;)
The Commentariat -- July 3, 2019
Afternoon Update:
Alan Rappeport & Michael Wines of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Wednesday that the Commerce Department is 'absolutely moving forward' with plans to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, contradicting statements made by his Department of Justice and Wilbur Ross, the Commerce secretary, and calling reports based on them 'fake.'... On Tuesday, the Justice Department said that the census was being printed without the citizenship question and Mr. Ross said that he was heeding the court's ruling. But the president is not letting the matter go. 'The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE!' Mr. Trump wrote Wednesday on Twitter. 'We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question.'"
Niv Elis of the Hill: "Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Interior Department spending, threatened on Wednesday to investigate the reported use of National Park Service entrance fees to finance President Trump's July 4th celebration on the National Mall. 'Mr. Trump's event is on federal grounds. The National Mall belongs to all of us. I'm prepared to use my full oversight authority as Chair of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Committee to determine how this decision was made and hold the responsible parties accountable,' McCollum said in a statement. 'This administration needs to be reminded that the power of the purse belongs to Congress.'... The Interior Department is reportedly diverting $2.5 million from National Park Service entrance fees to help pay for the event." ...
Paid Leave??? Meredith Lerner of CREW: "Heather Nauert, a former State Department spokesperson and President Trump's original pick to replace Nikki Haley as the United States Representative to the United Nations, reported in her termination financial disclosure report that she received salary payments from 21st Century Fox while she was working in government. Nauert was an anchor and correspondent on Fox News from August 2007 until April 2017, when she joined the State Department as a spokesperson. She reported receiving $167,000 from 21st Century Fox, which she characterized as 'Salary' ... cover[ing] the period from January 1, 2018, eight months after she entered government, to March 31, 2019, the date she left the State Department. If Nauert's termination financial disclosure report is correct, the salary payments are problematic because the White House gave her an ethics waiver that authorized her to meet, interview, and communicate with 21st Century Fox employees. The Counsel to the President explained that the basis for the waiver included a finding that she did not have a 'continuing relationship with' or 'financial interest in' the company. The State Department's ethics official gave Nauert a related ethics waiver, and he offered the same explanation."
David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "Iran will 'take the next step' on Sunday and begin to enrich uranium beyond the levels specified under its 2015 accord with the United States and other global powers, President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday, state news outlets reported. Mr. Rouhani's pledge to accelerate the country's uranium enrichment is the latest step in an escalating confrontation with the United States over President Trump's withdrawal from the nuclear pact and imposition of crippling economic sanctions on Iran."
Bob Orgeta of CNN: "Federal prosecutors in Tucson, Arizona, said in court Tuesday that they were dropping a charge of conspiracy to transport 'illegal aliens' against humanitarian aid worker Scott Warren, but will seek to retry him on two charges of 'harboring illegal aliens.' Warren's first trial on those three charges ended in a mistrial June 11, after jurors told US District Court Judge Raner Collins they couldn't reach a verdict. Eight of the 12 jurors had favored acquitting Warren of all charges. That trial drew widespread attention over concern that it represented an effort by the Trump administration to criminalize humanitarian aid work."
Rebecca Klar of the Hill: "Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is turning down a Harvard research fellowship amid public backlash over the university choosing the governor, who was widely criticized for his handling of the Flint, Mich., water crisis. Snyder tweeted Wednesday that he notified the Harvard Kennedy School of his decision."
~~~~~~~~~~
Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: I thought I had misread the following headline:
"Trump Administration Drops Effort to Add Citizenship Question to 2020 Census." Michael Wines of the New York Times: "The Trump administration said Tuesday that it would be printing forms for the 2020 census without a question asking about citizenship, abandoning its quest to add the query after being blocked last week by the Supreme Court. The decision is a victory for critics who said the question was part of an administration effort to skew the census results in favor of Republicans. It was also a remarkable retreat for an administration that typically digs into such fights and refuses to give up. Just last week after the Supreme Court's decision, President Trump said he was asking his lawyers to delay the census, 'no matter how long,' in order to fight for the question in court.... Word of the action came in a one-sentence email from the Justice Department to lawyers for plaintiffs in a New York lawsuit that sought to block the question's inclusion in the head count." ...
