“No One Is Safe.”

Hassan Aden -- via Facebook.

Hassan Aden — via Facebook.

Writing on Facebook on Saturday, retired cop Hassan Aden said he was returning from Paris where he helped his mother celebrate her 80th birthday when he was singled out and pulled from line by a customs official at John F. Kennedy International Airport who asked, “Are you traveling alone? Let’s take a walk.”

“I was taken to a back office which looked to be a re-purposed storage facility with three desks and signs stating, ‘Remain seated at all times’ and ‘Use of telephones strictly prohibited’—my first sign that this was not a voluntary situation and, in fact, a detention,” Aden wrote. ” By this point I had informed CBP Officer Chow, the one that initially detained me, that I was a retired police chief and a career police officer AND a US citizen—he stated that he had no control over the circumstance and that it didn’t matter what my occupation was.”

According to Aden after handing his passport over he was told that someone was using his name and that he had had to be cleared “so that I could gain passage into the United States… my own country!!!”

Aden said that he was not allowed to leave or contact his family at the same time an official told him he wasn’t being detained.

“He had the audacity to tell me I was not being detained. His ignorance of the law and the Fourth Amendment should disqualify him from being able to wear a CBP badge—but maybe fear and detention is the new mission of the CBP and the Constitution is a mere suggestion,” he wrote. “I certainly was not free to leave.

[…]

“I spent nearly 30 years serving the public in law enforcement. I interface with high level U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Court officials almost daily,” he wrote. “Prior to this administration, I frequently attended meetings at the White House and advised on national police policy reforms. All that to say, if this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone with attributes that can be ‘profiled.’ No one is safe from this type of unlawful government intrusion.”

I’m a little torn here. What happened to Mr. Aden was not, in any way, right. Just another instance of the police state. Mr. Aden, unlike many people being caught up in the nets of the current police state, had considerable resources to call on. I’d say it’s a good thing for a cop to experience what it’s like, being in the clutches of such; that said, it’s not an experience I would wish on anyone. In the end, Mr. Aden was released, and reunited with his loved ones. That certainly cannot be said for scores and scores of people who are being picked up, detained, and wrenched away from their families and their lives. And no, please don’t point out that what happened to Mr. Aden was somehow in defense of stopping a terrorist; it wasn’t, and no, please don’t point out this is way different from the current “round ’em up and deport them!” business, it isn’t. It’s all one and the same thing: xenophobia, accompanied by the clang of The Gold Curtain™. America First, y’all.

Via Raw Story.

People Will Die, What’s New?

A man delivers heating oil to a house in Maine in 2015. CREDIT: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty.

A man delivers heating oil to a house in Maine in 2015. CREDIT: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty.

That’s a familiar scene. Living rural, I’m on propane for heating and cooking. Propane is expensive, very expensive. Most people who live rural have large tanks, which when full, might be able to see them through a winter. Depending on how harsh the winter might be, sometimes a tank will last, sometimes it won’t. We have two tanks, totally 1,500 gallons. We rarely have the full amount. Naturally, it’s cheaper to fill your tanks in the dead of Summer, but that won’t keep you all the way through to winter, especially in places like Maine, or nDakota. We’re still in Winter here. There have been times when there’s been no power; there have been times when there’s been a heating failure, and it’s not easy to cope when you don’t have heat. When you don’t have heat, you’re prone to doing unsafe things, like opening the oven, and cranking it up, stringing electric heaters everywhere, lighting candles, firing up kerosene heaters and so on. And in such cases, people often die. People also die of hypothermia, because yes, it gets that damn cold. Out here in rural land, USA, we’re a tad short on mansions. Houses tend to be old, and not terribly energy efficient, and subject to drafts. A lot of older people simply close off most of their house and live in one or two rooms come winter, as do a lot of people without a ton of money. Most of us rural types don’t have handy get aways in Florida, either.

The Tiny Tyrant is so unhinged from reality, it never crosses that atrophied pea brain of his that most people in this country are not wealthy, they don’t have mansions, they don’t have the wherewithal to con people in order to stuff their pockets, and get very concerned when faced with the choice of either starving to death or freezing to death. The same people who, while faced with such dire choices, are having their pockets picked clean by the fucking Tiny Tyrant, so he can hide out in his Florida Fucking Mansion near to every weekend. Over $3 Million every effing trip. This weekend marks the 5th weekend, and the 7th weekend spent flaking off to huge sums of money. The Monstrous Narcissist Evil which is Trump is happily planning to kill off the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which uses very little money in comparsion to say, the military budget, but is crucial in keeping people alive in not only brutal winters, but brutal summers as well. As Global Warming gets worse, also hastened by the The Monstrous Narcissist Evil Trump, both of these extremes will worsen, and without aid, even more people will die. Not that the thought of people dying ruffles Trump’s tiny, smooth brain.

“You’ve got a population that’s got very little money, not able to work because of their age or their health, and this is the way we keep them in their apartments and keep them safe,” said Wolfe.

