CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.
By a 54–45 vote, the Senate confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on Friday.
Well, it was nice having voting rights while it lasted.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.
By a 54–45 vote, the Senate confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on Friday.
Airstrike on Syria (Photo: screen capture).
More than once, I’ve brought up the possibility of Trump starting yet another war, and I’ve been on edge for a while now, wondering when the fuck it was going to happen, because I think we all knew this was coming. The Tiny Tyrant is not bathing in adulation, he’s not everyone’s little baby, being cooed at. People are not happy, and they aren’t impressed. His low approval ratings are setting a whole new record. His Regime is a chaotic clusterfuck, his wife happily keeps her distance, while people are calling for her to get the fuck out of NYC, and no one in Florida wants the Trumps around anymore, as they are pure poison to plain folk, their wallets, and their businesses. There’s the collusion with Russia, the overwhelming evidence of corruption, fraud, and constitution violation. Donnie hasn’t gotten over his humiliation in not passing the Fuck You Care Plan, either. So, what’s a shallow, sociopathic idiot to do? War! Missiles! It’s the War on Terra 2.0!
And, just like with Bush, this is already working on at least some people, primarily the media it seems. Deciding to fire a missile from a long distance to slaughter people does not make a person “presidential”. Especially not in this case. Trump made this decision at his Mar-a-private club, without congressional approval. That’s not presidential. That’s a fucking dictator. And there’s something everyone really needs to remember – Trump does not give one shit about those Syrian children. Syria was on his personal hit list of bannination, and when he was campaigning, he compared Syrian refugees to venomous snakes. Don’t go thinking he had a sudden attack of empathy, he didn’t. Okay, let’s get on with the round-up, lots and lots to absorb out there.
In Think Progress’s main article about the strike, they include the seven tweets by Trump deriding President Obama for considering strikes against Syria. He ranted and raved about it quite a bit.
The actions represent a dramatic reversal from Trump’s position when Obama considered military action against Syria after Assad used chemical weapons in 2013. Trump repeatedly derided the idea of striking Syria, characterizing it as a foolish and expensive waste of time.
AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA – IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2013
[All Caps] Again, to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!
Think Progress also has an article about the excessive fawning by the media over the suddenly “presidential” Tiny Tyrant.
This isn’t entirely surprising. Trump’s approval ratings have been fairly low, but the President indicated in 2012 a certain awareness that decisive military strikes can help polling rebound.
Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2012
Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.
And many are already terrified that Trump might use military action to shore up his popularity and distract from the massive scrutiny and investigations his administration has face in its first 11 weeks.
You can include me in that group. That’s exactly what this fucking sociopathic idiot is going to do.
Think Progress has an article about the unhappiness of Russia with this symbolic muscle flexing.
Though the strike was intended to degrade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s capability to carry out another chemical attack in the future, it appears to have been largely symbolic. During a gaggle with reporters, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster acknowledged that after the strike, “the regime will maintain the certain capacity to commit mass murder with chemical weapons, we think, beyond this particular airfield.”
Raw Story has an article which reminds us all of Trump’s vow to commit war crimes and his love of torture.
Raw Story also has an article up about the selling of the Iraq war, and just how much news outlets had to do with that, primarily Fox.
The 10 Republicans who have done a 180 on Syria, now that Obama is not president.
The Conversation has an article about the current rationalisations for the new war.
Even the Nazis are upset.
And, just in:
Nine civilians including four children were killed in the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian airbase near the city of Homs on Friday, the Syrian state news agency said.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., arrives for a closed-door GOP strategy session on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 4, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.
We are so far beyond a farce now, I’m out of words. It’s quite clear that any “investigation” into the corruption of the regime is not going to happen. Yes, Nunes has stepped down. Yes, the idiot is going to be “investigated”. None of that fucking matters in the least, because …
Nunes, who is the chairman of the committee, said that he will retain his post but will hand leadership of the investigation over to Reps. Mike Conaway (R-TX), Trey Gowdy (R-SC), and Tom Rooney (R-FL).
Did anyone bother to think that perhaps having all rethugs in charge might not be the best idea? Also, who the hell thought it was okay for a compromised person to select those who would investigate? Everywhere you look, corruption.
Nunes designated Conaway as his lead successor, with Gowdy and Rooney as deputies. Conaway, like Nunes, is a Trump loyalist — one who was a member of the very campaign he will now be in charge of investigating. Conaway was a member of Trump’s Agriculture Advisory Committee, which Trump announced in August 2016.
