25,000 LED's

It's just beautiful what they have done with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. This is art on a grand scale.

Max Boot

Max Boot has been writing from "the right" for a long time. Until Trump.

Vote against all Republicans. Every single one.

by Max Boot, in the Washington Post

“I am sick and tired of this administration. I’m sick and tired of what’s going on. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I hope you are, too.”

— Joe Biden

I’m sick and tired, too.

I’m sick and tired of a president who pretends that a caravan of impoverished refugees is an “invasion” by “unknown Middle Easterners” and “bad thugs” — and whose followers on Fox News pretend the refugees are bringing leprosy and smallpox to the United States. (Smallpox was eliminated about 40 years ago.)

I’m sick and tired of a president who misuses his office to demagogue on immigration — by unnecessarily sending 5,200 troops to the border and by threatening to rescind by executive order the 14th Amendment guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

I’m sick and tired of a president who is so self-absorbed that he thinks he is the real victim of mail-bomb attacks on his political opponents — and who, after visiting Pittsburgh despite being asked by local leaders to stay away, tweeted about how he was treated, not about the victims of the synagogue massacre.

I’m sick and tired of a president who cheers a congressman for his physical assault of a reporter, calls the press the “enemy of the people ” and won’t stop or apologize even after bombs were sent to CNN in the mail.

I’m sick and tired of a president who employs the language of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish financier George Soros and “globalists,” and won’t apologize or retract even after what is believed to be the worst attack on Jews in U.S. history.

I’m sick and tired of a president who won’t stop engaging in crazed partisanship, denouncing Democrats as “evil,” “un-American” and “treasonous” subversives who are in league with criminals.

I’m sick and tired of a president who cares so little about right-wing terrorism that, on the very day of the synagogue shooting, he proceeded with a campaign rally, telling his supporters, “Let’s have a good time.”

I’m sick and tired of a president who presides over one of the most unethical administrations in U.S. history — with three Cabinet members resigning for reported ethical infractions and the secretary of the interior the subject of at least 18 federal investigations.

I’m sick and tired of a president who flouts norms of accountability by refusing to release his tax returns or place his business holdings in a blind trust.

I’m sick and tired of a president who lies outrageously and incessantly — an average of eight times a day — claiming recently that there are riots in California and that a bill that passed the Senate 98 to 1 had “very little Democrat support.”

I’m sick and tired of a president who can’t be bothered to work hard and instead prefers to spend his time watching Fox News and acting like a Twitter troll.

And I’m sick and tired of Republicans who go along with Trump — defending, abetting and imitating his egregious excesses.

I’m sick and tired of Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) acting like a caddie for the man he once denounced as a “kook” — just this week, Graham endorsed Trump’s call for rescinding “birthright citizenship,” a kooky idea if ever there was one.

I’m sick and tired of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who got his start in politics as a protege of the “bleeding-heart conservative” Jack Kemp, refusing to call out Trump’s race-baiting.

I’m sick and tired of Republicans who once complained about the federal debt adding $113 billion to the debt just in fiscal year 2018.

I’m sick and tired of Republicans who once championed free trade refusing to stop Trump as he launches trade wars with all of our major trade partners.

I’m sick and tired of Republicans who not only refuse to investigate Trump’s alleged ethical violations but who also help him to obstruct justice by maligning the FBI, the special counsel and the Justice Department.

Most of all, I’m sick and tired of Republicans who feel that Trump’s blatant bigotry gives them license to do the same — with Rep. Pete Olson (R-Tex.) denouncing his opponent as an “Indo-American carpetbagger,” Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis warning voters not to “monkey this up” by electing his African American opponent, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.) labeling his “Palestinian Mexican” opponent a “security risk” who is “working to infiltrate Congress,” and Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) accusing his opponent, who is of Indian Tibetan heritage, of “selling out Americans” because he once worked at a law firm that settled terrorism-related cases against Libya.

If you’re sick and tired, too, here is what you can do. Vote for Democrats on Tuesday. For every office. Regardless of who they are. And I say that as a former Republican. Some Republicans in suburban districts may claim they aren’t for Trump. Don’t believe them. Whatever their private qualms, no Republicans have consistently held Trump to account. They are too scared that doing so will hurt their chances of reelection. If you’re as sick and tired as I am of being sick and tired about what’s going on, vote against all Republicans. Every single one. That’s the only message they will understand.

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Leonard Cohen

Democracy

Jon & Dave

Jon Stewart and Dave Chappelle, on a comedy tour!

broken promises

All of Trump's rallies feature people holding signs, among them, "Promises Made, Promises Kept." But then there is reality.

Sam Harris

A recent appearance on Australian TV. 

