This organization staked out a booth at the recent Republican CPAC conference.
This is what happens when you lie and deceive for profit until you can't lie and deceive anymore:
You invent a new lie so you can continue destroying the planet for profit.
In the last two weeks, the Georgia Senate has made two unfortunate decisions:
Delta offered discounts to NRA members flying to their annual meeting. In 2017, this discount was utilized by a total of 13 people. As a result of Delta's decision, they will lose about $20 million dollars in savings per year.
To Delta's credit, they doubled down on their decision, issuing the following statement:
“Our decision was not made for economic gain and our values are not for sale, We are in the process of a review to end group discounts for any group of a politically divisive nature.”
There are more than 100,000 children in foster care in America awaiting adoption, and every year, about half of those kids are adopted. The average wait time for a foster child to be adopted is 7.7 years. Nevertheless Georgia senators feel it's better to keep these children in foster care rather than allowing two women or two men in a loving relationship to adopt them.
You know... because same sex marriage is a sin. The Bible says it, so it must be true.
Just like the Bible endorses:
Slavery: “Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.” (1 Peter 2:18)
Misogyny: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12)
Infanticide: "For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him." (Leviticus 20:9)
Discrimination against the disabled: "He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord."(Deuteronomy 23:1)
I've been to Georgia several times in my life. I've spent time on Georgia beaches and spent a weekend of hilarity in Atlanta.
I've enjoyed my time there, but I don't think I'll be returning anytime soon.
Just in case you missed it, a Washington Post photographer managed to take this picture of the notes that Trump was holding while speaking to the parents of victims and survivors of gun violence in America's schools.
Note #5 on the list:
"I hear you."
This is real. It's also terrifying.
Trump must rely on scripted empathy. Apparently a phrase like, "I hear you," was not immediately available to him. The narcissistic, egomaniacal, thin-skinned ignoramus is apparently not capable of expression empathy without the help of a staff member.
Can you imagine another human being on the planet who would need help empathizing with the survivor of the Parkland shooting or the parent of the Sandy Hook victim?
When it comes to gun control, I have good news:
Americans are united.
In the most recent Quinnipiac poll:
97% of Americans support universal background checks.
83% of Americans support a mandatory waiting period on all gun purchases.
66% of Americans support a ban on assault weapons.
In short, support for greater control has now hit a 10 year high.
This is also why so many teachers, students, and parents are enraged by the inaction of Congress. When public support for something like universal background checks is nearly 100% and we still don't have universal background checks, we no longer has representative democracy.
Instead, we have a country run by special interests like the NRA who are paying politicians to behave in a specific way.
Yesterday, while Stoneman Douglas students watched from the gallery, Florida legislators voted against moving a bill that would ban AR-15 rifles and other guns defined as "assault weapons" and large capacity magazines from committee to the House floor for questions, debate and a vote.
They didn't vote against the ban. They voted against debating and voting on the ban.
Why? They are cowards. They are afraid of a fight. They are afraid to debate gun control in a public forum. They are afraid to be held accountable by the vast majority of American voters who are demanding action. When the next school becomes a killing zone, they don't want to be on the record voting against a ban on the weapon that was used to slaughter students and teachers.
Better to have students die barricading doors so other students can live.
Better to have teachers surrender their lives while protecting their students from a gunman.
Better to rely on thoughts and prayers than debate, research, expert testimony, and actual legislation.
That way, they can still collect their blood money from the NRA and maintain their A+ grade.
Fear not, Florida legislators. Despite your cowardice and inaction, there are plenty of courageous adults leaving for work this morning, ready to protect your students no matter what horror comes through their schoolhouse doors.
As teachers, we can't remove an assault weapon from the hands of a killer.
We can't impose a universal background check before he purchases his gun.
We can't impose a mandatory waiting period before allowing him to purchase his gun.
We can't close the gun show and terrorist loopholes.
In short, we can't do all the things that the majority of Americans want done.
Instead, we can stand between students and bullets. We can think quickly and act wisely in the face of an attack. We can hide students and barricade doors. We can surrender our own lives in the preservation of student life. We can minimize the slaughter.
While you lack the courage to even debate and vote on gun control measures, we'll be busy protecting our students from the results of your cowardice and inaction.
Here is 15 year-old Anthony Borges, who was shot five times while protecting 20 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students by holding a classroom door shut to prevent shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz from entering.
Anthony Borges has done more to protect students from gun violence than every single member of Congress plus the President combined. While lawmakers in Washington offer their thoughts and prayers and accept millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the NRA, Anthony Borges placed his body between a killer carrying an assault weapon and his fellow students.
