;)
The Commentariat -- September 8, 2017
Peter Baker & Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: "President Trump pursued his newfound alignment with congressional Democrats on Thursday as he called the party's leaders in hopes of striking more deals and even complied with a request to publicly reassure younger immigrants brought to the country illegally not to worry about imminent deportation. A day after reaching a fiscal agreement with Democrats over the objections of his own Treasury secretary and party leaders, Mr. Trump called Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California to reinforce his willingness to keep working across party lines. He was effusive about their consensus. 'The press has been incredible,' he told Ms. Pelosi, according to a person briefed on the call.... Mr. Schumer, who has had little contact with Mr. Trump before now, said he raised the issue of cooperating on saving the DACA program through legislation known as the Dream Act and that Mr. Trump seemed amenable. 'We'll see,' Mr. Schumer said. 'I think it would be much better for the country and much better for Donald Trump if he was much more in the middle and bipartisan rather than siding with the hard right. I think he got a taste of it yesterday. We'll see if it continues. I hope it does.'" ...
... Elise Foley of the Huffington Post: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that ... Donald Trump told her on two occasions that he supports and would sign a bill to give legal status to young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. 'We made it very clear in the course of the conversation that the priority was to pass the Dream Act,' Pelosi said at a press briefing. 'Obviously it has to be bipartisan. The president supports that, he would sign it. But we have to get it passed.' Democrats are pushing for the bill, called the Dream Act, after Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program earlier this week.... Trump ... called Pelosi earlier Thursday and made the comment about the Dream Act then, as well as in a meeting on Wednesday, according to Pelosi." ...
... Guy Who Hates Media Swoons over Good Press. Josh Dawsey of Politico: "... in calls with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Thursday morning, Trump raved about the positive news coverage [his deal with them] had received, according to people familiar with the calls, and he seemed very pleased with his decision. Trump specifically mentioned TV segments praising the deal and indicated he'd been watching in a call with Schumer, two people said. And he was jovial in a call with Pelosi and agreed to send a tweet she asked for about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, these people said, while also mentioning the attention the deal had gotten. He indicated to both leaders he would be willing to work together again. 'He seemed super upbeat,' one person familiar with the calls said.... 'I think we will have a different relationship than we've been watching over the last number of years. I hope so,' [Trump told reporters]. 'I think that's what the people of the United States want to see. They want to see some dialogue.'" ...
... Steve M. is not impressed: "Trump is basically acting like a teenager who's mad at his girlfriend and responds by cheating with someone he finds unappealing. It's not going to be a long-term romance." Mrs. McC: I'm with Steve. Trump will dump "Chuck & Nancy" as soon as the high school chatter at "Fox & Friends" turns nasty. Don't buy the prom dress, Chuck. The high-school bully is not taking you anywhere that matters. ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: However, there is one factor that might cause Trump to keep coming back to Chuck & Nancy. That is, if he perceives they can get their clique to lighten up on "the Russia thing," it's conceivable that Trump will continue to take them up to Lovers' Lane for some quickies. ...
... Damian Paletta & Ashley Parker of the Washington Post: "President Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) have agreed to pursue a deal that would permanently remove the requirement that Congress repeatedly raise the debt ceiling, three people familiar with the decision said. Trump and Schumer discussed the idea Wednesday during an Oval Office meeting. The two, along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), agreed to work together over the next several months to try to finalize a plan, which would need to be approved by Congress.... Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has suggested scrapping the existing debt-limit process and replacing it with one that automatically lifts the borrowing limit every time Congress appropriates future spending.... House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said at a news conference Thursday that he opposes scrapping the debt-limit process." ...
... Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "The Republican-led Senate on Thursday approved legislation to raise the debt limit and keep the government funded until December while providing $15 billion in disaster aid, giving a reluctant stamp of approval to the surprising deal that President Trump struck with Democratic congressional leaders. The Senate approved the measure 80 to 17. All of the senators voting no were Republicans."
Ron Brownstein of the Atlantic: "President Trump may have hoped to increase pressure on congressional Democrats to accept other hardline elements of his immigration agenda this week by rescinding the program that has protected from deportation about 800,000 'Dreamers,' young people brought to the country illegally by their parents. But it's more likely Trump has triggered a process that will divide Republicans, further estrange him from the business community, and ultimately paralyze Congress, placing the issue of how to handle the 'Dreamers' squarely back on his desk when his six-month deadline expires." Brownstein explains why.