Ireland does it again!

Yet another monument to stupidity has fallen in Ireland! 

Ireland votes to oust ‘medieval’ blasphemy law

from The Guardian

Campaigners in Ireland celebrated the end of a “medieval” ban on blasphemy on Saturday, after voters overwhelmingly backed removing the offence from the constitution in a referendum.

The referendum saw 64.85% vote yes to remove the prohibition on blasphemy, with 35.15% in favour of retaining it. A total of 951,650 people voted for the change, with 515,808 opposing the move. The decision on a turnout of 43.79%, was the latest reflection of seismic social and political changes in Ireland, which the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has described as a “quiet revolution”.

“It means that we’ve got rid of a medieval crime from our constitution that should never have been there,” said Michael Nugent, chairperson of Atheist Ireland, which had campaigned for years to have blasphemy taken out of the constitution.

Voters also returned president Michael D. Higgins to office, giving the 77-year-old poet and human rights campaigner another seven-year term by a comfortable margin.

Until recently, Ireland was deeply conservative, dominated by the Catholic church, but the country has legalised gay marriage and abortion in popular votes, and is now led by an openly gay taoiseach.

Reflecting the speed of changes in Ireland, the strongest support for ending the ban came from younger voters, exit polls suggested. Four in five voters under 35 backed the change, according to the Irish Times, while over-65s only approved it by a narrow margin, with 52% in favour and 48% against.

Three years ago, Irish police investigated comments made by comedian Stephen Fry on TV, when he described God as “capricious”, “mean-minded”, and an “utter maniac”. They ultimately dropped the case, deciding that not enough people had been outraged.

“The population has moved on, [people are] no longer controlled by the Catholic church, but a lot of the laws that were put in place are still there,” Nugent added. “We have to chip away at them and get the state to catch up with the people.”

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Obama in WI

Milwaukee, in fact. It's refreshing to again hear a reasonable, intelligent person talk about the issues and not try to stir up hate and resentment like Trump. I hope Obama stays on the "campaign" trail through the midterms.

Dear Democrats

from Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post. Vote. Get your friends and family to vote. Though all may seem to be crashing down, nothing lasts forever.

Dear Democrats: You can do this

Dear Democrats,

You can do this. Stop fretting and second-guessing. Get out of your own way. Concentrate on turning out the vote, and remember you have everything to gain in this midterm election and nothing to lose.

I say you have nothing to lose because that is literally true. Republicans control both chambers of Congress, most governorships, most state legislatures — and, of course, the White House, which isn’t up for grabs this time. The great blues artist Muddy Waters put it best: “You can’t spend what you ain’t got. You can’t lose what you ain’t never had.”

So stop worrying, Democrats, that your House majority might be slipping away. You don’t have a House majority. But the odds of your winning one still look excellent — if you step up and grab it.

And don’t let Republicans convince you that the Senate is already a lost cause. Yes, this year’s battlefields are mostly on GOP turf. But almost every race is close enough to be within reach. Think of it this way: Do Democrats’ chances of threading the needle and somehow snatching a Senate majority look any worse than Donald Trump’s chances of winning the presidency looked with 10 days to go before the 2016 election?

Consider Texas. The conventional wisdom seems to be that Democrat Beto O’Rourke, after a stunningly effective campaign, is likely to fall short in his bid to unseat GOP incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz. But if the outcome is already ordained, why did the Republican Party waste so much of its most valuable asset — Trump’s time and effort — on a rally in Cruz’s hometown of Houston? Why did Cruz humiliate himself by sharing the stage with a man who made fun of his wife’s appearance and accused his father of being involved in the JFK assassination?

Much has been made of an uptick in Trump’s approval rating — now at 44 percent, according to Gallup. But in the 2010 midterm, when Democrats lost 63 seats in the House and Republicans took control, President Barack Obama’s approval was 45 percent. And in 1994, when Democrats lost 53 seats and the speaker’s gavel, Bill Clinton’s approval was 46 percent.

In 2014, when Obama’s approval was lower than Trump’s is now, Democrats did manage to hold their losses in the House to just 13 seats. But Republicans took control of the Senate.

The point is that with an unpopular president and a host of unpopular policies, Republicans are at a distinct disadvantage. They have to play defense. Democrats, who have so little to defend, can and should play offense with abandon.

To understate the obvious, much is at stake.

An aberrant, corrupt, out-of-control presidency is widening our divisions, spitting on our values and mortgaging our future. Republicans, who once could call themselves the Party of Lincoln, are now the Party of Trump; they will not lift a finger to constrain the president or hold him accountable. Congress has the power to do both — but will not unless at least one chamber is in Democratic hands.