While Congress refuses to even allow the CDC to study gun violence in America or move forward on their bipartisan agreement on banning bump stocks or close the gun show and terrorist loopholes, Anthony Borges turned his body into a human shield and saved lives.
Anthony Borges is a hero. Our legislators in Congress and the President are cowards. Tools. Money-grabbing instruments of the National Rifle Association.
Anthony Borges's Republican Senator, Marco Rubio, accepted $3.3 million dollars from the NRA last year and took to the Senate floor shortly after the shooting to explain who the assault weapon that pumped five bullets into Anthony Borges's body is not the problem.
There is a GoFundMe account set up on behalf of Borges to support his long and difficult road to recovery. Both of his legs were shot, left upper thigh bone was shattered, and one bullet went through his back. As of this writing, Americans have donated 76,000 on Borges's behalf.
Perhaps Marco Rubio should consider donating some of that $3.3 million dollars in NRA blood money to Borges. At the very least he could help an American who has actually done something to curb gun violence in America while he and his colleagues hunker down and hope this all goes away once again.
I don't think it will go away this time. At least I hope not. The classmates of Anthony Borges, some of whom are alive today because of Anthony, are angry, and they are taking their case to the cowards in Washington.
I will be standing with them. As a teacher in a public school who might one day be required to make the same sacrifice as Anthony Borges, the very least I should expect from lawmakers in Washington is debate. Deliberation. Research. Statistical studies. Expert testimony.
Legislation, goddamn it. Do something or go home.
Anything but the silence and the inaction that the NRA buys year after year with their millions of dollars in donations to Republican tools like Marco Rubio.
Donald Trump spent the day and evening at his Florida resort yesterday attempting to gaslight the American people via Twitter.
He's clearly a desperate man.
We need to be cautious and not allow this gaslighting to work.
If you're unfamiliar, gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, hoping to make them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Trump attempts this constantly by simply, unabashedly, and shamefully stating falsehoods that Americans know are untrue in hopes that the lies will eventually crystallize into fact.
Say something often enough and uninformed, undiscerning people start to believe it's true.
Here are yesterday's examples:
These first tweets blame the Democrats for the DACA problem, even though the problem was directly and specifically caused by Trump's refusal to re-authorize DACA protections to Dreamers. We had a solution, designed by Democrats and effective for years, but Trump removed it, creating this problem that he promised not to create.
Yes he takes no accountability in hopes that Americans will forget his failure to reauthorize the protections.
These next tweets are the sign of a man who does not understand that innocent people don't constantly profess their innocence, particularly while simultaneously disparaging the very organization investigating them.
Trump says, "No collusion" more than anything else these days. He wants those words to sink into our consciousness. He wants us to believe that "The Dirty Dossier" and "Uranium" are actual scandals, when in fact none of them are relevant or meaningful. This is why he doesn't explain anything in detail. He says, "Uranium" in hopes that Americans hear that word and think, "Clinton scandal" when most don't actually understand the situation at all.
Trump has claimed for months that the FBI investigation is a "witch hunt.: Now that Russians are indicted, he cannot claim this anymore. He does not acknowledge that he was wrong. Instead, he has shifted to, "The investigation proves no collusion via these indictments."
I don't know if Trump is guilty of collusion, but he sure as hell sounds like a guy guilty of collusion.
Trump expects Americans to believe that a company that does not want to be linked to election tampering is the best source as to whether or not the ads that they accepted millions in Russian rubles to display swayed the election.
He attempts to make the VP of Facebook ads an unbiased, expert source of information.
These next two tweets are interesting. Trump (and Trump supporter Michael Goodwin) would have us believe that the indictments against 13 Russians issued last week will be the only indictments forthcoming. Yes, it's true that last week's indictments do not prove collusion. A Trump campaign official was duped by the Russians, but he did not know that he was being manipulated.
But that's one guy. One set of indictments. There could very well be many more indictments to come. Give Mueller time.
This last one is just stupid.
The Russians decided to interfere with the American elections in 2014, particularly in order to prevent Hillary Clinton to become President. They didn't know who the candidates would be, but they established operations and simply waited for the weakest, most easily manipulated, most comprimised pro-Russian candidate to emerge.
Trump appeared on the scene, the choice became obvious, and the team went to work.
Anderson Cooper took on the administration on gaslighting in relation to the Rob Porter scandal.
I highly recommend both of these commentaries.
The shame, embarrassment, incompetence, and cruelty that Trump and his White House produces on a daily basis makes is hard to remember all of the horrors of the past year. But it's important to remember every single one of them as Republicans continue to stand alongside this racist, misogynist, authoritarian ignoramus.
