Saturday
Feb102018
The Commentariat -- February 11, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Motoko Rich & Choe Sang-Hun of the New York Times: "... Flashing a sphinx-like smile and without ever speaking in public, Kim [Yo-jong, the sister of Kim Jong-un,] managed to outflank Mr. Trump's envoy to the Olympics, Vice President Mike Pence, in the game of diplomatic image-making. While Mr. Pence came with an old message -- that the United States would continue to ratchet up 'maximum sanctions' until the North dismantled its nuclear arsenal -- Ms. Kim delivered messages of reconciliation as well as an unexpected invitation from her brother to the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, to visit Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.... Mr. Pence is playing 'right into North Korea's hands by making it look like the U.S. is straying from its ally and actively undermining efforts fo inter-Korean relations,' said Mintaro Oba, a former diplomat at the State Department specializing in the Koreas, who now works as a speechwriter in Washington. Ms. Kim, on the other hand, 'is a very effective tip of the spear for the North Korean charm offensive,' Mr. Oba said. Analysts ... said that Mr. Pence had missed an opportunity." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Needless to say, I'm no fan of the Kim family, but I am pleased to assume that these stories comparing pence unfavorably to Kim is making Trump hopping mad. On a more serious note, it's distressing that a powerful country like the U.S. has chosen such dimwitted leaders that a rotten little nation like North Korea can show us up with the blink of an eyelash.
Trump Hotels Announce Outer Space Expansion. "To the Moon, Melania!" Christian Davenport of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration wants to turn the International Space Station into a kind of orbiting real estate venture run not by the government, but by private industry. The White House plans to stop funding the station after 2024, ending direct federal support of the orbiting laboratory. But it does not intend to abandon the orbiting laboratory altogether and is working on a transition plan that could turn the station over to the private sector, according to an internal NASA document obtained by The Washington Post. 'The decision to end direct federal support for the ISS in 2025 does not imply that the platform itself will be deorbited at that time -- it is possible that industry could continue to operate certain elements or capabilities of the ISS as part of a future commercial platform,' the document states. 'NASA will expand international and commercial partnerships over the next seven years in order to ensure continued human access to and presence in low Earth orbit.'"
The problem for Kelly is that a good number of his staff tell me he's a liar. -- Jonathan Swan of Axios, in a tweet ...
... Benjamin Hart of New York: "After a disastrous week for White House Chief of Staff John Kelly..., Trump administration talking heads were in cleanup mode on Sunday morning. Amid reports that President Trump was considering getting rid of his chief of staff, Kellyanne Conway appeared on CNN's State of the Union with Jake Tapper to claim otherwise.... (Judging by past events, this assurance does not indicate that Kelly's job is completely secure.)... She defended President Trump's unwillingness to sympathize with Porter's accusers by ... pointing to job gains among women in the last year. And she dodged a question about the timeline of what Kelly and White House Chief Counsel Donald McGahn knew about Porter's behavior.... Kelly may still enjoy the confidence of the president, but he has increasingly become known for a loose relationship with the truth, so his credibility is not exactly airtight on this or any other matter." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Having "a loose relationship with the truth" should be a point of bonding between Trump & Kelly. ...
... Jonathan Swan & Mike Allen of Axios: Former "White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter is telling associates that some senior White House officials strongly encouraged him to 'stay and fight,' and claims he 'never misrepresented anything' to Chief of Staff John Kelly." According to Porter, he "told Kelly, as he had before, that he'd 'had troubled marriages but that the more outrageous allegations of physical abuse that might be suggested were untrue.'... [Porter said he] "learned [Wednesday] evening from news reports, not from Kelly or anyone at the White House,' that Thursday would be his last day." The report also relays Kelly's version of events, via an unnamed Congressman. Trump was supposedly oblivious to everything. Mrs. McC: They're all a bunch of liars, so who knows? ...
... Anyhow, over on Fox "News," the crazies -- in this case, Jeanine Pirro & Sebastian Gorka -- have cooked up a conspiracy theory for all this, and you won't be surprised to learn that the Porter debacle is all Obama's fault. Mrs. McC: I'm disappointed Hillary doesn't get some credit here.
