Thanks to Trump's new tax law the government is about to go almost another trillion in debt. MAGA!

Courtesy of WaPo: 

It was another crazy news week, so it's understandable if you missed a small but important announcement from the Treasury Department: The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year — Trump's first full year in charge of the budget. 

That's almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017. 

Here are the exact figures: The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday. It's the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year.

Treasury mainly attributed the increase to the “fiscal outlook.” The Congressional Budget Office was more blunt. In a report this week, the CBO said tax receipts are going to be lower because of the new tax law. 

As you can see from the chart we have borrowed more, but keep in mind that was to save the auto industry and the US economy.

In other words Obama's debt was the result of Republican mismanaging of the economy, and now so is Donald Trump's.

You know when the Tea Party was first formed one of its main attack points was the national debt, I can hardly wait to hear how silent they will remain about this.

Donald Trump just fired the entire HIV/AIDS advisory panel without explanation.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

The remaining 16 members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS were told they were being fired Wednesday, via a FedExed letter from the White House. Six members resigned in June in protest of what they called the Trump administration’s inaction on the issue. Gabriel Maldonado, a PACHA adviser, confirmed the firings, but said the “explanation is still unclear.” “Like any administration, they want their own people there,” Maldonado told the Washington Blade. “Many of us were Obama appointees. I was an Obama appointee and my term was continuing until 2018.” Scott Schoettes, a council member who quit in June (and a senior lawyer for Lambda Legal), called the Trump move a “purge,” tweeting that the White House was “eliminating few remaining people willing to push back against harmful policies, like abstinence-only sex ed.” In September, Trump had renewed PACHA’s brief for another year.

You know one would think that if you wanted to change the personnel in any given agency that you might do it over a period of time so as not to interrupt their work.

To do it like this seems impulsive and a little infantile.

Almost as if Trump simply cannot bear to have any Obama appointees in the government at all.  

EPA chief Scott Pruitt may be the king of paranoia.

Courtesy of the AP: 

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency used public money to have his office swept for hidden listening devices and bought sophisticated biometric locks for additional security. 

The spending items, totaling nearly $9,000, are among a string of increased counter-surveillance precautions taken by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who also requires around-the-clock protection by an armed security team. 

The EPA’s Office of Inspector General is already investigating Pruitt’s $25,000 purchase of a custom-made soundproof privacy booth for his office to deter eavesdropping on his phone calls.

An accounting of Pruitt’s spending for the bug sweep and pricey locks was provided to The Associated Press by an EPA employee who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing concerns of retaliation.

Does Scott Pruitt realize that he works for a government agency that deals with the environment and is NOT in fact working with the CIA?

Kind of makes me wonder if Donald Trump chooses his cabinet members based on the number of voices they hear in their heads.

Bicyclist who flipped Donald Trump's motorcade the bird has been fired.

Remember this woman?

Remember how much we all admired her?

Yeah, well she lost her damn job:

The woman’s name is Juli Briskman. Her employer, government contractor Akima LLC, wasn’t so happy about the photo. They fired her over it. 

In a Saturday interview with HuffPost, Briskman, a 50-year-old mother of two, said she was stunned that someone had taken a picture of her giving Trump the middle finger. 

As the photo circulated online, Briskman decided to tell Akima’s HR department what was happening when she went to work on Monday. By Tuesday, her bosses called her into a meeting and said she had violated the company’s social media policy by using the photo as her profile picture on Twitter and Facebook. 

“They said, ‘We’re separating from you,‘” said Briskman. “Basically, you cannot have ‘lewd’ or ‘obscene’ things in your social media. So they were calling flipping him off ‘obscene.’” 

Briskman, who worked in marketing and communications at Akima for just over six months, said she emphasized to the executives that she wasn’t on the job when the incident happened and that her social media pages don’t mention her employer. They told her that because Akima was a government contractor, the photo could hurt their business, she said.

Well that is just fucked up.

Here this woman expressed the emotions felt by the vast majority of the American people in this country, and she gets canned?

Don't you feel that Donald Trump is behind this, cause I certainly do. 

Well here's my prediction.

I bet money that there are company executives who are reading about this woman's situation right now, and I bet in the next several days she will have a different job, with better pay, and a more secure future.

After all this is still America isn't it?

