorant and brutish oaf in Congress (and that's really saying something in 2018) is the definition of low-hanging fruit, but Gohmert seems to be in the midst of an ecstasy of going the full Kent State on The Scary Brown Horde™ and that's, you know, crimes against humanity and what not.

But note the Gohmert makes no distinction between the fate of the convoy and that of the need for "weapons pointed towards the American people" because they're traitors in his eyes, and especially note that Gohmert considers this an excuse to use the full coercive power of violence reserved for the state against its political internal enemies to remove them from the earth.

As I keep saying, right now America is at hard six headed towards seven on the Ten Stages of Genocide, but Gohmert is ambitiously thinking we need to skip the whole "internment, removal and property theft" mass deportation phase of seven and go straight to the trial massacre part of eight where a whole lot of people end up dead.  I mean, China's moved quickly down this chart into seven with ethnic Uighur Muslims and Beijing is definitely in the concentration camp phase of that particular operation currently, eight is probably already underway.

Gohmert's just letting us know that the Trump regime plan is to blame Democrats when something similar becomes "necessary" here very, very soon.  They want that shooting war, they want that crackdown, and they want to finally purge America of those people so badly they can taste it.

Will anyone take a sitting Congressman to task for his call for martial law, mass roundups and even deadly force to be used on US citizens? Not Gohmert's Texas constituents.  Five Thirty Eight figures he'll get 70% of the vote anyway, at he does pretty much every two years.

Like I keep telling you guys, this is America.  This is who we are and always have been.