Nunes "News." David Siders of Politico: "House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a relentless critic of the media, has found a way around the often unflattering coverage of his role in the Trump-Russia investigation -- by operating his own partisan news outlet. Resembling a local, conservative news site, 'The California Republican' is classified on Facebook as a 'media/news company' and claims to deliver 'the best of US, California, and Central Valley news, sports, and analysis.' But the website is paid for by Nunes' campaign committee, according to small print at the bottom of the site. Leading the home page most recently: a photograph of Nunes over the headline, 'Understanding the process behind #ReleaseTheMemo.'"
*****
Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Trump complained on Saturday about allegations that he said were destroying the lives of those accused -- appearing to express doubts about the #MeToo movement after the resignations this week of two White House aides facing claims of domestic violence. In an early morning Twitter post, Mr. Trump did not name the former aides, but said: 'Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused -- life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?' Mr. Trump's claim ran counter to the White House's portrayal of its actions in response to the abuse allegations. Administration officials maintained that they acted decisively in the cases of Rob Porter, the staff secretary, and David Sorensen, a speechwriter, both of whom stepped down after their former wives accused them of emotional and physical abuse. But the president's defense is in keeping with the White House's initially defensive reaction to the charges against Mr. Porter -- as well as his tendency to dismiss allegations made against him and other powerful men by women who say they were sexually harassed." ...
... You Want Due Process? I'll Show You Due Process. Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) went after President Trump on Saturday for his tweet questioning a lack of 'due process' in abuse claims.... 'The President has shown through words and actions that he doesn't value women. It's not surprising that he doesn't believe survivors or understand the national conversation that is happening,' Gillibrand tweeted. 'If he wants due process for the over dozen sexual assault allegations against him, let's have Congressional hearings tomorrow,' she continued. 'I would support that and my colleagues should too.'" ...
... Benjamin Hart of New York: "One day after defending Rob Porter, the now-former White House staff secretary who is accused of having physically abused his two ex-wives, President Trump, a man who once demanded the Central Park Five's execution and then continued to claim they were guilty long after their exoneration; who advanced a grotesque, years-long conspiracy theory alleging President Obama was born in Kenya; who led unhinged 'Lock her up!' chants against his political opponent at rallies, and who is desperately trying to dismantle the FBI and Department of Justice just to avoid an investigation into his own possible transgressions, tweeted on Saturday about the degraded state of due process in modern American life." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Well, Ben, maybe Trump has been getting up early to read the Constitution. ...
... "Trump Believes the Men." Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico: "For ... Donald Trump, the allegations that his now-former staff secretary was a serial domestic abuser are another #HimToo moment. Never mind the FBI background check that found the allegations and restraining order credible enough to delay Rob Porter's security clearance, or the close-up photos of the black eye Porter's ex-wife says he gave her on vacation in Italy. 'Of course he never believes the women -- he can't,' [Rep. Kathlenn] Rice [D-N.Y.] said. 'Donald Trump's presidency is built on people not believing women. If people start believing women, maybe they'd think about believing any of the dozen-plus women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault and harassment.'... [The defense of Porter (& David Sorensen) is] part of a pattern in which Trump only defends one side in disputes between men and women over sex and violence: the men." ...
... Haley Britzky of Axios lists the men Trump has defended after they were credibly accused of abusing women. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Maureen Dowd compiles an impressive list of horribles that define Trump, & to a lesser extent, & Co.
Sharon LaFraniere of the New York Times: "Under pressure from President Trump, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee plan to redact a memo defending the F.B.I.'s surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide to resolve Mr. Trump's complaint that the document disclosed highly sensitive information, a Democrat on the committee said Saturday.... Jim Himes of Connecticut, accused Mr. Trump of hypocrisy in demanding changes to the document.... Mr. Himes noted that the president had declassified the contents of a rival Republican memo, based on the same underlying documents, that criticized the F.B.I.'s behavior despite vigorous objections from both the bureau and the Justice Department. 'There is just no way that man will allow the release of information that shows that the Nunes memo is just plain wrong,' Mr. Himes said in an interview.... Both memos address the F.B.I.'s justification for seeking a secret court warrant in October 2016 to eavesdrop on the former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page, who was suspected of being an agent of Russia." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: In a couple of months, we're going to be able to read between the lines of what's left of the Democrats' memo & find out what we already know: that the Nunes memo is crap. ...