Maggie Haberman & Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "Donald Trump Jr. told Senate investigators on Thursday that he set up a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer because he was intrigued that she might have damaging information about Hillary Clinton, saying it was important to learn about Mrs. Clinton's 'fitness' to be president. But nothing came of the Trump Tower meeting, he said, and he was adamant that he never colluded with the Russian government's campaign to disrupt last year's presidential election. In a prepared statement during an interview with Senate Judiciary Committee investigators, the younger Mr. Trump said ... he always intended to consult with his own lawyers about the propriety of using any information that [Natalia] Veselnitskaya, who has ties to the Kremlin, gave him at the meeting.... [This] suggests that he knew, or at least suspected, that accepting potentially damaging information about a rival campaign from a foreign country raised thorny legal issues." ...
... Tom Hamburger & Jonathan O'Connell of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump Jr. told Senate investigators Thursday that nothing came of the 2016 meeting he set up with a Russian lawyer who offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton.... In his statement Thursday, Trump Jr. acknowledged for the first time that phone records show three short phone calls he had with [Russian pop music star Emin] Agalarov before the June 9 meeting, which he said he did not recall.... Some senators attended the closed door session Thursday but they asked no questions -- those were left to the staff alone." ...
... The Washington Post has released a copy of Junior's prepared statement. Amber Phillips has annotated the transcript. Mrs. McC: Besides the expected "saw no evil, heard no evil, did not evil" claims, there is at least one out-and-out whopper: "The meeting was instead primarily focused on Russian adoptions, which is exactly what I said over a year later in my statement of July 8, 2017." ...
... Jake Tapper runs down Junior's evolving cover stories about the June 2016 meeting:
... Manu Raju, et al., of CNN: "Donald Trump Jr. told Senate judiciary committee staffers Thursday that he did not recall the details of White House involvement in the public response to his 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer and did not know much about the Air Force One meeting that allegedly led to the production of the statement, sources told CNN. Trump Jr. was explicitly asked whether he either took any of the Russian participants in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to see his father ... or whether he told his father about the meeting after, sources said. He insisted he did neither. Asked why his father promised the next day that dirt was coming on Hillary Clinton, Trump Jr. told Senate staffers that's just the way his father talks. The President's eldest son met with congressional investigators for more than five hours Thursday, but at least one member of the Senate judiciary committee is saying Trump Jr.'s interview is doing little to ease their concerns.... Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who sat in on the meeting with committee staff, told CNN that Trump Jr. has not put concerns to rest and is opening up new lines of inquiry.... [Committee Chair Chuck] Grassley told CNN on Thursday that no final decision has been made on a public hearing for Trump Jr." ...
... Natasha Bertrand of Business Insider: "Democratic Sen. Chris Coons on Thursday strongly suggested he thought Donald Trump Jr. lied in his interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee about a meeting he had with two Russians last year at Trump Tower. 'Below is a statute to keep in mind in regards to Donald Trump Jr.'s testimony today,' Coons' office wrote in an email with the subject line: 'On day of Trump Jr. testimony, an important law to remember.' Coons' memo then quoted statute 18 U.S.C. 1001(a) & (c)(2), which outlines the punishments for lying to Congress." ...
... Josh Marshall: "Don Jr. says that he really had no idea what the meeting was about or more importantly who would attend the meeting in advance. In other words, someone said he might have dirt on Hillary, why not take a meeting? This (no doubt intentionally) leaves out critical information that is in the plain text of the emails. In his emails [music publicist Rob] Goldstone very conspicuously noted that this wasn't just some information he could pass Trump's way. He went out of his way to say explicitly that it came from the Russian government and was part of the Russian government's support for and efforts to elect Donald Trump. He wrote: 'This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.' That makes all the difference in the world.... The relevant point is that Trump Jr was told in advance that he was dealing with the Russian government and that the Russian government was supporting and trying to elect his father. I don't care how naive you are.... What about Paul Manafort?... There's no question Manafort knew what was happening in this meeting and that it was a problem." ...
