The Commentariat -- July 7, 2018
Afternoon Update:
That Went Well. Gardiner Harris & Choe Sang-Hun of the New York Times: "North Korea accused the Trump administration on Saturday of pushing a 'unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization' and called it 'deeply regrettable,' hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his two days of talks in the North Korean capital were 'productive.' Despite the criticism, North Korea's Foreign Ministry said the country's leader, Kim Jong-un, still wanted to build on the 'friendly relationship and trust' forged with President Trump during their summit meeting in Singapore on June 12. The ministry said Mr. Kim had writte a personal letter to Mr. Trump, reiterating that trust."
Dave Philipps of the New York Times: "A growing number of foreign-born recruits who joined the United States military through a special program created to recruit immigrant troops with valuable language and medical skills are being terminated before they can qualify for citizenship. Lawyers for the recruits say at least 30 have been discharged in recent weeks and thousands more are stuck in limbo -- currently enlisted but unable to serve -- and may also be forced out. They are being cut even as the Army has been unable to meet its 2018 recruiting goals.... 'There's no explanation for this except xenophobia,' said Margaret D Stock, a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and immigration lawyer who helped create the program.... The layers of clearance have grown so complex that a backlog of several thousand cases has piled up. A Defense Department official testified in a recent deposition that it would take 10 years to clear those currently waiting to serve."
Matt Zapotosky & Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein "seems to be getting used to the constant controversy and criticism that comes from overseeing [Robert] Mueller. Rather than walking on eggshells, he's starting to fight back.... Those who know him say Rosenstein is playing the long game. He doesn't put too much stock in any single daily development, they say, but is mindful about what his place in history will be." ...
Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) in a Washington Post op-ed: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is under assault, and that is wrong.... As a party, we [Republicans] can't let the president or his allies erode the independence of the Justice Department or public trust in the vital work of law enforcement.... When Trump talks about firing the special counsel or his power to pardon himself, he makes it seem as though he has something to hide.... The special counsel's investigation is not about Trump. It is about our national security.... Congress must never abandon its role as an equal branch of government. In this moment, that means protecting Mueller's investigation."
... Eric Tucker & Chad Day of the AP: "Lawyers for ... Donald Trump unleashed a blistering attack on former FBI Director James Comey in a confidential memo last year to the special counsel, casting him as 'Machiavellian,' dishonest and 'unbounded by law and regulation' as they sought to undermine the credibility of a law enforcement leader they see as a critical witness against the president. The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, provides a window into the formation of a legal strategy currently used by Trump's lawyers as they seek to pit the president's word against that of the former FBI director. Comey's firing in May 2017 helped set in motion the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, and one-on-one conversations with Trump that Comey documented in a series of memos helped form the basis of Mueller's inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice."
*****
Michael Schmidt & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "President Trump's lawyers set new conditions on Friday on an interview with the special counsel and said that the chances that the president would be voluntarily questioned were growing increasingly unlikely. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, needs to prove before Mr. Trump would agree to an interview that he has evidence that Mr. Trump committed a crime and that his testimony is essential to completing the investigation, said Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president's lead lawyer in the case. His declaration was the latest sign that the president's lawyers, who long cooperated quietly with the inquiry even as their client attacked it, have shifted to an openly combative stance. Mr. Giuliani acknowledged that Mr. Mueller was unlikely to agree to the interview demands." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Why is it I doubt Bob Mueller is falling for this moving-goal-posts feint?
Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "Prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller intend to present evidence at the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort that a banking executive allegedly helped Manafort obtain loans of approximately $16 million while the banker sought a role in the Trump campaign.... Until now, there had been no indication that his role in the Trump campaign would become part of the trial, and he had asked the judge to keep details about his ties to ... Donald Trump out of the trial. Prosecutors say any alleged collusion with the Russian government won't come up at the trial. The allegation of a possible quid pro quo came amid several court filings Friday.... The bank executive 'expressed interest in working on the Trump campaign, told (Manafort) about his interest, and eventually secured a position advising the Trump campaign,' the filing said. The unnamed man 'expressed an interest in serving in the administration of President Trump, but did not secure such a position.'" ...
... Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Lawyers for ... Paul Manafort have asked that his trial on bank and tax fraud charges set to open later this month in Alexandria, Virginia, be moved to Roanoke and put off until after another trial Manafort faces later this year in Washington.... 'Nowhere in the country is the bias against Mr. Manafort more apparent than here in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area,' defense lawyers wrote.... In a filing Friday evening, Manafort's lawyers ... complained that their client's jailing at such a distance from Washington has impaired their ability to prepare for a trial that is less than three weeks away." ...
... Adam Raymond of New York: "Paul Manafort is being kept in solitary confinement in a Virginia jail in order to 'guarantee his safety,' his lawyer said in court documents filed this week. 'He is locked in his cell for at least 23 hours per day (excluding visits from his attorneys),' defense attorney Kevin Downing wrote. In a brief filed Thursday, Downing wrote that Manafort is unable to adequately prepare for his two upcoming trails, the first of which starts later this month, while locked up.... [Robert] Mueller's team ... wrote that Manafort does not deserve special treatment since the limitations he's facing 'are common to defendants incarcerated pending trial.'"
Andrew Prokop of Vox: "The sprawling saga of Michael Cohen's hush money payoffs has taken another bizarre turn. Shera Bechard, a former Playboy model who Cohen had arranged a payoff for in exchange for her silence about a sex scandal last year, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday. Though Bechard's complaint is currently sealed, the Wall Street Journal's Michael Rothfeld and Joe Palazzolo report she is suing three people for alleged breach of contract. First there's Elliott Broidy, the wealthy Trump donor who had made the payments to Bechard. Second is Keith Davidson, the former lawyer for Bechard (and Stormy Daniels, and Karen McDougal) who had negotiated that and other hush money deals with Cohen. Third is Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels's new lawyer, who is trying to get Daniels's nondisclosure agreement struck down.... All of this would merely be a strange and tawdry side story in the many scandals of Michael Cohen -- if not for rampant speculation among liberals that it may have been Donald Trump, and not Elliott Broidy, who had the affair with Bechard."
Marty Graham of Reuters: "The U.S. government must provide a list by Saturday evening of the estimated 100 children under the age of 5 who were separated from their parents when entering the United States, a federal judge ordered on Friday. U.S. Judge Dana Sabraw also ordered the government to explain by Saturday its expectation for reuniting each of those children with their parents by the end of Tuesday. Sabraw last month issued the reunification order, which also set a July 26 deadline for more than 2,000 children to be reunited. The U.S. government attorneys said they may fail to meet those deadlines due to delays in confirming family relationships, but Sabraw declined to extend them without more information." ...
... Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration will not fully meet a federal judge's deadline to reunite all migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, and instead is seeking more time in instances where officials are struggling to match children to parents, according to court records filed late Thursday. The government's request, hours before a scheduled hearing on the issue Friday, marks an abrupt departure from comments made earlier Thursday from President Trump's secretary for Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, whose agency cares for the children in shelters. He had said the Trump administration 'will comply' with the deadlines, though he criticized the judge's timetable as 'extreme.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
** "... PBS NewsHour's Lisa Desjardins shares chilling first-hand accounts of family separations at the border." Mrs. McC: I stand corrected. Worse than criminal negligience. Depraved indifference, at best. We lock up people who do this to children. ...
... Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said Friday that Trump administration officials have told him and his staff that they view placing separated migrant children in foster care as an equivalent to reuniting them with their families. 'The secretary told us on a conference call they do not have an intention to reunify these children with their parents,' Inslee said on MSNBC's 'All in With Chris Hayes.'... 'They're going to call it good if they can find anybody else who can serve as a foster parent or anybody else who can serve as familial relationship, and these kids don't even know these strangers,' he continued." Inslee & five other Democratic governors -- Andrew Cuomo (New York), Dannel Malloy (Connecticut), Tom Wolf (Pennsylvania), Phil Murphy (New Jersey) and Kate Brown (Oregon) -- sent a letter to administration officials complaining about the inadequate effort to reunite families -- one that appears to "blatantly ignore the terms of [a] court order." ...