... Rebecca Savransky of the Hill: "Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Saturday hit back at President Trump after the president defended his decision to block the release of a memo from Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee. Mr. President, what you call "political" are actually called facts, and your concern for sources and methods would be more convincing if you hadn't decided to release the GOP memo ("100%") before reading it and over the objections of the FBI,' tweeted Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee.... His tweet came after Trump asserted earlier in the day that Democrats 'knew' their memo would have to be heavily redacted due to its sources and methods. 'The Democrats sent a very political and long response memo which they knew, because of sources and methods (and more), would have to be heavily redacted, whereupon they would blame the White House for lack of transparency,' Trump tweeted. 'Told them to re-do and send back in proper form!'" ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "After the House Intelligence Committee voted this week to release a Democratic rebuttal to the Nunes memo, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders assured us that the White House would be evenhanded. 'As stated many times,' Sanders said, 'the administration will follow the same process and procedure with this memorandum from the minority as it did last week, when it received the memorandum from the majority.' That is simply not what happened. The White House announced Friday night (translation: news-dump o'clock) that it would not immediately approve the release of the Democratic memo. It instead instructed Democrats to work with the Justice Department to adjust the memo so that it could be released publicly.... This is not how the White House treated the Nunes memo. When it was confronted with a decision about whether to release that memo, it did so over the objections of the FBI.... Before he had even reviewed the memo — Trump and the White House made clear they would release the GOP memo."
Follow the Money, Arrive at Trump Laundromat. Katelyn Polantz & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "A senator is asking the Treasury Department to turn over records of a lucrative real estate sale Donald Trump made to a Russian billionaire as the Senate Finance Committee looks into Trump's ties to Russians. Sen. Ron Wyden, the committee's ranking member, on Friday requested the financial records of the sale of Trump's former estate in Palm Beach to Dmitry Rybolovlev. Wyden's letter outlined how Donald Trump bought a 6.3-acre property in Florida for $41.35 million in 2004 and then sold that property to a company owned by the businessman four years later. The sale price to Rybolovlev more than doubled Trump's initial investment, to $95 million. The property's appraisal in 2008 fell short of that sale price by $30 million, Wyden said.... 'It is imperative that Congress follow the money and conduct a thorough investigation into any potential money laundering or other illicit financial dealings between the President, his associates, and Russia.'"
Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein on CNN: "We're here again. A powerful and determined President is squaring off against an independent investigator operating inside the Justice Department. Special counsel Robert Mueller's mission is a comprehensive look at Russian meddling in the 2016 election -- and any other crimes he uncovers in the process.... Donald Trump insists it's all a 'witch hunt' and an unfair examination of his family's personal finances. He constantly complains about the investigation in private and reportedly asked his White House counsel to have Mueller fired. No wonder many people are making comparisons to the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973, when President Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned." The writers publish an adaptation of the portion of their book The Final Days that covers the "Saturday Night Massacre." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
William Antholis, in Politico Magazine, makes the case that Rob Porter (& Jared Kushner, Mike Flynn, et al.,) should never had had access to some of the top secrets that he may have read. "If an employee receives an interim security clearance, he or she is allowed by law to serve in positions designated 'National Security Non-Critical Sensitive' or 'National Security/Critical Sensitive.' They cannot, however, be given a 'Special Sensitive' job, which requires a different level of clearance: Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information -- also known as TS/SCI or TS/CodeWord.... In the coming days, it will be critical to know whether Priebus and Kelly, Flynn and McMaster, and/or the president himself knew about Porter's security clearance status. Based on that knowledge, did they allow him access to Top Secret/CodeWord intelligence, including the President's Daily Briefing?... If they did not know, then who exactly at the White House is protecting our national secrets?" ...
