Idiots At The Gates - The Future of the United States

I recommend this New Yorker article on the recently concluded session of the Texas legislature.  The second-most populous state in the union is almost under the control of complete morons.  Only a few somewhat sensible elected officials prevent them from riding roughshod over reason and logic.  As I sit here on the eve of Independence Day and contemplate the immediate and medium-term future, I have little faith that the sensible folks will win out.  I'm pretty sure we will see these cultists foist their ignorant bigotry and witch doctor economics on the rest of the nation, and only after their policies are complete disasters will we be able to vote them out of office.  In the meantime, I am concerned we will end up seeing unacceptable amounts of violence as regular citizens suffer under their doomed-to-fail rule.  I wish I could be more optimistic, but the last two years have rendered that almost non-existent characteristic in my personality extinct.

House GOP Obamacare Repeal: Robbing From The Sick and Giving To The Rich

GOP health bill. Numbers on left are benefit cuts, those on right are tax cuts. Benefits are cut just to pay for tax cuts. pic.twitter.com/9pnc4CpeAd

— Bruce Bartlett (@BruceBartlett) May 24, 2017

Dumbfuck-in-Chief

To all of you who think Donald Trump is doing a good job as President: Fuck off, morons.

Chart of the Day: Word Cloud Edition

Quinnipiac asked, "what is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump?":

The most common responses, in order:
1. idiot, 39 times
2. incompetent, 31 times
3. liar, 30 times
4. leader, 25 times
5. unqualified, 25 times
6. president, 22 times
7. strong, 21 times
8. businessman, 18 times
9. ignorant, 16 times
10. egotistical, 15 times
It is good that we only did the top 10, because the 11th most-common word is not suitable for a family newspaper. It rhymes with “mass soul.” And actually, it’s only tied for 11th … with “stupid.”

I would have probably used moron or dumbfuck.

The Trump Tax Cuts In One Chart

Via The Atlantic:

Take a wild guess which column Donald Trump would be The whole, tax break for pass-through income is ridiculous.  Pass-through entities were set up to avoid corporate income taxes.  Now they get treated at the state level in several cases, and in this proposal at the federal level, as somehow better than wage income, which is stupid.  Why should I as a farmer and a member in a farm partnership pay less in taxes on that income than I do for schlepping away at my town job working for The Man?  What if I became a contractor for the company I work in town for, and get paid through a pass-through entity.  This example of how that works is a doozy:

Take a real world example. The state of Kansas does not tax pass-through income, and its highest-paid public employee, Bill Self, the coach of the University of Kansas basketball team, is paid $4.8 million per year through an LLC. Under current federal law, a typical head of household earning $4.8 million might have to give more than a third of his income, or about $1.8 million, to the IRS. Under Trump's plan, somebody like Bill Self could save about $1 million in taxes by setting up a pass-through business, thus paying the same marginal rate as a household making about $50,000.

The highest-paid public employee in the state has his salary paid to an LLC, and thus he pays zero dollars in state income tax.  Brilliant, Sam Brownback, brilliant.  It just blows me away that so many people who are struggling to get by are more than happy to support a billionaire who is going to massively cut his own taxes while destroying the federal budget.  And those same struggling people will get negative returns once budget cuts to stem massive deficits are factored in.  

The Republican Party, In Summary

Alex Pareene goes over many of the things that make the Republican Party such a dysfunctional governing party:

If you want to understand intra-GOP warfare, the decision-making process of our president, the implosion of the Republican healthcare plan, and the rest of the politics of the Trump era, you don’t need to know about Russian espionage tactics, the state of the white working class, or even the beliefs of the “alt-right.” You pretty much just need to be in semi-regular contact with a white, reasonably comfortable, male retiree. We are now ruled by men who think and act very much like that ordinary man you might know, and if you want to know why they believe so many strange and terrible things, you can basically blame the fact that a large and lucrative industry is dedicated to lying to them....
The bottom-feeding amorality of the sorts of people who sponsored the right-wing press, and the crummy nature of the products and services sold, shows exactly who was supposed to be consuming it: suckers. Or, more specifically, trusting retirees, with a bit of disposable income, and a natural inclination to hate modernity and change—an inclination that could be heightened, radicalized, and exploited....
Rather rapidly, two things happened: First, Republicans realized they’d radicalized their base to a point where nothing they did in power could satisfy their most fervent constituents. Then—in a much more consequential development—a large portion of the Republican Congressional caucus became people who themselves consume garbage conservative media, and nothing else.