... Jeremy Stahl of Slate: "The email comes just hours after the president told reporters he was still considering delaying the printing of the census.... Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross issued a statement registering his disappointment with the Supreme Court ruling while confirming the decision to print.... The purpose of the census, as described in the Constitution, is for a full enumeration of the entire population, and it cannot be legally used for any other purpose -- including to take action against undocumented immigrants -- so it's unclear that [Trump's argument that 'it's very important to find out if somebody is a citizen as opposed to an illegal,'] would have held up.... If the case is truly over, it would be one of the biggest legal defeats of the Trump presidency." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: My bet is that Ross cried "uncle" because he didn't want his lies/perjury to get more press exposure. ...
... Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "Does Roberts deserve credit here? He does. But also going forward this is a modest victory. As he's made clear with his voting rights decisions, Roberts is fine with Republican elected officials doing racist things, and preventing legislatures from addressing racism; he just wants Republican public officials to engage in more bad faith when doing so.... Even given the incredibly egregious set of facts, four of the Court's five Republican nominees sided fully with the Trump administration, and did so in opinions that made no effort to hide their partisanship." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: BUT, Trump says he is not giving up. After DOJ sent its e-mail to litigants & after Wilbur conceded, Trump wrote, in two tweets, "A very sad time for America when the Supreme Court of the United States won't allow a question of 'Is this person a Citizen of the United States?' to be asked on the #2020 Census! Going on for a long time. I have asked the Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice.... ....to do whatever is necessary to bring this most vital of questions, and this very important case, to a successful conclusion. USA! USA! USA!' It seems unlikely Trump will prevail even if his minions make a stab at trying. The Constitution & federal law require the census be taken every ten years, not when it better suits the president*. Of course, Bill Barr seems to think the president* is immune from Constitutional constraints, so I could be wrong.
Hamed Aleaziz of BuzzFeed News: "The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General on Tuesday released its final report on overcrowding at several border facilities in the Rio Grande Valley -- nearly a week after BuzzFeed News reported on a draft version -- revealing shocking photographs of people crammed into small detention spaces. Inspectors detailed how, when they visited several the facilities earlier this month, they found adults and minors with no access to showers. Many adults were only fed bologna sandwiches, and detainees were seen banging on cell windows -- pressing notes to the windows that detailed their time in custody. Inspectors described the conditions as 'dangerous' and 'prolonged.' Some adults were held in standing-room only conditions for a week. There was little access to hot showers or hot food for families and children in some facilities." ...
... Adolfo Flores of BuzzFeed News: "In the wake of at least five children dying in US government custody, two nurses told BuzzFeed News immigration agents have delayed taking sick children in increasingly dire condition to a hospital near the border for treatment, putting the kids at risk of potentially severe health issues. The two registered nurses, who have treated immigrant children at a hospital in the Rio Grande Valley, said young patients arriving in recent months are often in such poor health that they're 'on the borderline' of medical staff needing to call a specialized rapid response team of doctors to prevent them from going into respiratory or cardiac arrest." ...
... The New York Times story, by Zolan Kanno-Youngs, is here. ...
... John Parkinson of ABC News: "Congressional Democrats on Tuesday blasted conditions at an immigrant detention center in Homestead, Florida, following a second-straight day of inspecting the government facilities, calling the shelter a 'warehouse of children for profit.'... 'It's what I didn't see that bothers me the most,' [Rep. Bennie] Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters, expressing concern that the Miami-Dade school system was not involved in the education of immigrants while lamenting that U.S. taxpayers pay $775 per day, per child. 'It doesn't matter what the president or any of his people say, we're going to get it right.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: As contributor Forrest reminded us yesterday, one of the people getting a cut of that $775/day/child is former DHS secretary & Trump chief-of-staff John Kelly. "... the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had awarded Caliburn's subsidiary a no-bid $341 million contract and that John Kelly ... joined the board of the company." Get that? DHS awarded a no-bid contract for a company where the former head of DHS sits on the board, a company that used that award to abuse children. It's all a grift where little children be damned. ...
... Also too, where the fuck are the Republicans? In the last couple of days, different delegations of House Democrats visited two immigrant concentration camps, without a single Republican in tow. Are Republicans now okay with child abuse? With gross human rights violations? One would certainly think rage against the Trump torture machine would be bipartisan. But, at least so far, it is not.
... Mrs. McCrabbie: What kind of man oversees crimes against humanity at the same time he throws himself a big party with fireworks? ...