... To give us a longer perspective on John Kelly, here's part of the statement from the Center for Constitutional Rights, a group that defended some of the Guantánamo prisoners, submitted in advance of Senate hearings to confirm Kelly as Secretary of Homeland Security (Jan. 10, 2017):
General Kelly’s aggressive oversight of the illegal military prison at Guantánamo Bay disqualifies him to head the Department of Homeland Security. Presiding over a population of detainees not charged or convicted of crimes, over whom he had maximum custodial control, Kelly treated them with brutality. His response to the detainees’ peaceful hunger strike in 2013 was punitive force-feeding, solitary confinement, and rubber bullets. Furthermore, he sabotaged efforts by the Obama administration to resettle detainees, consistently undermining the will of his commander in chief. His temperament and actions make him unfit to lead an agency that currently holds tens of thousands of immigrants, including many fleeing violence and many in long-term indefinite detention.
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say, now that our Rhodes-scholarly staff secretary & (alleged) serial wife-beater is out of a job and radioactive, how will he support himself? Sell state secrets? I think a scenario like this is more of a danger than one in which some ex-girlfriend blackmails him, as many talking heads have worried. Porter has known from Day 1 that he could be booted (in fact, everyone in President* Trumpertantrum's administration probably has that uppermost in his mind). So was Porter saving for a rainy day on his flashdrive? ...
... Several contributors last week mentioned the unusually high turnover in the Trump White House. Some of the staff who were forced out (like Loose Lips Bannon -- see Michael Wolff tell-all) have had access to highly-classified information. (Bannon was briefly [& infamously] on the National Security Council, & he too has lost his major sources of income, thanks to a Trump vendetta.) All White Houses fire staff, of course, but it's usually handled more gingerly than in Trumpland (being escorted kicking & screaming out of the building -- Omarosa; promised by Trump you could leave on your own schedule, then finding out less than an hour later Trump had announced your replacement via Twitter -- Priebus). Needless to say, disgruntled ex-employees who were privy to sensitive information are walking risks, & Trump's White House has mismanaged its way into far too many of them.
The Veep Who Was Left out in the Cold. Zeke Miller & Matthew Pennington of the AP: "Vice President Mike Pence's efforts to keep North Korea from stealing the show at the Winter Olympics proved to be short-lived, quickly drowned out by the images of the two Koreas marching and competing together, as the South appeared to look favorably on warming ties on the Korean Peninsula. Pence spent the days leading up to the games warning that the North was trying to 'hijack the message and imagery of the Olympic Games' with its 'propaganda.' But the North was still welcomed with open arms to what South Korean President Moon Jae-in called 'Olympic games of peace' and the U.S. appeared to be the one left out in the cold. Moon was all smiles Saturday as he greeted Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and Kim Yong Nam, the country's 90-year-old nominal head of state, for lunch at the presidential residence." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This will force the Trumpster to yell at pence. Such a shame.
Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The Trump administration has adopted new limits on the use of 'guidance documents' that federal agencies have issued on almost every conceivable subject, an action that could have sweeping implications for the government's ability to sue companies accused of violations. Guidance documents offer the government's interpretation of laws, and often when individuals or companies face accusations of legal violations, what they have really violated are the guidance documents.... The new policy, issued by the No. 3 official at the Justice Department, Rachel L. Brand, is significant because federal agencies have issued hundreds of guidance documents on a wide range of laws covering issues like health care, the environment, civil rights and labor. Under the revised policy, Ms. Brand said, the Justice Department will not 'use its enforcement authority to effectively convert agency guidance documents into binding rules.' Moreover, she said, Justice Department lawyers, who represent federal agencies in court, 'may not use noncompliance with guidance documents as a basis for proving violations of applicable law.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Nice parting gift. Thanks, Rachel! P.S. You should fit in well at WalMart.
Lauren Gardner of Politico: "A top official charged with overseeing the safety of U.S. railroads has resigned 'effective immediately,' the Department of Transportation said Saturday after Politico raised questions about whether he had been simultaneously working as a public relations consultant for a sheriff's department in Mississippi. Heath Hall became the Federal Railroad Administration's acting administrator in June but subsequently appeared on at least two occasions in Mississippi media reports as a spokesman for the Madison County sheriff, in a community where Hall has long run a public relations and political consulting firm. The firm continued to receive payments from the county for its services from July to December, despite his pledge in a federal ethics form that it would remain 'dormant' while he worked at DOT." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is the kind of thing that can happen during any administration, but it is more likely to happen when the POTUS* himself is double-dipping. The fish rots from the head.