That, broadly, explains the dysfunction of the Obama era, post-Tea Party freakout. Congressional Republicans went from people who were able to turn their bullshit-hose on their constituents, in order to rile them up, to people who pointed it directly at themselves, mouths open.

The radicalization of the base actually occurred earlier than Pareene lets on.  He pinpoints it to the election of Obama, but, at least around here, it occurred before that.  I ran for office in 2006 because I saw a Republican party being taken over by know-nothing idiots who believe all kinds of non-factual bullshit.  That year was an election year for all of the statewide executive offices, and when there is a contested Republican primary election for Governor, my county's Republican party holds a County Convention.  As one of the candidates for office, I was invited to speak, or I otherwise wouldn't have attended. The opening address was given by John Boehner, who, at the time, was House Majority Leader (he would become Minority Leader after the 2006 election).  He rolled out a lot of red meat, but over the course of the day, his speech was one of the tamer ones given.  Also present was House Freedom Caucus founder and do-nothing government paycheck thief Jim Jordan, who was leaving the Ohio Senate to run for Congress that year.  I don't think he spoke, but if he did, it was while I was trying to keep from puking due to nerves before my speech.  I gave my speech, which didn't stick to my script, but generally focused on the need for more spending on education.  Not surprisingly, I was the only speaker who didn't mention guns, terrorism or abortion, and the only one who mentioned additional spending for education.

The delegates to the county convention were a mix of elected officials (especially township trustees), party volunteers and business people.  To best illustrate that the base had already been radicalized, all but two of the right-wing loon candidates for statewide office (State Attorney General candidate Betty Montgomery and Mike DeWine, who was the most sane candidate for U.S. Senate present-how times change) was endorsed by the delegates present.  Later that week, I stopped by the county Recorder's office.  He was the county political boss, and he confided to me that he and the other political wheel, the county Prosecutor, were terrified by how radical the base was, and how willing they were to back the morons who professed the greatest faith in the old-time right-wing media bullshit.  Those two were more in it for the power and the ability to hand out patronage, and they were shocked that the majority of the local party was drinking the Kool-Aid.

As Pareene points out, one of the main problems is that the true believers are now a substantial minority in Congress.  The problem is that they were already holding most of the positions at the state level.  Jim Jordan was, at that moment in 2006, making the leap from the state-level stage to the national stage.  My goal was to convince people that they shouldn't be electing morons like Jim Jordan and my opponent to government positions, but instead be electing people who were smart enough to vote for positions outside of the conservative dogma.  Unfortunately, I had a hard time telling my friends and neighbors that they had a lot of stupid political beliefs.  Instead, I tried to work my way around the edges of political discussions, and ended up absorbing a brutal shellacking from a rather dumb incumbent I ran against.

Pareene focuses on Trump's position as the Fox News viewer-in-chief, and how dangerous that is functional government.  The unfortunate thing is that this movement has been building for almost 40 years, and it has taken completely unqualified dumbfuck being elected President of the United States for most folks to realize that stupid people have gradually been filtering up from the grassroots, and now they control almost all the levers of power.  We've had plenty of time to realize what's happening, and the fact that I ran for office is evidence that it was completely obvious back in 2006.  Now we have to reap the whirlwind.

The Trump Budget

FiveThirtyEight:

Idiots.  Note that Trump claims to want to fund massive infrastructure investment, but his cuts to the Ag Department hit investment in water and wastewater projects in rural areas.  Army Corps cuts are going to hit inland river navigation.  And DOT cuts? WTF?  He's the old-time patent medicine salesman ripping off the rubes.  Fuck that asshole.  He's going to be the worst President of my lifetime.