If our rights to freely express ourselves and to protest authoritarianism are no longer valid, then Donald Trump and his deplorables truly have won haven't they?

The costs of global warming are literally too expensive to ignore.

Courtesy of TPM: 

A non-partisan federal watchdog says climate change is already costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars each year, with those costs expected to rise as devastating storms, floods, wildfires and droughts become more frequent in the coming decades. 

A Government Accountability Office report released Monday said the federal government has spent more than $350 billion over the last decade on disaster assistance programs and losses from flood and crop insurance. That tally does not include the massive toll from this year’s wildfires and three major hurricanes, expected to be among the most costly in the nation’s history. 

The report predicts these costs will only grow in the future, potentially reaching a budget busting $35 billion a year by 2050. The report says the federal government doesn’t effectively plan for these recurring costs, classifying the financial exposure from climate-related costs as “high risk.” 

“The federal government has not undertaken strategic government-wide planning to manage climate risks by using information on the potential economic effects of climate change to identify significant risks and craft appropriate federal responses,” the study said. “By using such information, the federal government could take the initial step in establishing government-wide priorities to manage such risks.”

And of course this does not calculate the cost of human life that will also rise exponentially as these devastating weather patterns worsen.

Just imagine for a minute how much less all of this would have cost if thirty years ago people had listened to those wacky climate scientists and started working toward weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, and moving toward renewable energy sources.

We could have literally saved billions and billions of dollars.

But then how would those poor oil companies have made their billions and billions of dollars?

Government lawyers are asking a judge to reject request by CNN and others to make Comey memos public.

 Courtesy of CNN: 

Government lawyers have asked a judge to reject CNN's requests to make public the memos of former FBI Director James Comey in which he details his meetings with President Donald Trump. 

In a late Friday evening filing, the lawyers also have asked for permission to argue in secret why they say the disclosure could compromise the investigation into Russian election-meddling and potential obstruction of justice into that probe. 

Several news outlets and government watchdogs, including CNN, have requested the documents be released under the Freedom of Information Act. Comey testified in Congress that the documents detail Trump's request that he pledge personal loyalty and what he interpreted as a request to curtail an investigation into Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. 

Despite Comey's testimony that he wrote the memos specifically to avoid including classified information, the government argued it has now classified portions of the documents.

Releasing the memos, the government said, could "reveal the scope and focus of the investigation and thereby harm the investigation" and any prosecutions.

Yeah I think that last part translates into "We think making these memos public would harm Donald Trump's ability to escape prosecution or impeachment."

Funny how things that were not classified suddenly become classified when it helps to accuse Hillary Clinton of breaking the law, or helps Donald Trump avoid facing the consequences for his actions, don't you think?

In defiance of Donald Trump FEMA spokesperson says that they are not abandoning Puerto Rico.

.@FEMA will be w/Puerto Rico, USVI, every state, territory impacted by a disaster every day, supporting throughout their response & recovery

— Eileen Lainez (@FEMAspox) October 12, 2017

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

In a tweet Thursday afternoon, FEMA spokeswoman Eileen Lainez wrote that the agency “will be w/Puerto Rico, USVI, every state, territory impacted by a disaster every day, supporting throughout their response & recovery.”

Her tweet came five hours after Trump took to Twitter to say the island’s financial crisis “looms largely of their own making” and is due to the poor state of its infrastructure and electrical system and its governor’s “total lack of … accountability.”

Shortly after her initial tweet, Lainez sent FEMA’s latest update on support to Puerto Rico through the social media platform, a reminder that it will take time for the U.S. territory of 3.4 million people to recover, but that residents are seeing some services being restored. 

“FEMA, in coordination and partnership with 36 federal departments and agencies, remains focused on helping the people of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico with life-sustaining commodities and other essential services,” the agency stated in its press release from Wednesday. “As more businesses open and public services are restored, quality of life will continue to improve for many residents.”

Well it's good that some people still understand the responsibility of government.

It's like everybody's job these days is explaining what the president meant, or telling people to ignore him altogether.

The Israelis alerted the United States that the Russian antivirus software installed on their computers was stealing American secrets.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

It was a case of spies watching spies watching spies: Israeli intelligence officers looked on in real time as Russian government hackers searched computers around the world for the code names of American intelligence programs. 