For the sake of a economically unsound, deficit exploding transfer of wealth from the working class to the 1% and the hope of cutting entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, Republicans have stood by and supported a vile and incompetent man.
Meet the Press's Chuck Todd does a fine job reminding us of the atrocities of the past year on Sunday.
It's worth watching.
It reminded me of moments of stupidity and vileness that I had forgotten and re-energized me to click on my 5 Calls app every day and continue to speak out against this President and this administration at every turn.
As you may know, the President has blocked me on Twitter.
Shortly after I fired off three successive tweets at him this summer about his failure to produce his promised tax returns, Trump tweeted some inane nonsense to the world and then blocked three people (likely the three at the top of his feed), including me.
I was outraged. I remain outraged. Yes, I can still see his tweets via an alternate account or a variety of browser settings, but I am no longer able access his Twitter feed via my primary Twitter feed, and this means I can no longer tweet at him or respond to him as me.
More egregious, in 2017, then Presidential spokesperson Sean Spicer said that Trump's tweets amount to "official statements from the President." Therefore, I am also being denied access to the President's official statements because he is a thin-skinned, ignorant coward who cannot handle criticism of any kind.
When you don't clap at his speech, he calls you a traitor, for example.
In January of 2018, after Trump seemed to be goading North Korea into a nuclear clash via Twitter, an argument was made that Twitter bans users all the time for making similarly threatening and endangering remarks.
Why not Trump?
Twitter responded to these inquiries as it has with similar calls to ban Trump from the platform for similarly egregious tweets:
“Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate.”
Fine, but then this:
If Twitter is concerned about the dissemination of the important information from world leaders and therefore exempts them from any possible ban, then Twitter should also be concerned about the hundreds and perhaps thousands of Americans who Trump has blocked, including me, who have also been denied this "important information."
If you want to argue that world leaders cannot be banned from Twitter because the information they provide is too important to hide, then world leaders should be prevented from blocking citizens from this same important information.
This would be a fair, logical, and sensible policy that would afford world leaders the benefits that Twitter believes is necessary while also providing some basic rights for the citizenry of the world as well.
Why Twitter has not taken this step baffles me. Are they afraid of our vindictive, man-child President? Do they worry that he might abandon the Twitter platform for Snapchat? Or is the company run by hypocrites who don't give a damn about the dissemination of important information?
I would really like to know.
This is a real tweet, posted and then quickly deleted by Paul Ryan after an enormous backlash from the internet.
This is what Republican lawmakers actually think:
An extra $1.50 per paycheck is a meaningful increase. Something worth bragging about.
Meanwhile, estimates
What Ryan doesn't want you to know is five things:
This is truly the fleecing of America. Enormous sums of money are now running directly into the coffers of the wealthiest Americans, while high school secretaries are left with $1.50 extra per week.
It's not wrong. It's not irresponsible. It's just plain evil.
If you're looking to make a charitable donation to a worthy organization, might I suggest you consider the Guggenheim Museum in New York?
Thanks to a recently leaked email, when the White House emailed the Guggenheim in September and asked to borrow Vincent Van Gogh's 1888 painting "Landscape with Snow," the curator made a counteroffer:
A fully functional 18-karat gold toilet.
The toilet is an interactive work titled “America” that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.
It might not seem like much, but institutions like the Guggenheim art can play a role in refusing to normalize this Presidency, which is important.
Other examples:
Obama's inaugural concert featured Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige, Jon Bon Jovi, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Josh Groban, John Legend, John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, U2, and Stevie Wonder, with speeches and readings by Jack Black, Steve Carell, Rosario Dawson, Jamie Foxx, Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, Ashley Judd, Martin Luther King III, Queen Latifah, Laura Linney, George Lopez, Marisa Tomei, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker and Tiger Woods.
Trump's inaugural concert featured Lee Greenwood, Three Doors Down, and a speech by Jon Voight.
Trump also declined the traditional Presidential invitation to the Kennedy Center Honors for fear of backlash, and he refused to attend his own White House Correspondence Dinner, becoming the first President since Reagan to weasel out of this annual event.
He has also declined to be interviewed prior to this year's Super Bowl, making him the first President in 17 years to skip this tradition.
Add to this his historically low rating for his recent State of the Union address, his historcally low approval rating, and the enormous number of Republican Senators and Congressmen who have announced their retirements prior to the 2018 midterm election, and it's clear that as much as Trump wants to claim victory at every turn, this is not a normal Presidency, and America and its institutions are working hard not to normalize it.