... The Orphans Ruse, Ctd. Pamela Brown, et al., of CNN: "Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team has approached the White House about interviewing staffers who were aboard Air Force One when the initial misleading statement about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower was crafted, three sources familiar with the conversations said. The special counsel's discussions with the White House are the latest indication that Mueller's investigators are interested in the response to the Trump Tower meeting. Mueller wants to know how the statement aboard Air Force One was put together, whether information was intentionally left out and who was involved, two of the sources said. Mueller's questions could go to the issue of intent and possible efforts to conceal information during an obstruction of justice investigation.... The interviews with White House staffers who were aboard Air Force One have not begun.... Sources previously told CNN that [President] Trump was involved in the crafting of the statement aboard Air Force One and that he involved some of his closest aides." Mrs. McC: As noted above, Junior claimed to Senate staff today that this initial statement about the June 2016 was really, really true. Uh-huh. ...
... digby: "Trump Jr, Kushner [and] Manafort colluded with the Russian government to receive 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton. Junior admitted it today. We already knew it from the emails, but if he had said that he never read the emails all the way through or misunderstood or something he would have denied collusion, however unbelievable that might have been. He didn't do that. Whether that collusion resulted in information being exchanged we don't know. But we do know that subsequent to the meeting, Wikileaks dumped a huge cache of DNC emails during the Democratic convention and later we saw releases of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's emails and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. So there was 'dirt' and it was disseminated. All that's left to determine is what the president knew about this meeting and when did he know it. We do know that he tried to cover it up, which Jr pretended not to remember and which is not credible in the least." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I'm convinced, based on no evidence at all, that Trump & his inner circle are sitting on a minefield of other instances in which they colluded with Russians & others to undermine Clinton's candidacy, and we just don't know about them. They're happy that so far they only have to make false statements about this one June 2016 meeting, because there's a lot more that hasn't become public. Let's hope Mueller's tight-lipped staff has -- via phone records & other sources -- found out about more discussions about "Russian orphans." ...
... Adam Raymond of New York: "Across town, FBI Director Christopher Wray also spoke Thursday about the White House and the Russia investigation. While on a panel at Washington's Intelligence and National Security Summit, Wray was asked if the Trump administration has tried to influence the investigation into the campaign’s ties to Russia. 'I can say very confidently that I have not detected any whiff of interference with that investigation,' he said, perhaps forgetting that the reason he has a job is because Trump fired Wray’s predecessor for investigating him." ...
... Scott Shane of the New York Times: "An investigation by The New York Times, and new research from the cybersecurity firm FireEye, reveals some of the mechanisms by which suspected Russian operators used Twitter and Facebook to spread anti-Clinton messages and promote the hacked material they had leaked.... On Twitter, as on Facebook, Russian fingerprints are on hundreds or thousands of fake accounts that regularly posted anti-Clinton messages. Many were automated Twitter accounts ... that sometimes fired off identical messages seconds apart -- and in the exact alphabetical order of their made-up names, according to the FireEye researchers." ...
... ** TrumPutin Sleepers! Katie Zavadski of the Daily Beast: While Trump rails against U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, his Florida properties have become a playground for birth tourists from Russia's upper crust.... [An] estimated hundreds of Russian parents ... flock to the U.S. annually for warm weather, excellent medicalcare, and, more importantly, birthright American citizenship. And many ... stay at ... Trump's properties in Florida. The Daily Beast has discovered several companies are advertising rentals in Trump properties to expectant Russian parents. While the Trump Organization does not directly profit from subleases of privately owned condos, it does benefit from Russian patronage of the nearby Trump International Beach Resort.... The [Miami] area's most popular Russian deli ... sit[s] directly across the street from the Trump International Beach Resort, Trump Palace, and Trump Royale."
Paul Krugman elaborates on a blogpost he wrote earlier this week (and linked here) on the phony arguments Jeff Sessions employed to provide cover for Trump's (and his own) racist decision to dump the DACA program. ...
... Julia Ainsley & Andrew Blankstein of NBC News: "... Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security had planned nationwide raids to target 8,400 undocumented immigrants later this month, according to three law enforcement officials and an internal document that described the plan as 'the largest operation of its kind in the history of ICE,' an acronym for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.But after NBC News reported the plans late Thursday, the agency issued a statement saying it had cancelled nationwide enforcement actions due to Hurricane Irma and the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey.... ICE had been planning the operation internally since mid-August and had instructed officers in the field to target adults deemed to be gang members or perpetrators of serious crimes, said one of the officials. Other undocumented immigrants not suspected of crimes may have been swept up in the raids as 'collateral,' the official said."
