Now that we’re busy driving away our friends, we can’t afford enemies any more. You can thank Donald Trump and Nikki Haley.

The so-called tax reform that just became law was an act of financial sabotage. It was committed exclusively by the Republican side of the  House of Representatives and the Senate, and blessed every step of the way by Donald Trump. Had the economic sabotage that is bound to result somehow been inflicted on us by a foreign power, it would be an act of war. 

But the tax bill was just powder puff, compared to the act of sabotage committed against our nation by Nikki Haley and Donald Trump.

@nikkihaley

At the UN we're always asked to do more & give more. So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us. On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names.

5:08 PM - Dec 19, 2017

16,962 16,962 Replies24,571 24,571 Retweets69,693 69,693 likes

And sure enough, they took a vote. And if Ambassador Haley took names the way she promised she would, she most assuredly must be suffering from a severe case writers’ cramp.

A mere seven nations out of 193 voted with the United States. Should the United States ever be attacked again, by means ranging from from something like another 9/11-style hijack-and-crash attack, to Kim Jung Un’s nukes, who will we have to join us in the defense of our own nation?

Well, of the seven countries we can absolutely, positively, definitely count on because we haven’t told them to go stuff themselves, let's start with the Federated States of Micronesia. 

Umm Nikki? How big an army do you think the Federated States of Micronesia can raise and deliver to the battlefield, next time the USA needs help?

Excuse me, Nikki, I can’t hear you. Could you speak a little louder?  No no, louder than that. Nikki? Nikki?

Nevermind, I’ll do it for you.

The Federated States of Micronesia consists of  four little islands stuck out there in the Pacific ocean. The total population for all four of ‘em combined is roughly 105,000. 

I know, I know, size doesn’t matter. I mean between just two of the Islands alone, Chuuoi and Yap, they could probably raise a squad of really scary guys armed with clubs and rocks. Maybe even bottles.

Yes yes, I hear you, Nikki. We’ve also got the Republic of Palau on our side. And was that Donald I just heard whispering that Palau is really big — he means yuuge — compared to four-island Micronesia? They don’t just have four islands, Palau has 340 islands. Let me write that out for you. Three hundred and forty islands! There! That should help us out in a pinch. 

What’s that? They have only about 21,500 people on those 340 Islands? An average of 63.2 people per island?  Well then, what about the nations of Nauru and Palau and Togo? Not to mention the Marshall Islands?

Same kind of story? Well, didn’t any nation that most of us ill-educated Americans have ever heard of side with us? 

They did? Great! Who? 

Ah hah! Guatemala and Honduras! I’ll bet Vladimir Putin and Kim Jung Un are quaking in their boots at the thought of an invading army from Guatemala and Honduras.

Okay, let me get to the point of all this now. The truth of the matter is, we don’t really need ISIS, or Al-Qaeda, or Russia, or North Korea to crash our military strength, or to implode our economy, or to sink our battleships and our prestige around the world.

We have Nikki Haley and Donald Trump to do it for us.

But let me leave the last word to Nikki. Listen as, with cold and very blind fury, she hammers a stake into her own nation’s heart by telling nearly the entire population of the planet, outside of the United States, and Micronesia, and Palau and Narau, and so on, that they can all go screw themselves.

Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog

Do we owe the growth of the Dow to Trump? Nope, says legendary stock picker Ken Fisher's firm.

Donald Trump is fond of claiming that the stock market is going up because of him.

That your 401(k) is rising in value because of him.

That he's the savior of the American economy.

Not so, says the firm of legendary stock picker Ken Fisher.

Back in April, they put out a YouTube video that pointed out, among other things, that America's stocks were actually lagging behind stocks in other countries. Eighteen other countries were ahead of us, among them Spain, Egypt, Denmark, Greece and Poland. 

In fact, compared to Poland, the growth of American stocks has been a Polish joke.

The question is, when stocks crash, or simply deflate like a leaky balloon, will Donald Trump also take credit? Or will he blame the disaster on Hillary Clinton?

I usually hate putting advertisements on my blog, but this one's worth watching:

Bias? Did you ever hear of an un-biased accuser? Muller’s people are on to something big.