The perfect person to put in charge of a corruption investigation, right? No problem there, no sirree. Jesus Tap Dancing Christ in a sidecar, there isn’t even going to be a pretense of objectivity here. What investigation? “Oh, hey, we looked, it’s all cool, the Tiny Tyrant is grate, grate, grate!” [Yes, that was on purpose.]
In January, Conaway gave his view on the Russian election hacking to The Dallas Morning News — and compared it to Mexican entertainers campaigning for Hillary Clinton.
“Harry Reid and the Democrats brought in Mexican soap opera stars, singers and entertainers who had immense influence in those communities into Las Vegas, to entertain, get out the vote and so forth,” Conaway told the local paper. “Those are foreign actors, foreign people, influencing the vote in Nevada. You don’t hear the Democrats screaming and saying one word about that.”
He then told the paper he considered it on par with the Russian election hacking. “It’s foreign influence. If we’re worried about foreign influence, let’s have the whole story,” he said.
Now, Conaway will be in charge of the investigation.
I’m sure we all know what the result will be. Jesus Fuck.
The substantive impact of Steve Bannon’s exit from the NSC on foreign policy remains to be seen. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.
Rumours and leaks have been swirling about in the chaos which marks the Regime. The official line is that Bannon had nary a thought about resigning in a huff, however, sources inside the chaotic mess say Bannon was prepared to walk, but held back due to Rebekah Mercer’s counsel, which sounds quite ominous, telling Bannon that this is a long-term play. Going by what we know of Bannon’s playbook, I imagine we’d all be relieved if Bannon had walked.
The man credited with honing Donald Trump’s populist message and guiding him into the White House has grown frustrated amid continued infighting in the West Wing, so much so that in recent weeks a top donor had to convince him to stay in his position.
Five people, including a senior administration official and several sources close to the president, tell POLITICO that Bannon, one of Trump’s closest advisers, has clashed with the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who’s taken on an increasingly prominent portfolio in the West Wing. Bannon has complained that Kushner and his allies are trying to undermine his populist approach, the sources said.
Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, a longtime Bannon confidante who became a prominent Trump supporter during the campaign, urged Bannon not to resign. “Rebekah Mercer prevailed upon him to stay,” said one person familiar with the situation.
Another person familiar with the situation, a GOP operative who talks to Mercer, said: “Bekah tried to convince him that this is a long-term play.”
[…]
The White House said that Bannon had not taken any steps to leave, and Bannon told POLITICO that any suggestion he threatened to resign was “total nonsense.”
[…]
The “big fight is between nationalists and the West Wing Democrats,” said a person familiar with Bannon’s thinking.
“You have these New York interlocutors who are just not political and who want to think that they’re above the way Washington thinks, but if anybody is allied on delivering on things that Trump ran on, it’s Bannon and Reince and the vice president,” said the Republican who has spoken to Bannon recently.
So, we have President Bannon, who is busy having a hissy fit, and President Kushner, who is responsible for all the shit, and Daughter First Lady, who is doing who knows what the fuck, and I imagine Unpresident Trump is busy abusing taxpayer money and golfing again. What a fucking joke.
Politico has the full story.
The substantive impact of Steve Bannon’s exit from the NSC on foreign policy remains to be seen. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.
Seems there’s been a bit of a shake-up. Not much news at the moment, I’m sure this story will develop.
Donald Trump’s political strategist Steve Bannon has lost his place on the national security council in a staff shakeup, documents show.
An 4 April presidential memorandum took Bannon, the former Breitbart News executive and chief White House link to the nationalist rightwing, off the US’s main body for foreign policy and national security decision-making. It also restores the traditional roles of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the director of national intelligence onto the NSC.
While the revamp is likely to be seen as a victory for Trump’s second national security adviser, army lieutenant general HR McMaster, the substantive impact of the shakeup remains to be seen. A parallel security structure in the Eisenhower executive office building, known as the Strategic Initiatives Group, reports to Bannon, whose closeness to Trump is a signal-marker of influence in this administration.
As noted by The Guardian, this will not remove Bannon’s influence on Trump and the regime. It is good news as far as the NSC is concerned. Via The Guardian.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer, right, holds up a check during the daily briefing with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, left, and Harpers Ferry National Historic Park Superintendent Tyrone Brandyburg. CREDIT: AP Photo/Susan Walsh.