Chart of the Day - Trump "Landslide" Edition

FiveThirtyEight:

By most measures, Trump’s victory was modest

		ELECTORAL COLLEGE SHARE		POPULAR VOTE SHARE		POPULAR VOTE MARGIN		OVERALL
YEAR	PRESIDENT	SHARE	RANK	SHARE	RANK	MARGIN	RANK	AVERAGE RANK
1936	Roosevelt	98.5	1	60.8	2	+24.3	3	2.0
1972	Nixon	96.7	3	60.7	3	+23.2	4	3.3
1964	Johnson	90.3	5	61.1	1	+22.6	5	3.7
1984	Reagan	97.6	2	58.8	5	+18.2	6	4.3
1920	Harding	76.1	13	60.4	4	+26.2	1	6.0
1932	Roosevelt	88.9	6	57.4	7	+17.8	7	6.7
1928	Hoover	83.6	9	58.2	6	+17.4	8	7.7
1956	Eisenhower	86.1	7	57.4	8	+15.4	9	8.0
1924	Coolidge	71.9	14	54.0	11	+25.2	2	9.0
1940	Roosevelt	84.6	8	54.7	10	+10.0	11	9.7
1952	Eisenhower	83.2	10	55.2	9	+10.9	10	9.7
1980	Reagan	90.9	4	50.8	16	+9.7	12	10.7
1944	Roosevelt	81.4	11	53.4	12	+7.5	15	12.7
1988	GHW Bush	79.2	12	53.4	13	+7.7	14	13.0
2008	Obama	67.8	17	52.9	14	+7.3	16	15.7
1996	Clinton	70.4	15	49.3	21	+8.6	13	16.3
2012	Obama	61.7	18	51.0	15	+3.9	19	17.3
1948	Truman	57.1	19	49.6	20	+4.5	18	19.0
1992	Clinton	68.8	16	43.0	25	+5.6	17	19.3
2004	GW Bush	53.2	24	50.7	17	+2.5	20	20.3
1976	Carter	55.2	23	50.1	18	+2.1	21	20.7
1960	Kennedy	56.4	21	49.7	19	+0.2	23	21.0
1968	Nixon	55.9	22	43.4	24	+0.7	22	22.7
2016	Trump	56.5	20	45.9	23	-2.1	25	22.7
2000	GW Bush	50.4	25	47.9	22	-0.5	24	23.7

Sources: Dave Leip, Statistical Abstract of the United States, David Wasserman, Wikipedia

Train Wreck

10 days in, and George W. Bush is looking like Lincoln.  I don't think I can take this.  Opening up Facebook makes me want to throw my computer out the window and then run it over with my car.  I may have to spend the next four years keeping a safe distance from the rest of humanity.

NCAA Football Championship Links

Even though the college football season was over for Notre Dame back in September, the last game of the season is tonight.  Thankfully, Ohio State fans are being quiet, so I'll post a few interesting stories from the last week or so:

How Tom Izzo's wish to play at the Palestra created a magical day for Penn State - Washington Post.  I'd like to go to a Big Five game there someday.

College Football: Beer Sales Are Bigger in Texas - Wall Street Journal.  They need the Ohio State numbers in there.

How Do This Year's Blue Jackets Hold Up Against the 1992-93 Penguins? - Vice Sports

Farmers Get Creative in Reaping Profits - Wall Street Journal

Too Much of Weed That Feeds Forcing Wheat Farmers to Other Crops - Bloomberg

Squamscot Soda: Helping You Wash It All Down Since 1863 - The Salt

2016 Was Second Warmest Year on Record in U.S. - New York Times.  Stuff it, deniers.

Liquid Assets - ProPublica

Blood and Sugar - Texas Monthly

Becoming Michael Lewis - Washington Post

The Growing Rural-Urban Divide Around The World - The Atlantic

Why Rural America Voted for Trump - New York Times.  I'd go with that they are bad with facts and numbers, but here is another view.

The End of the Rural Hospital - Pacific Standard.  A situation which was worsened by Republican governors refusing to expand Medicaid may be made worse by the repeal of Obamacare.  