... Morgan Chalfont of the Hill: "The House Oversight and Reform Committee has scheduled a hearing next week to hear testimony from Trump administration officials about the separation and treatment of immigrant children at the southern border. Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) has invited acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan and acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan to testify at a hearing on July 12. Neither have confirmed their appearance, according to the committee." According to the ABC News report linked above, Cummings has signaled "he is prepared to subpoena senior Trump officials if they do not accept his invitation to testify." ...
... Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "Top officials in the agency overseeing border security condemned a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents that featured jokes about migrant deaths, obscene images of Hispanic lawmakers and threats to members of Congress as the lawmakers themselves on Tuesday amplified their criticism of the agency. Carla Provost, the chief of the Border Patrol, sent an email to her agents describing the posts in the group as 'highly inappropriate and offensive.' The Customs and Border Protection agency's Office of Professional Responsibility and the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general began an independent investigation into the posts, Ms. Provost said." ...
... Gene Johnson of the AP: "A federal judge in Seattle has blocked a Trump administration policy that would keep thousands of asylum seekers locked up while they pursue their cases. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled Tuesday that people who are detained after entering the country to seek protection are entitled to bond hearings. Attorney General William Barr announced in April that the government would no longer offer such hearings, but instead keep them in custody. It was part of the administration's efforts to deter a surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border." Mrs. McC: Constitutional considerations aside, it looks as if the judge just dealt a blow to the administration's torture chamber scheme. DHS will have to release a lot of the people Trump has packed like sardines into his concentration camps. ...
... Zak Cheney-Rice of New York: As Members of Congress described "disgusting" conditions at a migrant concentration camp they visited Monday, confederate media were more concerned that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might have been impolite to a Border Patrol guard (she says she was not). "The entire news cycle surrounding the congresswoman's behavior was an example of how debates about political violence get subsumed by debates about civility. It is hard to imagine conditions more worthy of an outburst than those in which the U.S. government has killed seven migrant children and imprisoned thousands more. Yet accounts of Ocasio-Cortez losing her cool -- false or devoid of context though they may be -- are framed as scandalous and characterized as threats against the law officers who maintain those conditions. It is a familiar standard, echoing the same logic by which many critics oppose nonviolent protests against racist police violence: By objecting to the method of protest -- blocking traffic, kneeling during the national anthem -- they obscure the fact that it is the protest that actually bothers them." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is a good part of what Trump's "fake news" charges are about. Instead of facing the facts, which Trump never does, he excoriates the "enemy of the people" for reporting those facts. That makes the media, not Trump's lies & his incompetent, corrupt administration the targets & he the victim.
Zack Ford of ThinkProgress: "In an interview with Fox News' Tucker Carlson..., Donald Trump claimed that sanctuary cities and increased homelessness are 'destroying a whole way of life,' adding, 'It's not our country. It's not what our country is all about.' During the interview, which aired Monday night, Trump was asked whether U.S. cities have more 'filth,' which both Carlson and Trump appeared to understand was a metaphor not for trash but for people living on the streets. Trump claimed this homelessness problem only started two years ago and bemoaned that 'police officers are getting sick just by walking the beat.'... 'You have people that work in those cities, they work in office buildings,' he said. 'To get into the building they have to walk through a scene that no one would have believed possible. This is the libera establishment. This is what I am fighting.' Trump also claimed that there were 'certain areas of Washington, D.C. where that was starting to happen,' but that he 'ended it very quickly.' D.C.'s homeless population has declined, but there is no evidence to suggest that Trump did anything to impact it. Even in this false history, his concern was not the homeless people of D.C., but guests of his who might have to witness them. 'When we have leaders of the world coming into to see the president of the United States and they're riding down the highway, they can't be looking at that,' he insisted. 'I really believe that it hurts our country. They can't be looking at scenes like you see in Los Angeles and San Francisco.'"
Lauren Egan & Mosheh Gains of NBC News: "Tanks for ... Donald Trump's 'Salute to America' Fourth of July celebration were seen arriving in Washington on Tuesday morning.... NBC News captured video of the tanks -- two Bradley and two Abrams tanks -- purportedly en route to the National Mall for Thursday's event.... The military hardware will be transported from bases around the country, ranging as close as Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to as far away as the Naval Air Station in California. With the increased air traffic in Washington on Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration said that it would suspend operations at the Ronald Reagan National Airport, the closest commercial airport to D.C., from 6:15 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. ET. Operations at the airport will also be impacted from 9:00 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. ET, during the fireworks show.... On Monday, the Republican National Committee said they had received tickets to the Fourth of July event for distribution.... An official from the Democratic National Committee confirmed to NBC New that, as of Tuesday morning, they had not received any tickets to the Independence Day celebration." ...
... Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: "... Donald Trump is throwing himself a parade this week, complete with a flyover by the Navy's Blue Angels and Air Force One, the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines standing by his side, and tanks that the District of Columbia emphatically does not want.... Perhaps he will [salute] America in a unifying and sober fashion, with no reference to his party, his enemies, or his reelection bid, but it seems much more likely that he will turn it into a Trump rally. Putting aside for a moment the property damage and waste, the cost to a cash-strapped National Parks Service, and the horrifying authoritarian spectacle of a military tribute to one man's ego, there is also the astronomical waste of taxpayers' dollars to consider.... Then, of course, there are the separate legal problems. CREW, the watchdog group that has been bird-dogging the administration on ethics violations, emoluments violations, and Hatch Act violations tweeted that it will be watching the 'Salute to America' to determine whether the president will violate the Hatch Act when delivering his remarks.... The president himself is not bound by the act,...," But Walter Shaub of CREW has outlined numerous ways the rally event could violate the act. ...
... Jeffrey Cimmino of the Washington Free Beacon: "MSNBC host Joy Reid claimed President Trump's decision to include tanks and military equipment in Washington, D.C's Fourth of July celebrations is a threat to Americans.... "What is the message Donald Trump is trying to send by rolling tanks down Constitution Avenue?" Reid [said during an appearance on MSNBC]. "Who is that message to? It's certainly not to tyrants because he likes tyrants, he loves tyrants. It's not to Putin, it's not to Kim Jong-Un, not to the Saudis. Is it to our friends, to Western democracies who he doesn't particularly like, or is it to us? Is it to the resistance in this country? I got tanks. I have this military armada. The message is a threat, but it's always a threat when you roll out your military. But it's to whom is the threat, and I suspect that the threat is to his fellow Americans. And I hate to say that, but I think that Donald Trump styles himself a tyrant, not a defeater of tyrants." ...
... Baby Blimp Time. Jonathan Chait: "President Trump has yearned to combine his political rallies with militaristic displays that visually conflate support for American troops with his political identity. After some false starts, he has settled on taking over the Independence Day fireworks display in Washington, D.C. But Trump's ambition is running headlong into another peculiarity of the Trump psyche: He is terrified of being booed.... Trump's efforts to control the rally should be seen in the context of his fear that the crowd will boo him. He is advertising the event on his Twitter feed, cordoning off the immediate area around his speech for ticket holders, and giving tickets away to Republican donors. Trump has 'requested that the chiefs for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines stand next to him.' Get it? The service chiefs have to stand next to Trump as human patriotism bodyguards."
Finally, a Baby Step. Nicholas Fandos & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The House's tax-writing committee sued the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday demanding access to President Trump's tax returns, escalating a fight with an administration that has repeatedly dismissed as illegitimate the Democrats' attempt to obtain Mr. Trump's financial records. The lawsuit moves the dispute into federal courts after months of sniping between the Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee, which requested and then subpoenaed the returns, and the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin. The outcome is likely to determine whether financial information that Mr. Trump -- breaking with longstanding tradition -- has kept closely guarded as a candidate and as president will be viewed by Congress and, ultimately, by the public." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Presidential Race 2020
Wow! Trump Supporters Are Beautiful! And Diverse! Oh, Wait. And Foreign. Bernard Condon of the AP: "A series of Facebook video ads for ... Donald Trump's re-election campaign shows what appears to be a young woman strolling on a beach in Florida, a Hispanic man on a city street in Texas and a bearded hipster in a coffee shop in Washington, D.C., all making glowing, voice-over endorsements of the president.... The people in the videos that ran in the past few months are all actually models in stock video footage produced far from the U.S. in France, Brazil and Turkey, and available to anyone online for a fee." Mrs. McC: Yesterday, news broke that the Trump campaign had collected a zillion dollars this past quarter, when it already had a fat campaign chest. But it can't afford to hire, you know, real Trumpbots for its ads? Maybe they're not pretty enough.