First, another photo distraction. Look at Zinke eyeballing that check – he looks like he’s about to lunge, grab it and run. The National Park stunt, it’s bullshit, so don’t swallow it. The Tiny Tyrant needed a distraction from the set of Damocle’s Swords hanging over his head, so this little stunt was staged. And it is quite little – $78,333 to the National Park Service. Given that his ideal budget strips the NPS, among many others, this is an empty gesture, and worse. Neither Trump nor Zinke give one tiny squirtle of a shit for land. They are both in favour of more pipelines, poisoned water, coal mining, strip mining, fracking, drilling for oil in protected reserves, and wholesale pollution. This tiny little check of a photo op is toxic bullshit of the highest order. While the Tiny Tyrant could not possibly care less about caring for our planet, there is one thing he sorta kinda cares about, battlefields. Yep. So incredibly important to maintain historic battlefields! What’s more important than the reminders of bloody slaughters?
…And as far as his donation, it falls well short of the cuts Trump himself would impose on the National Park Service’s supervising agency, the Interior Department.
Trump’s budget calls for a punishing 12 percent cut to the department, which manages the United States’ public lands. It would eliminate some of the department’s programs altogether, including the $13.2 million National Wildlife Refuge Fund and the $20 million funding for the nation’s 49 National Heritage Areas. It would also decrease funding for land acquisition — such as land that would be added to the nation’s national parks, and then stewarded by the NPS — by $120 million.
Zinke, in his remarks thanking the president, said he would put the money towards the department’s $229 million shortfall in maintenance of the United States’ historic battlefields. According to Spicer, Trump chose to give the money to the NPS himself, specifically because he was interested in restoring the battlegrounds.
“It’s a decision he made. Counsel presented him with several options. He believed… some great work is being done there, especially work being done to restore our great battlegrounds,” Spicer said.
Right. Fuck you, Trump. Think Progress has the full story.
National Security Advisor Susan Rice follows President Barack Obama across the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, to board Marine One, Thursday, July 7, 2016. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster.
Conservatives and Nazis are jumping all over a non-existent bombshell, which has to do with former National Security Advisor Susan Rice. If you’re interested in the truth of the matter, go on over to Think Progress to get the facts. All that really needs to be noted about this compleat lack of a story is that it was spread all over the place by Nazi Mike “Pizzagate!” Cernovich.
It’s yet another case of bullshit. Don’t swallow it. The totally phony Susan Rice story, explained.
Also see: Trump Junior Is A Fucking Idiot.
Some people have had enough, and just can’t take it anymore. The Wallace Global Fund can’t take it anymore, and have fired their lawyers, Morgan Lewis, for their role in allowing Trump to continue in his constant corruption and fraud.
The Wallace Global Fund is sick of pretending.
In a scathing letter, the investment fund fired its elite law firm, Morgan Lewis, for its role in enabling Donald Trump to use the presidency to line his pockets.
In January, Morgan Lewis partner Sheri Dillon publicly signed off on Trump’s plan to maintain ownership of his business empire while president. Instead, Dillon established a variety of measures that fell “well short of the steps recommended by the Office of Government Ethics.”
[…]
The Wallace Fund also blasts Morgan Lewis for largely ignoring the Constitutional prohibition on presidents receiving payments from foreign governments. Trump will purportedly donate the “profits” from foreign governments spending money at his hotels, a step that has been widely dismissed as insufficient and unenforceable.
A business partner of Trump’s in Las Vegas recently revealed that Trump is not taking steps to segregate profits from foreign governments.
The letter ticks through the “ethical carnage” that has piled up since Morgan Lewis blessed Trump’s plan: the doubling of initiation fees at Mar-a-lago, Trump’s private club; the courting of foreign governments at Trump’s D.C. hotel; and his numerous financial entanglements with the Chinese government.
“America deserves a President of undivided loyalty. Your firm has denied them that. We cannot be complicit in that,” the letter concludes.
Full Letter from Wallace Global Fund. Full Story at Think Progress.
Mr. Tweet has made another appearance, this time touting the “love and strength” in the republican party. All I can think about are the Ministries.
Anybody (especially Fake News media) who thinks that Repeal & Replace of ObamaCare is dead does not know the love and strength in R Party!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2017
Anybody (especially Fake News media) who thinks that Repeal & Replace of ObamaCare is dead does not know the love and strength in R party!