"Your honor, I object! This accuser is biased against the defendant!"

From the New York Times of Monday, December 18:

WASHINGTON — For much of the seven months since Robert S. Mueller III was appointed special counsel, President Trump’s lawyers have stressed their cooperation with him, believing that the more they work with his investigation, the sooner the president will have his name cleared. 

But in recent weeks, as the investigation has reached deeper into Mr. Trump’s inner circle, that image of cooperation has begun to fracture. Mr. Trump’s lawyers and supporters have significantly increased their attacks on Mr. Mueller, especially as the F.B.I. has handed them fresh ammunition to claim that the agents investigating the president may be biased.  

The latest salvos came over the weekend, when a top Republican senator said Mr. Mueller should examine his team’s political leanings, and a lawyer for Mr. Trump sent a letter to lawmakers saying that the special counsel had improperly gotten emails from the presidential transition team.

Umm, wait a second there, White House lawyers. Where is it written that a prosecutor’s staff, or the FBI, have to like you to investigate you or accuse you of a crime? Or that they even have be impartial?

A judge has to be impartial. A jury has to be impartial. An investigator? The more he despises you, the harder he’s likely to dig for evidence.

If there’s evidence there, he’s likelier to find it. If there’s no evidence? Well, if even somebody who doesn’t like you can’t get the goods on you, chances are you're innocent and there are no goods to get.

But I suspect that the reason the Trump lawyers — and Trump himself — are freaking out is because Muller’s people are on to something big.

“Not looking good, it’s not looking good — it’s quite sad to see that, my people were very upset about it,” Mr. Trump said on Sunday when asked about the emails. “I can’t imagine there’s anything on them, frankly, because, as we’ve said, there’s no collusion, no collusion whatsoever.”

Trump is repeating himself, repeating himself, I suspect, because he knows he’s in deep doodoo, deep doodoo. I suspect “no collusion, no collusion whatsover,” means that Trump and his people are neck-deep in collusion. And that they’re sweating bullets and desperate to make Muller’s investigation go away. 

But the only thing they have on Muller is that maybe an FBI investigator or two aren’t one hundred percent impartial. If the Trump legal team can get away with stopping the investigation because of this, than any street thug can get off by claiming that the cops who busted him didn't like him.

Does anybody else here smell flop sweat?

THANK YOU, ALABAMA!

There's more than one way to make America great again — and today

a lot of people in Alabama showed us a good way

The voters of Alabama stood tall today.

Whatever else we believe, on matters ranging from taxation, to abortion, to government regulation, every American citizen should be able to agree that there's a crying need for decency, honor and respect in government. 

Today, Alabama showed the way, by rejecting an often-accused child molester who also — no small matter — has exhibited little regard for the Constitution of the United States or the rule of law. Instead, the voters took a stand for decency.

Is this beginning of a movement to return sanity to government — one that will pull all of us back, in every state, from the brink of an un-American plunge into totalitarianism? Let us hope so.

To the citizens of Alabama who stepped into the voting booth and did the right thing, all this one cranky person can say is, I most sincerely thank you! 

The secret plot to gun you down in the street

Before anything, go here, and look and the photograph of the four mercenary thugs at the topic of the article you’ll see. (I can’t reproduce the pictures in this blog because the Associated Press owns the copyright.)

If these characters look like the type of people you wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley, you’ve got excellent instincts. They were arrested and tried for the cold-blooded murder and injury of at least 31 civilians in Iraq some years ago. 

Technical legal arguments evidently got them off from long prison sentences that were pursued under both Republican and Democratic administrations. But the key facts in the case are barely disputed. They mowed down 31 civilians. Not enemy combatants. Civilians. In the street. In broad daylight.

All of these unsavory characters worked for Eric Prince, who

Eric Prince, mercenary mastermind

contracts to send mercenaries to dangerous places with an implicit license to kill anybody who they deem to be in their way.