Liz Robbins of the New York Times: Across the nation, "federal judges are ... giving people time to fight in the immigration courts. They are slowing deportations by insisting that undocumented immigrants still have the right of due process, even if in many of these cases, the immigrants had known for years that they could be expelled. Immigration officials offered sharp rebukes to the judges on Friday. 'I am increasingly troubled by orders from federal judges halting the deportation of certain groups of individuals, all of which appear to ignore the fact that each alien in question was lawfully ordered removed from the United States after full and fair proceedings, many of which lasted several years or longer, at great taxpayer expense,' said Thomas D. Homan, the deputy director of the United States Customs and Immigration Enforcement agency, known as ICE." ...
Sarah Ruiz-Grossman of the Huffington Post: "Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to deport an undocumented man from Mexico whose child is battling cancer. On Thursday, ICE denied an extension to remain in the U.S. for 30-year-old Jesus Berrones, who lives in Arizona with his pregnant wife and five children. The immigration agency ordered Berrones to appear on Monday to be deported, according to his lawyer Garrett Wilkes. Berrones has been living in the U.S. since he was 1½, when his parents brought him here in 1989, according to his wife, Sonia. In 2006, at age 19, Berrones was caught driving with a fake license and deported to Mexico. He then twice re-entered the country unlawfully to rejoin his family. In 2016, ICE granted Berrones a stay of removal based on his son's illness. "last year, under the new Trump administration, Berrones went to ICE to refile a stay, and officials told him it was not necessary because he was no longer a deportation priority, Wilkes said. But in January, Berrones got a notice from ICE that he would be deported." ...
... Nicholas Kristof: "President Trump suggests that the aim of his crackdown on immigrants is to 'defend Americans' from 'savage,' 'worst of the worst' intruders who kill Americans or at least are 'dangerous criminals.' What does Trump's crackdown look like in real life? In Lawrence, Kan., the other day, immigration agents handcuffed a beloved chemistry professor as he was leaving his home to drive his daughter to school. Then they warned his crying wife and children, ages 7 to 14, that they could be arrested if they tried to hug him goodbye, and drove off with him -- leaving a shattered family behind."
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd.
Emily Stewart of Vox: "... Donald Trump propelled himself to the White House in part by promising to revive American manufacturing and deliver high-paying jobs to that industry's workers. One plank of his plan for accomplishing that goal was the $1.5 trillion tax cut bill Republicans passed in December. That legislation, however, is on track to be much more beneficial to shareholders than it is workers across all sectors -- and perhaps especially in manufacturing. On Thursday, Morgan Stanley analysts said they expect companies in general to pass just 13.2 percent of tax cut savings directly to workers, while 42.9 percent will go to share buybacks and dividends, which largely benefit shareholders and executives who hold large amounts of their companies' shares. In manufacturing, the split is even more drastic: Analysts think 46.7 percent of tax savings will go to buybacks and dividends, while just 8.9 percent will go to worker pay." ...
... Robert Reich in Salon: "Trump's promise that corporations will use his giant new tax cut to make new investments and raise workers' wages is proving to be about as truthful as his promise to release his tax returns.... Almost all the extra money is going into stock buybacks. Since the tax cut became law, buy-backs have surged to $88.6 billion. That's more than double the amount of buybacks in the same period last year, according to data provided by Birinyi Associates. If anything, the current tumult in the stock market will fuel even more buybacks. Stock buybacks are corporate purchases of their own shares of stock. Corporations do this to artificially prop up their share prices. Buybacks are the corporate equivalent of steroids. They may make shareholders feel better than otherwise, but nothing really changes." ...
... About That Bonus. Patricia Cohen of the New York Times: "A growing preference among employers for one-time awards instead of raises that keep building over time has been quietly transforming the employment landscape for two decades.... The stream of companies announcing bonuses for their employees in the wake of the newly minted tax cuts is just the latest expression of the trend. This little-noticed shift in how employers compensate workers could also help explain one of the economy's most persistent puzzles: why a hot labor market has failed to ignite bigger increases in wages." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Ya see, Trumpbots, your BFF in the White House & that sweet sadsack Paul Ryan have been scamming you. Big time.