Talks on Repealing and Replacing ObamaCare are, and have been, going on, and will continue until such time as a deal is hopefully struck.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2017
Talks on Repealing and Replacing ObamaCare are, and have been, going on, and will continue until such time as a deal is hopefully struck.
Sweet Zombie Jesus, it’s painful to type those out. Once again, note that Donnie uses his personal account, not the POTUS account. Anyroad, upon seeing the latest from Mr. Tweet, all I could think about, again, was Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, specifically, some of the ministries:
The Ministry of Love (or Miniluv in Newspeak) serves as Oceania’s interior ministry. It enforces loyalty to Big Brother through fear, buttressed through a massive apparatus of security and repression, as well as systematic brainwashing. The Ministry of Love building has no windows and is surrounded by barbed wire entanglements, steel doors, hidden machine-gun nests, and guards armed with “jointed truncheons”. Referred to as “the place where there is no darkness”, its interior lights are never turned off. It is arguably the most powerful ministry, controlling the will of the population. The Thought Police are a part of Miniluv.
The Ministry of Love, like the other ministries, is misnamed, since it is largely responsible for the practice and infliction of misery, fear, suffering and torture. In a sense, however, the name is apt, since its ultimate purpose is to instill love of Big Brother—the only form of love permitted in Oceania—in the minds of thoughtcriminals as part of the process of reverting them to orthodox thought. This is typical of the language of Newspeak, in which words and names frequently contain both an idea and its opposite; the orthodox party member is nonetheless able to resolve these contradictions through the disciplined use of doublethink.
The Ministry of Truth is the propaganda ministry. As with the other ministries in the novel, the name Ministry of Truth is a misnomer because in reality it serves the opposite: it is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events.
As well as administering truth, the ministry spreads a new language amongst the populace called Newspeak, in which, for example, “truth” is understood to mean statements like 2 + 2 = 5 when the situation warrants. In keeping with the concept of doublethink, the ministry is thus aptly named in that it creates/manufactures “truth” in the Newspeak sense of the word. The book describes the doctoring of historical records to show a government-approved version of events.
In Newspeak, the ministry is known as Minitrue.
The Ministry of Plenty (in Newspeak, Miniplenty) is in control of Oceania’s planned economy. It oversees rationing of food, supplies, and goods. As told in Goldstein’s book, the economy of Oceania is very important, and it’s necessary to have the public continually create useless and synthetic supplies or weapons for use in the war, while they have no access to the means of production. This is the central theme of Oceania’s idea that a poor, ignorant populace is easier to rule over than a wealthy, well-informed one. Telescreens often make reports on how Big Brother has been able to increase economic production, even when production has actually gone down (see § Ministry of Truth).
The Ministry hands out statistics which are “nonsense”. When Winston is adjusting some Ministry of Plenty’s figures, he explains this:
But actually, he thought as he readjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of time you were expected to make them up out of your head.
I’m also reminded of this particular quote, from chapter 3:
The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything.
We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science.
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
Via Raw Story.
Photo by Rex Roof/Flickr.
The Gold Curtain has resulted in uStates bleeding out in the financial sense. Seems people don’t want to include the oh-so-wonderful Amerikkka in their travel plans these days. Because of Trump. Can’t say I blame them at all, I wouldn’t want to travel here, either.
People around the world have taken a look at Donald Trump and decided his America is not a place they want to visit. The result has been labeled the “Trump Slump,” a drop in international tourism that’s predicted to cost the United States more than $7 billion. Experts across the travel industry have sounded the alarm that the Trump presidency, already destructive on so many fronts, may also do serious financial damage to the country’s $250 billion tourism sector.
Frommer’s, a prominent travel guide, notes that “the prestigious Travel Weekly magazine (as close to an ‘official’ travel publication as they come) has set the decline in foreign tourism at 6.8 percent” for this year.
[…]
The numbers offer evidence that Trump has turned off potential visitors from around the world. The resounding message of Trump’s “America First” stance, his obsession with the Mexico border wall, his anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies, his Muslim ban, and his rudeness to longstanding allies is that America is inhospitable to foreigners. Predictably, international travelers are opting to stay away—and that includes the European ones that Trump and his supporters are totally cool with.