“If you withdraw that, some of them will die. But that doesn’t seem too important to them at the moment,” he said.

“He doesn’t know anybody like that. They don’t belong to Trump’s club.”

And that last line sums it up. In the Tiny Tyrant’s world, people without money aren’t even on the radar. As far as Trump is concerned, they barely exist, and they certainly don’t matter. Not that it would make much difference if he was more aware, it still wouldn’t register. There isn’t any empathy in The Monstrous Narcissist Evil which is Trump. There is plenty of hypocrisy, though! There’s a mine full of it. If only hypocrisy were food, then everyone would have enough. The Tiny Tyrant is intent on killing off any and all programs which so much as hint of helping people, and won’t shut up about “slashing” the budget (while massively increasing the military money), while the money being spent out of taxpapyer’s pockets by the fucking evil asshole is overwhelming:

President Trump doesn’t want to spend federal dollars on after-school programs, meals for poor people, or heating assistance that helps keep folks alive.

But he has no problem wasting more than $3 million a pop to spend weekends at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Trump has already made four trips there since becoming president on January 20, and on Friday he confirmed he’s headed there this weekend for the fifth time.

[…]

Despite vowing during his campaign that he “would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done” and “would not be a president who took vacations” because “you don’t have time to take time off,” Trump has visited Trump-branded properties each of the past six weekends. That streak will hit seven when Trump lands at Mar-a-Lago later Friday.

In fact, Trump has spent time at Trump-branded property every weekend of his presidency other than the very first, when he created chaos throughout the country by signing a Muslim ban executive order that was later stayed by a federal court.

[…]

As Quartz reported on Friday, after this weekend, Trump will have already spent about $16.5 million on trips to Mar-a-Lago. For that amount, Meals on Wheels could feed 5,967 seniors for a year and after school programs could feed 114,583 children for a year.

Remember though, that starving seniors and children don’t matter! Nope.

On Thursday, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney defended the draconian cuts included in the Trump administration’s proposed budget by arguing that the federal government can’t ask “a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for” programs like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But one wonders whether those struggling Americans would rather have public radio or dole out their share of the $3.3 million a self-proclaimed billionaire is spending each weekend to mingle with his ludicrously wealthy club members down in Florida.

Oh yes, of course, why a coal miner or a single mom are just your general dumbfucks who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in quality educational TV, or good quality radio broadcasts, oh no. Why, they are just stupid peons, they don’t think, or feel, or care about anything at all, no. Certainly, they’d have no interest in their children having access to good education and information, no sir. They are, however, supremely happy to have the food taken out of their mouths in order to support the Tiny Tyrant when he wanders off to play golf and collect those $200,000 dues from his “friends” at the club.

Via Think Progress: Ending home heating subsidies is a choice to let people die. Trump to spend 7th consecutive weekend at Trump-branded property, at enormous cost to taxpayers.

Mr. Tweet, Coward at Large.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on as President Donald Trump accuses a German reporter of engaging in 'fake news.' (Screen cap).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on as President Donald Trump accuses a German reporter of engaging in ‘fake news.’ (Screen cap).

Take a moment, and look at that screen cap, again. Most people have seen it, the look of “unfuckingbelievable” on Ms. Merkel’s face when Trump pulls his fake news clown act on a German reporter. I cherish that expression, because it’s a clear divider between adult / child. Unfortunately for us in uStates, we’re stuck with the terrible infant.

Naturally, having to limit his childish outbursts during the press conference, as soon as possible, unpresident Jekyll found a dark corner, and let the craven Mr. Tweet loose, to spew forth all the shit he knows he can’t get away with saying in person. He’s doing all this, by the way, from his hidey mansion in Florida, y’know, the place he swore up and down he wasn’t going to go. This makes his 5th weekend there, at a cost of over $3 million a trip, so all us taxpayers are on the hook for more than 16.5 million dollars for Jekyll & Tweet to play, all while his sputtering temper adds more instability to the world.

As is his custom on Saturday mornings when he is vacationing at his Mar-a-Lago resort, President Donald Trump jumped on Twitter to complain about something — this time taking shots at both the media and Germany.

Following a meeting and press conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel — where Trump refused to shake hands with the German leader and she gave him a dismissive glance when he brought up surveillance of both of them — Trump felt the need to set the record straight in typical Trump fashion on Twitter.

“Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel,” Trump began in his first tweet before getting to his latest complaint.

“Nevertheless, Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!” he continued.

Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nevertheless, Germany owes…

…vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!

:Drops head gently onto desk: No. Just No. It’s the weekend, I slept in, and I was feeling kind of good, and then … No. I’ll content myself with a “Hey, Donnie! Go Fuck Yourself!”

Via Raw Story.

Paul Ryan’s Fantasy Life.

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

Unfortunately, this is not as amusing as the rest of today’s posts. It’s not amusing at all. There’s no more hedging or obfuscation over The Fuck You Plan, Trump has been interviewed, and admitted it will aid rich people and fuck over the poor (and everyone else), and now Ryan is blathering away about just how long he has yearned to rip healthcare away from people. From where I sit, this isn’t fantasy, it’s an obsession, an evil one.