This map explains the weather we had in 2016 - Washington Post.  Not exactly, because it doesn't indicate that we had a crippling drought in late June, July and early August, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Trump's Massive Need To Overstate His Victory

James Fallows destroys the Trump transition team's propaganda:

Translation: “A long time ago” is actually one month, and “one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history” is actually one of the least impressive. Here are the facts:

• In terms of his Electoral College margin, which will probably end up at 306 to 232, Trump will rank #46 among the 58 presidential elections that have been held, or just above the bottom 20%.
• In terms of his popular vote margin, Trump will probably end up with the third-worst popular vote result ever, or if you prefer 56^th ranked of the 58 winning candidates in history. (Obviously the 58 elections have produced 45 presidents, some of them winning two terms and FDR winning four.) This ranking is based on Trump’s losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by a little more than 2 percent, or a little less than 3 million votes. John Quincy Adams lost the popular vote by 10 percent in 1824 to Andrew Jackson, and also came in second in the electoral vote—but became president when the race went to the House, since none of the four candidates had an Electoral College majority. He is #58 out of 58, in terms of popular-vote mandate for winners. Rutherford B. Hayes, who won the electoral college while losing the popular vote by 3 percent to Samuel Tilden in 1876, is #57. Donald Trump, losing by 2 percent, is #56. Every president except J.Q. Adams and Hayes came to office with a stronger popular-vote mandate than Trump.

The amazing part of that press release from the transition team is that the most truthful part of the whole thing is the attack on the CIA, and the least truthful is in quotations ("Make America Great Again").  Trump will never be able to handle the fact that he won fewer overall votes than Hillary Clinton, even though he was elected president.  Even more amazing is that he won more electoral votes than George W. Bush did in either of his election victories, even though Bush won the popular vote by 2.4% in 2004.  The fact is, Trump didn't win a landslide victory no matter how you look at it, but just like when W was in office, that will in no way mitigate the damage done to the country by Republicans while he is in power.

Morning in America

This morning, Americans in cities will wake up to a country they can't understand and don't recognize.  They will see that a reality TV star was elected President of the United States.  A man who made outlandish promises he will never be able to keep, and maybe never will try to keep.  They will struggle to understand how this happened, and the answer they will come up with is that rural Americans overwhelmingly elected this loudmouthed, blowhard overgrown child.  Will he bring steel mill jobs back to Youngstown and Pittsburgh?  No.  Will he overturn the economics of shale gas and bring coal jobs back?  No.  Will he dismantle Obamacare and make a dysfunctional health care system even more dysfunctional? Yes.  Will he allow Republicans in Washington to run wild with tax cuts and social spending cuts? Yes.  Will he continue to be a complete buffoon? Certainly.

If Republicans do push forward their tax and spending plans, rural Americans will suffer.  Even worse, whenever the inevitable backlash against Trump and Republicans come, there will be no interest in helping out rural areas which need help but obviously don't want it.  Do not expect the heroin epidemic to let up.  Do not expect the rural economy to improve. As the farm economy tanks, do not expect help to come from Washington.  People in cities just aren't going to care.  They see hateful assholes who gave them the finger and celebrated doing it.  Rural Americans did a stellar job choosing the worst possible candidate, and the worst possible legislature, and all Americans will suffer because of it.  Don't expect the Democrats in the House to bail out the Republican leadership when the do-nothing idiot Freedom Caucus holds out against the budget.  The Republican Party owns everything that happens from here on out, and it won't be glorious.  Sure, the statistics showed that the Bush administration was horrific, but you couldn't tell a Trump voter that.  Going forward, they have no one else to blame.  Patent medicine salesmen loved to move from town to town and rip off the rubes.  Trump continued that long tradition.  It's morning in America.  We'll move on.  We won't improve, at least for the time being.

Trump and the Rural-Urban Divide

2012 Presidential Results by county

Cracked has a good piece explaining some of what attracts rural voters to Trump:

These are people who come from a long line of folks who took pride in looking after themselves. Where I'm from, you weren't a real man unless you could repair a car, patch a roof, hunt your own meat, and defend your home from an intruder. It was a source of shame to be dependent on anyone -- especially the government. You mowed your own lawn and fixed your own pipes when they leaked, you hauled your own firewood in your own pickup truck. (Mine was a 1994 Ford Ranger! The current owner says it still runs!).....
The rural folk with the Trump signs in their yards say their way of life is dying, and you smirk and say what they really mean is that blacks and gays are finally getting equal rights and they hate it. But I'm telling you, they say their way of life is dying because their way of life is dying. It's not their imagination. No movie about the future portrays it as being full of traditional families, hunters, and coal mines. Well, except for Hunger Games, and that was depicted as an apocalypse.