Tal Axelrod of the Hill: "President Trump plans to hold a campaign rally in North Carolina later this month as he seeks to buoy his reelection bid in a key battleground state.... The rally is scheduled for the same day as former special counsel Robert Mueller's testimony on Capitol Hill. Mueller's highly anticipated appearance before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees follows a subpoena from House Democrats." Mrs. McC: I've got bad news for Trump; the top story July 18 will be Mueller, not Trump.
The mikey mystery. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "... on Tuesday, when [mike pence] abruptly abandoned a planned trip to New Hampshire after he had already boarded Air Force Two at Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland, it raised immediate questions. It is rare that something causes a vice president to abandon a publicized trip once aboard a plane. Mr. Pence's aides said that there was no national security emergency or personal health issue that prompted the change. They said that he had boarded the plane but that it never took off. They would not say much else.... Multiple people familiar with what happened offered at least a partial explanation. They said it was related to the place Mr. Pence was scheduled to visit, the Granite Recovery Center, but they did not offer any details."
Mrs. McCrabbie: I meant to look for this video yesterday, but it's still good today. I thought this was Maddow's best segment ever. It aired Monday night:
Cassidy Gard & Bonnie McLean of ABC News: "Former Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher was found not guilty on Tuesday on charges of killing an ISIS prisoner during a deployment in Iraq, though he was convicted on a lesser charge of wrongfully posing for an unofficial picture with a human casualty. Gallagher was facing a court-martial on charges of murdering the ISIS prisoner in 2017. He will be sentenced on the lesser charge on Wednesday.... In a shocking twist during the trial, Special Operator 1st Class Corey Scott, a Navy medic, testified he saw Gallagher stab the ISIS prisoner, but that it was Scott who suffocated the prisoner to death as an act of mercy."
A Fox "News" Gaffe. Adam Raymond of New York: "On Monday's episode of The Five, the Fox News talk show ... panel members Dana Perino, Jesse Watters, and Greg Gutfeld praised President Trump for his impromptu meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over the weekend.... Perino called the get-together' historic,' which is technically true, and Watters said, 'I think everybody can agree we're headed in the right direction....' Greg Gutfeld followed with a point that was both obvious and shockingly candid. 'Of course they're going to attack him,' he said of Democrats who've criticized Trump's meeting with Kim. Then he admitted that if President Obama had done exactly what Trump just did, he and the other hosts on The Five would be doing a 180. 'Let's be honest: If it were an adversary from the other party, we'd be doing the same thing,' Gutfeld said."
Beyond the Beltway
Florida. Isaiah Smalls & Nicholas Nehamas of the Miami Herald: "A state panel has voted unanimously to revoke the law enforcement accreditation of the Broward Sheriff's Office, the largest sheriff's office in Florida. The loss of accreditation -- a voluntary certification sought by law enforcement agencies -- won't affect BSO's operations in a major way. But it is a further blow to the agency's prestige at a time when a new command staff, including a new sheriff, are dealing with a string of failures and questionable conduct by deputies. The Commission for Florida Law Enforcement Accreditation (CFA) cited BSO's mishandling of the Parkland school shooting last year and the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport shooting in 2017 as reasons for its decision in a 13-0 vote last week. Both incidents were marked by chaotic and disorganized responses from the sheriff's office."
New Jersey. When Is Rape Okay? When the Rapist Comes from a "Good Family." Luis Ferré-Sadurní of the New York Times: A New Jersey 16-year-old taped himself raping an intoxicated girl & sent the video to friends with the text, "When your first time having sex was rape." "But a family court judge said ... the young man came from a good family, attended an excellent school, had terrific grades and was an Eagle scout. Prosecutors, the judge said, should have explained to the girl and her family that pressing charges would destroy the boy's life.... Now the judge has been sharply rebuked by an appeals court in a scathing 14-page ruling.... In doing so, the appeals court cleared the way for the case to be moved from family court to a grand jury, where the teenager, identified only as G.M.C. in court documents, will be treated as an adult.... The appellate division reversed another judge's decision not to try a 16-year-old boy as an adult after he was accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in 2017."
News Lede
New York Times: "Lee A. Iacocca, the visionary automaker who ran the Ford Motor Company and then the Chrysler Corporation and came to personify Detroit as the dream factory of America's postwar love affair with the automobile, died on Tuesday at his home in Bel Air, Calif. He was 94."