…And, if you were House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), it was a time to dream about how, someday, you would take health care away from millions of poor people.

In a conversation with the National Review’s Rich Lowry on Friday, Ryan bragged about how conservatives now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take health coverage away from the most vulnerable Americans.

“So Medicaid,” Ryan told Lowry, “sending it back to the states, capping its growth rate. We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around — since you and I were drinking at a keg. . . . I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a long time. We’re on the cusp of doing something we’ve long believed in.”

Ryan is 47 years old, which means that, if he started “drinking at a keg” early in his college career, he’s fantasized about all the poor people who could be stripped of health care for nearly three decades.

And he’s downright gleeful about finally being able to culminate his long standing obsession. Why? Why are these people voted in to government in the first place? I do not want to belong to a country in which its so-called leaders have long standing fantasies about fucking people over in the worst possible way, and spend their whole lives in pursuit of that fantasy. People like Ryan should be ashamed, and wondering just what in the fuck is wrong with them, but that never seems to happen.

Full story at Think Progress.

“RAW POWER! HARD RAW POWER GRRRRRR HISSS POW!”

CREDIT: 1600 Daily email.

CREDIT: 1600 Daily email.

This week, the White House began sending out an official email newsletter, “Your 1600 Daily,” to promote video clips of the president, pertinent news articles or endorsements, and other items of note happening that day.

On Friday, there was an odd inclusion at the bottom, where normally one can find friendly headlines from Fox News, Breitbart, or other conservative outlets that have become media safe harbors for the administration. One of the two featured articles was a parody piece titled “Trump’s budget makes perfect sense and will fix America, and I will tell you why,” written by Alexandra Petri, who writes satirical pieces for the Washington Post’s lighthearted ComPost blog.

[…]

ThinkProgress asked the White House press office if they were aware the article was a parody, and if so, why they selected it, but received no response by press time.

If this was a simple mistake, then the staff member who chose and approved the article’s inclusion on official White House communications did not read beyond the first paragraph, which makes abundantly clear that the headline is deeply sarcastic:

Some people are complaining that the budget proffered by the Trump administration, despite its wonderful macho-sounding name, is too vague and makes all sorts of cuts to needed programs in favor of increasing military spending by leaps and bounds. These people are wimps. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has called it a “hard power budget” which is, I think, the name of an exercise program where you eat only what you can catch, pump up your guns and then punch the impoverished in the face. This, conveniently, is also what the budget does.

The article concluded, “RAW POWER! HARD RAW POWER GRRRRRR HISSS POW!”

[…]

Other sections of the newsletter are anodyne White House agenda items that urge supporters to “get involved” or share important tweets “from President Trump,” promote “Oval Office highlights,” link to press room briefings, and detail Trump’s schedule.

Sometimes these links, always titled “News Reports,” are op-eds or letters to the editor by friendly voices or administration officials, or a straight news piece about a positive economic development or administration announcement. None of the other days of the “News Reports” section featured anything like Petri’s parody.

The links included in Tuesday’s newsletter, for example, are representative of Trump allies’ favorite outlets:

CREDIT: 1600 Daily email.

CREDIT: 1600 Daily email.

Wednesday was the second day in a row the newsletter linked to a Breitbart article about Obamacare. Other featured items include stories from Fox News, Townhall, Washington Post, Washington Examiner, Yahoo, and an endorsement of AHCA by the National Federation of Independent Businesses. On Thursday many mainstream outlets were cited, as well as the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s news site, called The Daily Signal.

Oh my. It seems this is amusement Friday, with some kind entity somewhere answering Voltaire’s Prayer. Full story at Think Progress.

“Red rover, red rover, call Milo over,”

LM

C. Ford.

Elsewhere in the wilds of the Religious Reich, Lance Wallnau has put a claim on Milo Yiannopoulos. How sweet it would be, if it weren’t a match made in a nightmare. It will be interesting to see if  Milo claws desperately onto to this, to try and once again claim his place as king of the shitlords or summat. I don’t see this as being a particularly comfortable union, but Wallnau has gone full court daft in his attempts to paint the rise of a great and wondrous theocracy, and Milo is, if anything, an opportunist. Considering Wallnau’s hatred of all queerness, I wonder if this can be taken as yet another sign of the desperation infesting the Religious Reich.

Last week, right-wing preacher Lance Wallnau appeared on the Charisma podcast with Steve Strang, where he claimed Alt-Right troll Milo Yiannopoulos for Jesus Christ and prophesied that he will one day be leading revivals on college campuses.

Wallnau said that he began listening to Yiannopoulos in the wake of the controversy regarding his comments condoning  pederasty and found him to be a brave truth-teller who “is exposing the tyranny and fascist spirit behind the progressive left.” Yiannopoulos is like “a prophetic fencer just scoring point after point,” Wallnau said, which is why the left is out to destroy him.

