Taking National Security Seriously

Apparently, that not something The Stain does very well, according to the New York Times.  Shortly after North Korea conducted a missile test, The Stain huddled with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe --- at The Stain's Mar-a-Lago resort, in a public area.  At least one guest was so awestruck by the event that he posted to Facebook about it.

And this isn't an isolated occurrence.  Former NSA analyst John R. Schneider writes that the current administration is so lax about security matters that:

. . . out of worries about the White House’s ability to keep secrets, some of our spy agencies have begun withholding intelligence from the Oval Office. Why risk your most sensitive information if the president may ignore it anyway?

He goes on to quote an unnamed senior Pentagon intelligence official, who says that “since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the SITROOM,” meaning the White House Situation Room.

But it's not like he's using a private email server to conduct business --- THAT would be WRONG!

A Study in Contrasts

I'm just sayin'.

Working-Class Whites watch: Day 19

Okay, it turns out that labeling these by day of The Stain's administration was a bad idea.  Anyway, look at The Stain's latest plan to Make America Great (with the full support of Republicans in Congress):

Insurers would have more leeway to vary prices by age, so that premiums for the oldest customers could be 3.49 times as large as those for younger customers. Today, premiums for the old can be only three times as high as premiums for the young, which is what the Affordable Care Act stipulates. According to sources privy to HHS discussions with insurers, officials would argue that since 3.49 “rounds down” to three, the change would still comply with the statute.

Yes, The Stain is eager to make health care more expensive for seniors.  And since the 3:1 ratio is stipulated in law as part of the Affordable Care Act, and since changing the law is tricky, The Stain wants to just wave his hands and make the change using 'rounding'.

Fortunately, this is unlikely to go anywhere, because if the administration actually tries to make this fly, it's likely to be laughed out of court --- even by a Bush- or Reagan-appointed judge.  But still, those Working-Class Whites have to appreciate how The Stain continues to devise exciting and creative ways to take money out of their pockets.

Russians

As a special favor to an 'acquaintance' of mine on Facebook (not a 'friend'.  We're not Facebook friends, and I know nothing about this person other than she has challenged me to 'research the true facts'.  Hi Patti!), I'm going to take a close look at the report on Russian hacking into the U.S. election, released jointly by the CIA, FBI and NSA.  Their conclusion:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.  Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.  We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.  We have high confidence in these judgments.

So there you go, Patti.  I have researched the 'true facts' that the U.S. intelligence agencies reported, and just like I thought, they reported that the Russians helped elect The Stain.

But that's not all they said!

Moscow's use of disclosures during the US election was unprecedented, but its influence campaign otherwise followed a longstanding Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations --- such as cyber activity --- with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or "trolls".

The Russians paid people to repeat pro-Trump or anti-Hillary propaganda on social media.  So Patti is right to make sure I have my facts straight!  Fortunately, I do, and I can assure you that no one is paying me to write this (I wish).  And I'm so old, I can remember when Russians undermining a U.S. election was considered a BAD thing.

The report actually goes into quite a bit of depth regarding the "state-funded media" aspect of Russian involvement in the election.  Fully half of the report is devoted to a discussion of RT America TV, which the report describes as "a Kremlin-financed channel operated from within the United States".  It also contains a section titled "RT Leadership Closely Tied to, Controlled by Kremlin", in which they conclude:

The Kremlin staffs RT and closely supervises RT's coverage, recruiting people who can convey Russian strategic messaging because of their ideological beliefs.

There seem to be a lot of Americans --- on the left AND the right --- who are unaware that when they're getting information from RT America, they're drinking in Russian propaganda.

The declassified report from the intelligence community contains no discussion of the degree to which The Stain may have been complicit in the Russian subterfuge.  It seems that a responsible Congress would want to conduct an investigation to find this out.  After all, this Congress spent literally YEARS investigating the Benghazi attack which left four Americans dead.  As tragic as that was, it was nowhere near the threat to democracy that a hacked election is.

Yes, a responsible Congress would definitely initiate a no-holds-barred investigation.  I wonder what this Congress will do?

  

#MuslimBan

Is there anything to be said about The Stain's #MuslimBan that hasn't already been said?  For starters, let's be clear about this --- it is indeed a #MuslimBan, and not just because Rudy Giuliani has admitted as much:

In the court of public opinion, however, the evidence suggests pretty strongly that Trump's order was, in fact, little more than a thinly disguised attempt to ban Muslims from the Middle East—except for those from a few favored allies. Pretzel-bending arguments aside, it's really pretty obvious what's going on here.

This is probably a good time to remind everyone that the first immigrants to this country, the Pilgrims, came here because they were fleeing religious persecution.  So it is at best a sick joke that The Stain is blocking immigrants on religious grounds.  It is at worst, unconstitutional --- no laws regarding the establishment of religion.

So, why is The Stain doing this?  Ostensibly to protect us from terrorism.  Is it likely to be effective?  The data demonstrate pretty conclusively no.  The conservative Cato Institute did a study of terror attacks on U.S. soil between 1975-2015, and concluded the following:

 From 1975 through 2015, the chance of an American being murdered by a foreign-born terrorist was 1 in 3,609,709 a year.

But wait, it gets worse.  The seven countries targeted by The Stain's ban are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.  According the Cato study, terrorists from those countries have killed exactly ZERO Americans.