What gave the Russian hacking, detected more than two years ago, such global reach was its improvised search tool — antivirus software made by a Russian company, Kaspersky Lab, that is used by 400 million people worldwide, including by officials at some two dozen American government agencies. 

The Israeli officials who had hacked into Kaspersky’s own network alerted the United States to the broad Russian intrusion, which has not been previously reported, leading to a decision just last month to order Kaspersky software removed from government computers. 

The Russian operation, described by multiple people who have been briefed on the matter, is known to have stolen classified documents from a National Security Agency employee who had improperly stored them on his home computer, on which Kaspersky’s antivirus software was installed. What additional American secrets the Russian hackers may have gleaned from multiple agencies, by turning the Kaspersky software into a sort of Google search for sensitive information, is not yet publicly known.

I think it is a safe bet that this is the information that Trump shared with his new Kremlin buddies during that White House visit.

Knowing what we know now the very idea that we would install antivirus software created by the Russians on government computers seems the very definition of stupidity.

It just shows how criminally unprepared were for a cyber attack of this magnitude.

Speaking of the Russian hacking, how is that House investigation going anyway?

Courtesy of CNN: 

The chairman of the House intelligence committee has issued subpoenas to the partners who run Fusion GPS, the research firm that produced the dossier of memos on alleged Russian efforts to aid the Trump campaign, according to sources briefed on the matter. 

The subpoenas -- signed by California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes -- were issued Oct. 4, demanding documents and testimony later this month and early November.

But the subpoenas appear to be the latest fight in an investigation that has periodically been hobbled by controversy and infighting. 

A Democratic committee source said "the subpoenas were issued unilaterally by the majority, without the minority's agreement and despite good faith engagement thus far by the witnesses on the potential terms for voluntary cooperation." 

Indeed, the move blindsided some committee members, multiple sources told CNN. And it has angered some on the committee who say that Nunes is still seeking to direct an investigation he was supposed to have no involvement in leading. 

"He's not in any way, shape or form working on the investigation," said one Democratic committee member. "He's sitting outside the investigation and pushing it in a political direction."

So Trump tells the Russian spies that the Israelis caught on to how they were accessing some of our government information, and now his congressional puppet is working to sabotage an investigation into who else worked to make the hacking more effective.

EPA is spending almost $25,000 to build a soundproof booth so that Scott Pruitt can communicate privately.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

The Environmental Protection Agency is spending nearly $25,000 to construct a secure, soundproof communications booth in the office of Administrator Scott Pruitt, according to government contracting records. 

The agency signed a $24,570 contract earlier this summer with Acoustical Solutions, a Richmond-based company, for a “privacy booth for the administrator.” The company sells and installs an array of sound-dampening and privacy products, from ceiling baffles to full-scale enclosures like the one purchased by the EPA. The project’s scheduled completion date is Oct. 9, according to the contract. 

Typically, such soundproof booths are used to conduct hearing tests. But the EPA sought a customized version — one that eventually would cost several times more than a typical model — that Pruitt can use to communicate privately.

The agency is arguing that they need this for the sake of privacy but they already have a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) on site, just like other agencies, so the reason for this extra level of security is somewhat puzzling.

It kind of makes you wonder just what Pruitt is saying that he is so desperate to keep quiet.

And of course who he is saying it to.

HHS to take federal health insurance exchange websites offline for most Sundays during the upcoming open enrollment sessions. You know, because that's so helpful.

HHS will take https://t.co/hHpJTTaZfz offline nearly every Sunday from 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. of open enrollment, per presentation sent to me. pic.twitter.com/0n5cZ9ENOK

— Sarah Kliff (@sarahkliff) September 22, 2017

Courtesy of HuffPo:

The Trump administration plans to shut down the federal health insurance exchange for 12 hours during all but one Sunday in the upcoming open enrollment season. 

The shutdown will occur from 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET on every Sunday except Dec. 10. 

The Department of Health and Human Services will also shut down the federal exchange — healthcare.gov — overnight on the first day of open enrollment, Nov. 1. More than three dozen states use that exchange for their marketplaces. 

HHS officials disclosed this information Friday during a webinar with community groups that help people enroll.

So if they cannot simply repeal Obamacare out right, plan B is to sabotage it from within.

Just like the Republicans to undermine government effectiveness so that they can then claim that government is completely ineffective. 

The Democrats are demanding to know just how much the government is paying Trump owned businesses.