Uh, no, Lance.  As per usual, any destruction Milo suffered was a direct result of his own actions. I’m afraid the reasons to dislike Yiannopoulos are numerous – he’s a repugnant asshole who will do and say absolutely anything in order to gain attention. Yet another person with arrested development, much like the Tiny Tyrant. I can’t speak for the whole left, but this small slice of it has better things to do than plot ways to ‘destroy’ him.

But the left will not destroy him, Wallnau predicted, because Yiannopoulos is going to undergo a radical religious conversion and lead an army of millennial prophets who will take on the left.

Oh, well, this ought to be good. It will be like Marjoe Gortner all over again, with glitter!

“I’m claiming Milo in the name of Jesus for the Kingdom of God,” Wallnau declared. “Just like [Donald] Trump was an unlikely candidate for us as a deliverer in the presidency … God hid himself in Trump, I think God is hiding himself in Milo and I’m calling him out in Jesus’ name to salvation.”

That god of yours has been hiding for millenia, and now it has decided to hang out in the bowels of Trump & Yiannopoulos? Eeuuurgh.

“Red rover, red rover, call Milo over,” he continued. “The church doesn’t want people like him, but God wants him in the church. Father, we call for Milo in Jesus’ name. We call, Lord, that You will break every cycle of destruction, every spirit that is assigned to him to destroy, distort, to wound and to lock him up. We pray for shafts of light to come from heaven into his heart, divine encounters with the Gospel in unique and unusual ways, we pray for Jesus to be made manifest in his dreams.”

Red … rov oh gasp hahahahahahahahahaha…hahahahaha. Hee. :falls over laughing: Oh you have got to be kiddihahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Red fucking Rover? How can anyone take these clowns seriously? Yeah, fuck the rest of the prayer or whatever it is, I’m not getting past the Red Rover business.

Wallnau said that Yiannopoulos will be part of an “army of millennial young prophets who will expose the enemy” and prophesied that “Milo is going to be doing campus revivals in the future.”

If nothing else, that should be entertaining. Are you going to make Minister Milo shed his pearls? Via RWW.

The Gulliver Prophecy.

bobjones.org

bobjones.org

Here’s one I had never heard of, and it dates back to 2005. It’s being revived. This uh, prophecy is detailed at “The Prophetic Ministry & Resources of Bob & Bonnie Jones with Lyn Kost.” It’s actually yet another fevered dream, which is more akin to an acid trip than prophecy.

During last week’s POTUS Shield conference in Ohio, speakers made repeated references to a prophecy that Ohio would be the spark for the next Great Awakening, with some citing a “Gulliver” prophecy to explain the selection of cities for upcoming POTUS Shield events.

I’ve been getting the idea that the Potus Shield people are getting increasingly desperate, as the anticipated waves of glory washing over their chosen Trump hasn’t happened. Well, let’s take a trip with Gulliver.

The Gulliver prophecy explains why many believe that “God has set Ohio aside as a hub for His glory to go out from.” Here’s how it is described:

While in a conference in Cincinnati, Ohio Bob had a vision of a great man, who in the past had fallen asleep.  He was lying on his back, half-covered in dirt, and his name was Gulliver.  Little people from a place of little input had completely tied him down, and he was waking up from being asleep for the past 38 years.  We can also call him (Gulliver) the Body of Christ.  Bob saw that the head of this very large man was in Cleveland, Ohio, in a place called “Jacob’s field.”

The next thing Bob saw was a large, center pole of a tent coming up out of Columbus, Ohio. This was His heart. Powerful signs and wonders will come up out of Columbus, greater than we’ve ever seen before, that will look like a canopy over the region. Explosions of miracles and healings will be the hallmark of this city.

Cincinnati was the place where the reproduction organs were. Reproducing of the Kingdom will be evidenced here in priestly and kingly anointing.

The left hand of this large man was in Philadelphia, which had teaching and great love in it. The right hand extended west and came to rest in Indianapolis, Indiana. It began to flex, and the cords that were around it to keep it tied down, were beginning to snap off like rubber bands.

The left foot was in Charlotte, North Carolina, and there was a great television with it, so they televised the gospel all around the world. The right foot was in Nashville, Tennessee, where great faith is beginning to raise up.

This great man finally began to get up, breaking off all restraints and planting both of his feet in Atlanta, Georgia.

Bob said, “God means to take Ohio, then move over to Indianapolis and up into Illinois, crossing over into the east and finally standing completely upright in Atlanta.” The Lord told Bob that to take Atlanta would mean capturing the whole south.

What is it with these zealots and their very strange interpretations of literature? We recently had a mangling of Tolkien, and now this, uh, stew of weirdness. I can’t help but note that the giant penis and scrotum are mentioned – one thing Christians can never seem to do is pull their noses out of one crotch or another. In terms of poetic mangling, I think the explosions of miracles should have been placed in Cincinnati.

When you actually read the bible, whichever version, you never get the impression that Jehovah is terribly big on being knowledgeable, rather like those men who made up the stories, so I figure it wasn’t much a one for reading books. Oh, but perhaps movies are Jehovah’s bag, and this is why they so frequently end up being mangled into prophecy. Or perhaps it’s just a bunch of bullshit. I’ll opt for the latter.