I can appreciate the do-it-yourself mentality.  I was proud that I used an 8-pound maul to split all the firewood I used to heat my house for 15 years.  I can appreciate the feeling of emptiness one feels as he or she watches all the things one has held dear slowly die (for me, that includes American manufacturing, rural communities, the Catholic Church and the Republican Party).  I can appreciate the resentment toward "the big city."  I just dropped a large sum of money on a piece of land just so the neighboring town can't burn up more farm ground with big shit shacks for Citiots (yes, that is a combination of city and idiot).  However, I just can't understand how anyone can believe that Donald Trump is a trustworthy person, and not a flaming sack of shit. 

As I listened to this story on NPR tonight, I was thinking that it would be better for struggling white folks to notice that their Hispanic neighbors shared many of the same beliefs in family, church and hard work, and that they would each be better off working together to address the inequality and lack of opportunity they each suffered under.  Meanwhile, they are splitting their vote between two ultra-rich asshole crooks who play them off against one another.  I don't know that this is a divide that can be surmounted, but if it is, I better invest my retirement funds in torches and pitchforks. 

Rio Opening Weekend Links

Here are a few stories for your enjoyment:

41-year-old Oksana Chusovitina may be the most incredible athlete at the Olympics- ESPN

Why Big Pharma Wants to Switch Billions of Farm Animals to Vaccines From Antibiotics- Bloomberg.  Ag has to change its antibiotic use.

Why Do Milk Prices Spike And Crash? Because It's Like Oil - The Salt

Hop Growers Cheer Craft Brewers For Saving An Ailing Industry - The Salt

The Huelskamp Mistake - Wall Street Journal.  I disagree with the premise.  I think it is more that most voters hate other peoples' government programs, but really like their own.  Huelskamp was against the Farm Bill and the Export-Import Bank.  That doesn't sit well with farmers and the aircraft industry in Wichita. All the free market bullshit in this article is just that.

Meet the New Owner of the Playboy Mansion - New York Times.  I only highlighted this because these guys used to own PBR.

Climate Change is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways - Bloomberg

Former cleanup workers blame illnesses on toxic coal ash exposures - Center for Public Integrity

The Coolest Shipyard in America - Politico

Calling the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat a ‘Frigate’ Doesn’t Make It Any Less Crappy - War is Boring

How Did GOP Presidential Nominations Decline From a World War II General to a Narcissistic TV Celebrity?- Andrew Bacevich.  Bacevich is one of my favorite political commentators.

The Executive Mr. Trump - Politico

Party of Rage - New York Review of Books

What do Donald Trump voters really crave? Respect - The Guardian

Ichiro Has 2,998 Hits - And A Few Even Left the Infield - Wall Street Journal.  I remember getting pissed at a bartender in Davenport, Iowa who was celebrating Mickey Mantle's quote about Pete Rose, "if I hit that many singles, I'd wear a dress."

Tea Party Poster Boy Huelskamp Losing Primary Election

Kansas City Star:

Huelskamp, the chairman of the House Tea Party Caucus, has garnered a lot of attention as well as scorn during a combative tenure that saw him booted off the House Agricultural Committee.
With 13 percent of precincts reporting in the western Kansas district, Huelskamp trailed with 41 percent of the vote to Marshall’s 59 percent.
Marshall, an obstetrician from Great Bend, gained the endorsement of the Kansas Farm Bureau — giving him some clout against Huelskamp’s backing from anti-abortion and gun-rights groups, as well as the Club for Growth and the National Federation of Independent Business.
Huelskamp rode into office in the 2010 tea party rout and was part of standoffs, including tension around the government shutdown in 2013, that drove former House Speaker John Boehner from office a year ago.

