EOMMD

It's time for the End Of the Month Meme Dump, and go Astros!

Camel on tour

Hey, I just might get to see the music band Camel live after all. They have announced one date for 2018 so far and claim more to come. Hmmm, I will travel just about anywhere to see this band.

Band to perform whole of 1976's classic Moonmadness at celebrated venue...

Legendary prog rockers Camel have announced a show at London's Royal Albert Hall. They will play the celebrated venue on 17 September 2018 in what is billed on the band's website as part of 'The Moonmadness Tour 2018', where the band will perform the whole of their 1976 album of the same name as well as "other classic tracks".

The band's website currently lists the Royal Albert Hall show but also adds "more dates to come". Tickets for the event go on sale on Friday 3 November at 10am. They will be available from the All Tickets website.

Camel legendarily performed their 1975 album The Snow Goose at the venue, a major stepping stone in their career.

Here is one tune, Lunar Sea, from the Moonmadness album, not live.

Cracked

They used to produce satire. Now, reality has become rather satirical.

Cracked.

Bernie on Seth Meyers

I hope that someday Bernie's ideas will be mainstream, especially Medicare for All. It's a crime how we are set up with healthcare via insurance companies these days. I do wish he had decided to run for President years ago, and his ideas could have been much more ingrained in society by now.

solar suitcase

Another excellent use of solar power.

How solar-powered suitcases are helping babies in Nepal

She walked from her home in the remote Nepalese village Pandavkhani for her final antenatal check up at her local birthing centre through shuddering thunder, a drenching rainstorm and one of the village's frequent power cuts.

These power cuts can last up to two weeks and used to cause the birthing centre significant problems. But now it has its own power solution. The light in the birthing centre stays on and she smiles.

short video here

"I am really happy," the young mum says. "Because we have a solar light at the birthing centre."

That light is powered by a bright yellow suitcase bolted to the delivery room wall. This is a solar suitcase. Connected to a solar panel on the roof, the device is a miniature power station that provides light, heat and battery charging and a baby monitor.

Life saving

For local midwife, Hima Shirish, the solar suitcase has been a lifesaver. She was determined find a solar solution for her health centre's energy problems. A charity called One-Heart Worldwide sourced the solar suitcase and installed it in Pandavkhani in 2014. Since then there have been no maternal or baby deaths here.

"Pregnant mothers used to be afraid of the dark when they came to give birth at the health post," Hima says.

Midwife Hima Shirish switches on the solar suitcase
to power life-saving medical equipment

"They feared losing their babies. But now the fear is gone and they are relieved that they are going to have a baby using the solar light."

Off-grid solution

The solar suitcase is the brainchild of California-based obstetrician-gynaecologist Dr Laura Stachel of We Care Solar. While in Nigeria in 2008, she witnessed complications and even deaths when babies were delivered at night without reliable light or power.

Dr Stachel devised a suitcase-sized, off-grid, solar electric system with her husband, solar engineer, Hal Aronson. The prototype was so successful in Nigeria, they decided to bring the innovation to clinics and health stations in other countries with high rates of maternal and new-born baby mortality.

Earthquake challenge

In Nepal, the 2015 earthquake destroyed many of its hospitals and left most of the remaining facilities without reliable power.

Weighing just 16kg (35lbs) solar suitcases were ideal for deployment over tough terrain. They provided life-saving power to makeshift medical and birthing tents in the immediate aftermath of the quake. But, even without such natural disasters, Nepal is a long way from being able to generate the electricity its people need.

"There are a lot of maternity or small clinics in rural areas where they have no electricity at all." Up to a third of rural areas have no reliable power, says Raj Kumar Thapa, managing director of Solar Solutions Private Limited.

Government schemes to increase small-scale power generation using solar, wind or hydro have had limited success, he says, because it is difficult for private companies to install and maintain systems in remote areas while still making a profit.

"So as long as the users are provided with proper training on the operation of the system I think there is a bigger role to play for solar energy especially on a charitable basis in Nepal."

Before the birthing centre was built in Pandavkhani in 2013, most babies were delivered at home, sometimes by torchlight or in total darkness. In difficult cases, mothers in labour would be taken on a 65km (40-mile) mountainous trek over mud and rocks to the hospital in the nearest town, Baglung.