Busloads of Left-Wing Radical Criminals Steal New Hampshire Election! -- Kobach. Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "Days before they meet in New Hampshire, members of the White House's Election Integrity Commission have seized on a report about same-day registration to allege that massive fraud might have swung the state's 2016 vote. Both voters and election experts say the allegation -- accusing thousands of voters of criminal activity simply for living in New Hampshire but holding out-of-state driver's licenses -- are baseless. The accusation arose Thursday morning, when Shawn Jasper, the speaker of New Hampshire's Republican-run House of Representatives, released data on same-day registrants that he'd obtained from the secretary of state's office. In November 2016, 6,540 voters had registered to vote on Election Day. As of Aug. 30, just 1,014 of those voters had obtained a New Hampshire drivers license. A few hundred voters did not obtain state licenses but had registered cars in the state. That was enough for Jasper to allege thousands of fraudulent votes -- and for Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the vice chairman of the commission, to flatly allege that fraudulent voters might have stolen the state's four electoral votes and a U.S. Senate seat away from Republicans. 'If 59.2 percent or more of them went for [Democratic Sen. Maggie] Hassan, then the election was stolen through voter fraud,' Kobach wrote in a column for Breitbart. 'That's likely, since the surrounding states are Democrat (sic) strongholds.'"
AND. Addy Baird of ThinkProgress: "Rush Limbaugh will be evacuating South Florida, just days after the popular conservative radio host claimed that Hurricane Irma would not hit the United States and that scientists and the liberal media were hyping up the hurricane as proof of their global warming 'lie.'"
Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "In a major upcoming Supreme Court case that weighs equal rights with religious liberty, the Trump administration on Thursday sided with a Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The Department of Justice on Thursday filed a brief on behalf of baker Jack Phillips, who was found to have violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act by refusing to created a cake to celebrate the marriage of Charlie Craig and David Mullins in 2012. Phillips said he doesn't create wedding cakes for same-sex couples because it would violate his religious beliefs. The government agreed with Phillips that his cakes are a form of expression, and he cannot be compelled to use his talents for something in which he does not believe." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Okay, then. Bigotry is a form of expression. But spontaneously giggling out loud at a preposterously hypocritical remark by Jeff Sessions is not a form of expression; rather it is a crime punishable with incarceration. This is how the authoritarian state works.
Tiffany Hsu of the New York Times: "Equifax, one of the three major consumer credit reporting agencies, said on Thursday that a data breach left Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers and other sensitive information for 143 million United States consumers vulnerable to hackers. Criminals gained access to certain files in the company's system from mid-May to July by exploiting a weak point in a website application, according to an investigation by Equifax. The company said that it discovered the intrusion on July 29 and has since found no evidence of unauthorized activity on its main consumer or commercial credit reporting databases." ...
... Anders Melin of Bloomberg: "Three Equifax Inc. senior executives sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered a security breach that may have compromised information on about 143 million U.S. consumers. The trio had not yet been informed of the incident, the company said late Thursday." Mrs. McC: Uh-huh.
News Ledes
Washington Post: "Hurricane Irma’s deadly fury threatened to swamp low-lying islands of the Bahamas with a possible 20-foot storm surge Friday as the massive storm moved toward Florida's doorstep packing the potential to ravage the state with destruction not seen in a generation. The window to escape the path of Irma in Florida was rapidly closing. Forecasters said Irma could make landfall early Sunday somewhere in the wide band between densely populated Atlantic coast and the 100-mile string of islands from Key Largo to Key West, before veering to the north possibly toward more population centers up the Eastern Seaboard." ...
... The Miami Herald has a page dedicated to Irma-related stories. Access is free.
ABC News: "At least 60 people were killed after a magnitude-8.1 earthquake rocked Mexico late Thursday night, leveling buildings in southern Mexico, triggering tsunami warnings in several countries and causing people to flee into the street. Buildings swayed and lights went out in Mexico City, some 650 miles from the epicenter.Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto called it the strongest quake the country has seen in a century. The U.S. Geological Survey measured it at 8.1 magnitude, though initial reports said 8.2. Pena Nieto said in a series of tweets on Friday that more than 200 people had been injured and more than 260 aftershocks had hit the country since the initial quake, the most powerful of which was measured at magnitude 6.1. More than 1.85 million electricity customers had been affected, Pena Nieto said, with nearly 200,000 still facing outages." ...
