I was going to write a brilliant post about how the Mooch was like a cuckoo hatchling

Loud, obnoxious, shoving his nest-mates out of the tree to their deaths, grabbing all of the resources.

And now, I'll never get the chance.

Adios, Mooch-a-cho!

You've managed to lose your job and your wife and family. All to suck up to power and a man you rightfully disdained on national TV.

An Unbelievable Voting Machine Hack

We'll never know if our voting machines are hacked/rigged. Because touch screen machines create no checkable physical artifact of a vote, all they have to do is have the same vote totals as the number of voters and they can return any result desired. If the security is broken.

I don't know if votes have been changed, either in local, state, or federal elections. None of us know at present. But what I do know is that the machines offer no assurance that they cannot be hacked. And, I know that the GOP would absolutely use any and all means, including altering the results of the machines, to win. They have shown no respect for the process, only the lust for power.

What that means is that if results are being hacked, it is in the hackers' best interests to make the results as realistic as possible. Give a candidate trailing in the polls a surprising win, but only by 1 or 2%. Try to match previous voting patterns as best as possible, or create winning anomalies in just a few key districts.

BUT. If the machines can be hacked, then they need to be hacked and shown to be hacked. To do this, the hacker should create An Unbelievable Voting Machine Hack - a result that can't possibly be true. 100% of the vote for the Democratic candidate. Every vote but 1 for a little known independent. Create a result that lays bare the vulnerabilities of the system. Even just in one precinct.

If this can be done (especially if we put the GOP on the losing end of the result), it might finally wake somebody up.

The only drawback is that it would be a crime. But maybe worth the risk.

TYT: Scaramucci Imploding Before Our Eyes

TYT: Scaramucci Destroys Steve Bannon In NSFW Interview

Majority Report: Anthony Scaramucci's Very First Insane Meltdown

TYT: Breitbart Is Turning On Trump

Majority Report: John McCain's Ever-Worsening Political Legacy

TYT: Failing to repeal Obamacare becoming daily thing for GOP

Majority Report: John McCain's heroic speech about what he'd do if he had a soul

Derek Lowe's reaction to Panera's dopey (and misleading) sodium benzoate ad campaign

If you Google “sodium benzoate”, prepare yourself for a firehose of stupidity. There’s a long list of sites that are convinced that while benzoic acid is a fresh, healthy, natural ingredient, that sodium benzoate is a devilish industrial chemical that will rot your soul. No, really, that’s pretty much how it goes, and since I know that the great majority of the readers here have a good understanding of acid/base chemistry, you all must be furrowing their brows in puzzlement about that one. I’m with you. I think that my favorite, in a way, is the assertion that when sodium benzoate is exposed to ascorbic acid, that it immediately converts to benzene, which cues up a look at benzene’s (most definitely alarming) toxicity. The source for this would have to be this paper from 2008, which analyzed a long list of beverages for benzene contamination, and found that the only detectable levels were in carrot juice intended for infants. Benzene levels correlated with copper and/or iron levels, and the authors believe that the benzoic acid in carrots is catalytically decarboxylated to a small extent during the heat treatment of the juice. But even the sites that don’t bring that up generally work in something about how sodium benzoate causes Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, cancers of all types, you name it. And you thought only aspartame could do it all. Somehow, turning fresh, pure benzoic acid into its sodium salt puts the Curse of the Vat onto it, and this evil stain can never be removed, as we all know.

Benzoic acid is found (as a completely natural metabolite and intermediate) in a huge variety of foods, especially fruits and vegetables – berries are particularly high in it, but it’s also found in aromatic spices such as cinnamon and allspice. There’s not much in meat, but it is found in seafood, and in milk, particularly in fermented milk products such as completely natural, non-GMO yogurt made by people wearing unbleached hemp clothing and singing to each other about their feelings. OK, I’ll try to resist going off like that again (it’s difficult), but it’s certainly true that the bacterial metabolic pathways in fermented milk products like cheese and yogurt produce a good amount of benzoate. (If you’re wondering, chemically, where it comes from, it’s apparently via the microbial breakdown of hippuric acid and phenylalanine, and indirectly from tyrosine as well).