"Some babies were in the wrong position and we did not have the equipment to help them," Hima recalls. "Mothers used to die from haemorrhaging." Now Hima and her staff are also able to charge their mobile phones, another vital piece of kit in this remote part of the world.

"Sometimes the power cuts can last for 15 days," Hima explains. "We used to be completely out of contact because we could not charge our mobile phones."

Mrs Sunar is just one of 175 mothers who have already given birth at the centre at least once. As she waits to deliver her second child, she is reassured by her experience during the birth of her daughter.

"When I was in labour with my first child… I arrived at the health post and the light had just been cut. But the health worker said they had a solar suitcase so I didn't need to worry."

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Kathy Griffin

Kathy Griffin is still suffering from the backlash over that silly fake photo of Trump's head. But she seems to be getting along ok, and she's dishing dirt.

Growing Exposed

The cannabusiness is growing by leaps and bounds. 

Colorado’s 2017 marijuana sales reach $1 billion in just eight months

Legal marijuana is a bona fide billion-dollar industry in Colorado. And it’s hitting the mark faster than ever.

In 2017, Colorado eclipsed $1 billion in marijuana sales in eight months; in 2016, it took 10 months.

Colorado’s marijuana retailers logged upward of $1.02 billion in collective medical and recreational sales through August, according to The Cannabist’s extrapolations of state tax data released Wednesday. Year-to-date sales are up 21 percent from the first eight months of 2016, when recreational and medical marijuana sales totaled $846.5 million.

This year’s cumulative sales equate to more than $162 million in taxes and fees for Colorado coffers.

The monthly tax data now comes with some additional stipulations. It’s the second full month in which marijuana sales have been subject to a different taxing structure, and the reports reflect a “period of transition,” DOR officials say.

The special sales tax rate for recreational marijuana increased to 15 percent from 10 percent in July, as the result of a new law that also exempted recreational marijuana products from the 2.9 percent standard state sales tax. Medical marijuana and accessories are still subject to that 2.9 percent sales tax rate.

The Cannabist’s calculations for July and August 2017 recreational sales are based on revenue reported for the new 15 percent sales tax.

Here’s a look at Colorado’s previous cumulative yearly sales totals:
2014: $699,198,805
2015: $996,184,788
2016: $1,313,156,545

And California is on track to spend $2.68 billion on just medical marijuana in 2017.

Obama wins!

At golf, against Jordan Spieth.

The Truth Matters

Bruce Bartlett, one of President Ronald Reagan's architects of "trickle-down" economics, has a new book out called, "The Truth Matters: A Citizen's Guide to Separating Facts from Lies and Stopping Fake News in its Tracks."

Bartlett has seen the error of his ways. He no longer believes in trickle-down economics and rails against the GOP continuing to embrace the bogus theory.

After seeing Bartlett make the rounds of TV talk shows, I am ordering the book on Amazon. 

Lawrence O'Donnell

The combination of Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC prime time is fantastic. Recently Tucker Carlson and Lawrence got into a little spat, and what do we expect from FOX?

"religious liberty"

Religious liberty apparently includes the right to discriminate. How ridiculous. At least FFRF is fighting this bullshit.

Sessions’ theocratic memo on ‘religious liberty protections’ will unleash legal chaos

On October 6, the Trump administration unveiled a series of theocratic interpretations of "religious liberty protections" that will unleash legal chaos and discrimination, charges the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The executive orders and memos largely redefine religious liberty as the right to discriminate and deny others civil rights. On the same day, President Trump signed two executive orders under the auspices of religious liberty permitting employers to deny women workers contraceptive coverage, in a move condemned by FFRF.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, at Trump's behest, has issued a list of 20 far-reaching "Principles of Religious Liberty" that all federal agencies must implement. The goal appears to be to exempt Christians and other religionists from the rules and regulations of civil society, including rules that prevent discrimination.

Trump instructed the attorney general "to issue guidance interpreting religious liberty protections in federal law" when he issued his May 4 order on religious liberty. That executive order, in part claiming that churches no longer had to obey the Johnson Amendment barring 501(c)(3) entities from engaging in politicking, is under court challenge by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The unprincipled "principles" signal that the U.S. federal government will look the other way when discrimination occurs, so long as it is religiously motivated. The attorney general's memo seeks to redefine religious freedom, a strategy FFRF has warned about for years. It seeks to morph a right to freely exercise one's religion into an absolute right that can be used to harm and even discriminate against other Americans.