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Reader Comments (14)
Oh, shit. July 23rd. Where has the time gone. At least we're closer to the election.
@unwashed: Sorry, forgot to remove the "2" when I copied yesterday's title. Guess I got too excited about a headline that was actually good news. This was a mistake so blatant I saw it when I wasn't wearing my glasses. so I fixed it.
I don't buy any of the stories about pence not leaving Washington. Right wing world is saying that pence's non-leaving Washington was due to Russia going on military emergency footing after the explosion and sinking of an experimental submarine in the Barentz Sea. The president was out of the country, so the Vice President would have to be on hand. That makes sense. A visit to a drug rehab facility does not.
What bothers me is that this story revealed to me how much I have come to disrespect/disregard the word of the NYT. The Times says one thing -- I immediately look for confirmation from other sources.
Billy Joel's "I'm in a New York state of mind" always made me smile. I wish I could do that now but I'm afraid my state of mind is one of despair. Rachel's superb program segement (see above) is heartbreaking and infuriating and this along with the immigration chaos begs the question of HOW CAN WE ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN? The only saving grace seems to be the courts and even that is iffy.
The one department that appears to be immune to any kind of destruction is our Large Military Industrial Complex which Eisenhower warned us about. Defense spending now accounts for almost 60 percent of the budget: everything else is accommodated in the remaining two fifths. And questions of why we need to or want to devote three fifths of the government's discretionary funds to defense aren't being asked. WHY NOT?
And so tomorrow we will see the tanks–-two different kinds–-lumber through the streets–- possibly wrecking roads and a bridge and for added glory planes will fly over the head of Fatty who will extoll America's greatness while the statue of Lincoln weeps copious tears.
@Victoria: word on the street is that the reason Pence cancelled his trip was due to a severe case of anal itching which led to a severe case of butt infection. "Mommy"–-his missus–-couldn't find the preparation H in time for his departure so they just cancelled the whole thing. Pence prayed for relief but God ignored his pleas because as HE always says: Once an ass-hole, always an ass-hole plus he's still pissed at Pence for his homosexual stance. Afraid the Gray Lady couldn't handle all that.
I saw Maddow's piece last night, about the fact that our agencies, which are our only bulwark against the pure ignorance/malice of climate change denial, are being gutted. To think that people were told they had to move or quit, with virtually no warning or choices offered reminds me of the cold war era, when one could not trust anything Russian/Sovietesque. This is Soviet-style crap, and it is pure evil to do that to people.
I remain amazed that the trumpster cult has sucked in so many people. It fits with the treatment of people in general, and the show of might being planned for tomorrow. I keep blaming the 2016 Great Stolen Election for the deterioration of everything so rapidly, but I do not think anything began then. If you think about how the ugliness we see every day began with the obstruction to Obama, even as we saw it during his campaign by the tea party racists, it all culminates now, and is still going steadily downhill. Obstruction allowed by the Stonewalling Party just hastens this descending into a mire. Nope, I don't trust the NYT nor most of the sound media, including some sympathetic but clueless pundits on our side. I will not be tuning in to see the rabble shaming the Lincoln Memorial. OF COURSE no Democrats were invited to sit in that flag-draped enclosure. And they are lucky. Who would want to in person hear that sing-songy voice reading/mouthing stuff he has never believed but which will be hailed as "presidenshul..." Gaaaccchh
I wonder who, exactly, designed this exodus of scientists that Rachel was describing. If one works for the federal government, it is well known that one way of removing personnel without firing them is to offer them the "option" of going to a place in the Idaho badlands (or Brownbackistan), which, if they don't accept this, their position is eliminated. The notice is usually 2 weeks.
So those scientists must go to nowhere Kansas or lose their jobs. And the government can not be blamed for firing them.
This is diabolical and requires knowledge of how government employment works. It's hard for me to think of anyone with that kind of knowledge in the White House - not even that Miller guy. Who did this and why?
Little mikey is on standby today in case any presidencing needs to be faked (it’s all fakery these days). The Orange Menace will be unavailable. He’ll be in Egg-zecutive Time the entire day, strutting around in his new leather boots and jodhpurs, swishing his riding crop and practicing his Trumpollini chin jut in the mirror. “Melanie, do these jod-things make my ass look big?”