Including offering him a golden toilet instead of a Van Gogh.
These things also make Trump look stupid and sad, which ain't a bad outcome, either.
My favorite things in the world are those that make me joyous while making the people who I despise sad or angry.
This protest by multimedia artist Robin Bell, projected onto the facade of Trump Tower in Washington, DC on Saturday night, manages to hit this sweet spot perfectly.
Added to my joy is the suddenly plunge in Yelp scores at Trump hotels across the world as scores of protesters are leaving one and two star reviews with hilarious comments.
Yelp has begun removing these fictitious reviews, but for a while, Trump hotels were rated at the bottom of the barrel, which must've made the petulant man-child very angry.
Oddly, it's also been pointed out that the word "shithole" is an anagram for "His hotel."
It would seem that even the universe is fight back in subtle and amusing ways.
This tweet got a little loss in the political firestorm of the last couple days, which is understandable. Not only did Trump disparage Haiti and refer to African countries as "shitholes," but he managed this act of indecency on the eight year anniversary of the Haitian earthquake and on the cusp of Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend.
Timing is everything, I guess.
Still take a look at this tweet:
The real reason that Trump has cancelled his London trip is out of fear of massive protests (a fact the White House reported before Trump attempted to change the narrative) , but in addition to this lie, the tweet contains three other lies.
His tweet was so inaccurate and disparaging that the US embassy in the United Kingdom put out a press release correcting his lies.
With any other President, a statement containing three deliberate lies in order to support a fourth lie would be an scandal of enormous proportions, but Trump lies so often and with such impunity from his party or supporters that this tweet is all but forgotten amidst the hundreds of other lies and racist remarks.
These are not normal times, even though a small but still astounding 36% of Americans continue to support this racist, coward, and serial liar.
It's hard to understand.
I'm a harsh critic when it comes to speeches and monologues. I often hear that a speech is "amazing" or "remarkable" or "inspiring," only to be let down by something that fails to reach the level of the shouted superlatives.
This is not the case.
Anderson Cooper's brief monologue in response to Trump's disgusting, indecent, and un-American comments on Haiti and other countries is moving, captivating, and brilliant.
Take two minutes and watch. Please.
You'll be pleased to know that Trump and the Republican leadership met at Camp David this weekend to set their 2018 legislative agenda, and once again, the GOP made sure that a diversity of voices were heard.
Nine old, white, male Republican leaders, including Trump and Pence, were joined by Paul Ryan, who is also male and white but only middle aged.
He's only 47 years old.
Republican diversity at work, my friends. And they were once again dumb enough to emphasize this point by posing behind Trump at the conclusion of the weekend.
I don't think it's wise to parse the words of someone as erratic and incompetent as Donald Trump, but this recent tweet is a real doozy and demands a little scrutiny.
Take a look.
Let's dig in.
First, we have the President claiming that the book is boring. But the only way to determine if a book is boring is to actually read the book, which we know Trump did not do because:
It's both strange and disconcerting that Trump would not see the transparency of this obvious lie.
Second, we have the President claiming that Wolff "made up stories" to sell this "untruthful" book. But Trump knows that Wolff, who reputation for the truth is admittedly not pristine, has recordings of many of the conversations used to write this book.
Is he hoping Wolff won't release these recordings or allow a third party to listen for verification?
Even worse, we know most of these stories to be true already. They are consistent with reporting emerging from the West Wing all year. Sources have been leaking this kind of information about Trump and his staff ever since Trump took office. While the book is a bombshell, it's not exactly entirely new information.
Also, why doesn't Trump realize that every time he criticizes this book or attacks the author, Wolff sells more books? This should be exceptionally obvious, and yet Trump continues to attack. First, he ineffectually sued to prevent the book's publication (which only results in the publisher releasing the book four days earlier), and since then, he has criticized it verbally and on Twitter again and again.
It's going to be a New York Times #1 bestseller, thanks in large part to Trump.
I can only pray that Trump would attack one of my books with equal ferocity.
Now we get to the most interesting and incomprehensible aspect of this tweet. Trump says:
"He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job."
There is so much here.
Then Trump says that Bannon has been "dumped like a dog" by almost everyone.
Who dumps dogs?
Dumped like a bag of steaming garbage? Sure.
Dumped like a bad habit? Fine.
But who dumps man's best friend? Apparently Trump does.
Then Trump closes with "Too bad!"
What does this mean?
According to the many accounts in Wolff's book, it's the latter. The one consistent theme running throughout the book is that Trump acts like a petulant child in need of immediate gratification. As a result, these final two words of this tweet only serve to further support the case for the book and its accuracy.
