Ken Navarro

And now something else to chase the gloom of the local news: Ken Navarro. If you ever get a chance to see this man live in concert, don't miss it. On this video, Ken appears to be playing along with some pre-recorded music, which he also does occasionally live. I love this guy and his music.

serious danger

Every now and then we should check in with the old-line Republicans.

Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now

by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times

Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.

In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.

Up to now, Trump has been flouting the norms of the presidency. Now Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution. Here’s an imperfect but close analogy: It’s as if George W. Bush had said after 9/11: “No big deal. I am going golfing over the weekend in Florida and blogging about how it’s all the Democrats’ fault — no need to hold a National Security Council meeting.”

At a time when the special prosecutor Robert Mueller — leveraging several years of intelligence gathering by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. — has brought indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups — all linked in some way to the Kremlin — for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, America needs a president who will lead our nation’s defense against this attack on the integrity of our electoral democracy.

What would that look like? He would educate the public on the scale of the problem; he would bring together all the stakeholders — state and local election authorities, the federal government, both parties and all the owners of social networks that the Russians used to carry out their interference — to mount an effective defense; and he would bring together our intelligence and military experts to mount an effective offense against Putin — the best defense of all.

What we have instead is a president vulgarly tweeting that the Russians are “laughing their asses off in Moscow” for how we’ve been investigating their interventions — and exploiting the terrible school shooting in Florida — and the failure of the F.B.I. to properly forward to its Miami field office a tip on the killer — to throw the entire F.B.I. under the bus and create a new excuse to shut down the Mueller investigation.

Think for a moment how demented was Trump’s Saturday night tweet: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

To the contrary. Our F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., working with the special counsel, have done us amazingly proud. They’ve uncovered a Russian program to divide Americans and tilt our last election toward Trump — i.e., to undermine the very core of our democracy — and Trump is telling them to get back to important things like tracking would-be school shooters. Yes, the F.B.I. made a mistake in Florida. But it acted heroically on Russia. What is more basic than protecting American democracy?

It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.

Donald, if you are so innocent, why do you go to such extraordinary lengths to try to shut Mueller down? And if you are really the president — not still head of the Trump Organization, who moonlights as president, which is how you so often behave — why don’t you actually lead — lead not only a proper cyberdefense of our elections, but also an offense against Putin.

Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin —just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.

My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our president.

But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

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Brian Culbertson

Brian Culbertson has been a favorite for a long time, when he isn't trying to be tooo funky.

guns and money

Now THIS could be one of the only ways that the GOP will finally allow some basic gun control: take away their campaign contributions. Take away their money. If enough rich GOP donors threaten to withhold any and all campaign contributions UNTIL the GOP passes some gun control measures, including banning assault weapons, we might just see some action. Finally. 

Disgusting, but that's today's GOP!

Prominent Republican Donor Issues Ultimatum on Assault Weapons

from the New York Times

A prominent Republican political donor demanded on Saturday that the party pass legislation to restrict access to guns, and vowed not to contribute to any candidates or electioneering groups that did not support a ban on the sale of military-style firearms to civilians.

Al Hoffman Jr., a Florida-based real estate developer who was a leading fund-raiser for George W. Bush’s campaigns, said he would seek to marshal support among other Republican political donors for a renewed assault weapons ban.

“For how many years now have we been doing this — having these experiences of terrorism, mass killings — and how many years has it been that nothing’s been done?” Mr. Hoffman said in an interview. “It’s the end of the road for me.”

Mr. Hoffman announced his ultimatum in an email to half a dozen Republican leaders, including Jeb Bush and Gov. Rick Scott of Florida. He wrote in the email that he would not give money to Mr. Scott, who is considering a campaign for the Senate in 2018, or other Florida Republicans he has backed in the past, including Representative Brian Mast, if they did not support new gun legislation.

more at original

Neal Schon

Neal Schon has some incredible music, but still no full video of this tune!

too many farts

The news is happening so quickly these days that sometimes you have to just slow down and ... fart?

Passenger's Repeated Farts Force Airline To Make Emergency Landing

from IBT

An Amsterdam-bound flight was diverted to make an emergency landing due to a passenger's continuous farting and the heated exchange that broke out because of the flatulent incident.

Two male Dutch-Moroccan passengers that boarded a Transavia Airlines flight, which was traveling from Dubai to Amsterdam, complained of an older man seated nearby and his incessant flatulence, according to Dutch outlet De Telegraaf. Despite repeated requests to halt the man from breaking wind, he continued to do so nonetheless. This resulted in a fight breaking out, which caused one of the male passengers to allegedly threaten a flight attendant.

Upon diverting to Vienna International Airport in Austria, officers boarded with police dogs to remove the two unruly men from the aircraft, Mirror UK reported. However, a pair of Dutch-Moroccan sisters seated in the same row as the problematic men were also escorted from the flight.  

"It was crazy that we were included, we had no idea who these boys were, we just had the bad luck to be in the same row and we didn't do anything," Nora Lachhab, a Dutch-Moroccan passenger, told De Telegraaf. "They did not do anything to justify the bizarre behavior of the Transavia crew."

Lachhab suspects that she and her sister were pulled from the flight alongside the troublesome men due to their Morrocan heritage, saying: "Do they sometimes think that all Moroccans cause problems? That's why we do not let it sit. All I will say is that the crew were really provocative and stirred things up."

Transavia Airlines claimed to stand by its cabin crew and pilots handling of the incident.

"We stand behind our crew, who has been trained to prevent misconduct," a Transavia Airlines spokesperson told AOL. "There are clear guidelines for this. The limits have been exceeded here. We filed a declaration in the Netherlands. It is possible that the costs of the unscheduled landing will also be recovered from them and that they will be blacklisted."

"We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to this kind of amok makers," the spokesperson added.

Lachhab and her sister claim to be seeking legal action.

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