Kate McKinnon Last NIght On SNL

I'm not giving up and neither should you.

How I feel every time I see Trump on the screen as President-elect

Come together

Hey all you people saying it's our duty as good Americans to come together and unite around Trump now as he's going to be our President, why haven't you been calling for the Senate to unite around our actual President and do their job regarding his Supreme Court pick?

Hypocrital motherfuckers.

A Veterans Day Repost

I'm still on hiatus so this isn't a return to my regular blogging.

But it is Veterans Day and our nation's veterans deserve more than my self-imposed silence.

So here's a blog post from 2011 and 2006:

======================

Today is a very important day.

It's Veteran's Day.

It's the day we should all remember the sacrifices every veteran has made to protect the freedoms outlined in the Constitution. Were it not for the millions of men and women who've served in the Armed Forces, that piece of paper would just be, well, just a piece of paper long since consigned into the dustbin of history.

But where did the day come from?  Why is it so important?  Something from Kurt Vonnegut - a writer far far more talented than I will ever be - keeps echoing in my head whenever I think of November eleventh. Here's what he wrote in Breakfast of Champions (by the way "Dwayne Hoover" is a character from the book - go read it):

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day was the end of The Great War. It was called The War to End All Wars, and obviously they got the name wrong. But the day speaks to us as a symbol of hope in recognition of the folly of calling any war "The War to End All Wars."

The lesson learned is that there will always be conflict and we should be eternally grateful to those who've sacrificed some part of themselves to protect us and our freedom.

Thank you.

======================

You've Got To Be Kidding Me

What the fuck do we do now?

I am sure over the next days/weeks/months/years/decades people much smarter than me will be dissecting last night's shitstorm, looking for who to blame, how to stop it the next time (next time??) and so on.

I have nothing to add there.

I will say this, though.  While no one can predict the future (if someone could, we would have known yesterday the shit we're in today) I think it safe to assume a few things will happen as a direct result of the oncoming Trump Presidency:

• American servicemen and women will die.  Each time Trump decides to settle a real or imagined score by sending in some Marines (or Navy Seals or Army Rangers or whatever), servicemen and women will die.  All needlessly.  All because of last night.
• Americans will die.  If/when Obamacare is repealed (do you really think these guys want to replace it??) millions of Americans will lose their health insurance.  Some will then have to forgo routine medical care.  Some of those will die because something that could have been treated early wasn't.  All because of last night.
• People around the world will die.  With or without Trump's revenge based military intervention, his obvious lack of foreign policy experience will make hot spots across the globe even hotter.  Lotsa non-Americans will die because Trump will have no idea what he'll be doing.  All because of last night.
• Women will die.  Separate from the women in the military and women dying of lack of medical care, when/if Roe v Wade is rescinded women, once again, will be forced to fend for themselves and some of them will die.  All because of last night.
• American Families will suffer.  Ok, some American families.  Not the white ones, of course.  But all those brown ones who speak funny and the ones who pray eastward five times a day.  They're all going to suffer.  All because of last night.

Thanks, Amurika.

Sadly, the list can go on.  LGBT protections?  Why bother?  It's merely a bad lifestyle choice.  Climate Change??  An obvious hoax to keep us from being competitive with the Chinese.

All because of last night.

I'll be taking some time off here at 2PJ.  I have no idea when I'll return or how often I'll be posting when I do.  I need some time to process the deep deep shit hole red Amurika has dropped us (and by "us" I mean the whole planet) into.

This is a truly sad and disappointing day for the country I love.

WhiteLash

Hope CNN feels really great about keeping us fully updated for 8 months about email server protocol issues. Thanks guys!

— Andy Cobb (@AndyCobb) November 9, 2016

All Sins Trump: ELECTION DAY

This past week we've explored these Trump sins:

• Trump's a birther
• Trump's in favor of war crimes
• Trump's a tax-evader 
• Trump's bragging about his sexual assaults (NSFW) 
• Trump's rampant misogyny 
• Trump's dishonesty
• Trump's a conman

Now today's the day.  GO VOTE.

As the OPJ reminds us, it matters.

This time there can be no discussion about how "having to choose the lesser of two evils only leaves you with evil" or "there's not a dime's bit of difference between the two parties."

Last time we heard that, we got the War in Iraq, Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, Samuel Alito and John Roberts on the Supreme Court, domestic surveillance and waterboarding.