While some of the principles simply reiterate obvious and accepted constitutional provisions, many carve out new rights for religionists, such as:

• Saying private associations and even businesses have free exercise rights.

This would imply that secular businesses may discriminate based on religion, e.g., by refusing to hire or promote LGBTQ individuals or an unmarried mother who are considered transgressive of some religious dogma. (Principle 3)

• Repealing federal mandates pertaining to grants to faith-based organizations, saying
that "the federal government may not condition federal grants or contracts on the religious organization altering its religious character, beliefs, or activities." (Principles 4, 6)

This would appear, for example, to allow adoption or foster care agencies working with the government to discriminate against LGBTQ or interracial couples, so long as that discrimination stems from a religious belief. It would allow churches to get FEMA funding (a timely issue, with Trump tweeting support for litigation against FEMA by some Texas churches seeking hurricane relief). Principle 6 explicitly states that the government may not deny religious schools the right to participate in voucher programs, thereby seeking to bypass Congress' role in passing such legislation.

• A religious adherent can deprive another citizen ("a third party") of a benefit. (Principle 15)

Allowing a religionist to deny a benefit would be acceptable because the federal government must accommodate this religious belief. This clearly speaks to ongoing challenges involving cake bakers who refuse to bake cakes for same-sex weddings, plus any number of other kinds of discrimination.

At the root of the attorney general's memo is not the First Amendment, but the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a broad and misguided act passed by Congress in the early 1990s. RFRA, not the First Amendment, was the basis of the Supreme Court's infamous Hobby Lobby decision enabling some secular corporations to deny women workers contraception based on corporate "religious belief."

The attorney general's memo repeatedly affirms RFRA: "Once a religious adherent has identified a substantial burden on his or her religious belief, the federal government can impose that burden on the adherent only if it is the least restrictive means of achieving a compelling governmental interest," Sessions states (Principle 14).

Citizens may believe whatever they like, but the right to act on those beliefs is by no means absolute, FFRF points out. "Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices," the Supreme Court ruled 130 years ago. The court asked: "Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship; would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice?"

Somewhere on the spectrum of religiously motivated action, civil law can step in. That line should be drawn where the rights of others begin. As Thomas Jefferson put it, "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

But if religion mandates picking pockets and breaking legs, it comes under the purview of our secular law. And no belief, however fervent, should change that.

However, Sessions' new rules do seek to change this. Under Sessions, the Justice Department has filed an amicus brief supporting the baker who discriminated against an LGBTQ couple, reversing the Justice Department's position.

FFRF warned the Senate about confirming Sessions as attorney general, writing that he would tear down the wall of separation between state a church, which he called "a recent thing that is unhistorical and unconstitutional." Sessions was open about his belief that "free exercise also includes the freedom to act as one's religion demands, even if such actions might curtail the civil rights of others, or run contrary to the law." 

This is chilling.

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Resistance #139

Keith keeps chugging along. The list of offenses piled up by this president is quite long, but is anyone going to do anything about it? The GOP is happy as long as they get tax cuts. The Dems, well, with no majority anywhere, all they can do is howl in the wind, but they are not even doing that.

Andrew Sullivan

Sometimes Andrew Sullivan is tolerable, but I still don't understand his rather extreme antipathy towards Hillary Clinton.

Andrew Sullivan: Trump’s Mindless Nihilism

The trouble with reactionary politics is that it is fundamentally a feeling, an impulse, a reflex. It’s not a workable program. You can see that in the word itself: it’s a reaction, an emotional response to change. Sure, it can include valuable insights into past mistakes, but it can’t undo them, without massive disruption. As any Burkean conservative will tell you, the present is what you work with. “Home is where you start from,” in T.S. Eliot’s words. The reactionary, like the progressive, never fully grasps this, cannot see the connections that require that present actions are most effective when they build on what is, rather than what was, or, for the progressive, what could be.

I mention this as a way to see more clearly why the right in Britain and America is either unraveling quickly into chaos, or about to inflict probably irreparable damage on a massive scale to their respective countries. Brexit and Trump are the history of Thatcher and Reagan repeating as dangerous farce, a confident, intelligent conservatism reduced to nihilist, mindless reactionism.