Beyond the Beltway
Your Typical Trump Campaign Chairman. Scott Wartman of Cincinnati.com: "Former Judge Tim Nolan on Friday agreed to spend 20 years in prison for human trafficking. He used drugs, threats of arrest and threats of eviction to force women and girls under the age of 18 into sex acts, according to the charges read in court by Judge Kathleen Lape. Nolan pleaded guilty to 21 counts dating back to 2004. In addition to human trafficking and attempted human trafficking, the charges included giving drugs and alcohol to minors. Under the plea agreement, Nolan will serve 20 years in prison and pay a $100,000 fine. He would be eligible for parole in four years, his attorney said. The judge will sentence him on March 29.... Nolan served as a district judge in the late 1970s and early 1980s and had become a well-known political figure. He campaigned locally for ... Donald Trump, was vocal on many conservative/tea party issues, and was elected to the Campbell County School Board in 2016." (According to LG&$, Nolan was Trump's Kentucky campaign chair.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I do want to congratulate Campbell County voters for electing a child sex abuser to the school board. Campbell County went almost 2-to-1 for Trump in 2016: 62.5 percent to 32.7 for Clinton. Just good judgment all around. Meanwhile, Campbell County should have a mess on its hands: every single conviction of every single young woman who appeared before "Judge" Nolan in this century should be thrown out. In the meantime, Donaldo, let's be clear: your friend Tom got his due process.
Way Beyond
Isabel Kershner, et al., of the New York Times: "Israel clashed with Syrian and Iranian military forces on Saturday in a series of audacious cross-border strikes that could mark a dangerous new phase in Syria's long civil war if the day's fighting draws Israel more directly into the conflict. The confrontations began before dawn when Israel intercepted what it said was an Iranian drone that had penetrated its airspace from Syria. The Israeli military then attacked what it called the command-and-control center from which Iran had launched the drone, at a Syrian air base near Palmyra. On its way back from the mission, one of Israel's F-16 fighter jets crashed in northern Israel after coming under heavy Syrian antiaircraft fire. It is believed to be the first Israeli plane lost under enemy fire in decades. That prompted a broad wave of Israeli strikes against a dozen Syrian and Iranian targets in Syrian territory. The Israeli military said it hit eight Syrian targets, including three aerial defense batteries, and four Iranian positions that it described as 'part of Iran's military entrenchment in Syria.'"
News Lede
New York Times: "A Russian plane carrying 71 people crashed near Moscow shortly after takeoff on Sunday afternoon, killing all on board. Flight 703, operated by the Russian regional carrier Saratov Airlines, was carrying 65 passengers and six crew members. The plane went down near the village of Stepanovskoe, about 50 miles southeast of Moscow in the Ramenskoe District, according to a statement from the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry."
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Reader Comments (23)
If after reading Maureen Dowd's NYT well-written opinion piece (for a change) you may find it worth checking out the Reader Picks, too. Commenter John F. McBride from Seattle has a listing of his own borrowed from Media Matters that enumerates Miz Dowd past role in the trashing of Hilliary to the benefit of Trump. And Gemli contributes his usual gem.
Interesting side note, in more recent columns she's begun to say Barack Obama and not call him by her previous petty diminutive put down. At last, Barry has left the room.
Once again, the little dictator and his half pence have done the seemingly impossible: to make the United States look irrelevant and inept on the world stage at the Olympic Games. I suppose that’s what you get when you substitute bullying bluster, obdurate ignorance and juvenile picque for adroit, sagacious management of a suddenly fluid situation in delicate international realpolitik.
Moon and the Kims have left them with nothing to do but wave their nukes around.
Now who’s the little rocket man?
If anyone watched the opening ceremony in Pyeong Yang you
probably came away with the same thought I did. The US should
have just sent a cardboard cutout of pence. He sat there
unemotional with that look on his face, the one that's difficult to
describe. I saw him move once when his wife whispered in his ear.
He didn't stand or acknowledge any group of athletes, even ours.
Maybe the biggest problem with the Democratic memo, other than it was factual, was it was "long". Democrats should have gotten an author of kindergarten books to write the memo and told him to keep it simple.
Dear Mr. Trump,
You seem to be having trouble understanding your new job. The person with ultimate responsibility for hiring people in the WH who need serious security clearance is YOU. So YOU have no problem hiring people with access to serious security items without full clearance. YOU have no problem hiring such people without even checking the FBI data. Yes, it might be possible that allegations are false, but since YOU run the WH, YOU are responsible for doing the complete evaluation.