Giving himself a Heil Trump salute, he wonders if that might be too much. Decides it’s not. “Heil myself!” he squeaks, clicking his heels together.
In comes a secret service guy, fresh from a booze blast party with strippers and call girls. “Mr. President” he says, correcting himself quickly, “I mean Mein Fuhrer. Iran has launched a nuclear powered sub loaded with missiles, headed for the east coast. “Tell mikey to handle it. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
Big day tomorrow.
There are so many turning points, so many historical inflections, it is impossible to say which is the exact point where we went wrong.
Was it Reagan's election? Citizens United? Make your own long list on this day before the tanks rumble down Pennsylvania Avenue, but my favorite this AM remains the Supreme's "election" of Bush II.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/31/politics/bush-gore-2000-election-results-studies/index.html
While there will always be some doubt about who "won" in 2000, there is none about who lost.
We did, and that loss along with many others, led to the Pretender's Fourth.
When the Supremes themselves didn't think democracy important enough to actually count all the ballots, their message was very clear, and remains more deafening to this day than the sound of any of the Pretender's fireworks on the Mall will be.
Ken,
I’m right there with you. Halting a democratic election in order to install, by fiat, their own choice, an egregiously ill prepared, hardcore little right wing twit and his pet shark who, to be honest, caused more damage to the concept of constitutional government and the rule of law than even a crook and traitor like Trump has done (no multi-decade wars yet, and no world wide financial collapse, yet) put us, not on a slippery slope to authoritarianism, but on a toboggan ride down a 60 degree ice mountain to fascism.
But some of the blame must go to Al Gore and the Democrats for caving so easily to winger shenanigans. Once the Bush family fixer, James “The Velvet Hammer” Baker landed in Florida with his RNC thugs to make sure no additional votes would be counted for the Democratic candidate, the Gore people, realizing that the election was being stolen, should have gotten into the ring and started slugging.
But they didn’t. They threw in the towel. I can still picture the leering grins on the self-satisfied faces of the Bushies and their thugs when Gore tucked tail and handed the country over to a bunch of crooked sharpies. The Gore people claimed to be doing it to avoid a nasty spectacle, but hey, as someone once said, politics ain’t beanbags. If he really believed in the concept of democracy, he would have fought to the last man and woman standing to keep Republicans from stealing the election.
But he didn’t.
Democrats are still trying to “do the right thing” or be the adults, or whatever impotent weenie-ass metaphor you choose. Meanwhile, Republicans AGAIN have stolen an election, are planning to steal another one, and are continuing to wreck democratic institutions at a pace that must be the envy of every anti-democratic dictator and thuggish political strongman in the world
But we’re being the adults in the room.
As that room burns down around us.
Happy fucking Fourth.
The real reason for little mikey’s Panic attack resulting in that aborted trip to New Hampshire has emerged. And it’s all the fault of the Republican penchant for hiring illiterate henchmen.
Just as they were about to board the plane, one of mikey’s underlings misread the destination of the pence platoon, the Granite Recovery Center. “Says here we’re going to...hold on...the...the Gay-nit Recreation Center.”
Panic!! “Gay-nit?? Gay recreation?? Oh, Mother! Save me. I’ll get gay cooties if we go there!! Aiieeee!”
So, rather than explain that he’d prefer not to contract gay cooties, they pretended there was a national emergency. Because what’s a little war scare now and then?
Ever the stalwart souls, they turned tail and ran.
Maybe they thought they’d be forced to bake a cake.
Good for a much needed Fourth of July laugh:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/rex-huppke/ct-trump-fourth-of-july-washington-fireworks-tanks-dc-huppke-20190703-sil66mgv55gpnldl23hcruacni-sil66mgv55gpnldl23hcruacni-story.html
....though I can't believe Huppke left out all the brown people in his concluding list of American exceptions. Must have been the Tribune's censors....err...editors...
The only thing I'll be watching tomorrow is the weather radar map:
Independence Day: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly after 3pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 93. Heat index values as high as 100. Light and variable wind becoming east around 5 mph in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.
Thursday Night: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly before midnight. Cloudy, with a low around 74. Southeast wind around 6 mph becoming calm after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.
Let's hope the T-storms roll in early and often to cancel flight activity and to rain on his* parade.
As my husband sometimes puts it, “biblical rain”