... "Whatever." Aura Bogado, et al., of Reveal News: "A major U.S. defense contractor quietly detaineddozens of immigrant children inside a vacant Phoenix office building with dark windows, no kitchen and only a few toilets during three weeks of the Trump administration's family separation effort, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has learned.... The building is not licensed by Arizona to hold children, and the contractor, MVM Inc., has claimed publicly that it does not operate 'shelters or any other type of housing' for children. Defending the administration's policy to separate families at the border in a May interview with NPR, White House chief of staff John Kelly promised: 'The children will be taken care of -- put into foster care or whatever.'... That 'whatever' for them was the vacant building tucked away in a midtown Phoenix neighborhood." ...
... David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: on how the U.S. has treated detained immigrant children: "The children were kept in often horrific conditions -- one child was apparently unbathed for 85 days and infested with lice, while others were bound to chairs naked in cold cells -- as their parents were unceremoniously shipped away with no knowledge of where their children were or when, if ever, they would see them again. In some cases Trump administration cronies like Betsy Devos with conservative religious adoption businesses and organizations have been profiting by housing the stolen children. As the Trump administration, facing withering public condemnation and judicial demands, begins to comply with court orders to reunite the families, it's not clear at this point that they're capable of complying in many cases even if they wanted to. Worse, these horrors are not born of incompetence or even mere callous insouciance. They are an intentional act of political terror by our government, perpetrated against some of the most vulnerable and desperate people in the world for purely racist reasons." ...
... Andrew Desiderio of the Daily Beast: "Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) was denied entry on Friday into a government facility [in Homestead, Florida,] housing unaccompanied immigrant minors and children who had been separated from their parents at the southern border.... According to Curbelo's office, the congressman followed the proper protocols with the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the facilities, prior to his scheduled tour." But at the last minute, after a more than two-week process, HHS said it was too busy to "give him a tour.... Around 1,000 children are being housed [in the Homestead facility].... 'If your operation is so sensitive and delicate that an elected leader walking through your facility and asking a few questions disrupts your work, then you have a bigger problem,' [Curbelo] said." ...
** Rob Cuthbert in a New York Times op-ed: "This month is the 70th anniversary of President Harry Truman's executive order to end discrimination in the military according to 'race, color, religion or national origin.'... Yet in recent weeks, President Trump has shown that the military can also be manipulated to serve a nativist agenda. The Department of Defense has unconscionably committed to assisting in the prosecution and interment of asylum seekers. And, over the past few months, Mr. Trump and the civilian leadership of the military have begun to demolish an honorable path to citizenship for immigrants in our armed services.... Congress must take the initiative to protect the thousands of immigrants who serve in our military from this xenophobic commander in chief."