This is not the Bob Jones who founded the famously racist fundamentalist university, but a guy who supposedly met the archangel Gabriel when he was seven years old and was given a mantle as a “Seer Prophet.”

Jones was removed from a Kansas City ministry in 1991 after admitting that he had used his “gifts” to manipulate women and engage in sexual misconduct, but that didn’t end his prophetic career.

No, of course it didn’t, what with that convenient get out of jail free card built into Christianity. I expect there weren’t any actual consequences at all. :Reads article: Nope, no actual consequence.

The prophets of POTUS Shield have clearly decided that the Gulliver prophecy was a divine revelation. There are plans for upcoming POTUS Shield events in Charlotte, which will be hosted by Joyner, as well as Nashville and Indianapolis. POTUS Shield will be partnering with Lou Engle to bring versions of his prayer rallies—branded as “The Call”—to Cleveland this summer and to Philadelphia on Labor Day weekend in 2018, which POTUS Shield leader Frank Amedia noted would be right before the mid-term elections.

Divine revelation. Someone makes up some very weird shit about Gulliver’s Travels, of all things, a work that Swift himself said was set to vex the world, not divert it. Obviously, the satire went completely over their heads, if someone actually read it, which is doubtful. Jones probably saw the Disney version, drank some suspect kool-aid, then had his ‘divine revelation.’ While it’s easy enough to dismiss this nonsense, the efforts of the Religious Reich to bring about a theocracy should not be dismissed. For all the silliness, we do need to pay attention.

RWW has the full story.

Aaaaand, We Are Back to Reefer Madness.

The famous ending

The famous ending

Oh, the regressive idiocy never ends. The manufactured war on drugs has caused an untold amount of misery, primarily in the form of people being tossed into a prison without a glance, or worse, shot to death by those oh so valiant drug hunting cops. (Deep sarcasm, in case you’re hard of sarcasm.) Jeff Sessions, bigot extraordinaire, and asshole ignoramus has decided we need to go straight back to the days of Tell Your Children. Yes, lies, oh lies are wonderful! And just when we, as a society, were finally making some progress on the whole weed front. A nice smoke now and then goes a long way with my pain issues, but as I’m a pain patient, I’m under the federal thumb, and am routinely drug tested as a requirement to receiving scrips for mild pain meds. There may have been a shot at medical weed, but not any more. Fuck Sessions, and fuck the so-called war on drugs. Mano Singham has an excellent post up which tangentially addresses that manufactured mess. In that post, he quotes a bit from John Ehrlichman:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

And that’s the truth, right there. This shit has been going on all my life, and all it has done is fuel the prison complex, enable murderous cops, and cost taxpayers an obscene amount of money. There is no “war on drugs”. You’ll note that it’s never one, or even two specific drugs that remain a constant in this war, because that doesn’t keep the money pouring in to militarize cops even more. No, there’s always a new, terrifying “epidemic”, oh my yes! When I was a sophomore in high school, it moved from weed to speed. I still remember the stupid anti-drug comics which were handed out. They had as much value as a Chick tract. It’s just fucking propaganda, the same old propaganda. This is what they looked like:

14-15

Freedom Road. Full comic here.

Actually, it’s this specific image I remember, the rest not so much:

02

Anyroad, as most people will have noticed, it’s always a “new” drug “crisis”, weed, heroin, speed, coke, crack, meth, and on and on. Right now, we’re doing the prescription opiates “crisis”. You’ll also have noted, I’m sure, that none of these so-called crises are ever actually dealt with before moving on to the next exciting drug to titillate the masses and incite fear. And here we go the fuck again, back to weed.

Marijuana users and heroin addicts are basically the same, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Wednesday in Richmond, Virginia.

“I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana — so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that’s only slightly less awful,” said Sessions. He went on to call for a revival of hardline ’80s- and ‘90s-style “educating people and telling them the terrible truth about drugs.”

“Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs will destroy your life,” Sessions said.

For someone on a bar stool arguing with his friends, this would be a stupid but harmless “hot take.” But for the top law enforcement official in a nation of 320 million people, it’s a malicious string of lies intended to justify dangerous policies.

Sessions’ mockery of the idea that marijuana could help people struggling with opiate addiction is especially frustrating to Steve Miller, who retired as a sergeant after 18 years on a suburban Detroit police force and now works as a private investigator at a lawfirm specializing in medical marijuana cases.

“He’s out of reality in that statement. Marijuana has proven to be very beneficial medically for people. And there are studies coming out now showing it is helping people get off their opiate and heroin addictions, and showing it helps kick alcohol addiction as well,” Miller, one of many law enforcement professionals who advocates to end marijuana prohibition, told ThinkProgress. “I don’t know where his medical training comes from that he makes these statements.”