... Los Angeles Times: "A massive earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mexico late Thursday and was felt as far away as Mexico City, where residents fled violently swaying buildings and electrical transformers exploded. The Mexican Seismological Institute said the earthquake measured 8.4 in magnitude, making it the most powerful to strike Mexico since the disastrous earthquake of 1985, which caused extensive damage in Mexico City and left at least 5,000 people dead. The epicenter of Thursday's earthquake was about 60 miles off the coast of Chiapas state, near the border with Guatemala, according to the United States Geological Survey, which measured the quake's magnitude at 8.1. The National Weather Service's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center warned that tsunami waves as high as 9 feet might hit along Mexico's Pacific coast. Tsunami waves of 2.3 feet were observed in Huatulco, a resort city in Mexico's Oaxaca state, and 3.3 feet at Salina Cruz, according to the center."
Share Article
Reader Comments (12)
I won't accuse him of subtle "strategery" here, but I see a direct connection between the Pretender's willingness to break from his party's fiscal hawks--those who don't like spending all that unnecessary money on anything other than bigger guns or anyone other than themselves--and support legislation eliminating the need for the debt limit Kabuki theater Republicans revel in and his desire to lower taxes on corporations, on the wealthy and especially on himself, all guaranteed to increase the national debt by hundreds of billions.
The Pretender may not understand much, but he, with an assist from the Munchkin, might have noticed repeated attention to the explosion of debt he and his party intend to create in the name of "reform" might not make for the good press he craves.
There is already a long list of things the Pretender is up to that he would rather people not notice. Pretending they have no bad consequences or deliberately hiding them is common to all of them.
First off: MARIE––where the heck are you? Hope you are not in harms's way in Fl. Fort Myers is gonna get whacked, or so they say.
Watched a bit on two hearings that were going on this week on Capitol Hill: on health care and EPA. The former sounded as though something could be worked out with a bipartisan effort; the latter was sounding dire warnings about Pruitt's dire dealings. Good to know. Now what are we going to do about it. There are many positions in the EPA that have not been filled as yet which means the skeleton crew of regular workers have to do double duty.
And the King is pleased as punch––perhaps the media could help our fractured fairy tale take on a more positive story line. Good press=good democratic decisions.
@PD Pepe: Thanks. I'm not in Florida.
Marie
More Real News from Rush
Famous drug addict, Man of the People, and Real American, Rushbo Limbaugh, days after exposing hurricanes as a liberal plot, has issued a warning to all other real Americans not to believe reports of a terrible earthquake in Mexico.
"It's just a liberal conspiracy designed to make us feel bad for brown people and send them money."
Calling reports of the earthquake a hoax "Just like those hurricane lies", and the work of evil Tectonic Platers, Limbaugh stated everyone knows that Jesus would never create anything as stupid as stone plates that move around. "How stupid is that?" he asked. "Besides, if there was some kind of rock movement, it was Mexican rapists and murderers trying to tunnel into the great US of A so they could Make America Bad Again.
Now that he's exposed conspiracies involving evolution, climate change, black quarterbacks in the NFL, sluts who use contraception, and today, geology, sources close to the great man indicate he will soon be going after relativity ("Everything's relative to those goddam liberals!"), photosynthesis, DNA, and Planck's Constant ("A plank is only constant until it warps!").
The Right Wing: Back to the Dark Ages, at the gallop.
A note of hilarity: the teevee machine just showed a large golf-style cart with Miami zoo personnel, each carrying a large pink flamingo. As it drove off (sheltering in place is the plan--) there were all these active long necks sticking out all over the place. And no one in the interview spot was laughing! I loved it--
Hope any of our fellow readers that live in FL will have left by now-- or are hunkered down safely.
From the Department of the Glaringly Apparent:
"Democratic Sen. Chris Coons on Thursday strongly suggested he thought Donald Trump Jr. lied..."
Junior lied? Of course he lied! These people would turn green and keel over with their tongues frozen to the top of their mouths if they ever spoke a true word. As Mary McCarthy once said about Lillian Hellman "...every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'".
For the entire Trump clan, even stuttering utterances like "um" are black lies.