But obsessing about the fact that the Nov. 6 elections are so consequential does not help. The one thing Democrats can and must do is get their voters to the polls.

It should be no surprise that what once looked like a Democratic landslide now appears, as my friend Dan Rather might say, “as tight as a tick.” Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the country is divided along regional, cultural and demographic fault lines. Republicans were bound to find or manufacture some issue, some reason to claim victimhood, that would incite the party’s base. A bedraggled group of men, women and children, nearly 2,000 miles away in southern Mexico, is apparently the best they could come up with.

But Democratic enthusiasm remains stronger — and, I believe, deeper. We saw that passion at the Women’s March following Trump’s inauguration and across the country after the Charlottesville horror. We saw it in the party’s success at recruiting young, dynamic candidates from coast to coast. The Democratic leadership may be a bit long in the tooth, but when you look at rising stars such as Stacey Abrams in Georgia, Andrew Gillum in Florida and O’Rourke in Texas, you realize that the future is now.

Don’t be dour and doubtful, Democrats. Be joyous and determined. Stop worrying about losing what you “ain’t got” and focus on winning elections district by district, state by state. Don’t let Republicans bluff you into folding. You’re playing a very good hand.

Sincerely,

A friend

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Stephen gets it

Stephen Colbert gets it. No doubt he is on Trump's shit list.

John Bridevaux

The blue dot in Texas is pissed today.

a bold liar

That's Trump. He lies like nothing we have ever seen before, to borrow his phrasing. It's just a blizzard of lies. Reports are he's even increasing his frequency of lying, if that's possible. He's the biggest, best liar, EVER. And his supporters either don't care or they're too stupid to notice.

Donald Trump’s strategy as mid-terms approach: lies and fear-mongering

The Toronto Star

WASHINGTON—Democrats will kick seniors off their health insurance. Democrats will end insurance protections for people with health problems. Democrats will destroy the Social Security retirement system. Democrats will give illegal immigrants free cars. Democrats will abolish America’s borders. Democrats are behind the latest migrant caravan from Latin America. That caravan includes people from the Middle East.

False, false, false, false, false, false, false.

U.S. President Donald Trump made a brief attempt to campaign on his record of accomplishments but, as the November congressional elections approach, he has traded that shiny new positivity for the well-worn tactic that helped him win the presidency in 2016: a blizzard of fear-mongering and lies, many of them about darker-skinned foreigners.

Trump has been a serial liar about just about everything for his entire tenure in office, but he has rarely before deployed so many complete fabrications about so many important subjects at the same time.

His most frequent and significant recent whoppers have centered on immigration, the issue about which his base has been most excited, and health care, the issue polls suggest is most important to the Democratic base.

Trump escalated his immigration dishonesty on Monday morning. Seizing on a groundless claim from a host on his favorite Fox News morning show, he tweeted that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” to a caravan of Latino migrants that began in Honduras.

Reporters travelling with the caravan have seen no Middle Easterners, but the tweet was a way to get voters thinking about the supposed dangers of both Latino criminals and Muslim terrorists, Trump’s two favourite subjects of suspicion in 2016.

Stuart Anderson, who served as Immigration and Naturalization Service executive associate commissioner for policy under George W. Bush, said Trump “is trying to scare some segment of voters into believing immigrants are threats.”

“I think the president is taking advantage of the inherent deference most Americans have for the office of the presidency, where people assume a president may sometimes exaggerate but won’t simply make things up,” said Anderson, now executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy.

Trump and the Republicans have made repeated attempts to replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, with a law that would let states allow health insurance companies to charge hefty fees to people who have medical conditions.

His response to the unpopularity of this strategy has been to insist that “Republicans only” will protect people with pre-existing conditions and that “Democrats won't be able to do it” — even though Democrats passed the protections in the first place and plan to keep them.

“Republicans are trying to obscure their record on insurance deregulation because pre-existing condition protections are very popular with Americans of all political persuasions,” said Jonathan Oberlander, a University of North Carolina professor who studies health policy and politics.

“They are worried that the truth — which is that Republicans have been trying to roll back the (Affordable Care Act’s) consumer protections — will cost them votes.”

Trump’s dishonesty careened into the realm of absurdity on the weekend.

At a rally in Arizona on Friday, he half-jokingly said that since many Democrats are willing to give driver’s licences to unauthorized immigrants, “next thing you know they’ll want to buy ’em a car.” At his Nevada rally on Saturday, he asserted that Democrats already do want this: “They want to give ’em cars.”

At the Nevada rally, Trump also declared that California residents on his side of the immigration debate are “rioting” in opposition to “sanctuary” policies that limit law enforcement co-operation with federal immigration authorities. There has been no rioting at all from California conservatives.