This petulant, angry, insulting, defensive, untruthful tweet was written by the President of the United States. This is how he spends his time. This is how he serves the American people.
I'd tell Trump how I feel about his tweet directly, but he blocked me on Twitter earlier this year.
Damn coward.
It's a damn shame how racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and disregard for human life outside our borders keep getting in the way of the those God loving conservatives like Mike Pence and Jeff Sessions and what should be their desire to help those less fortunate.
If only they knew the true meaning (and origins) of Christmas.
In response to Trump's tweet earlier this week about Senator Gillibrand:
USA Today's Editorial Board wrote:
“With his latest tweet, clearly implying that a United States senator would trade sexual favors for campaign cash, President Trump has shown he is not fit for office. Rock bottom is no impediment for a president who can always find room for a new low.
A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush. ”
USA Today is generally considered to occupy the center in terms of its political leanings, and it does not formally endorse political candidates.
But these are not normal times, and the editors of USA Today recognize this.
I thank them for breaking from tradition, responding to this truth, and taking a stand. While I would not characterize my blog as political, I am writing more about politics now than ever before, simply because these are not normal times in America.
This is not a normal President.
And yes, I would agree. Donald Trump is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush.
Not really, of course, but damn do I love this sweater.
For those of you who can't quite pick up on the reference, it's Die Hard, the greatest Christmas film of all time.
In the movie, our hero, John McClane, has just managed to kill his first terrorist and acquired a machine gun. He sends the lifeless corpse down to Hans Gruber, the terrorist boss man, in an elevator with this note written in red Sharpie on his sweatshirt.
There's nothing better than a barefoot underdog taunting his well armed enemy.
For the record, while I'm not interested in owning a machine gun, I'm not at all opposed to the second Amendment. I believe in the right of Americans to own firearms. I simply want every gun owner to undergo a thorough background check, restrictions placed on criminals, perpetrators of domestic abuse, individuals on the no-fly list, and the like, and a complete ban on assault weapons.
You know... reasonable, rationale gun ownership. The kind of gun ownership our founding fathers envisioned with they wrote the Constitution.
Except for John McClane, of course. He can have as many machine guns as he wants.
Two years ago Kim Davis, the county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky, denied David Ermold a marriage license because he was gay, despite it being legalized.
Last week she had to watch as he signed up to run against her in the next election.
Alabama did the right thing last night. Let's hope Rowan Country, Kentucky can do the same.
"But for a couple of bad breaks, especially visited upon vulnerable people, the outcome of life would be so different."
This is a sentence that Slate's Mike Pesca spoke a couple months ago on his podcast The Gist in the midst of an interview.
I wrote the sentence down immediately, and I've been thinking about it ever since.
Mike is right. As a person who has suffered from a couple of bad breaks while in a vulnerable position, I can assure you that it doesn't take much to send a life reeling into desperate, uncharted, potentially life-changing waters.
It's so easy to judge the circumstances of others if you enjoy a proverbial glass floor: a familial support system that will prevent you from ever falling too far.
I've seen it more times than a can count.
If you're fortunate to be blessed with a glass floor, please don't forget how devastating a bad break can be for someone who isn't as blessed, and how incredibly stressful life can be for someone who is living without any safety net whatsoever.
Think about this: According to a recent New York Fed study, one-third of Americans would not be unable to come up with $2,000 to deal with an emergency like an urgent home repair, medical crisis, or car accident.
This means that not only could they not raise $2,000 themselves, but they have no parent or family member capable of raising the money on their behalf, either.
For many people, this situation would be unimaginable. But for almost a decade, I lived that reality, not because of bad decisions on my part or an unwillingness to work, but simply because of bad breaks. A cycle of poverty. A lack of support systems of any kind. The victim of a violent crime. An arrest for a crime I didn't commit. Homelessness.
And I was lucky. I was physically and mentally healthy. Fairly intelligent. Capable of working 80 hours a week when necessary. I lived in a state with a strong social safety net. I had friends who put a roof over my head in a time of need. I wasn't the victim of racial discrimination.
Still, I almost didn't make it.
Imagine what life could have been had my bad breaks had been coupled by mental illness. A physical disability. Addiction. Imagine if I had been unjustly convicted of that crime. Imagine how my life might be different had I been African American or female or any other marginalized member of society.
It's so easy to see someone down on their luck, spiraling, and assume that they are to blame, when so many of us suffer similar breaks but are saved by the support systems that many don't enjoy.
"But for a couple of bad breaks, especially visited upon vulnerable people, the outcome of life would be so different."
It's so true.