Oh well, that one’s easy, Sessions doesn’t have any medical training. He doesn’t have as much training as your average dog. Sessions is dragging out one of the oldest, most incorrect of all drug propagandism: “it’s just as bad as heroin!!111!!!” There is no reason for this bullshit to be waved about again, especially not by a suspect attorney general. As pointed out in Mano Singham’s post, this is to largely fuel the prison industrial complex. How else can you legally enslave people and get your labor done for free? This is absolutely intolerable, and people should not put up with it for one second. Unfortunately, I’ve had many years in which to watch people fall for this utter bullshit time and time again. It’s time to wake up.

Think Progress has the full story.

“Palace Intrigue.” “Loyalists.”

MW-FA026_trump__20161111070915_ZH

MarketWatch photo illustration/Shutterstock.

Palace intrigue. Loyalists. What country is this again? From the sound of it, we took a wrong turn at Albuquerque or something. Politico has in-depth look at the paranoia-infused administration regime, where people admit to being paranoid, while paranoia is also dismissed. The whole thing is a dismantled mess, more resembling Bedlam of yore than any type of government. Splintered, running on mistrust, paranoia, and lies, all on a wobbly base of fake news fueled insanity.  And of course, the gold-plated unpresident, who can’t seem to find time for anything, um, presidential, but once again resorts to Mr. Tweet, going after Snoop Dogg, who does not seem to have bothered noticing the gold menace.

A culture of paranoia is consuming the Trump administration, with staffers increasingly preoccupied with perceived enemies — inside their own government.

In interviews, nearly a dozen White House aides and federal agency staffers described a litany of suspicions: that rival factions in the administration are trying to embarrass them, that civil servants opposed to President Donald Trump are trying to undermine him, and even that a “deep state” of career military and intelligence officials is out to destroy them.

Aides are going to great lengths to protect themselves. They’re turning off work-issued smartphones and putting them in drawers when they arrive home from work out of fear that they could be used to eavesdrop. They’re staying mum in meetings out of concern that their comments could be leaked to the press by foes.

Many are using encrypted apps that automatically delete messages once they’ve been read, or are leaving their personal cellphones at home in case their bosses initiate phone checks of the sort that press secretary Sean Spicer deployed last month to try to identify leakers on his team.

It’s an environment of fear that has hamstrung the routine functioning of the executive branch. Senior advisers are spending much of their time trying to protect turf, key positions have remained vacant due to a reluctance to hire people deemed insufficiently loyal, and Trump’s ambitious agenda has been eclipsed by headlines surrounding his unproven claim that former President Barack Obama tapped his phone lines at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

One senior administration aide, who like most others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the degree of suspicion had created a toxicity that is unsustainable.

“People are scared,” he said, adding that the Trump White House had become “a pretty hostile environment to work in.”

[…]

One senior aide said staffers have become almost obsessed by daily news accounts of palace intrigue and spend hours in the office dissecting them in hopes of deciphering who is dishing — and who is trying to hurt whom.

Another Republican who is close to the White House said junior-level staffers are simply “mimicking what they’re seeing at the top … Everyone at the top is so suspicious that it trickles down the org chart, so everyone has become paranoid and suspicious.”

The distrust, some contend, isn’t unfounded.

“I wouldn’t call it paranoia under the circumstances,” said a Republican who communicates with many administration aides through encrypted apps. “It’s not paranoia if people really are out to get you, and everybody actually is out to get everyone else.”

Many staffers say they don’t like the idea that supervisors — or anyone else — could have access to their emails. Some have taken to using secure messengers like Confide and Signal in order to communicate on their personal phones. One program gaining popularity within the administration is Wickr, which allows users to set an expiration time on how long an unread message can remain in a recipient’s inbox before it self-destructs.

The encryption programs can’t be accessed from White House-issued phones, which prevent users from downloading most apps. There are no restrictions on employees using encrypted apps on their personal phones, the White House official said, as long as they’re not being used to conduct official business.

The most stress, however, may be outside the West Wing, in executive branch agencies, where staffers worry about career bureaucrats who are hostile to Trump.

The whole article is excellent, and quite disturbing. Recommended reading.

In keeping with all the palace paranoia, there’s been a showdown between Mattis and the palace:

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis reportedly told the White House he would resign unless a Trump campaign loyalist was removed from her job.

DefenseNews reported on Wednesday that supporters of Mattis were expecting the White House to reassign Mira Ricardel from her job at the Office of Presidential Personnel.

According to the report, Ricardel is a former member of Trump’s campaign who is seen as “a loyal soldier who is looking out for the interests of the President.”

Sources told DefenseNews that Ricardel was “a roadblock for nominees,” making it difficult for Mattis to fill top-level positions at the Pentagon.

Ricardel has allegedly imposed an ideological purity test that blocked many potential nominees. Sources said that the White House has blacklisted all candidates who signed “never Trump” letters during the election.

A source within the administration said that Ricardel’s opposition to “politically unacceptable” candidates was seen as a “badge of honor” in the White House.

“Mattis told the White House either Mira goes, or he walks,” one Pentagon source explained to Defense News. “They blinked.”