** Annie Snider of Politico: "The Trump administration is suppressing an Environmental Protection Agency report that warns that most Americans inhale enough formaldehyde vapor in the course of daily life to put them at risk of developing leukemia and other ailments, a current and a former agency official told Politico. The warnings are contained in a draft health assessment EPA scientists completed just before Donald Trump became president, according to the officials. They said top advisers to departing Administrator Scott Pruitt are delaying its release as part of a campaign to undermine the agency's independent research into the health risks of toxic chemicals. Andrew Wheeler, the No. 2 official at EPA who will be the agency's new acting chief as of Monday..., was staff director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2004, when his boss, then-Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), sought to delay an earlier iteration of the formaldehyde assessment.... As long ago as January, Pruitt told a Senate panel that he believed the draft assessment was complete. Five months later, it has yet to see the light of day." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Peter Walker of the Guardian: "Donald Trump will almost entirely avoid London during his four-day visit to the UK next week, Downing Street has said, unveiling an itinerary that is likely to prompt accusations he is trying to avoid planned protests against him.... Trump, who is to meet Theresa May and the Queen among others before spending two days in Scotland, will only spend the night in London on Thursday, the day of his arrival, staying at the US ambassador's official residence in Regent's Park, Winfield House. Before that he will attend a gala dinner at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, and the following day he will hold talks with the prime minister at her Chequers country retreat in Buckinghamshire. Both are places where protesters can be kept out of sight and earshot. Later on the Friday he will meet the Queen at Windsor Castle before heading to Scotland for the weekend." Mrs. McC: Sure hope he gets to see Blimpy Baby Trump (story linked yesterday). (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Arris Folley of the Hill: "CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Friday slammed President Trump for his attacks on Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), calling them 'racist.' During a rally in Montana on Thursday night, Trump called Waters a 'low-IQ individual,' which is a description the president has used many times in reference to the congresswoman. The president also speculated Waters's IQ was 'somewhere in the mid-60s,' though the average IQ is 85-114. 'How about this Maxine Waters stuff over and over again?' Toobin said in reference to Trump's remarks on CNN. '"Low IQ." How racist is that? ... How many black people does the president have to attack in these terms?...' Toobin continued."
Chris Cillizza notes some of the men Donald Trump believes over their accusers: Jim Jordan, Roy Moore, Rob Porter, Rogers Ailes & Bill O'Reilly. (Al Franken, not so much.) "It doesn't take a genius to diagnose a severe case of situational ethics in Trump." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
She'll Fit Right in. Caleb Ecarma of Mediaite: "The wife of Bill Shine -- former Fox News co-president who just joined the Trump administration as White House communications chief -- has a lengthy history of defending racists, promoting unfounded anti-vaccination conspiracies, writing about 'Islamic Insanity,' and making racially-charged remarks on her social media pages. Darla Shine made these remarks primarily on her Twitter account, @darlashine, which was deleted as soon as the White House announced that her husband was officially joining the Trump administration." Ecarma cites numerous disgusting examples of Darla's "thoughts."
Scotty's Last Hurrah (Will Kill Us). Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "In the final hours of Scott Pruitt's tenure as administrator, the Environmental Protection Agency moved on Friday to effectively grant a loophole that will allow a major increase in the manufacturing of a diesel freight truck that produces as much as 55 times the air pollution as trucks that have modern emissions controls. The move by the E.P.A. came after intense lobbying by a small set of manufacturers that sell glider trucks, which use old engines built before new technologies significantly reduced emissions of particulates and nitrogen oxide that are blamed for asthma, lung cancer and other ailments." Mrs. McCrabbie: There is absolutely no excuse for this. None.
Rachel Bade & John Bresnahan of Politico: "A half-dozen ex-wrestlers told Politico they were regularly harassed in their training facility by sexually aggressive men who attended the university or worked there. The voyeurs would masturbate while watching the wrestlers shower or sit in the sauna, or engage in sexual acts in the areas where the athletes trained, the former wrestlers said.... Though none of the wrestlers and coaches interviewed blamed [Rep. Jim] Jordan for the inappropriate behavior they experienced..., they said he would have had to know about it. One former wrestler told Politico he saw Jordan yell at male voyeurs to get out of the sauna, though Jordan's office refuted this account.... Multiple former wrestlers have accused Jordan ... of being among the faculty members who turned a blind eye to inappropriate behavior by the late Richard Strauss, the university's former athletic doctor." ...