Nope.  Not this time.  One party's candidate's a lying, cheating, science-denying sexual predator who's waay to enamored with torture (see the list above) and the other has survived with 30+ years of right-wing media conspiracy baggage (did you know that she killed Vince Foster or she that faked a concussion to avoid testimony about Benghazi or that she's so demon-possessed she actually smells of sulfur?) with more qualifications for the job than anyone has had...possibly ever.

There's no end to how bad a president Donald Trump would be.  And I just don't know what America will look like with Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

#ImWithHer

POST SCRIPT: For my friends who may be thinking of voting for Pat Toomey, as far as I know, he still hasn't said he won't vote for the lying, cheating, science-denying sexual predator who's waay to enamored with torture.  Perhaps that's something for you to think about when you see his name in the voting booth.

It Matters

I've written the following names on a small piece of paper that I'll be bringing into the voting booth with me today:

Elizabeth Lupinacci
Mary Adams
Helen Lupinacci

These are the names of my mother and grandmothers -- none of whom lived long enough to see this day.

Both of my grandmothers were born before women had the right to vote.

I may cry a little when I put a check mark next to Hillary's name.

#ImWithHer

(A good read while you're waiting for the results:

"I want Hillary Clinton to be president. And I want to understand why.")

All Sins Trump: Conman Edition - Election Day Minus 1

So far we've explored these Trump sins:

• Trump's a birther
• Trump's in favor of war crimes
• Trump's a tax-evader 
• Trump's bragging about his sexual assaults (NSFW) 
• Trump's rampant misogyny 
• Trump's dishonesty

Today, we'll be looking at some of the more rancid parts of Trump's yuge empire: his scams.

Let's look at the big one: Trump University.

Here, read this from The Atlantic:

Trump University, the real estate training program offered in cities across the country, hasn’t offered a course in several years, but the school that Donald Trump modestly named after himself is still making plenty of news. Trump University is the target of two major lawsuits, a $40 million fraud action brought by New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, and a class-action lawsuit in California. Both suits charge that Trump University promised to make students rich on real-estate deals but instead steered them into costly and mostly useless seminars.

The National Review (THE NATIONAL REVIEW!!) is a little less diplomatic:

First thing first, Trump University was never a university. When the “school” was established in 2005, the New York State Education Department warned that it was in violation of state law for operating without a NYSED license. Trump ignored the warnings. (The institution is now called, ahem, “Trump Entrepreneur Initiative.”) Cue lawsuits.

Trump University is currently the defendant in three lawsuits — two class-action lawsuits filed in California, and one filed in New York by then-attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who told CNN’s New Day in 2013: “We started looking at Trump University and discovered that it was a classic bait-and-switch scheme. It was a scam, starting with the fact that it was not a university.”

Trump U “students” say the same. In his affidavit, Richard Hewson reported that he and his wife “concluded that we had paid over $20,000 for nothing, based on our belief in Donald Trump and the promises made at the [organization’s] free seminar and three-day workshop.” But “the whole thing was a scam.”

The very very conservative National Review says that Trump "University" is a bait-and-switch scam.

And they quote the New York State lawsuit:

The free seminars were the first step in a bait and switch to induce prospective students to enroll in increasingly expensive seminars starting with the three-day $1495 seminar and ultimately one of respondents’ advanced seminars such as the “Gold Elite” program costing $35,000.

At the “free” 90-minute introductory seminars to which Trump University advertisements and solicitations invited prospective students, Trump University instructors engaged in a methodical, systematic series of misrepresentations designed to convince students to sign up for the Trump University three-day seminar at a cost of $1495.

And so on. The purpose of the "University" was to sell exceedingly more expensive (and useless) seminars to people who couldn't afford them.  From The New Yorker:

If anyone still has any doubt about the troubling nature of Donald Trump’s record, he or she should be obliged to read the affidavit of Ronald Schnackenberg, a former salesman for Trump University. Schnackenberg’s testimony was one of the documents unsealed by a judge in the class-action suit, which was brought in California by some of Trump University’s disgruntled former attendees.

Schnackenberg, who worked in Trump’s office at 40 Wall Street, testified that “while Trump University claimed it wanted to help consumers make money in real estate, in fact Trump University was only interested in selling every person the most expensive seminars they possibly could.” The affidavit concludes, “Based upon my personal experience and employment, I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme, and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.”

This is the man Rudy Giuliani says is a "genius."  This is the man the GOP has chosen to be their presidential candidate.  This is the man who calls his opponent "crooked."