Courtesy of Madison.com: 

As President Donald Trump spends much of August at his New Jersey golf club, Democratic lawmakers are making a new push for information about how much money the federal government is spending at his for-profit properties. 

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday asked departments to hand over information about their Trump-related spending by Aug. 25. 

"The American people deserve to know how their tax dollars are spent, including the amount of federal funds that are being provided to private businesses owned by the president and the purposes of these expenditures," reads the lawmakers' letter to Elaine Duke, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. The lawmakers sent similar requests to all Cabinet secretaries. 

Their request seeks documents about any payments the departments made to the Trump Organization or any business in which the Trump organization has an ownership stake. 

The Democratic Oversight letter cites reports about the State Department booking rooms at a new Trump hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia, where his adult sons were on site for the grand opening, and the Defense Department and Homeland Security renting space at Trump Tower, where first lady Melania Trump and the couple's 11-year-old son lived until the end of the school year. 

"President Trump also makes frequent trips to properties he owns, and these trips may result in U.S. taxpayers' money flowing into President Trump's pockets," the letter to Duke reads. 

The new effort is one of many to understand how much money the Trump-led government is spending on businesses that he still owns. The Government Accountability Office is undertaking the most comprehensive study.

This is a good move.

I think that even many of Trump's supporters might be shocked once they see the millions of taxpayer dollars that have been flowing into the Trump family businesses since the inauguration.

It might even knock Trump's approval numbers down into the twenties.

Support surges for single payer health care.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Single-payer healthcare is growingly increasingly popular in the United States, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Friday. 

33 percent of poll respondents said they favor a single-payer system, in which the government covers medical expenses with tax money, over the current system based on private insurance companies. 

That's an increase of five percentage points since January, and twelve points since single payer was polled in December 2015. 

60 percent of Americans who were surveyed said the federal government is responsible for providing healthcare coverage to all Americans, compared to 39 percent who said it was not the government’s job. 

The poll comes a day after Senate Republicans unveiled the first draft of their plan to repeal ObamaCare.

Like I have said before the Republicans may actually be inadvertently pushing this country toward single payer, and clearly the American people are ready for it.

Just the other day Rand Paul said, and I quote, "What I'd like to do is legalize inexpensive insurance, and you should be able to get insurance for $1 a day. I mean, you really should."

Well I have news for Mr. I Have a Squirrel Toupee, thirty dollar a month for insurance premiums would only be possible through a single payer system that every single American had signed onto. 

And the best way to do that is through a government program like Medicaid or Medicare.

So essentially the Republicans want single payer health care as well, they are just too stupid to realize it.

A new threat surfaces as hurricane season gets under way. There's nobody in charge.

Courtesy of WTKR: 

Hurricane season began on June 1, and according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the season will be a busy one, with an above-average range of 5-9 hurricanes likely in the Atlantic. 

The United States could be especially vulnerable to hurricane landfalls this year, observers say, but not because of the enhanced activity that is expected. 

The two agencies that protect the country’s coast lines and its residents, NOAA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are still without leaders — positions that must be appointed by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate. 

“That should scare the hell out of everybody,” retired US Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré told CNN. “These positions help save lives.”

For their part FEMA and NOAA say they are ready, however with nobody competent at the helm there is still concern that the lack of leadership will negatively impact reaction time.

Anybody remember Katrina?

Now for his part Trump of course is blaming the Democrats.

.@foxandfriends Dems are taking forever to approve my people, including Ambassadors. They are nothing but OBSTRUCTIONISTS! Want approvals.

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

But in fact Trump has been exceedingly slow in appointing the necessary personnel in the first place.

 As you can see while the confirmation process IS slower than in previous administrations (For good cause if you ask me.) there are still far fewer appointees to even consider.

And why is that? Take a guess:

“In the vetting process there is a lot of scrutiny of social media accounts, Twitter . . . any hint of something negative about Trump as a candidate can be disqualifying, and a lot of people haven’t made it through that filter,” said Christine Wormuth, who served as the Pentagon’s top policy official from 2014 to 2016, under former President Barack Obama’s administration. 

The investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials is also scaring off people who had been on the fence about joining the administration. Even the opportunity to work under Mattis, who many of the potential picks know and respect, may not be enough. 