So, the threat posed by these people is essentially zero.  It's worth pausing here to observe that the vetting already in place by the Obama administration (and the second Bush administration, and the Clinton administration, and the first Bush administration . . .) was pretty damn solid.  Unfortunately, the harm DONE to these people is somewhat greater:

Confusion turned to panic as travellers were told they were unable to board flights to the United States.  Some passengers checked in but were then barred from boarding at the gate.

Others were hauled off planes.  Others arrived at American airports only to be detained for hours. Some were refused access to legal assistance. 

The order saw students at top American universities barred from entering the country.

 At this point, the reasonable person would be moved to their nearest airport to protest The Stain's lunacy.  But some may still argue, like The Stain's own Comical Ali impersonator, that it's better to be safe than sorry: "What happened if we didn't act and somebody was killed?"  It's true that there are no guarantees.  There is indeed a possibility, no matter how small, that one of the people currently detained by the ban would eventually kill an American some day, if we let them in the country.  Doesn't that possibility justify the ban?

The answer is pretty obviously no.  Because the essentially-zero probability that The Stain's actions might actually be protecting someone must be weighed against the absolute certainty that he is driving recruits into the waiting arms of ISIS:

In conversation on social media, various jihadists have said the executive action unveiled America's "hatred towards Muslims," according to US-based SITE monitoring service. A pro-ISIS account on Telegram -- an encrypted app favored by the militant group -- praised Trump as "the best caller to Islam," signaling the President's ban would attract new believers.

One thing you can say for The Stain: he promised he'd do this, and he's kept his promise.  Large-scale protests, thousands of travelers inconvenienced, families kept apart, confusion among state, local and federal officials, and all in support of a policy which actually aids our enemies.  Unfortunately, all of The Stain's policies are likely to turn out about this well.

As a final observation, I'll note that many of The Stain's supporters are asking why there weren't similar protests when Obama banned Iraqi refugees in 2011.  The simple answer is: he didn't.  This is just yet another #AlternativeFact the right-wing media is rolling out, which The Stain's supporters are only too happy to parrot back on social media.

Also, the ACLU and CAIR managed to win partial relief in the courts, but they need your help.  They can't fight The Stain for the next four years all by themselves, so please give what you can:

• ACLU
• CAIR

The Entire Trump White House is Nuts

It has been suggested more than once that The Stain suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.  I'm no psychologist, but we may be seeing something as-yet uncatalogued by the DSM-V: mass narcissistic personality disorder.  In this case, manifested in a large (but, thankfully it seems, shrinking) number of people who share the unwavering belief that The Stain is the greatest person/President ever, in contradiction of all evidence to the contrary.

In addition to the roughly 63 million Americans who voted for The Stain, there's new White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who insisted that the crowd for Friday's inauguration was positively YUUUUGE!!!!:

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Saturday accused the media of misrepresenting the crowd at Donald Trump's inauguration in order to dampen enthusiasm for the event, getting some numbers wrong himself in the process.

“This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer said with emphasis. “Both in person and around the globe.”

He accused the media of "deliberately false reporting" both with regard to photos of the crowd that were published as well as crowd estimates.

Um, okay Sean.  I'm just eyeballing it here, but . . . .

The top photo was taken shortly before noon on Obama's first inauguration in 2009, while the bottom photo was taken at the same time of day on Friday.  It sure LOOKS like the bottom photo has several thousand fewer people.

So Spicer is suffering from The Stain's mass narcissistic personality disorder.  Kellyanne Conway on the other hand --- a high-ranking adviser for The Stain, and part-time Woody the Woodpecker impersonator --- is clearly suffering from cognitive dissonance.  On the one hand, she can look at these photos and recognize that The Stain drew a much smaller crowd.  On the other hand, it seems, she can't reconcile that fact with her unshakeable belief that The Stain is the best, the biggest, the greatest, THE YUGEST, and so she was forced to conclude that BOTH ideas qualify as 'facts':

Senior Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway said in an interview Sunday morning that White House press secretary Sean Spicer wasn't lying about crowd size at the President's inauguration—he was just giving "alternative facts."

I knew I'd seen such comically inept government spokespeople before, but it took me a while to remember exactly where and when.  But then I figured it out:

Working-Class Whites Watch: Day 1

The election is over, The Stain has been officially inaugurated, and so now it is time to document the atrocities.

In the many, many, many post-mortems written about the election, two things are clear.  First, James Comey stole the election on behalf of The Stain.  Second, even with Comey ratfucking the election, The Stain still would not have won had it not been for working-class whites in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania who provided his razor-thin margin of victory in those three states.

Since The Stain owes his presidency to these working-class whites, it's reasonable to assume that he'll work in their best interests, right?  After all, you'd have to be some kind of idiot to vote for a torture-loving, lying, incompetent con-man sleazeball unless he really *IS* going to make America great for you, right?

Well, it's just one day, but he's not off to a good start:

The order will have the immediate effect of increasing the amount that most non-wealthy homeowners must contribute to the Federal Housing Authority’s insurance program. Beginning Jan. 27, most borrowers will now have to pony up six-tenths of a percent of their mortgage each month, up a quarter of a percentage point from last year. Americans with $200,000 mortgages will pay roughly $500 more in 2017 than they did in 2016, according to the FHA.

Trump’s decision to undo the Obama-era rate reduction, thus resulting in an uptick on borrowers’ bills, will have very little affect on wealthier mortgage holders . . . .

Not to worry.  I'm sure we'll all sorts of jobs and other economic benefits coming to those working-class white folks --- let's call them WCWs --- in the days and months to come which will more than make up for this initial slap in the face.