Trump is careening ever more manically into a force of irrational fury. I watched his infomercial with Hannity Wednesday night and see a sharp decline even from his previously unhinged and malevolent incoherence. He riffed for a while on how the rise in the stock market since he came to office somehow halves our national debt. He asserted, like an American Erdogan, that no citizen can disrespect our flag, anthem, or country … or else. He claimed that the economy — which a year ago was a “total disaster” — is now a staggering overnight success. He boasted of unemployment numbers he described as fraudulent only months ago. In his interview earlier this week with Forbes, he sounds like someone so stoned he can barely parse a sentence, let alone utter a coherent thought, and whose utter indifference to reality still staggers.

But it’s the impossible reactionary agenda that is the core problem. And the reason we have a president increasingly isolated, ever more deranged, legislatively impotent, diplomatically catastrophic, and constitutionally dangerous, is not just because he is a fucking moron requiring an adult day-care center to avoid catastrophe daily. It’s because he’s a reactionary fantasist, whose policies stir the emotions but are stalled in the headwinds of reality. He can’t abolish Obamacare because huge majorities prefer it to any Republican alternative, so he is sabotaging it. He hasn’t built a huge wall across the entire southern border because it’s a ludicrous project that cannot solve the problem it was designed for. Ditto ripping NAFTA to shreds, which would cause immense disruption to three countries’ economies and ricochet around the world. Or attempting to ally with Russia against the E.U., as if Merkel was worse a threat than Putin. Or removing NBC’s license, which it doesn’t actually have, for political reasons. Or deporting 11 million people. Or pretending that climate change is not happening. Or a massive tax cut on the wealthy, and arguing, as Trump did Wednesday night, that it would create surpluses as Reagan’s did, which, of course, Reagan’s didn’t.

These are not conservative reforms, thought-through, possible to implement, strategically planned. They are the unhinged fantasies of a 71-year-old Fox News viewer imagining he can reconstruct the late 1950s. They cannot actually be implemented, without huge damage. And so he resorts to executive sabotage — creating loopholes in the enforcement of Obamacare to undermine the entire system. Or he throws a temper tantrum because Obama’s Iran Deal is actually working as promised, and attempting to undermine that as well. At this point, the agenda is so deranged and destructive almost every sane senior member of his cabinet is trying to rein it in.

In Britain, meanwhile, Brexit is in exactly the same place — a reactionary policy that is close to impossible to implement without economic and diplomatic catastrophe. Brexit too was built on Trump-like lies, and a Trump-like fantasy that 50 years of integration with the E.U. could be magically abolished overnight, and that the Britain of the early 1970s could be instantly re-conjured. No actual conservative can possibly believe that such radical, sudden change won’t end in tears.

Last week, Theresa May had her first interview since her excruciating speech to her party’s annual conference. (Brief recap: In a pivotal moment after a disastrous and unnecessary election, May, in mid-speech, accepted a recognizable pink slip — the British Form P45 — handed to her by a prankster in the audience, then had a coughing fit that went on and on, then lost her voice altogether, but managed to squeak through to the end while the letters on the slogan behind her randomly fell to the floor. It was like something out of Veep.) Anyway, she was asked in that interview whether she would vote Leave if the Brexit referendum were conducted today. (She voted Remain the first time round.) To her credit, she just couldn’t get it out of her mouth. This is the British leader, in a now-minority government, beholden to every faction in her own party as well as a merry band of Northern Irish Protestant deputies, who obviously believes her current task is a form of madness. And this is supposed to be the credible negotiator with Brussels. Good luck with that.

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Boca Chica launch

Construction is moving rather slowly at the Boca Chica launch site selected by SpaceX's Elon Musk. Hey, take your time and get it right.

SpaceX's Texas-based Mars launch facilities to be completed as soon as 2019

As part of a recruitment effort, SpaceX engineers from the company’s McGregor, Texas testing facilities visited Texas A&M University in September and gave a presentation to interested students. In the process, they revealed some extremely exciting details about SpaceX’s future endeavors.