Then there's the Trump Foundation.  Here's what Forbes Magazine had to say about the Foundation:

“I give a lot of money away,” Trump proclaimed during his 2015 inaugural campaign speech at Manhattan’s Trump Tower. The businessman showed off a net worth summary – and provided a list of donations to Associated Press – that illustrated that he donated $102 million in cash and land over five years.

A Washington Post investigation revealed that none of the $102 million was Trump’s money – and the paper could only confirm one cash donation made by Trump between 2008 and May 2016 after contacting over 400 charities. Trump’s foundation also reportedly paid for obligations owed by his businesses, even though Trump has not kicked in a cent to his namesake nonprofit since 2008. In October, the foundation was served with a cease-and-desist order from the New York Attorney General for not having the proper registration in the state. 

We all know the story here.  Trump got other people to give their money to the foundation.  He then used part of money (which wasn't his, remember) to settle some legal affairs and to buy some art for (and of) himself.

How is that not another Trump scam?

So here's my last question to my Senator, Pat Toomey.  Pat, you're a business guy.  President of the Club for Growth and all that.  Does any of the above sit well with you?  How much money did Trump scam out of "the elderly and uneducated"?  Were any of them Pennsylvania residents (i.e. your constituents)?  Is this enough for you to finally say, "Nope.  I just can't vote for this man, Donald Trump.  He's a scam artist."??

IF NOT, WHY THE HECK NOT??

The fact that you can't bring yourself to say that you won't vote for this racist, tax evading conman who's in favor of war crimes is truly disappointing - on too many levels to list.

I guess we're meant to be grateful the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette didn't actually endorse Trump

You can read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's "A guide to decide: Twelve tests to choose between Clinton and Trump" embarrassing non-endorsement here, or you can save some time and just watch this dumpster fire:

According to the editorial in today's paper, the "test" is meant to be "a useful exercise for the citizen’s own decision-making" lovingly curated by...we assume the Block Family (owners of the P-G).

If you're not familiar with the Blocks, here's John Block on Trump's private plane:

His brother Allan was notably heard in a NYC restaurant loudly voicing his support for Trump, and who "according to FEC filings, donated tens of thousands to Republican political candidates across the country since the late nineties."

There were even reports earlier this year that some P-G journalists were "worried about their paper’s credibility should it support the billionaire candidate who’s campaigned on a platform that includes deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants, building a wall between the United States and Mexico and banning Muslims from entering the country." (Sorry! Mission accomplished!)

So far, the P-G's endorsements have been running a bit heavy on the R side, especially for what was once considered a liberal paper:

Post-Gazette 2016 General Election Endorsements

REPUBLICANS Pat Toomey, U.S. Senate
John Rafferty Jr., Pennsylvania Attorney General
Guy Reschenthaler, State Senate
Mike Turzai, State Representative
John Maher, State Representative
Jason Ortitay, State Representative

DEMOCRATS
Mike Doyle, U.S. Representative
Erin McClelland, U.S. Representative
Eugene DePasquale, Auditor General
Joe Torsella, Pennsylvania Treasurer

Mike Turzai? Doesn't this forever disqualify him from public office?

But, I digress. Back to the "test."

I assume the editorial board was, oh let's say, grabbed by their metaphorical pussies by the Blocks and had to come up with...something. What they came up with is mostly nonsense and false equivalence that ignores the worst that is Donald Trump. The absolute nadir of the editorial comes in the "Character" portion of the "Leadership Traits."

While acknowledging that Trump is "a vulgarian who never seems to study, to apologize or to learn" and a "sexist and a cad," they feel the need to throw in a bash at Bill Clinton, who is not the one running for office. Moreover, Trump is not just a "cad" (how purposely quaint!), he is according to his own words, a serial sexual predator. And a misogynist, and a racist, and a bigot, and a xenophobe, and a proponent of torturing innocent Muslims. He's a terrible businessman who doesn't pay his vendors, who declared bankruptcy six times, who wrote-off nearly a billion dollars in debt, who refuses to release his taxes because he hasn't paid any federal taxes in decades. He's a man who has a fraud trial starting later this month over his fake "university" and who has hundreds of lawsuits pending against him. He's a man who declared a war hero not a hero because he was captured and who tormented a Gold Star mother. He's a man with questionable ties to Russia's President Vladimir Putin and who doesn't understand why we have nukes if we don't use them.

He is a man who so thin-skinned, he can be provoked by a tweet. Reliably. Repeatedly.