... Accusations Against Jordan Are Rosenstein's Fault. Catie Edmundson of the New York Times: Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Vicious) "was defiant Friday night on Fox News.... He disparaged some of the former college wrestlers who have come forward to say he knew of allegations that the team doctor, Richard H. Strauss, had fondled them. He said he could not explain why other more friendly wrestlers had leveled similar charges.president.... Mr. Jordan continued to fan conspiracy theories connecting the emergence of the charges to his aggressive questioning last month of Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, the man many Trump supporters hold responsible for the Russia investigation. 'I think the timing is suspect when you think about how this whole story came together after the Rosenstein hearing and the speaker's race,' he said.... Some of his backers have suggested that Mr. Jordan's accusers are also part of a 'deep state' conspiracy to derail his political future.... His supporters have tried to amass evidence of that conspiracy. One of the leading talking points, which Mr. Jordan referenced on Friday night, is the choice of the investigative law firm retained by Ohio State in the Strauss matter. The firm, Perkins Coie, worked for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, and helped to pay for a dossier of unconfirmed accusations linking the Trump campaign to Russian intelligence." ...
... Dear Mr. Rosenstein: Congratulations! You have replaced President Obama as The Source of All Evil. I'm sure it's not because you're Jewish. Is that Rosen-STINE or Rosen-STEEN? -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie ...
... William Saletan of Slate outlines the rules for evaluating malfeasance -- with ample examples -- that Jim Jordan applies to officials he is attacking. "1. You're responsible for what happens on your watch.... 2. You're responsible for monitoring the people around you.... 3. It's immoral to remain silent about the truth of an accusation.... 4. Any incomplete disclosure is malicious and corrupt.... 5. Any delay in disclosure is deliberate concealment.... 6. The penalty for these offenses should be prosecution or termination.... In every way, Jordan's conduct [re: the wresting scandal] violates the standards he applies to Comey, Mueller, Rosenstein, and Sessions. He ducked responsibility for offenses that occurred when he was, in effect, the deputy director of the OSU wrestling program. He claims to have known nothing about Strauss' locker-room behavior, even though Strauss' locker was next to his. And for months, despite explicit reports from Strauss' victims, Jordan has kept silent, asking them not to involve him in the story.... [Jordan] insists that such a person should be prosecuted, charged, or forced from office. That is the justice he must now face."
Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed: "The US Attorney's Office in Washington, DC, announced Friday that it is dismissing charges against the remaining defendants charged in connection with anti-Trump demonstrations on Inauguration Day. The dismissals conclude more than a year and a half of litigation over prosecutions that the defendants, their lawyers, and free speech advocates said represented overreach by the government, warning that they would chill First Amendment-protected activity going forward under the Trump administration. Police charged 234 people after making mass arrests in downtown Washington on Jan. 20, 2017. Twenty-one people pleaded guilty -- one person was sentenced to jail time after pleading guilty to a felony charge. The final dismissal notice Friday came after several trials in which prosecutors were unable to secure any convictions -- defendants were either acquitted or jurors failed to reach a verdict." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: No doubt this is because the DOJ is too busy framing that nice Jim Jordan to devote any more time to picking on Trump protesters.
Congressional Races
Julia Jacobs of the New York Times: "A Republican congressional candidate in a reliably blue California district managed to capture nearly a quarter of votes cast in the state's open primary last month -- just after the state Republican Party caught wind of his anti-Semitic comments and rescinded its automatic endorsement. The candidate, John Fitzgerald, urged people on his campaign website to pay attention to 'Jewish supremacism,' among other anti-Semitic views, which led party leaders to rescind their support in May, about two months after the official endorsement.... Mr. Fitzgerald received 23 percent of the vote to finish second in the 11th Congressional District's June primary, which is open to all candidates regardless of party and allows the top two finishers to qualify for the general election. He is running against Representative Mark DeSaulnier, a Democrat...."
Nathan McDermott of CNN: "A Democrat from Wisconsin running to replace House Speaker Paul Ryan in Congress was arrested and pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated in 1998, in addition to eight other arrests, according to documents obtained by CNN. Two of Randy Bryce's arrests were more recent -- in 2011 and 2018 -- while protesting the policies of Ryan and Wisconsin's GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, but the majority of Bryce's arrests stem from a single incident of driving under the influence, including three times for driving with a suspended license.... Bryce is facing Janesville School Board member Cathy Myers in a Democratic primary on August 14."