Of considerable interest are several comments made on the Boca Chica, Texas launch facilities SpaceX is in the process of constructing. Progress has been gradual, even slow, over the last three and a half years, and it is a running joke within the SpaceX fan community that we aggressively encourage locals to help us track the growth of a pile of dirt, the most obvious feature at the pad site. The McGregor engineers confirmed what was long suspected: Boca Chica is not and will not be a priority until both of SpaceX’s East coast pads, LC-40 and LC-39A, are respectively reactivated and upgraded for Falcon Heavy and Commercial Crew launches.

This means that Boca Chica will not begin to be seriously developed until the end of 2017, likely November or December at the earliest. While disappointing for those who have been watching closely, the information was tempered by the news that Boca Chica would be developed from the start of construction as a launch facility for SpaceX’s Mars colonization vehicle, the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS). This is the first non-employees have heard of this, and it meshes well with comments Gwynne Shotwell made on September 13 indicating that SpaceX “could” have the Boca Chica pad ready within “two years”, although it is not a current priority.

If SpaceX does intend for their Texas launch facilities to support their Mars vehicle from the start, the fact that construction is not a priority is of no surprise. As far as we know, SpaceX has yet to finalize the design of the ITS launch vehicle and spaceship, and a finished design would almost certainly be necessary for launch pad engineers to seriously begin construction or even conceptualization of a launch facility for the vehicle.

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Minute 323

I'm sure that Trump had nothing to do with this agreement. I mean, it's still intact.

Update to U.S.-Mexico Water Treaty Is a Huge Win for Conservation

Audubon and its partners played a key role in the negotiations for Minute 323, which sets aside 200,000 acre-feet of water for environmental purposes.

Without an influx of water, the Colorado River trickles to a halt 100 miles inland of its historical coastal outlet in Mexico. Photo: Pete McBride/National Geographic Creative

The birds and people that live along the Colorado River delta have gotten a second reprieve. After years of painstaking negotiation, delegates for the United States and Mexico signed Minute 323, the latest refinement on a 1944 treaty, managed by the International Boundary and Water Commission, that dictates how water is managed across the shared U.S.-Mexico border.

The last major update to the treaty that involved environmental sharing of water was Minute 319, signed in 2012, that promised a series of flows from 2014-2017. This latest agreement secures continued commitments from both countries to improve water conservation in the Colorado River basin; Audubon was actively involved in the negotiations to make sure that water sustainability was addressed in any new treaty language.

While the agreement covers a number of issues, including how water shortages will be shared by the United States and Mexico, it also sets aside 210,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water specifically for environmental purposes. This water will be used to support and restore habitats along the  river’s parched delta in Mexico—without this water, the Colorado River trickles to a halt some 80 miles inland of its historical coastal outlet—and will be released over the course of nine years. The conservation coalition Raise the River, which includes Audubon and its BirdLife partner in Mexico Pronatura Noroeste, will focus on the restoration of approximately 4,300 acres of prime cottonwood, willow, and mesquite habitat along the delta.

The pulse flow in 2014 was followed by the planting of more than 200,000 native cottonwood trees. An initial assessment by Audubon and its partners showed that the 2014 release improved habitat, and 1,100 acres of new habitat had been created. The data also suggest that birds have begun to return to the areas that were formerly parched; according to Osvel Hinojosa Huerta, a Mexico-based scientist and member of the team that monitors vegetation and wildlife in the delta, Yellow-billed Cuckoos have been spotted where none were before. He cautions, however, that it's still too early to say if the increase in biodiversity is permanent.

While most of the water released 2013-2017 came as one large pulse, the Minute 323 water deliveries will focus on smaller volumes that will help preserve a baseline amount of water in the delta ecosystems over a longer period of time. According to Jennifer Pitt, Audubon’s Colorado River program manager, this new regimen is based directly on the results of the long-term monitoring studies.

The negotiations around the sharing of Colorado River water between the U.S. and Mexico is just one facet of the myriad challenges involved in managing water in the arid Western U.S. Climate change is making an already-arid climate even drier. Understanding all of the various facets affecting Western water use is critical to making big-picture, sustainable decisions. To help in that effort, Audubon recently released its analysis of the situation in its Birds and Water in the Arid West report, which explores the importance of water in all of its forms—saline lakes and rivers in the Colorado River basin—to bird populations. The report plots out how overdrawing water from the landscape will negatively affect everyone, including the humans, who depend on it. 