“With, frankly, the chaos that is happening, people who might have been open to it are asking themselves ‘Do I want to join this administration? How much of an impact will I have? Will I have to get a lawyer?’” Wormuth said.

So what is Trump doing with his time not spent making appointments to his cabinet, besides tweeting of course?

Funny you should ask.

President Trump is now at his Virginia golf club for the 2nd day in a row. It's his 23rd golf course visit since taking office 19 weeks ago.

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 4, 2017

Yeah, if Trump is looking for somebody to blame for the lack of leadership in key government agencies he need only look in the mirror.

Though I would advise him to only do so while fully dressed.

Because, ick!

Former DNI James Clapper says that our institutions are under assault internally. Under assault by Donald Trump.

Former DNI James Clapper: Our institutions are "under assault" internally by President Trump https://t.co/sDW8NzuwDq https://t.co/sVWYdol733

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 14, 2017

Courtesy of CNN: 

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a stern warning Sunday about the state of the US government after President Donald Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey last week, saying he thinks US institutions are "under assault." 

"I think in many ways our institutions are under assault both externally -- and that's the big news here is the Russian interference in our election system -- and I think as well our institutions are under assault internally," Clapper said on CNN's "State of the Union." 

Pressed by anchor Jake Tapper if he meant US institutions were under assault internally from the President, Clapper responded, "Exactly." 

Clapper called on the other branches of the federal government to step up in their roles as a check on the executive. "The founding fathers, in their genius, created a system of three co-equal branches of government and a built-in system of checks and balances," Clapper said. "I feel as though that is under assault and is eroding."

There is really no way to argue with this.

And that is why we need to appoint that special prosecutor and start taking steps to have this orange cancerous tumor removed from the White House.

Donald Trump's former choice for Army Secretary has stated that the government helping people keeps them from seeking God.

Hey, don't look at me. If you want help pray for it.

Courtesy of the Washington Examiner:  

President Trump's now-former pick for Army secretary once said government-assisted healthcare is an "injustice" because it hampers church-affiliated providers from converting people to Christianity. 

Mark Green, a state senator in Tennessee, told a church group in 2015 that sickness is one of the main avenues that bring people to religion, but that citizens in the United States now instead rely on the government to help them, limiting the Christian church's role. 

The comments shed more light on the conservative religious views that led Green, a physician and former Army flight surgeon, to withdraw his nomination on Friday after Democratic lawmakers and progressive advocacy groups raised an outcry in advance of his Senate confirmation hearings. 

"The person who's in need … they look to the government for the answer, not God, and I think in that way government has done an injustice that's even bigger than just the creation of an entitlement welfare state," Green said. "In this setting, I'll share the story, I think it interrupts the opportunity for people to come to a saving knowledge of who God is."

Most of the time these Fundamentalists are not dumb enough to say something like this out loud, but yeah I think that a lot of the religious Republicans have this as one of the secret reasons that they do not want the government to provide people with affordable healthcare. 

Are you sick?

Sounds like you need a little faith healing from Dr. Jesus.

Actually if they miss the chance to indoctrinate you into a religious faith as a child, their only real opportunity after that is if you become sick, or poor, lose a loved one, or experience some other catastrophic event that leaves you feeling vulnerable.

Religion is essentially a parasite that feeds on the weak.

If you are well cared for and filled with the confidence that you have the help you need when you need it, then why would you resort to seeking solace from a primitive superstition?  

I have to tell you that this statement makes a whole lot of things start to fall in place concerning the Republican's disdain for big government, Planned Parenthood, and Obamacare. 

This is why teaching civics is so important.

They understood it clear as a bell back in 1948.

So why is it so damn hard for everybody to understand today?

Top State Department officials resign en masse in order to avoid working for a Trump administration.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era. 

Tillerson was actually inside the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search for his No. 2, and that it was looking to replace the State Department’s long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me. 

Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
 ........

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry. “Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”

On the one hand it is a little gratifying to see government employees with too much integrity to work for Putin's puppet, but on the other it is somewhat terrifying as these folks do a very important and challenging job that will now be left undone unless Trump can find equally experienced folks to replace them with.

In other words the job will be left undone.

By the way according to two senior Trump Administration officials these officials were asked to leave and did not resign in protest.

Just so you know my baseline stance on everything that has to do with the Trump administration is that they are established liars, so any contradictory version of events I hear is the one that I am most likely going to accept as true.