It seems Mr. Trump you are unaware of what your job is. That is the reason I used Mr. instead of POTUS.
P.S. I know this is difficult for YOU, but the POTUS needs to accept responsibility for things. And given your mental state, this is impossible.
Thanks @MAG for mentioning the Dowd column, I probably would have passed that up since for many moons her cleverness was wearing thin. I wondered whom it would be she could write about positively–her disparagement of "Barry" and Hillary became tiresome––McBride's list was proof of that pudding.
The stories about ICE arresting long time resident immigrants, tearing them from their families, is sickening. How does one do that if one has an ounce of compassion? Talk about cold blooded––ICE–-absolutely!
The comments above about all these persons who were privy to classified or semi-classified information and are now out on their ear but harboring this data close to their broken hearts is more than troubling–-it's dangerous. If this happened in Putin's palace, some of these persons would be found dead on the sidewalk on a rainy night.
@Forest: Had to laugh at your idea of just sending a cardboard cut-out of Pence to S.K. because I think he always looks and acts like one. He's so put together in a Ken doll way that you want to boot him in the rear to see if he jumps.
And because it's Sunday, I wanted to ask my old pal God a whole lot of questions, but when I rang him up there was only this message:
"Sorry, your request is denied. God will be absent from Cloud 9 for some time due to his trip to South Korea to hear all the prayers that he will not answer."
Alas! Poor MarvinS: Trump looked at your letter and with his limited apprehension and reading skills simply saw the all cap words: YOU, YOU, YOU...and said to himself, "...nice, it's all about ME, ME, ME." (words in between didn't sink in).
P.S. After I posted, a fleeting thought crossed my mind, had I used the wrong word? Quickly Googled and et voila:
Comprehension requires knowledge, while apprehension does not. ... Apprehension is a state of mind wherein a person does not fully grasp the meaning of an idea or object presented to him, while comprehension is a state of mind wherein he is able to fully understand the meaning of the idea or object presented to him.
Yep! In reference to Trump, apprehension was correct!
MAG, your right! My mistake. Trump sees only himself.
You all can quibble with my percentages, but I think it's safe to assume that 90 percent of the people willing to work in a Trump administration have some kind of deficiency that assures us they are NOT "the best people." There might be 10 percent who -- while they would not work for Trump in a private capacity (like on his campaign) -- hope they can put the brakes on the Trump train wreck. So, unfair tho it may be, every political appointee in the Trump administration is suspect because the odds are high that there is something seriously wrong with him or her.
Even tho I do know how to behave in public, if I ever met someone who said, "I work for Trump," (not likely in my current circumstance), I don't think I could help but blurt out, "OMG, what's wrong with you?!" And I wouldn't fault myself. A spontaneous utterance is what it is.
Bea, I think your 90% is right on. I would love to see the list of people Trump offered jobs who said no.
Marvin brings up an excellent point about a security clearance for the little dictator. Given the scams, schemes, con jobs, the raft of sexual harassment charges, the sneaking in to dressing rooms to watch young girls change, the myriad connections to shady underworld characters both in this country and abroad, the questionable “banking” arrangements, the money laundering (even a sniff of it), the criminal connections, not to mention the thousands of lawsuits, including those with multi-million dollar findings against him, plus the scheme to deny housing to African-Americans for which he was smacked down by the feds, it’s highly unlikely, not to say impossible, that Trumpado would pass anyone’s security clearance.
The FBI is always on the lookout for red flags indicating an individual being considered for top secret clearance could be compromised in some way or blackmailed. I give you Donald J. Trump.
Could he pass clearance to be a crossing guard or school bus driver? Never in life. It’s entirely possible that, were he ever to have effected a hostile takeover of Coca-Cola and installed himself as CEO, the board would deny him access to the formula for “real Coke” for fear of his selling it to Pepsi and pocketing the payoff. But he has access to the nuclear codes.