Eric Levitz of New York: "... most Americans' wages aren't getting any better, at all. Over the past 12 months, piddling wage gains -- combined with modest inflation -- have left the vast majority of our nation's laborers with lower real hourly earnings than they had in May 2017.... A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) offers a ... straightforward -- and political -- explanation: American policymakers have chosen to design an economic system that leaves workers desperate and disempowered, for the sake of directing a higher share of economic growth to bosses and shareholders. The OECD ... report lays waste to the idea that the plight of the American worker can be chalked up to impersonal economic forces, instead of concrete political decisions.... The U.S. [has] a higher 'low-income rate' than any other developed nation besides Greece and Spain.... Not only do Americans get fired more than other workers; we also get less warning.... Our government does less for us when we're out of work than just about anyone else's.... Labor's share of income has been falling faster in the U.S. than almost anywhere else."
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. -- Declaration of Independence, one of the "repeated injuries and usurpations" committed by King George ...
... Facebook Sorry It Banned Declaration of Independence as Hate Speech. Rachel Sandler of Business Insider (July 5): "In yet another viral case of Facebook struggling to police hate speech on its platform, parts of the Declaration of Independence posted by a newspaper in Texas were taken down earlier this week after the social media giant flagged the excerpts as hate speech.... The Vindicator, a small community newspaper in Liberty County, Texas, started posting excerpts of the Declaration of Independence earlier this week leading up to the Fourth of July. While the newspaper was able to post the majority of the Declaration of Independence without any issue, one post contained the phrase 'Indian Savages,' which, out of context would appear to violate Facebook's community standards.... After The Vindicator's editors published a story about it ... and notified Facebook, the company restored the post and apologized."
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Reader Comments (14)
By the way, in my car, I "got" to listen to a story on NPR (natch) all about how dissed the poor repugnican women are. So sad. Cathy Whatsername of the state of WA (McMorris Rogers?) is having to really pour it on, to properly represent women who are NOT LIBERAL, who are feeling abused. She is so hoping that all those Democrat(ic-- deliberately left off, as usual--) women running will not be elected. I wept all the way home for the poor ladies of the right.
I would also like to comment on the former crapweasel HEAD of the trumpie campaign, poor sad, in-solitary, Man-o'-Forked Tongue. He wants his trial moved to REDVA, rather than BLUEVA...
How can anyone like this guy? Did you ever seen anyone with as flat a head in the back? Someone left him too long on his back as a baby. If he isn't a fathead (I'm sure he is--) he is sure a flathead. So he is a con and a flathead. Maybe trumpie's head is flat too, but we can't tell due to that arrangement of cornsilk decorating his marble-containing noggin. UGH--
@Jeanne: got quite a kick out of your "flat head" description for "Man of Forked Tongue"–-good to laugh so early in the morning.
Yesterday I wrote about discrimination methods around CT's beach fronts. Today I see another story pertaining to this situation only this one is blantedly racist. A white man calls the police because he sees a black woman with her son in the neighborhood public pool–-horrors! The good thing here–-the best thing ever–-is that the woman took a video while she was being accosted, the video went viral and the man was fired from his company and they wrote a letter of apology to the woman.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/white-man-calls-cops-black-woman-pool_us_5b3f7f21e4b07b827cbfd30b
When I heard Jay Inslee's report on Hayes' last night I was stunned. Chris, too, was taken aback and asked Inslee to repeat what he had just told us. The absolute evil in this is shocking. When the US rounded up Japanese on the west coast, tore them from their homes, their businesses, and put them in internment camps they DID NOT take children away from their parents. Small mercies that, but at least families were kept together. As I said yesterday what is being done now is exactly what Nazi Germany did and as someone here said the other day–-at least they kept good records.