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Need to Impeach

Tom Steyer, a billionaire on the "good side" is going to spend up to $10 million on commercials based on the "Need to Impeach" (Donald Trump) theme. I hear that the NFL is one ad target.

I have to say this does not bother me. I wish Tom the best of luck.

Issac Asimov

Issac Asimov, born in Russia in 1920, died in New York City in 1992. He left a prodigious volume of work, many of which are considered classics.

Before he passed, he had something memorable to say which is still pertinent today:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. 

Isaac Asimov 1980 

More quotes from Issac can be found here.

just fuck off Kelly

I keep forgetting to check in with the Rude Pundit. 

Turns out General Kelly is a jerk from way back.

Oh, Just Fuck Off, John Kelly

by the Rude Pundit

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: No matter where the fighting is and no matter the cause, most soldiers will act bravely, sometimes even heroically, to support their fellow soldiers. In every bullshit war, there are men and women who fight, get wounded, and die, and their sacrifice should be honored and respected. They went to war because the leaders we elected made them go there. 

But let's also get another thing straight: We have not fought a war that wasn't bullshit since World War II. And every death and every wound has been for nothing (beyond the soldiers protecting each other.) Korea was bullshit. Vietnam was bullshit. The Persian Gulf was bullshit. Iraq was bullshit. Afghanistan is bullshit. They are all built on lies. Sometimes we allow ourselves to believe they weren't lies. But each and every one was based on lies to advance some policy or ideology that no Americans should have had to die for.

Which gets us to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine general. Yesterday, Kelly appeared at the White House press briefing to set the record straight or some fucking thing about President Trump's callous phone call to the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, killed in Niger earlier in this month.

In doing so, Kelly took his career and any respectability he had, which he had already handed over to Trump when he agreed to work for him in the first place, and he allowed Trump to fuck it in the ass while he cheered Trump on. 

You can read about the many ways in which Kelly lied about Congresswoman Frederica Wilson. You can get confused at Kelly's statement that Wilson "listened in" on a conversation that was on a fucking speakerphone in the car she was riding in and therefore she had no fucking choice but to listen in. You can roll your eyes at Kelly calling Donald Trump "brave" for reaching out to the family of a fallen soldier, as if Donald Trump has ever done anything braver than eat one too many Big Macs in a single sitting. You can even shake your head at Kelly's beyond ignorant invocation of the past when "Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor."

But I'm saying, "Oh, just fuck off" to John Kelly for a couple of reasons.

First, he should fuck off for talking about how Gold Star families (those who lost someone in battle) are no longer sacred because "I think that left in the convention over the summer." He is probably invoking the Khan family, who criticized Trump at the Democratic Convention, and not Patricia Smith, who lost her son in the Benghazi attack and called Hillary a murderer, more or less, at the Republican Convention.

And Kelly should fuck off because in the rest of his fucked-up appearance he completely politicized Gold Star families - who, it should be noted, often politicize themselves in honor of their lost loved ones. He ignored that the president didn't treat those families as sacred when he attacked the Khans. That didn't fucking crop up in his obsequious fluffing of Trump. As if to make his point clear about who he values, Kelly took a couple of questions but only from reporters who are in Gold Star families or are related to them.

Then he pretty much said that you're an asshole if you don't serve in the military: "We don't look down upon those of you who that haven't served. In fact, in a way we're a little bit sorry because you'll have never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kinds of things our service men and women do -- not for any other reason than they love this country. So just think of that."

To which one can only say, "Fuck off. There are so many ways to serve your country and your community that don't involve the military and how fucking dare you diminish those."

Even more, John Kelly can fuck off because of what I started with here. Kelly said he was so upset that Rep. Wilson said mean things about Donald Trump (by, you know, quoting Donald Trump) that he had to take a walk. So, as one does, he went to Arlington National Cemetery, and "I went over there for an hour-and-a-half, walked among the stones, some of whom I put there because they were doing what I told them to do when they were killed."

What were they doing under his orders? Fighting in a bullshit war in Iraq, where Kelly had various commands, up to being in charge of the whole damn show in 2008. Yeah, Kelly led men to die for nothing. And so many in the military know it was a war for nothing. Oh, he could have retired, but he didn't. Which means he believed in the bullshit war and sent soldiers to die for bullshit. I'm pretty fucking sure they didn't sign up for that.