This may seem unfair since NOBODY lies all of the time, but to me there is really no choice considering what we know about Trump and his subordinates, so unless they have corroborating evidence provided by a trustworthy source, I am going to assume they are full of shit.

President Obama's second term approval ratings now higher than Ronald Reagan's second term approval ratings. Take that GOP!

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Pollster.com's Charles Franklin was a little ahead of the curve Sunday morning when he pointed out that President Obama's approval rating right now is among the highest Election-Day approval ratings in recent history.

Why is that ahead of the curve? Because on Monday, fewer than 24 hours before polls open across the United States, Gallup reported that Obama's daily approval rating had hit 56 percent. That's a figure that he'd been around at the end of October, but had otherwise only hit or exceeded on seven days since August 2009. 

Franklin tracked recent survey results by party to evaluate Obama's approval, finding that, at 52.1 percent on average, he's viewed more positively now than Ronald Reagan was at the end of his second term, but not as positively as was Bill Clinton at the end of his.

That's right President Obama, the man that Donald Trump claims is THE worst President ever, is polling at a whopping 56%. And that puts him just barely behind our LAST Democratic President, Bill Clinton.

Remember THIS is the administration that Donald Trump wants to save us from seeing go to a "third term," this is the swamp he wants to "drain." and this is the wrong direction that he wants to steer this country away from.

In short Donald Trump wants to toss us a lifeline and drag us from our comforting, relaxing, soothing bubble bath.

Which brings me to one of my many pet peeves.

During this campaign season I have seen a parade of half witted Trump surrogates saying that the people do not trust the government, and that the government is broken, and that Americans want to "take back this country," and it seems that NOT ONE of the journalists interviewing them ever takes the time to correct that BS.

Yes it is true that many Americans believe that the government is "broken."

But they are NOT talking about the Executive branch of government, they are talking about the Legislative branch of government.

In other words they are talking about the Senate and the House of Representatives, both of which have essentially ground to a halt. (They cannot even do something simple like confirm a Supreme Court nominee.)

And which party has the majority in both of those places?

That's right, the Republicans.

So essentially the Republican presidential campaign has been running on the promise to fix the branch of government THEIR party broke, by replacing the person in charge of the branch of government that is actually working well.

How in the fuck does that work?

No if the voters really want to "fix" the government, "drain" the swamp, and "take back" their country they want to vote every one of those obstructionist GOP assholes out of office and replace them with idealistic, hopeful Democrats who know how government is supposed to work and will make sure that it does.

And THAT should have been the central message of the Hillary Clinton campaign in my opinion.

"Government is only broken when you don't know how to make it work. Vote for Hillary Clinton and a Democratic Senate and House, and we will show you how to get it running like a clock."

Do you think that is too long for a bumper sticker?

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

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

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

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

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

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

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

And this is not an isolated incident either.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So Russia just signed massive new surveillance measures into law. Wait, didn't those already exist?

Courtesy of The Washington Times:

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed legislation Thursday compelling telephone companies and internet providers to save and store the private communications of its customers, notwithstanding concerns raised by human rights advocates and big business alike. 

Included within a package of amendments proposed as antiterrorism measures, the law will require telecoms to collect and keep copies of customers’ phone calls, text messages and emails for six months, as well as maintain metadata concerning those communications for up to three years. 

Other provisions effectively outlaw the use of digital encryption within Russia and introduce new penalties for individuals accused of inciting terrorism through social media.

Wondering how Edward Snowden is handling this news? Not very well actually.

#Putin has signed a repressive new law that violates not only human rights, but common sense. Dark day for #Russia. https://t.co/J4I2SQ9VCe

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2016

Signing the #BigBrother law must be condemned. Beyond political and constitution consequences, it is also a $33b+ tax on Russia's internet.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2016

Personally I think that most of these measures have already been in place for quite some time, and for whatever reason Putin just now decided to make it public.

After all the idea that Russia has a less intrusive domestic spying program than the United States is simply ridiculous.

While we're on the subject is anybody else essentially no longer worrying about privacy and government surveillance in light of the number of terror attacks that have occurred here and in other places around the world?

It just seems to me that every time there is an attack everybody complains that law enforcement did not keep close enough tabs on the suspect, and rarely do I hear anybody challenging the idea of the government keeping tabs on people.

Or maybe it just seems that way to me.