Prince’s so called “business reputation" keeps getting such a black eye, in part thanks to the trail of dead bodies it leaves in its wake, that he keeps trying to escape his reputation by changing the name of his shadowy corporation. It started out as Blackwater. Then it became Xe. Then it became Academi LLC. For all I know it has changed its name again. Or not. But if President Trump has his way, it may soon have no name at all.

Instead, as Newsweek has revealed:

“The Trump administration is reportedly weighing the creation of a private network of spies conjured up by former Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a former CIA officer and famous Iran-Contra scandal figure Oliver North, which would gather intelligence for CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House and keep the rest of the U.S. intelligence community in the dark of what it discovers, according to a report by The Intercept on Tuesday.”

The purpose of this would allegedly be to combat “the deep state.” Except there’s no such thing as a deep state. Or as the same Newsweek article put it:

“Trump has repeatedly claimed, with no evidence, that such an underground group exists and has worked against him since he took office earlier this year. 

“The proposal of a private, clandestine network appears rooted in distrust the current administration has for the intelligence community. Top political donors to Trump were reportedly asked to help finance operations before any agreement was reached.”

Wait a second, wait a second! Why the distrust? Perhaps it's caused by the inclination of the CIA rank and file to obey the law. Perhaps Trump's problem is that devoted civil servants — Americans loyal to the law and the Constitution — won’t lie about facts to fit Trump's preconceived notions, or murder Trump’s political enemies.

As Newsweek reported about the private network:

“It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books,” this person said, meaning the intelligence collected would not be shared with the rest of the CIA or the larger intelligence community. “The whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly.”

What could a powerful organization do, an organization well-paid with your taxes, that somehow "doesn't exist" because it's "totally off the books" and unaccountable to anyone saved Donald Trump and Pompeo?

Well it might do what one of the people Trump admires, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, has his shadow thugs do — murder the political opposition. Just walk right up to them and shoot them dead in the street.

If you’re a journalist Putin doesn’t like, or a whistle blower, or merely a political opponent, you’ll have a hard time getting life insurance. Journalists and other critics in Russia who say things Putin doesn't like have an alarming habit of getting murdered, like this one, gunned down in the lobby of her apartment building.

In the United States, an “off-the-books” organization might extend the honor of getting murdered to anyone Trump doesn't like, a very long list that includes, among many others....

• People who have the temerity to believe that black lives matter. 
•Elizabeth Warren
•People who have the unmitigated gall to want to extend the right to vote to every adult citizen.
•Hillary Clinton 
•People with the utter nerve to demand that the Republican government not steal the Social Security income that they contributed to throughout their working lives, or their health care. 
•Bernie Sanders
•Gay people who get married 
•Colin Kaepernick
•Women who confirm that Donald Trump once tried to manhandle them
•Chuck Schumer.
•Reporters from the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, or any other publication Trump doesn't like.
•Nancy Pelosi.  
•Any member of Trump's own cabinet who momentarily displeases him. 
•Me. 
•Or you.

“Off the books” unaccountability is the beginning of total dictatorship. And at the risk of repeating a very old and very tired cliche that somehow suddenly seems to have new life: Be afraid, be very afraid.

Santa Claus fired after multiple allegations of sexual improprieties surface at North Pole

Mr. Claus in happier days.

NORTH POLE, USA (SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK CRANK): Santa Claus earlier today was suspended and then fired, after several of his reindeer alleged that he had improperly and repeatedly touched and fondled them.

The move came as a shock at the North Pole, where Santa Claus has been a revered figure for centuries.

Shortly after the news broke, Mr. Claus released a statement in which he said, “While I do not specifically deny the allegations, some of them do not square with my own memory of how these events happened, ho-ho-ho!" 

"Deeply embarrassed" 

Santa expresses regrets

"For example," Claus said, "in at least two of the incidents cited, it is my recollection that I was merely adjusting Dancer and Prancer's harnesses.  However, I am deeply embarrassed by these claims and I regret any pain I may have caused any of my reindeer, whom I have always respected and admired.”

But that statement seems to have been retracted after Claus retained an attorney, who said he had in turn hired an international firm of private detectives to investigate the case. According to well-placed sources in Santa's Workshop, the  private detectives discovered “a long history of wanton sexual behavior among the reindeer themselves. 