And the environment (and Stone Cold) bids a fond farewell to Mr. Pruitt.
https://twitter.com/stonecold2050/status/1015027798845427714
My friend called with the news of Pruitt's departure. Has was elated until I reminded him that now, WE must all pitch in to clean his pooh box.
I hear it's just been declared a "superfund site".
"The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, needs to prove before Mr. Trump would agree to an interview that he has evidence that Mr. Trump committed a crime ..."
So, Giuliani is saying that Mueller has to indict DiJiT to get DiJiT to "interview."
Whattaloyer!!
On a lighter note: https://uproxx.com/viral/funniest-best-tweets-
second-civil-war-letters/2/
An example:
Dear John, Marched six hours this weekend and still no sign of the
enemy. We've been told they were at the golf course. It's the 120th
time this has happened-must get better intel. Canadian allies made
a beer-drop yesterday. P.S. Send pretzels.
Continuing down the Trump Nazi road, we find that not only are children separated from their parents and housed in filthy conditions, often lice infested, they are also required by their super patriot racist abductors to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance.
“And now they live and wait in unfamiliar places: big American wsuburban houses where no one speaks their language; a locked shelter on a dusty road where they spend little time outside; a converted Walmart where each morning they are required to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, in English, to the country that holds them apart from their parents.”
This is reminiscent of Jews being forced to give the Heil Hitler salute upon command.
It IS happening here. Right under our noses. And I don’t want to hear any bullshit about how the pledge of allegiance is not the same as the Nazi salute. The stunning similarity is in being forced to demonstrate fealty and submission—in this case even in a different language— to those who consider you scum, and unworthy of being treated as a human being.
And I don’t give a shit about Trumpies whining that these undeserving brown children get food and in at least one prison camp, have a place to play soccer. “Oh, and they’re allowed to call their parents twice a week, praise Jesus!” This is the most ridiculous claim in support of some last minute invented “proof” of humane conditions for abducted babies. Call their parents? Where? Do they know? Of course not. The prison guards making fun of their pain don’t know. Betsy Devos, making money off these kids doesn’t know, Azar doesn’t know, and certainly the fat man teeing off at one of his luxury golf resorts doesn’t know. A sick joke.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/politics/separated-immigrant-children-are-all-over-the-us-now-far-from-parents-who-dont-know-where-they-are/2018/06/24/c9bc5ba6-7568-11e8-805c-4b67019fcfe4_story.html
MAKING THE MOVIES UN-AMERICAN:
How Hollywood tried to fight facism and ended up black listing suspected Communists, by Noah Isenberg reviewing a book about all this with some new twists on the tale:
https://newrepublic.com/article/149542/making-movies-un-american
UK to cover $6.6 million policing costs if Trump visits Scotland. Since he has his greedy paws all over golf courses there––ruined the sand dunes in particular along with evacuation of some residents–-how jolly for him to show his pudgy face once again for all the Scottish to feast upon. Our friends from Glasgow are vacationing here; the thought of being in Scotland while Trump visits is too much for them to bear.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/05/trump-set-for-a-6-million-round-of-golf-scotland.html
And that many million to protect his fat ass? It ain't fair, it just ain't fair! she said despairingly.
So...the protestors charged for the past year & a half with felonies whose cases were just 'dismissed:' who pays for their legal fees? Any compensation for the time taken from work to attend trials, meet with lawyers, or just in general for the disruption caused by frivolous charges that in the end evaporated into thin air?
Just got the following headline from The New Yorker: Scott Pruitt Is Gone, But The Trump Administration’s Climate Negligence Remains.
It's not Negligence, it's SABOTAGE.
Croatia beats Russia in a dramatic shootout to advance in World Cup. Look for the entire Russian team to be gulagged by the morning. Uncle Vlad will not be happy.
So will anyone finally be able to convince the little dictator that he’s been hosed by a much smarter little dictator? Prob’ly not. Must be Obama’s fault. No, scratch that. Rosenstein’s fault. No...maybe it was Comey’s fault. Hillary? Pelosi? The Deep State?...oh wait...it was...