A little background:

Kansas farmers are taking on some of America’s most powerful conservative interests in an attempt to oust U.S. Representative Tim Huelskamp, a Tea Party favorite kicked off the House Agriculture Committee for ideological rigidity.
The Club for Growth and the Koch brothers, whose Koch Industries Inc. is based in Wichita, are backing Huelskamp, who opposed a farm bill providing crop insurance farmers deem vital -- which former Speaker John Boehner backed. For farmers, little means more than Huelskamp’s opposition to the bill and loss of his committee seat, marking the end of almost a century of Kansas representation. Agribusiness groups support Republican primary challenger Roger Marshall, an obstetrician who says regaining the state’s voice on farm matters is his first priority.
“As a farmer or a rancher, we need the safety net of the farm bill,” said Orrin Holle, a Rawlins County farmer. “Western Kansas, which is most of his district, sees severe droughts.”
The Aug. 2 primary may show the limits of the anti-establishment politics that have swept Kansas. In 2012, Governor Sam Brownback, promising a “real live experiment” for Tea Party policies, won enactment of broad tax cuts. The resulting $400 million budget hole forced public schools to end the school year early and led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade Kansas’s credit one step to AA, third-highest, and to put it on watch for further reductions.
Brownback won re-election, but the state’s Republican Party was bitterly split. Huelskamp’s loss of the Agriculture Committee seat provides another test of the state’s faith in ideology over pragmatism....
Huelskamp, a 47-year-old, fifth-generation farmer from Fowler who began his tenure in 2011, said he’s sensitive to constituent needs.
“Crop insurance was my first, second, third priority in the farm bill and it was in there,” he said. He voted against the bill, he said, because it didn’t require stricter work requirements for the more than 46 million Americans seeking food stamps at the time.

The Tea Party has always been playing with fire when it comes to voting against the Farm Bill because they hate food stamps.  They should be smart enough to know that urban Congressmen only vote for the Farm Bill because of the food stamp program, but as we've seen, Tea Party congressmen aren't that smart.  Goodbye, Mr. Huelskamp.  I'm not going to miss you.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/election/article93390117.html#storylink=cpyKansas farmers are taking on some of America’s most powerful conservative interests in an attempt to oust U.S. Representative Tim Huelskamp, a Tea Party favorite kicked off the House Agriculture Committee for ideological rigidity.
The Club for Growth and the Koch brothers, whose Koch Industries Inc. is based in Wichita, are backing Huelskamp, who opposed a farm bill providing crop insurance farmers deem vital -- which former Speaker John Boehner backed. For farmers, little means more than Huelskamp’s opposition to the bill and loss of his committee seat, marking the end of almost a century of Kansas representation. Agribusiness groups support Republican primary challenger Roger Marshall, an obstetrician who says regaining the state’s voice on farm matters is his first priority.
“As a farmer or a rancher, we need the safety net of the farm bill,” said Orrin Holle, a Rawlins County farmer. “Western Kansas, which is most of his district, sees severe droughts.”
The Aug. 2 primary may show the limits of the anti-establishment politics that have swept Kansas. In 2012, Governor Sam Brownback, promising a “real live experiment” for Tea Party policies, won enactment of broad tax cuts. The resulting $400 million budget hole forced public schools to end the school year early and led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade Kansas’s credit one step to AA, third-highest, and to put it on watch for further reductions.
Brownback won re-election, but the state’s Republican Party was bitterly split. Huelskamp’s loss of the Agriculture Committee seat provides another test of the state’s faith in ideology over pragmatism.

Kansas Tax Cuts: A Closer Look

NCAA Tournament Opening Weekend Links

In between basketball games, you can check out these stories:

Are the 2016 Browns the Least Talented Team in Modern History? - Bleacher Report

The Complicated Politics of Hating Duke - Wall Street Journal.  Not complicated for me.

The Farm Bill Drove Me Insane - Politico  

Low oil prices drying up ethanol producers’ profits - Des Moines Register 

Who’s watching the chickens?- Politico

Gigi The Cow Broke The Milk Production Record. Is That Bad For Cows? - The Salt  

These artisans specialize in the dwindling craft of saintly repairs - Washington Post  

Inside the Billion-Dollar Dig to America’s Biggest Copper Deposit - Bloomberg. Crazy. 