He is a man who has called for his political opponent to be jailed and has alluded to her assassination.

And dozens and dozens of other horrors too many to list -- or even recall at this point.

All this, the P-G ignores.

But it gets worse. Here's what they say about Hillary Clinton's character:

Ms. Clinton would begin her presidential term under criminal investigation. Impeachment is a very real possibility from Day 1. How would she function? Like Richard Nixon, who won in a landslide in 1972, she might not serve out her term. But her dishonesty is more than legal — it is deeply embedded in her every word and gesture. The WikiLeaks provide us many smoking guns, not least of which is this: Nothing about her is genuine.

Christ Almighty!

She is not under criminal investigation.

Impeachment may be "a very real possibility from Day 1" only because the Republican Party, along with their standard-bearer, is determined to turn us into a banana republic.

And her dishonesty? Her dishonesty?!? PolitiFact, the nonpartisan fact-checking outlet, has found that '78 percent of all of Trump's fact-checked claims have been scored "mostly false" or worse.' They also awarded their "2015 Lie of the Year" to the collective campaign misstatements of Donald Trump!

Lastly, the Post-Gazette is on the wrong side of history. 456 newspapers and magazines have endorsed Hillary Clinton. 22 have endorsed Donald Trump (including the KKK’s official newspaper).

Post-Gazette Editorial Board -- you all cisgender, all-but-one white men -- you had a choice to make and you chose instead to make no choice. You chose to cover yourself in shame. You chose to write a dumpster fire of an editorial.

In the immortal word of Donald Trump, "Sad."


UPDATE: From one member of the Editorial Board:

All Sins Trump: Dishonesty Edition - Election Day Minus 2

So far we've explored these Trump sins:

• Trump's a birther
• Trump's in favor of war crimes
• Trump's a tax-evader 
• Trump's bragging about his sexual assaults (NSFW) 
• Trump's rampant misogyny

Today, we're looking at something broader though no less dangerous to the republic and to the world: Trump's rampant dishonesty.

Let's start with a very recent frame and work our way inward.  A few days ago this happened:

President Obama on Friday defended the rights of a Donald Trump supporter after a crowd at a rally for Hillary Clinton in North Carolina erupted when the supporter stood up and started shouting.

And then:

The crowd continued to heckle, and Obama continued to urge those shouting to “hold up,” defending the man’s right to free speech.

“First of all, we live in a country that respects free speech,” Obama said. “Second of all, it looks like maybe he might have served in our military and we ought to respect that. Third of all, he was elderly and we got to respect our elders. And fourth of all, don’t boo. Vote!”

And this is how Trump told the story:

He was talking to the protester — screaming at him, really screaming at him. By the way, if I spoke the way Obama spoke to that protester, they would say, 'He became unhinged! He became —' You have to go back and look and study. And see what happened. They never moved the camera. And he spent so much time screaming at this protester and, frankly, it was a disgrace.

There is no way around it.  Nothing of what Trump said was true.  If he didn't know that, he should have. His dishonesty throughout his campaign is either active or passive.  He knows and lies or he should have known and doesn't care about the truth.

But we've seen this going as far back as this lie:

I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.

Politifact said that wasn't just untrue it was "Pants on Fire" untrue.  That was late November 2015 and he's yet to correct himself.

In a similar story, there's this:

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said Tuesday that Muslims knew a radicalized couple planned to launch the December terrorist attack on a county workers’ holiday party in San Bernardino, California, but refused to notify authorities.

Trump has repeated the claim to thousands of supporters at campaign rallies and, most recently, on live television during a presidential town hall interview on CNN.

“In San Bernardino people knew what was going on,” Trump told Anderson Cooper on Tuesday. “They had bombs on the floor. Many people saw this, many, many people. Muslims living with them, in the same area, they saw that house. They saw that.”

There is, however, no evidence to suggest this claim is true.

The Star, a Canadian newspaper, has collected a yuge list of Trump's lies.  They cover a wide array of topics.  Here's one:

7. Groping allegations

“Many of them have now already been debunked.” — Oct. 18

Nothing could be further from the truth. None of the allegations against Trump have been definitely disproven, although Trump and his surrogates have offered rebuttals. (One of Trump’s favourites: questioning the attractiveness of the accuser.)

Yet allegations that he has sexually imposed himself on women have been around for decades, as has his history of misogynistic comments.

His former wife Ivana once accused him of marital rape, though she said she did not mean it in a “literal or criminal” sense after their divorce was settled.