Reindeer orgy?

“They have irrefutable evidence, for example, that Dancer once did a five-some with Donner, Blitzen, Prancer, and Rudolph,” the source claimed.

The lawyer stated, “These animals are displaying an inordinate amount of hubris when they turn on Santa simply for joining in their reindeer games.”

Additionally, the lawyer said, “Some of the alleged incidents charged by the reindeer occurred more than fifty years ago. Yet none of the reindeer reported the so-called abuses to the Human Resources Department at Santa’s Workshop until this month. I find that highly suspicious.”

Frantic concerns may

have a simple solution

The dismissal of Santa Claus raised frantic concerns about who will come down the chimneys of America and deliver the Christmas presents this year.  However, a spokesperson for Santa’s Workshop said that most of the slack would be taken up by Amazon, with spillover handled by UPS and Federal Express.

Amazon is said to have a fleet of robots that can fly up and down chimneys, dropping off presents and even taking photographs of the gifts under Christmas trees, or of whatever else they may discover in America’s living rooms. 

Could Jeff Bezos

be listening?

In addition, thanks to the Amazon Echo, “We know when you are sleeping, we know when you’re awake, we know when you are good or bad, just like Santa,” said an Amazon spokesperson.

There have been some reports, however, that  UPS and FedEx workers were concerned that  requiring them also to jump down chimneys was an unnecessary work hazard and would be in violation of OSHA regulations.  

In a related event, The North Pole Daily Herald-News reported that Mrs. Claus has engaged a matrimonial lawyer and is planning to sue Santa for divorce.

Poisonous trees, killer fruit, Donald Trump — and a legal theory that might help undo much of the damage he has caused

The Manchineel tree. Touching any part, or even getting wet from
rain that drips from it, will burn and blister your skin. Eat its fruit
and you die. Read what this has to do with Donald Trump. 

There’s a principle of United States constitutional law designed to stop cops from searches without warrants, or from beating or torturing Americans for information. 

Just doing those things is illegal, of course. But what if I illegally search your house and discover a $50 million stash of marijuana? Or if I beat up Willie the Neighborhood Bum, and he then confesses that he helped you helped bury a drug stash in your backyard, and when I dig up your yard, sure enough, there’s the stash?

Under long-established law, I can’t charge you for drug possession. That’s because my discovery of your stash is what the courts have termed “The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.” It means that if illegally-obtained information leads me to evidence of your guilt, I’m not allowed to use that evidence against you. It’s tainted because of the way I originally obtained the information that led me to the evidence.

Okay, here’s where some will claim I’m getting into a dicey argument. I’ll take the risk.

If tainted police methods can make their fruit, — criminal evidence — invalid, can a tainted election make the fruit of that election —  the Trump presidency — equally invalid?

Wait, stop, don’t hit me! I’m only asking. It seems to me that if current investigations reveal that a mischievous foreign power (let’s say hypothetically, umm, Russia) poisoned  our elections — okay, okay, swayed our elections, but that’s a poisoning of the electoral process — then the fruit of that poisoned tree is also tainted.

In this case, the tainted fruit is Donald Trump and his Vice President, Mike Pence.

And if that’s the case, anything done by the tainted President is also tainted and invalid.

Appointment of ultra conservative judges, or any judge, to the Federal courts? Invalid.

Signing a new tax code that robs the poor and middle class to give to the rich? Invalid.

Lifting regulations on water pollution, air pollution, or that rape our nation’s natural "forever wild" public lands? Invalid.

Any bill, any executive order, any cabinet or sub-cabinet appointment? Invalid.

Succession of Mike Pence if Donald Trump resigns, or is removed from office, or becomes unable to serve by reason of insanity, physical illness or death? Invalid.

The third in line for succession is Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. But that’s a bridge that can be crossed when we come to it.

A Machineel apple This'll kill ya.

Meanwhile let us hope to find out whether Donald Trump was elected in a tainted election process. If he was, he’s every bit as poisonous as a shiny Manchineel apple. And when it comes to my legal theory, there’s no telling who will bite.