But some of those conservatives argued that Trump was not lying. Dave Harrington, the Republican mayor of Aliso Viejo, Calif., said he thought Trump was “referring to the Republican form of rioting: we do it through discourse and policy suggestion, not on mob and interrupting people’s dinner.” He lamented that people take Trump “so literal all the time.”

“I think it shows a lot of people kind of lack a sense of humor,” he said.

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anti-Cruz ads

Richard Linklater and the Fire Ted Cruz PAC have now teamed up on four commercials designed to convince Texans heading to the polls on November 6th that the incumbent senator is not the man to represent their state. Each of the ads have featured nothing more than an extremely Texan man, played by Sonny Carl Davis, sitting in an extremely Texan coffee shop, expressing bewilderment over how his home state could embrace such a craven, unlikable politician. Released Tuesday afternoon, the latest offering keys in on how even Republicans find Cruz objectionable. It’s every bit as effective as the first three. 

Cruz has long been abhorred by his colleagues in Congress. During the 2016 campaign, former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh” while speaking at Stanford University. “I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life,” Boehner said. It was the second time Boehner used “Lucifer” to describe Cruz in as many months. 

When Cruz was asked to respond, he said that in calling him “Lucifer,” Boehner had “allowed his inner Trump to come out.” On Monday night, Cruz embraced Trump at a rally in Houston hours after the president said he didn’t regret implicating Cruz’s father in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. “God Bless Texas! And God bless President Donald Trump!” Cruz said after taking the stage in the Toyota Center. The rally was headlined by the president, who was forced to make a stop in Texas to solidify what was thought to be a safely Republican Senate seat. Cruz’s unpopularity combined with the appeal of challenger Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) has called the race into question. In the third quarter of 2018, O’Rourke raised $38.1 million, a record for a Senate campaign.

Khashoggi's last

How odd to hear from Jamal Khashoggi after he was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Turkey. To Trump, we cannot upset the military hardware apple cart. All is subservient to money for that asshole. Trump's supporters are even worse, mindlessly lapping up any excrement spewed by Trump and his lapdogs, as long as they slam the Democrats.

Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression

A note from Karen Attiah, Global Opinions editor

I received this column from Jamal Khashoggi’s translator and assistant the day after Jamal was reported missing in Istanbul. The Post held off publishing it because we hoped Jamal would come back to us so that he and I could edit it together. Now I have to accept: That is not going to happen. This is the last piece of his I will edit for The Post. This column perfectly captures his commitment and passion for freedom in the Arab world. A freedom he apparently gave his life for. I will be forever grateful he chose The Post as his final journalistic home one year ago and gave us the chance to work together.

I was recently online looking at the 2018 “Freedom in the World” report published by Freedom House and came to a grave realization. There is only one country in the Arab world that has been classified as “free.” That nation is Tunisia. Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait come second, with a classification of “partly free.” The rest of the countries in the Arab world are classified as “not free.”

As a result, Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change.

The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries. They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information. These expectations were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before.

My dear friend, the prominent Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi, wrote one of the most famous columns ever published in the Saudi press. He unfortunately is now serving an unwarranted five-year prison sentence for supposed comments contrary to the Saudi establishment. The Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of a newspaper, al-Masry al Youm, did not enrage or provoke a reaction from colleagues. These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence.

As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate. There was a time when journalists believed the Internet would liberate information from the censorship and control associated with print media. But these governments, whose very existence relies on the control of information, have aggressively blocked the Internet. They have also arrested local reporters and pressured advertisers to harm the revenue of specific publications.

There are a few oases that continue to embody the spirit of the Arab Spring. Qatar’s government continues to support international news coverage, in contrast to its neighbors’ efforts to uphold the control of information to support the “old Arab order.” Even in Tunisia and Kuwait, where the press is considered at least “partly free,” the media focuses on domestic issues but not issues faced by the greater Arab world. They are hesitant to provide a platform for journalists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. Even Lebanon, the Arab world’s crown jewel when it comes to press freedom, has fallen victim to the polarization and influence of pro-Iran Hezbollah.

The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power. During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe, which grew over the years into a critical institution, played an important role in fostering and sustaining the hope of freedom. Arabs need something similar. In 1967, the New York Times and The Post took joint ownership of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, which went on to become a platform for voices from around the world.

My publication, The Post, has taken the initiative to translate many of my pieces and publish them in Arabic. For that, I am grateful. Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West. If an Egyptian reads an article exposing the actual cost of a construction project in Washington, then he or she would be able to better understand the implications of similar projects in his or her community.

The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face.

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