The allegations came out after the release of a 2005 video in which Trump bragged it was easy to grope women — “Grab them by the p---y. You can do anything.”

Oh, those Canadians. So polite. The word they partially blanked out was "pussy." It means "vagina" in porn-speak.

The list, sadly and irritatingly, goes on and on (he just keeps on trying...) .

But I can hear my vast right wing audience claim that it's Hillary who's dishonest.  What about that, Dayvoe?  Huh?  What about that one??

Luckily, Nicholas Kristoff wrote about this a few months ago:

If deception were a sport, Trump would be the Olympic gold medalist; Clinton would be an honorable mention at her local Y.

Let’s investigate.

One metric comes from independent fact-checking websites. As of Friday, PolitiFact had found 27 percent of Clinton’s statements that it had looked into were mostly false or worse, compared with 70 percent of Trump’s. It said 2 percent of Clinton’s statements it had reviewed were egregious “pants on fire” lies, compared with 19 percent of Trump’s. So Trump has nine times the share of flat-out lies as Clinton.

Likewise, The Washington Post Fact-Checker has awarded its worst ranking, Four Pinocchios, to 16 percent of Clinton’s statements that it checked and to 64 percent of Trump’s.

“Essentially, Clinton is in the norm for a typical politician,” says Glenn Kessler, who runs Fact-Checker, while Trump “is just off the charts. There’s never been anyone like him, at least in the six years I have been doing this.”

And so it goes.

I'll end this post, as I have done for all the others, with a question to my Senator, Pat Toomey.  Pat, I realize you've come out publicly and denounced Trump in any number of ways.  You also have yet to say that you can't vote for this bigoted, dishonest, tax-evading fan of war crimes.  Why the heck not?

What else do you need to know, Pat?  What else would it take to get you to say publicly that  he's simply not worthy of your vote?

Your silence on the matter, I fear, tells us a great deal about your own character.

Something for all Pennsylvania voters to think about on Tuesday.

All Sins Trump: Misogyny Edition - Election Day Minus 3

So far we've explored these Trump sins:

• Trump's a birther
• Trump's in favor of war crimes
• Trump's a tax-evader 
• Trump's bragging about his sexual assaults (NSFW) 

I'd like to expand on that last one into a broader discussion of Trump's misogyny since it seems to me that not all sexual assaults are misogyny (in the sense that the perpetrators are men and victims are women - tea-bagging, for instance) and not all misogynists commit sexual assault.  We just happen to have a happy overlap with Donald J. Trump.

But first things first.  Let's start with a good definition of "Misogyny."  The English Oxford defines it thusly:

Dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.

Yea, that works.  So how does someone show contempt for women?  As Hamlet said to Polonius, "Words, words, words" (Hamlet, Act II Scene ii).

Here's some of Trump's misogyny words - and he has the best words, believe me.  He has the best words, bigly.

Last year, when he wasn't too happy with how he was treated by debate moderator Megyn Kelly (a known woman) Trump's post-debate response to her was this:

You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.

Ooo, menses - that's the explanation for why that Kelly lady to be so mean to Mr Trump!  To be clear, after a short period of time, he did try to walk back the comment with this: what he meant to say was that there was blood coming out of her...nose.

Of course.  Because that so fits the narrative of why he might think a woman would be challenging him on what he said that might be offensive about other women - a nose bleed. The clue as to what stimulated his flow of misogyny words is found when you look at what Megyn Kelly was challenging him about:

KELLY: Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women.

You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.

(LAUGHTER)

Your Twitter account...

TRUMP: Only Rosie O'Donnell.

(LAUGHTER)

KELLY: No, it wasn't.

That's exactly true.  It was all about women and it wasn't only about Rosie O'Donnell.  For example, the above Washington Post article tells us about one reaction he had to Arianna Huffington:

[W]hy is it necessary to comment on [Huffington's] looks? Because she is a dog who wrongfully comments on me

Say something wrong about Trump and he calls you ugly.  And then there's another:

[Huffington] is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man- he made a good decision.

Hmm, that's some Trump misogyny mixed in with a little Trump homophobia - Oh, look!  A twofer!!

I'm no expert on sexuality, but I don't think that a wife's actions or looks can "un-straighten" a husband in any way whatsoever (and truth be told, Huffington knew Michael was bisexual before they were married).  But think about it.  If what Donald is saying is possible (that someone's "attractiveness" could determine someone else's sexual orientation) then good looking guys could have a field day "straightening" lesbians whenever they wanted. 