A sinking jail: The environmental disaster that is Rikers Island - Grist

Story of cities #4: Beijing and the earliest planning document in history - Guardian

  

The Hoaxster Who Revealed Sad Truths About America - Priceonomics

How We Learned (Almost) Everything That's Wrong With U.S. Census Data - Harvard Business Review

Crowdfunding for the Public Good is Evil - Wired

Free Lunch - Texas Observer 

The Role of Highways in American Poverty - The Atlantic  

The Huge Cultural Shift That's Helping Trump Win Evangelicals - Politico

The great unsettling - Washington Post

Extraordinary Raw Materials in a Tesla Model S - Visual Capitalist

This Is Our Circus

With more than a dozen clowns running to claim the seat vacated by John Boehner, it is hard to pick the lesser of the evils. 

Let's Not Jump To Conclusions

CNN:

What moved a man to kill three people and wound nine others at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado has not been disclosed. But the suspect accused of carrying out the shooting spree, Robert Lewis Dear, made remarks about "baby parts" to investigators after his surrender, a law enforcement official told CNN.

Dear, 57, told them he has anti-abortion and anti-government views, but that doesn't mean those opinions were his motive for allegedly shooting up the Colorado Springs clinic on Friday, the official said. It's too early to tell, as investigators are still processing evidence.

Well, Occam's Razor could probably be used to determine what motivated the shooter, but it doesn't appear that Ted Cruz is using it:

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is the latest presidential candidate trying to downplay the role anti-abortion rhetoric may have played in motivating the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado Springs Friday afternoon. When a reporter asked him at an Iowa campaign stop Sunday evening about suspect Robert Lewis Dear saying he was motivated by “no more baby parts,” Cruz countered that he’s also been reported to be a “transgendered [sic] leftist activist.”
Cruz explained, “We know that he was a man registered to vote as a woman.” This discrepancy on Dear’s voter registration was first reported by The Gateway Pundit, a self-described “right-of-center news website,” under the claim that he “identifies as [a] woman.” Conservatives have since run with the claim that Dear is transgender.
There is actually no evidence to suggest that he is transgender, nor a “leftist,” nor any kind of activist. In fact, all of the available information suggests he was none of those things....The Times’ profile also identifies him as “generally conservative,” having been raised as a Baptist, but as someone who did not discuss politics much. According to his ex-wife, “he believed wholeheartedly in the Bible” and believed that abortion was wrong. He also distributed pamphlets criticizing President Obama to his neighbors in Colorado. On the voter registration form with the gender discrepancy, his party is listed as “UAF,” meaning unaffliated.

I'll bet against that transgender theory.  I'll also bet against the theory that Ted Cruz isn't a slimy, manipulative charlatan who pretends to be religious.

"By This Shall All Men Know That You Are My Disciples"

Remember this next time Mike Pence claims to be a Christian:

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy welcomed to his state Wednesday a family of Syrian refugees diverted from Indiana because of security concerns raised by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

"It is the right thing, the humane thing to do," Malloy told reporters. "Quite frankly, if you believe in God, it’s the morally correct thing to do."

The family of three fled from Syria to Jordan when their 5-year-old son was less than 1 and is the first family to be redirected after 26 governors objected this week to accepting Syrian refugees, according to The New York Times.

The status of a family of four that was supposed to arrive Dec. 10 in Indianapolis, where they have friends, is in limbo as Catholic Charities weighs how to respond to Pence's request that the family be directed elsewhere.

"There’s still just a lot of information that we’re all waiting on," said Heidi Smith, director of refugee services for Catholic Charities Indianapolis. "In the meantime, there’s refugees that have no control of their lives and no place to go and nobody wants them. And we have to think about what it would be like to be in their shoes."

The state Division of Family Resources sent a letter Tuesday to Exodus Refugee Immigration and to Catholic Charities Indianapolis asking that all Syrian arrivals be “suspended or redirected to another state that is willing to accept Syrian placements until assurances that proper security measure are in place have been provided by the federal government.”....

Pence tweeted Wednesday that he will "maintain this policy until the Administration and Congress acts to ensure the security of our Hoosiers."

Malloy told reporters Pence doesn't have legal authority to reject Syrian refugees.

"But this is the same guy who signed a homophobic bill in the spring surrounded by homophobes," Malloy said, referring to Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act that critics said would allow discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. "So I’m not surprised by anything the governor does."

Pence is an embarrassment, but I expect nothing less from Indiana.  I can't believe how supposedly tough guy Republicans are such bed-wetting chickenshits (which is actually an insult to bed-wetters and chicken shit).