But let's go even further here because, you know, if you're gonna tell someone to "Fuck off," you may as well go all the way. One of Kelly's sons died in combat. He usually doesn't talk about it because it's horrific and personal and why should he. But Trump dragged the corpse of Kelly's son into this shitpool. And Kelly brought him up yesterday. Kelly's son died in Afghanistan in 2010 in a war that should never have been started and was fucked up from the start by President Bush and it wasn't even unfucked by President Obama. Like every other soldier in this war, he died for nothing because he shouldn't have been there in the first place. Kelly's younger son is now on his fifth tour of duty in Afghanistan. 

Yeah, John Kelly walked out in front of the world yesterday to announce that he is just another piss whore in Trump's bed, and he'll willingly degrade himself and his family in order to stay there.

(Note: I support the troops so much that I don't want them to have to fight because some politician needs to prove that a think-tank's position on democracy or terrorism is correct. I want them to defend us and defend our allies. And, yes, I have family in the military. I don't want them to die for bullshit.)

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troll farm

The extent of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election appears to have been very broad. And a little scary. It's a little curious that the Trump administration doesn't seem very concerned about it. Curious indeed.

St Petersburg 'troll farm' had 90 dedicated staff working to influence US election campaign

The Kremlin has rejected allegations of interference in the 2016 vote

Few Russian addresses have received as much attention as 55 Savushkina Street. The grey, four-storey office block in St Petersburg's northwestern suburbs seems almost undeserving of the interest. But the souls inside, busy with pro-Kremlin internet manipulation since 2011, have ensured their building will stay in the headlines for some time to come.

An investigation has revealed more intimate details about the office, known colloquially as “the troll farm.” The report, published on Tuesday by the business portal RBC, suggests that the organisation played a role in the US election campaign and its aftermath, organising as many as 40 US rallies and protests.

The report identifies 120 different groups and social media accounts used by trolls over 2016-2017. “The farm,” it suggests, concentrated on divisive social issues for the US, particularly civil rights.

The report describes a rally held in Charlotte on 22 October 2016, ostensibly against police violence. The event was held in the name of “BlackMatterUS,” and it seems probable many of the activists who took part did not understand the rally was unconnected with Black Lives Matter. Or, indeed, that the entire operation was being directed from St Petersburg.  

Facebook advertising campaigns also focused on divisive messages, the report says. The US tech giant has already confirmed 55 Savushkina Street was responsible for buying $100,000 (£75,000) worth of pre-election posts, and this report does not add to those numbers.

It reveals details about the organisation’s relatively modest budget. Over two years, “the troll farm” spent $2.2m (£1.7m), the vast majority of which went on wages. For Russia’s second city, the pay was reasonable but not excessive. Wages started at 55,000 rubles (£725)  per month for a new hire, rising to 120,000 rubles (£1600) for line managers.

In total, 250 people were employed, with 90 dedicated trolls working on the US election campaign at its peak.

Close scrutiny made the trolling organisation change its methods. Following publication of a long investigation in The New York Times in June 2015, Facebook blocked its accounts. But “the farm” opened new channels and reverted to more sophisticated anonymous protocols. The authors of the report say 55 Savushkina St kept about a million subscribers on various channels even after the main Facebook accounts were closed.

“They’re learning, but only by their mistakes,” Andrey Zakharov, one of the authors of the report, told The Independent. “Their US operations, for example, required total anonymity, but they still fumbled by attaching Russian mobile numbers to their Twitter accounts.”

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has distanced the Kremlin from allegations of interference in the US elections.

“We don’t know who placed the Facebook ads, how they were placed,” he told journalists last month. “The Russian side is not involved in this.”

The report does not contain any smoking gun that might link “the farm” to the Trump campaign. Indeed, its authors suggest that media coverage of the trolls of 55 Savushkina St may be somewhat incommensurate with their real influence. Interest in Russia’s “troll farm” had arguably reached "unhealthy" levels, Mr Zakharov told The Independent.

“You hear very little about the Macedonian bloggers that pumped out fake news in support of Trump, yet their audience was phenomenal,” he said.

“If the Russian trolls are responsible for Trump, then you’d have to say these guys are too.”

Original.