("Dear Penthouse Forum, I always thought your letters were fake until this happened.  I'm a good looking guy, believe me.  Big hands.  Worth billions.  Real Estate.  I can't tell you my name but I can tell you what happened to me when I walked into this lesbian bar last week...")

Ridiculous, right?  That's Trump.

The Telegraph in the UK has a list of some more of Trump's mysogyny words.  Here's his view of women and prenuptial agreements from 1997 (the same year the Huffingtons divorced, by the way):

There are basically three types of women and reactions. One is the good woman who very much loves her future husband, solely for himself, but refuses to sign the agreement on principle. I fully understand this, but the man should take a pass anyway and find someone else.

The other is the calculating woman who refuses to sign the prenuptial agreement because she is expecting to take advantage of the poor, unsuspecting sucker she’s got in her grasp. There is also the woman who will openly and quickly sign a prenuptial agreement in order to make a quick hit and take the money given to her.

Did Ivana sign a prenup?  Did Marla?  Did Melania?  I wonder if he still thinks this. 

Sadly this discussion about Trump's misogyny could go on for days.   The font of material from Trump's he-man woman haters club tweets is, sadly, endless.

And for that, I have to ask a question, yet again, of my Senator, Pat Toomey: Pat, isn't this enough for you yet?  Isn't this enough for you to declare "No, I just can't support Donald Trump with my vote.  I just can't."  If not, what does that say to all the women in Pennsylvania that you won't say that you can't vote for such an obviously obnoxious excuse of a man like Donald J. Trump?

What else do you need to know, Pat?

All Sins Trump: Sexual Assault Edition - Election Day Minus 4 (NSFW)

We all remember this, right?  It's from only last month:


This is the video where the GOP candidate for president, Donald J. Trump bragged about some of the perks arising out of his celebrity:

• Uninvited kissing (as long as there are Tic-Tacs)
• Uninvited vagina seizures ("When you're a star they let you do anything you want...grab them by the pussy.")

This is sexual abuse.  Not, as Donald tried to skew, just locker room talk.  It's sexual abuse and it's illegal.   But for Donald J. Trump, it's OK as long as you're famous.

Then there's the shaming of the married woman he attempted to seduce ("I moved on her like a bitch but I couldn't get there.  She was married.") with this:

Then all of a sudden I see her, she's got the big phony tits and everything. She's totally changed her look.

The release of this tape triggered a number of women to come forward with their Trump stories.  For example this alleged assault of a People magazine writer:

We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds, he was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat. Now, I’m a tall, strapping girl who grew up wrestling two giant brothers. I even once sparred with Mike Tyson. It takes a lot to push me. But Trump is much bigger — a looming figure — and he was fast, taking me by surprise, and throwing me off balance. I was stunned. And I was grateful when Trump’s longtime butler burst into the room a minute later, as I tried to unpin myself.

And so on.

This is the candidate of the party of family values.  This.  This vulgar indecent man is the standard bearer of the Party of Lincoln and Reagan (note for those keeping score: I am a yuge fan of the former and a yuge non-fan of the latter.  Just to be clear).

I realize I am far from famous (I've been on 4802 a couple of times, but that's about it) but, if I had one chance to ask the GOP candidate a question it would be this:

Mr. Trump:  Since I am not famous, it would be completely illegal and immoral for me to attempt to do what you bragged to Billy Bush about in 2005.  But even given that, how famous would I need to be if, in the unlikely event I were to meet her,  I grabbed your daughter Ivanka in the pussy?  Do I need to be Ted Danson famous?  How about Vince Vaughn famous?  If I were as famous as you, could I let my fingers, um, dance around a little?

How about Melania?  You'd be OK with you if I moved on her like a bitch, right?  Even though she's married?

Could I get away with any of that?  No.  Not at all.   But for Trump's many supporters, it's ok.

One of them, possibly, is my own Senator Pat Toomey.

Only yesterday this happened:

Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey is staying mum on how he’ll vote on the presidential ballot, despite being pressed repeatedly during a 10-minute television appearance Thursday as he seeks re-election in a neck-and-neck race with Democrat Katie McGinty in moderate Pennsylvania.

Pat, the man was bragging about sexual assault (which is illegal, not to mention immoral).  Isn't that enough right there to say you can't vote for him?

What else do you need to know, my friend?

FBI Launches Investigation into Democratic Presidential Candidate's Reported Lack of a Penis

In other news...