“Even white, Anglo-Saxon people, who are most of our customers, they are afraid of crossing the border,” Al Qanun, who runs a Toronto travel agency, told the Times. “They don’t want to end up in some prison.”
[…]
The loss of all those visitors could mean future problems for a sector on which more than 15 million people rely for employment. Oxford Economics suggests the toll may ultimately ripple beyond the travel industry, even reducing the U.S. gross domestic product by a few percentage points, per Market Watch.
“I’ll tell you quite honestly, when I saw these reports my reaction was, Oh, my god,” Douglas Quinby, of travel-market firm PhocusWright, told the Boston Globe. “To see a decline in search and booking volume in the 6- to 8-percent range is a profound shift.”
I wonder, how many of those 15 million employed people will soon be unemployed? How many smaller travel businesses will end up having to close their doors? Ah, but no worry, we have Unpresident Jobs Jobs Jobs!
Travel industry insiders aren’t just freaking out, they’re trying to stop the trend in its tracks. Roger Dow, CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, penned an open letter to Trump, as if he could be reasoned with.
“Mr. President, please tell the world that while we’re closed to terror, we’re open for business,” the brief letter nearly pleads. “Imbalanced communication is especially susceptible to being ‘lost in translation’—so let’s work together to inform our friends and neighbors, who could benefit from reassurance, not just who is no longer welcome here, but who remains invited.”
That’s nice, but I’m pretty sure it won’t penetrate the wall of concrete separating Donnie from reality.
The coastal cities where Trump fared the worst in the election are likely to be hardest hit by travel downswings triggered by his administration.
[…]
The rise of Trump and his xenophobic messaging has motivated a number of countries to warn their citizens against non-essential trips to the U.S. The Nigerian government, citing “a few cases of Nigerians with valid multiple-entry U.S. visas being denied entry and sent back,” suggested its residents skip the jaunt to America if they have a choice. In January, the Toronto Star published an editorial suggesting Canadian citizens boycott the U.S. in response to the Trump Muslim ban.
Other negative reactions to America’s longstanding social issues and rising right-wing policies began to take hold even before Trump office. Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Bahamas, the U.K., Germany and New Zealand all issued 2016 U.S. travel warnings to citizens due to the U.S.’ issues with mass shootings, general gun violence, police murders of black citizens, anti-LGBT bathroom laws, and ongoing social upheaval.
With Trump and his white nationalist brigade in charge, the tourism lag could dip to levels not seen since after the World Trade Center attacks.
[…]
The rise of Trump and his xenophobic messaging has motivated a number of countries to warn their citizens against non-essential trips to the U.S. The Nigerian government, citing “a few cases of Nigerians with valid multiple-entry U.S. visas being denied entry and sent back,” suggested its residents skip the jaunt to America if they have a choice. In January, the Toronto Star published an editorial suggesting Canadian citizens boycott the U.S. in response to the Trump Muslim ban.
Other negative reactions to America’s longstanding social issues and rising right-wing policies began to take hold even before Trump office. Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Bahamas, the U.K., Germany and New Zealand all issued 2016 U.S. travel warnings to citizens due to the U.S.’ issues with mass shootings, general gun violence, police murders of black citizens, anti-LGBT bathroom laws, and ongoing social upheaval.
With Trump and his white nationalist brigade in charge, the tourism lag could dip to levels not seen since after the World Trade Center attacks.
[…]
Trump and his followers will definitely find a way to blame President Obama if the tourism decline persists, but in reality, under the previous administration foreign visits went way up. Bloomberg cites data from U.S. Travel indicating that from 2006 to 2015, “America saw international visitors rise, with arrivals increasing from 51 million in 2006 to nearly 78 million in 2015.”
Oh, I smell another conspiracy brewing, and I’m sure it won’t be long before Mr. Tweet makes an appearance to place blame. Via Raw Story.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Nunes arrives for a weekly meeting of the Republican Conference with House Speaker Paul Ryan and the GOP leadership on Wednesday. CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.
On Tuesday, House Intelligence Committee chair and former Trump transition team official Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) made the extraordinary claim that Democrats are actually the ones obstructing his committee’s investigation into connections between President Trump and Russian officials.
Nunes — who abruptly cancelled all scheduled committee hearings last week, including one that was to feature testimony from Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general who alerted the White House to Michael Flynn’s deceptions about his communications with Russian officials and was fired for refusing to enforce President Trump’s Muslim ban — told NBC News that “it appears the Democrats aren’t really serious about this investigation.”