That full story is here. I have no doubt there will be more intrigue oozing out of Bedlam, and no doubt, Mr. Tweet will be back once again.

Mr. Tweet: What. An. Idiot.

Snoop Dog (Screen Capture).

Snoop Dogg (Screen Capture).

There’s been considerable fuss over Snoop Dogg’s latest, which features the assassination of a political clown. (Three guesses.) I’d assume the video was meant to be one which would cause a fuss, because it’s a rather strong indictment of the current regime, which so far has taken many draconian measures against all manner of people, most of them not pasty white. Or orange. Political dissent is being quashed and felonized, the government is allowing cop shops to comb through social media, there’s the ban, the wall, representatives openly speaking out about the wonders of white supremacy, millions upon millions of people will have their health care stripped from them, cops have been given a green light to murder, and on and on it goes. So, I get where Snoop Dogg is coming from, and I agree with him that this regime is evil.

All that said, no matter where you stand on the video, Unpresident Jekyll gave away to Mr. Tweet once again, and once more proves that Mr. Tweet is a fucking dumbass:

Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time!

Oh, Crispy Fried Christ, the man is a fucking idiot. No, dipshit-in-chief, there would not have been jail time. You’re the one who wants to jail people for no reason, remember? And, in the scenario you paint, I expect conservative assholes like yourself would have been thrilled and cheering it on. There wasn’t a video like that though, because there was no reason for one. Now, there’s a reason.

Also note the bloated ego of the child in tantrum: failing career, look at me, I’m unpresident, you’re no one! Jesus Fuck. Perhaps putting you in clown face is a good idea, then people might start to wake up to what you really are, an evil sociopath.

People in the tweet stream helpfully pointed out the time that Trump said he could shoot someone in the street and still have people vote for him; and others pointed out that he was stone silent when effigies of President Obama were set on fire; also silent when President Obama’s face was placed on targets for sale; also silent when the craptastic Ted Nugent said President Obama should suck on his gun; pointed out the time Trump called on 2nd amendment fans to take care of Ms. Clinton, and so on. One of the dangers of being such a fucking idiot is having all the smart people point at your hypocrisy.

Full story here.

The What Healthcare? Roundup.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) speaks during a health care news conference to oppose Republicans’ effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) speaks during a health care news conference to oppose Republicans’ effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

Okay, ready for all the bad? Here’s the current reading list:

Trumpcare could cost 24 million people their insurance, government analysis finds.

The Congressional Budget Office released its long awaited analysis of Trumpcare on Monday afternoon, and its findings were grim.

The CBO found that 14 million fewer Americans would be insured by 2018 under the House GOP’s health care plan. By 2026, a full 24 million people would have gone uninsured relative to the number of people expected to be insured under the Affordable Care Act. The increase stems mostly from Trumpcare’s repeal of the individual mandate and changes to Medicaid.

White House analysis finds Trumpcare is even worse than the CBO estimated.

An internal White House analysis concluded that House Republicans’ Obamacare replacement bill, called the American Health Care Act, will cause up to 26 million people to lose their insurance coverage over the next decade, according to a copy of the analysis obtained by Politico.

Here’s how many people could die if Trumpcare becomes law.

Approximately 17,000 people could die in 2018 who otherwise would have lived if a House Republican health proposal endorsed by the Trump administration becomes law. By 2026, the number of people killed by Trumpcare could grow to approximately 29,000 in that year alone.

Determining the exact number of deaths that could occur each year due to a lack of access to insurance is not an exact science. But ThinkProgress calculated these estimates by examining two sources.

Premiums under Trumpcare would be lower for all the wrong reasons.

Despite the fact that a CBO report projected that 24 million more people would be uninsured under Trumpcare, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R) is bragging about its lower premiums. But premiums would be lower because people would buy less generous plans and fewer older people would be able to buy coverage. […] But the premiums are lower because insurance would be so expensive for older people that they would exit the market and become uninsured. Under the House GOP plan, insurance companies would be allowed to charge five times more for older enrollees. Under the ACA, they could only charge three times more for older enrollees than younger people. This means there would be a larger share of younger people in the nongroup market and a smaller share of older people.

Trump signals his willingness to put even deeper cuts into Trumpcare.

Trumpcare is bleeding out.

Democrats oppose the bill en masse. Members of the Tea Party Caucus are deriding it as “Obamacare Lite.” And the more centrist wing of the Republican Party feels queasy at the prospect of voting for a bill that, according to Congressional Budget Office projections, would cause 24 million people to go without insurance over the next decade.

Virtually no one likes the proposed Obamacare replacement, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and President Donald Trump aside. And so Trump, the dealmaker in chief, is reportedly looking to modify the legislation in order to win over a handful of new allies.

Specifically, he’s looking to his right.

Just hours after the CBO released its projections, Politico reported that the White House wants Trumpcare amended so that it will appeal to the House Republicans’ Tea Party wing. Among other things, that would mean phasing in the bill’s Medicaid cuts next year, rather than putting them off until 2020 as the legislation currently does.