Because presidents are not given a security clearance, this criminal fuck and feckless leaker of classified information to foreign governments, is given immediate access to all manner of top secret documents. Kindergarten aides undergo more stringent background checks than this loser. It’s likely that no one ever expected such a low life lying chiseler to slither into the Oval Office, so it could be time to rethink that idea.
Forrest,
C’mon now. A cardboard cutout of little mikey would be unfair to the real pence. Cardboard is at least authentic. Plus, way more personality.
Bea,
At this point in the Republican Party's devolution to its essentials of greed and white superiority, it would be very reasonable to extend your analysis to the entire party. Maybe, to be generous, not to all who vote for Republicans but certainly to the vast majority of those who make their slimy living representing the party at the national and at most of the red states' levels.
That would be how I explain the party's evident unwillingness to decry the behavior in the WH. The WH makes the news...but most Republican politicians are cut from much the same cloth. They too have sold their souls, just not so publicly and brazenly.
And while their lead buffoon has not proved to be good for their brand, he and his WH's cascading disasters are doing them the great favor of distracting the public from their own daily mis-and malfeasances.
@Akhilleus: I'm betting that -- at least after Trump leaked top-secret intelligence to Lavrov & Kislyak, putting an Israel intelligence officer in danger -- some of Trump's briefers put their secret stuff in his PDB (which he doesn't read) but accidentally forget to tell him about it in the oral briefings.
Note to FBI & CIA: Rob Porter knows a lot more secret stuff than the POTUS* does. Y'all might want to follow him around to see if he's putting any notes under rocks in D.C. parks.
I don't think Rob Porter should leave any notes under rocks in D.C.
parks. After all, that's where the POS* finds all his best people,
under rocks in D.C. parks.
*president
@forrest morris: Okay, ya got me!
I must admit that I was caught off guard by how much scandal has been ginned up by the whole Rob Porter alleged wife beating. Now that the bar for acceptable behavior has been ripped off the wall and is presently laying flat on the ground, a wife beater seems to blend in as naturally as Tang's fake tan cream.
I have literally no hope of this administration and its entire group of enablers to ever "do the right thing", and as Marie hypothesizes, in order to be elevated within this environment, being a shitty person seems to be a primary prerequisite.
This is old news satire but it reminds us of origin of the USA.
Native American Council Offers Amnesty to 240 Million Undocumented Whites
Re. the ISS: Good riddance, à mon avis, of a boondoggle of immense proportions. During my tenure at the University of Iowa, my faculty colleague James Van Allen proselytized often, with convincing data, about the folly of manned space flight. History has proven him correct (recall that the Van Allen belts were discovered by an unmanned satellite), as evidenced about the spectacular achievements of extraterrestrial probes and robotics relative to the meager output from the moon missions, Shuttle and ISS. A look at the ISS bibliography reveals minor advances of existing science, experiments just as easily done by robots, or science fair level exercises. At astronomical cost (sorry). Giving it away or a fire sale would be a fitting end.
Akhilleus;
Your sentence: “It’s likely that no one ever expected such a low life lying chiseler to slither into the Oval Office…” is somewhat contradicted by
Federalist Paper #68 (attributed to Hamilton) which, in my mind, has become one of the more ironic documents from those revolutionary times.
The very “condition” we have today appears to be the direct result of that Constitutional provision (Article 2, Section 1) that Hamilton enthusiastically backed in order to prevent the very “situation” we now have in the Oval Office.
#68 begins:
“Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?”
I know rationally that it is an infinite cesspit, but I am still floored by the level of blatant corruption. From the Guardian article:
“It is a serious attempt by someone high up in government to make the US government and Congress look ridiculous,” he said [Anders Åslund, who helped compile the original list of oligarchs who made their money corruptly from their ties with Vladimir Putin].
“In doing so, this senior official ridiculed the government experts who had prepared another report, rendering [the July congressional legislation] ineffective and mocking US sanctions on Russia overall. By signing this list, the secretary of the treasury took responsibility for it.”
“The main beneficiary of this list is Russia’s president,” Åslund concluded.
... and perhaps some American kleptocrats who are beholden to him.
@Whyte Owen: Thanks for your POV on the space station. I'd always thought of it as a plus, even it was technically a "waste of taxpayer money." So maybe, just maybe, I might be wrong. Anyhow, I won't be staying at the Trump Hotel Intergalactic.