“They need to give us their witness list because we have no idea who they even want to interview,” Nunes said. “So, at the end of the day here we’re going to get to the truth, we’re going to find out who’s actually doing a real investigation… we’re going to do an investigation with or without them, and if they want to participate that’s fine, but the facts of the matter are pretty clear.”
But a source with knowledge of the situation tells ThinkProgress that Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee actually submitted a tentative witness list to Republicans on Tuesday and haven’t yet heard back. That information was corroborated by Business Insider’s Natasha Bertrand, who reported that a “[c]ommittee aide tells me Dems provided witness list to Nunes yesterday and offered to schedule hearings next week, have not heard back.”
[…]
Nunes might say “the facts of the matter are pretty clear,” but they’re not. Here’s what we do know. Last Wednesday, Nunes held a press conference where he appeared to clumsily validate Trump’s claim that Obama wiretapped his Trump Tower phones by saying he has “recently confirmed that on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition.”
Instead of sharing that information with the intelligence community or his committee members, Nunes raced to the White House to brief Trump, whose campaign is under investigation for possible collusion with foreign agents. In the week since, Nunes has steadfastly refused to share what he claims to know about legal incidental collection at Trump Tower with his House Intelligence Committee colleagues.
The list of willful obstruction on the part of Nunes and Gowdy continues over at Think Progress, and it’s quite the long recount of obstruction. It would be downright laughable, the weak attempt to place blame on democrats, except for the fact that this is extremely serious. If this was anyone else, everyone would be going apeshit, screaming for impeachment and imprisonment. The silence of those on the right is more than telling, it’s an indictment all its own, of just how much they truly don’t care about such treasonous actions, as long as the crimes are being committed by someone on their side of the fence.
Think Progress has the full story.
The Heartland Institute recently had their “Fuck the Planet!” conference, attended by the Mercers, and all those others who have some sort of vested interest in killing off everyone and everything. I guess they’ll bug out to Mars with Musk when life becomes unsustainable.
The atmosphere was buoyant at a conference held by the conservative Heartland Institute last week at a downtown Washington hotel, where speakers denounced climate science as rigged and jubilantly touted deep cuts President Trump is seeking to make to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Front and center during the two-day gathering were New York hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer, Republican mega-donors who with their former political adviser Stephen K. Bannon helped finance an alternative media ecosystem that amplified Trump’s populist themes during last year’s campaign.
The Mercers’ attendance at the two-day Heartland conference offered a telling sign of the low-profile family’s priorities: With Trump in office, the influential financiers appear intent on putting muscle behind the fight to roll back environmental regulations, a central focus of the new administration.
The Washington Post has a full run down on the conference.
I’ll just focus here on the batshit element of such conferences, this time, embodied by ever loony Lord Christopher Monckton:
Raw Story has a rundown of his 5 main points, so click on over if you prefer to read.
Ryan Zinke (Twitter).
Just when you think rethuglicans really could not possibly go lower or more regressive, *bam*. Ryan the fink Zinke has a problem with the stupid wall – placing it on U.S. land would cede the Rio Grande, oh no wtfbbq!!!11!1 The solution? Doesn’t seem to be one right now, outside of making sure endangered animals are endangered right into extinction. It seems the only way to keep the Rio Grande would be to either steal land from Mexico, or build it on Mexico’s land and claim it for uStates. Or something. Jesus Fuck. There’s that Colonial mindset at work.
E&E News reports that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke talked about the logistics of building a border wall while speaking at an event held by the Public Lands Council this week, and he said the Trump administration didn’t want to build the wall on American soil because it would mean ceding the entire Rio Grande river to Mexico.
“The border is complicated, as far as building a physical wall,” Zinke said. “The Rio Grande, what side of the river are you going to put the wall? We’re not going to put it on our side and cede the river to Mexico. And we’re probably not going to put it in the middle of the river.”
Zinke didn’t elaborate on how the wall would get built if it wasn’t located on America’s side of the Rio Grande or in the middle of the river, which implies that it would be built on the Mexican side of the border.
Elsewhere in his talk, E&E News reports Zinke said the Trump administration will seek a waiver to the Endangered Species Act so it can build the wall in jaguar habitats that are for now protected from “destruction or adverse modification.”
Via Raw Story. And, Ryan fucking idiot Zinke has now said there’s no such thing as clean energy. Nope.