All Sins Trump: Tax Evasion Edition - Election Day Minus 5

Yesterday, we looked at Trump's support of war crimes and torture.  The day before it was Trump's birther entanglements.

It's interesting to note that we still haven't heard from Senator Pat Toomey that he's not voting for the racist potential war criminal in the race.

What gives, Pat?  What else do you need to know to say, "No I just can't vote for a man like Trump.  I just can't."  Could it be the many many deplorable Trump supporters in Pennsylvania that you need for your (at this point questionable) re-election chances?

Way to go, Pat.  Trading in humanity and decency for a few votes.  Way to go.  So so proud of you.

Anyway, back to Trump.  You may have missed this story recently of how Trump seemingly used other people's debts to cancel his own crushing debt burden:

Donald J. Trump proudly acknowledges he did not pay a dime in federal income taxes for years on end. He insists he merely exploited tax loopholes legally available to any billionaire — loopholes he says Hillary Clinton failed to close during her years in the United States Senate. “Why didn’t she ever try to change those laws so I couldn’t use them?” Mr. Trump asked during a campaign rally last month.

But newly obtained documents show that in the early 1990s, as he scrambled to stave off financial ruin, Mr. Trump avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tax avoidance maneuver so legally dubious his own lawyers advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would most likely declare it improper if he were audited.

Of course there's no way to know for sure exactly how the debt was moved around because Trump has (oh so coincidentally) refused to release his taxes.

And there's no chance they'll be released before the election.  Of course.

In the early 90s, Trump was in deep debt.  Had his creditors simply forgiven him his debts, then he would have had to declare that money as income.  Taxable income.

So here's what he did:

The strategy, known among tax practitioners as a “stock-for-debt swap,” relies on mathematical sleight of hand. Say a company can repay only $60 million of a $100 million bank loan. If the bank forgives the remaining $40 million, the company faces a large tax bill because it will have to report that canceled $40 million debt as taxable income.

Clever tax lawyers found a way around this inconvenience. The company would simply swap stock for the $40 million in debt it could not repay. This way, it would look as if the entire $100 million loan had been repaid, and presto: There would be no tax bill due for $40 million in canceled debt.

Can you do that with your VISA bill?  No?  Hmmm...

Trump swapped his casino debt for "partnership equity" in his business.

So why is this a big deal?

“He deducted somebody else’s losses,” [John L. Buckley, who served as the chief of staff for Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation] said. By that, Mr. Buckley meant that only the bondholders who forgave Mr. Trump’s unpaid casino debts should have been allowed to use those losses to offset future income and reduce their taxes. That Mr. Trump used the same losses to reduce his taxes ultimately increases the tax burden on everyone else, Mr. Buckley explained. “He is double dipping big time.”

I think he meant "bigly" but that's OK.  Like Trump's debt, that can be forgiven.

The Times piece points out that Trump knew that the IRS would not like the maneuver.

But like the unwanted kissing and pussy grabbing, he did it anyway.

So Senator Toomey, you were once the president of the pro-business Club for Growth, is this OK with you?  Trump using someone else's debts to cancel his own tax burden to the tune of nearly a billion dollars?

Can you say now that he won't get your vote?

All Sins Trump: War Crimes Edition - Election Day Minus 6

Yesterday we started a brief series of blog posts detailing why Donald J Trump is unfit for the presidency.  Yesterday, talked birther.

Today, with 6 days left to the election, we're talking war crimes - torture in particular.

First, let's start with the legal definition:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

That's from part Part 1, Article 1 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. It was signed by Ronald Reagan in April of 1988 and ratified by the US Senate and thus by virtue of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, is, as they say, "the supreme law of the land."

Now let's look at what Donald Trump has proposed.

This past February, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Trump said: 

STEPHANOPOULOS: As president, you would authorize torture?

TRUMP: I would absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding. And believe me, it will be effective. If we need information, George, you have our enemy cutting heads off of Christians and plenty of others, by the hundreds, by the thousands.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do we win by being more like them?

TRUMP: Yes. I'm sorry. You have to do it that way. And I'm not sure everybody agrees with me. I guess a lot of people don't. We are living in a time that's as evil as any time that there has ever been. You know, when I was a young man, I studied Medieval times. That's what they did, they chopped off heads. That's what we have ...

STEPHANOPOULOS: So we're going to chop off heads ...

TRUMP: We're going to do things beyond waterboarding perhaps, if that happens to come.