Marie: So glad to hear you are out of harm's way. We just talked to our daughter-in-law's parents who live in Boca Raton in a high rise apartment complex and have hunkered down and are prepared for the worst––have taken in some neighbors who had to evacuate because they live too close to the ocean. Their car, however, will probably be underwater even though it is in an underground garage.
And then when I heard the news of the earthquake in Mexico I thought–-looks like the end of the world. Maybe Rush and his cronies will blame all this on, as Akhilleus said, "The liberal media" although the voices of the religious zealots will surely claim that the blame (for this country's storms)goes to the degradation of our moral fiber sex wise and otherwise.
And boy, oh boy, do we need to see a few more pink flamingos riding in golf carts. Takes the edge off. Thanks Jeanne for the visual.
Not Skeevy Enough for Trump!
How would that look emblazoned on a t-shirt?
According to KKK Steve Bannon, Chris Christie could have had a job in the Trumpado cabinet but he didn't express enough acceptance of Trump's salacious, immoral behaviors to suit the Trumpies.
After the "Grab 'em by the pussy" tape came out, Bannon and the rest of the Trump Mafia separated those with morals from those with none. Those with none were let on board, those with? Fuck off.
An interview with KKK Steve says as much:
"'Christie, because of Billy Bush weekend, was not looked at for a Cabinet position,' Bannon said in an interview on CBS's '60 Minutes...'
Host Charlie Rose responded: 'He wasn't there for you on Billy Bush [first cousin of the Decider, who guffawed along with Trump about sexually assaulting women] weekend, therefore he doesn't get a Cabinet position.'
Bannon continued, 'I told him the plane leaves at 11 o' clock in the morning. If you make the plane, you make the team. He didn't make the plane.'"
This doesn't necessarily mean that Christie's character is above reproach. He's still a bullying piece of shit. But his queasiness (or his desire to look queasy about the whole thing) about tying himself to Candidate Pussy Grabber was a non-starter for Obergruppenführer Bannon. "There's no room for you because you're not a big enough asshole."
Guess we better make that t-shirt XXXL.
Jesus, could this Trump Fiasco get any more disheartening?
And my thanks also to Jeanne for that amusing image of pink flamingos. Gorgeous birds. Only had one opportunity to see them in the wild, a huge colony all moving and bobbing and weaving together. It's not a mystery that someone might want a pink flamingo figure or two gracing their lawn, but it is odd how they've come to symbolize low rent, cheesy kitschiness (not to mention that John Waters movie).
I suppose it beats having a whole colony of Fat Donald statuettes camped out in your front yard, like overweight, orange haired gnomes, with red ties and that insistent "I'm a badass" glare that makes him look perpetually constipated.
Who knows? Maybe it will become a thing. Like pet rocks. Only not as smart.
Socialist Weed.
Canadian province of Ontario to open 150 provincial marijuana outlets for those at least 19 years old.
Putting the Bee in the Bibi
Mrs. Bibi being Bibied.
According to the NY Times, "Israel’s attorney general said Friday that he intended to bring fraud charges against Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing her of misusing some $100,000 in public funds in her management of the prime minister’s official residence."
Like husband, like wife. But it seems like just another bee sting.
It's just one of many corruption charges for which the Bibies are being investigated. It sounds as if there are so many allegations that Israelis are taking it all in with a sort of fatigued resignation.
Sounds almost like what's going on here with the Trumpados. Take any one or two scandals surrounding the Little King and almost any other politician would be dead on arrival. There is such a volume of fetid effluence pouring out of the White House that it's hard to know which outrage to concentrate on next. But Netanyahu has been in office for eight years. Donaldo only eight months. Just think of the incredible mess if this crap goes on for seven more years.
If the Bibies are anything like the Trumpies, the "poor-poor pitiful us" card will be flung on the table shortly.
I'm glad this week is almost over. This shit is wearing me down.
Coates is back with an article in the Atlantic magazine based on his new book 'We were 8 years in power'. It looks at trump as the culmination of white supremacism in the US. A statistic from Mother Jones; based only on white voters, trump won the Electoral College 398 to 81 with 68 toss-ups. Perhaps that is the source of the "unprecedented victory" he keeps referring to.
Coates notes racial progress in the US. In 1990 the whites in Louisiana voted for a White Supremacist, David Duke, to represent them in the senate. In 2016 White America voted for a White Supremacist for president. You may declare the Civil War finally over. The South won.