The Political Email Entanglement: Wayne Tracker.

email

Oh, politicians and their email. If one is guilty of committing an email no-no, they all are. Honestly, it’s when politicians try to be smart that they plumb the depths of stupid. Emailitis is doing the rounds of many new appointees. We’ll start with Wayne Tracker, also known as Rex Tillerson. What a tangled web we weave, when we first practice to deceive.

Another alias email account — that of “Wayne Tracker”— is poised to cause problems for a high-level official, this time former Exxon CEO and current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Tillerson used an alias email account from at least 2008 to 2015 to discuss climate change, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office said in a court filing Monday.

Schneiderman, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, and the Securities and Exchange Commission are currently investigating whether Exxon defrauded the public by engaging in a campaign to discredit climate science, propping up the value of its oil and gas reserves. The Wayne Tracker email account — Tillerson’s middle name is Wayne — was discovered in the course of the investigation, known as the Exxon Knew case.

“This is a significant development in Schneiderman’s investigation into what Exxon knew about climate change, when it knew it, and what the company did to conceal it,” Naomi Ages, Greenpeace’s lead on the climate liability project, said in a statement. “Was Rex Tillerson that worried about climate risks for Exxon? Or was he more worried about the risk of revealing them to his shareholders and to the public? Or was it both?”

Documents uncovered in 2015 suggest that as far back as the 1970s, Exxon scientists knew that burning fossil fuels were the primary contributor to climate change.

Environmentalists have long been saying that to prevent catastrophic climate change, humanity needs to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels. But Exxon — as well as the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel interests — have worked against that effort, funding attempts to discredit the theory of global warming.

It is illegal for a company to withhold liability risks from its shareholders.

[…]

It has come to light that, as governor of Indiana, now-Vice President Mike Pence conducted official business via an AOL account that was subsequently hacked.

[…]

EPA head Scott Pruitt’s emails are also under scrutiny. His former office, the Oklahoma Attorney General, is currently embroiled in a lawsuit to force the release of emails between Pruitt, his deputies, and oil and gas interests. Pruitt also used a private email account to conduct official business, a fact he denied during his Senate confirmation hearing.

For all the people screaming over Hillary Clinton using a private, secured server for emails, to the point of wanting her locked up, where’s all the yelling over Pruitt, Pence, and Tillerson? Why is it their particular fuck-ups and deliberate obfuscation and lying is okay? It’s not even making minor scandal points among the Trumpholes, which goes to show, I suppose, they never actually gave one tiny shit about Ms. Clinton’s emails, they simply used it as an excuse, and unfortunately, it’s one that worked, as we now find ourselves neck deep in a corrupt regime.

Think Progress has the full story.

McCrory: Sweet Schadenfreude.

Pat McCrory

Pat McCrory.

There are times schadenfreude is ever so sweet, and this is one of them. Pat McCrory, that eternal bigot, is now whining that his bigotry is interfering with him finding a job. It turns out that a lot of people aren’t terribly interested in hiring an attention-pandering bigot. Who knew?

In an interview with the Raleigh News & Observer, McCrory complained that his decision to champion HB2 — the infamous “bathroom bill” that banned transgender people from using the bathrooms of their choice — was hurting his career prospects.

“People are reluctant to hire me, because, ‘oh my gosh, he’s a bigot,’” McCrory explained to the newspaper. “Which is the last thing I am.”

Unfuckingbelievable. He still clings to this insistence that he’s not a bigot, oh no, why he’s a champion superhero, protecting peeing people!

McCrory said that while he’s been considered for part-time teaching positions at some universities, campuses have been reluctant to hire him over fears that he might spark a backlash among students, who would then respond with disruptive protests.

“That’s not the way our American system should operate – having people purged due to political thought,” he complained.

Oh no, don’t be dishonest, Pat. This isn’t a case of thought crime. You did much more than have an unpopular, stupid, bigoted political thought. You drove the bigoted HB2 at any and all cost, even when your own constituents stood against it, and you were costing your state millions upon millions of dollars. That’s different from having a political thought. Our ‘American’ system should not be stuffed to the rafters with incompetent bigots, either, but it is, and people have the right to oppose them, which they did. You lost your job through your own actions, and you have not taken one step back on your draconian views.

McCrory’s complaints echo similar comments he made recently during a podcast interview in which he claimed that “if you disagree with the politically correct thought police on this new definition of gender, you’re a bigot, you’re the worst of evil.”

Oh For Fuck’s Sake! You godsdamned piece of shit masquerading as a human being! Such a fucking liar. This has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness, nor thought police, nor a ‘new’ definition of gender, and you are a fucking bigot, a terrible, toxic, venomous one, and yes, you are on the side of evil. Someone should have, at some point, taught you there are consequences to both speech and actions. There are *four* pages on Affinity, all posts about McCrory’s evil legislation, and yet all he can manage to do is whine about what a victim he is. And here I thought it was only us SJW snowflakes who did that. Tsk.

Via Raw Story.