There is nothing in what Trump said that doesn't conflict with the UN Convention/US Law.  And do I need to point out that even as (shudder) president, Trump simply doesn't have the authority to "authorize" waterboarding or indeed anything "beyond" it?

Consider this:  How much heat has been generated by his party over the so-called "executive overreaches" of the Obama Administration?  There was nothing to them, by the way.  And certainly nothing like Trump, with a stroke of a pen in his tiny pussy grabbing hand, simply "authorizing" war crimes.  To quote Bob Dole, "Where's the outrage?"  Oh, that's right.  We're talking Donald Trump here.

Trump seems to be aiming towards justifying the use of torture with the "enemy cutting heads off" argument.

That won't work either.  Again from the Convention, this time Part 1, Article 2, Section 2 we can read:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

Still US Law, Donald.  You still can't do it.

He was still stumping on this this week.

That's not the end of Trump's proposed war criminality.  Last December he went with this:

Last December, Trump said:

Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would kill the families of terrorists in order to win the fight against ISIS. The billionaire businessman was asked by the hosts of Fox News' "Fox and Friends" how to fight ISIS but also minimize civilian causalities when terrorists often use human shields.

"The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families," Trump said.

Again, Donald.  Can you read the UN Convention?  The terrorists' families would undoubtedly fall under the "third parties" clause.  You're killing innocent (or else they'd be terrorists themselves) in order to coerce the terrorists not to be terrorists.

I've alluded to it before, but let's settle it.  Is any of the above actually and legally considerred a "war crime"?

Yes, according to the War Crimes Act of 1996.   Anything that's a "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions (and that includes the definition of torture above) is, by US law, considered a war crime.

Donald Trump has proposed war crimes.

And now my so far unanswered question to my senator: Senator Toomey, given that Donald Trump, the candidate for the presidency from your party, has seriously proposed war crimes as foreign policy, are you still "unpersuaded" that he's unworthy of your vote?

Racist birther, and now war crimes proposer.  What else do you need to know about Donald Trump to convince you not to vote for him?

All Sins Trump: Birther Edition - Election Day Minus 7

With 7 days to go until the election, I thought I'd list some of the reasons Donald J Trump is unworthy of the highest office in the land.

Let's get the obvious reasons out of the way early.

1 - Donald Trump is a Birther.

For those few living who don't know what a "birther" is, here's a definition:

A person who doubts the legitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency because of a conspiracy theory that Obama is not a natural-born US citizen.

And like most (if not all) conspiracy theories, it's factually incorrect.

This one also happens to be racist:

In recently leaked emails, Colin Powell, former secretary of state, National Security advisor and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff wrote: “the whole birther movement was racist. That’s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate (Obama’s birth certificate) noted that he was a Muslim.” Powell went on to describe Donald Trump as “a national disgrace and international pariah.”

But why?  Why is it racist?  James Carroll over at the Boston Herald has an idea:

Echoes abound in this affair of a very old story. First, an African-American is elected president, presumably opening a new era of racial equality. Then the racists push back with visceral denial that such a man is even eligible for the office. The pattern is well established. First, freed slaves are promised 40 acres and a mule, but then, forced into sharecropping, they are reshackled to white landowners by debt. First, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolishes involuntary servitude, but then Jim Crow laws reinstate it across the South. First, the civil rights movement trumpets the long-postponed end of black subjugation in America, but then a nationwide wave of draconian anti-drug laws sends people of color to prison with wild disproportion. The burden is always on blacks to prove what, in the case of whites, goes without saying. Prove innocence. Prove eligibility. Prove rights. Prove competence. Prove that proof is genuine. [Emphasis added.]

We all know what Donald Trump said and did recently - he attempted to erase his 5 or so years of his own racist birtherism with a 30 second rebuttal.  But in doing so he lied about what he was lying about when he added:

"Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.

None of that is true.  But don't take my word on it.  Here's the managing editor of the USNews and World Report saying the same thing:

If Donald Trump is talking, Donald Trump is lying. He lied – lied – in asserting Friday that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement of which he was the highest profile member. He didn't apologize for leading a racist witch-hunt and shouldn't be permitted to so quickly and mendaciously elide what for years was his signature political issue.

And so on.

Donald Trump.  Racist. Birther. Liar.

And now a question to my senator, Senator Pat Toomey: Pat, are you still "unpersuaded" 
that Donald Trump does not deserve your vote?  I mean are you really undecided as to whether this racist lying birther is going to get your vote?