President Loco And His Band of Meanies Go Down the Rabbit Hole
The news today seems just a bit more crazy than usual. Let me count the ways...
Today, the President sort of admits the Russians helped him get elected and then descends into blathering about impeachment.
On Monday, Trump wished the Japanese a “Happy Memorial Day.”
The Department of Defense/US Navy/White House staff/All of the above were so worried about the Commander in Chief of the armed forces being triggered by seeing the name “John McCain,” they sought to hide the presence of a warship.
Hillary Clinton warns us again about the dangers to democracy posed by the current administration.
A Department of Energy press release renames Liquified Natural Gas as “Freedom Gas.”
Documents have been released showing the architect of GOP gerrymandering was behind Trump's push to add citizenship question to 2020 census.
A Congressional Budget Office study on the impact of the Mighty Tax Cut passed by the GOP says it didn’t work as promised. Color me shocked!
Supreme Court Clarence Thomas says what we’re known all along; the anti-abortion movement is also coming after birth control
I could list more things, but ya gotta stop somewhere. Keeping up lately feels more like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant.
The President had what the media likes to call a “freewheeling” session on the White House lawn on Thursday morning. Unhinged is more like it, but whatever.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1134066371510378501
He later walked back the tacit admission that Russia helped get him elected. But here’s the capper:
"You know who got me elected?"
Normal POTUS w/out narcissistic personality disorder: "The American people, and I'm humbled by their support"
Trump just now: "I got me elected!"
Via the Washington Post:
For years, Trump has regularly denied that Russia was involved in the effort to interfere in the election and he’s certainly never acknowledged the intelligence community’s assessment that it did so in order to boost his own chances. At times, he’s implied that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have been happier if Hillary Clinton had won, though Putin himself said he wanted Trump to win during a news conference in Helsinki last year.
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Memorial Day is about honoring U.S. service members who passed away, especially those who gave their lives in the line of duty. Although it’s used as a launching point for summer recreation by many Americans, I don’t think Hallmark is printing Happy Memorial Day card.
So when the President of the United States wished a “happy” Memorial Day — to Japanese forces aboard the JS Kaga, lots of eyebrows were raised.
While I’m sure the statement was intended as a goodwill gesture from one leader of a foreign nation to the service members of the country he was visiting, you have to remember this is the guy who was critical of former President Barack Obama for not bringing up the attacks on Pearl Harbor while speaking with Japanese dignitaries back in 2016.
At least Trump wasn’t wearing a tan suit.
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The scandal/not-a-scandal triggered by a Wall Street Journal story about making the USS John McCain disappear during the President’s visit to Japan continues to unfold.
The backpedaling on this story has been furious enough to ride a bike backwards up San Francisco’s famous Lombard Street. Trump said he didn’t have a hand in it, using the moment to restate all his beefs with the deceased U.S. Senator.
From CNN:
President Donald Trump and John McCain's long-running feud is back in the spotlight following reports that White House and lower-level US Navy officials traded emails about keeping a warship named from the late senator's father and grandfather out of sight ahead of the President's trip to Japan.
Two Navy officials confirmed to CNN Wednesday night that the White House Military Office asked lower-level US Navy officials about keeping the ship out of view. One of the Navy officials further clarified Thursday morning that the discussion included obscuring the ship or moving it, which was not practical because the ship was under repairs at the time.
From the New York Times:
Two Navy sailors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that the McCain sailors were not invited to hear Mr. Trump speak that day aboard the amphibious assault ship Wasp, while sailors from other American warships at the base were.
A Navy service member based on Yokosuka said that all of the American warships in the harbor were invited to send 60 to 70 sailors to hear Mr. Trump’s address, with the exception of the McCain. When several sailors from the McCain showed up anyway, wearing their uniforms with the ship’s insignia, they were turned away, the service member said.
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Play the video.
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1134076994419691523
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“We’re not racist...really, we swear…”
A court ordered document release shows that the architect of GOP gerrymandering was behind the push to add citizenship question to 2020 census, says it "would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” & “advantageous to Republicans and Non Hispanic Whites”
From Talking Points Memo:
The study was commissioned by GOP mega-donor Paul Singer, a major funder of the Washington Free Beacon, who was considering whether to financially support a lawsuit that sought to require that noncitizens be excluded from redistricting.
Hofeller’s study cautioned that such a redistricting overhaul would be “functionally unworkable” without a citizenship question on the Census.
Hofeller went on to advise the Trump transition on the census, and was the “first person” to suggest that a citizenship question be added, according to the deposition of another transition advisor, Mark Neuman.
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Gosh, I always thought Freedom Gas was when I managed to slip away from a crowd to break a little wind.
From the Guardian:
America is the land of freedom, as any politician will be happy to tell you. What you don’t hear quite so often is that the stuff under the land is also apparently made of freedom as well. That is, at least according to a news release this week from the Department of Energy (DoE).
Mark W Menezes, the US undersecretary of energy, bestowed a peculiar honorific on our continent’s natural resources, dubbing it “freedom gas” in a release touting the DoE’s approval of increased exports of natural gas produced by a Freeport LNG terminal off the coast of Texas.
“Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America’s allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy,” he said.
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Speaking of gas, it should shock nobody that all the claims about just how wonderful the Trump/GOP tax cut would be were… hot air.
A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report released on Tuesday says the tax law's effects on the economy were smaller than those predicted by a slew of forecasters, adding that the economy's growth was not consistent "with the direction and size of the supply-side incentive effects one would expect from the tax changes.".
Via the Huffington Post:
“While evidence does indicate significant repurchases of shares, either from tax cuts or repatriated revenues, relatively little was directed to paying worker bonuses, which had been announced by some firms,” CRS economic policy experts Jane Gravelle and Donald Marples wrote in their report...
...Meanwhile, companies announced more than $1 trillion worth of stock buybacks, which inflate the value of shares by reducing their supply. Most stock is owned by the richest 10% of Americans, including corporate executives themselves whose pay is tied to stock performance…
..In fact, the report estimates that GDP growth will offset 5% or less of the revenue lost as a result of the tax cuts — meaning the GOP promises that the law would pay for itself may come up 95% short.
The report also says real wage growth has not significantly increased since the tax cuts went into effect.
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Finally, Justice Clarence Thomas issued an unhinged opinion in connection with an abortion case the court declined to hear.
At the heart of his rant was the assertion that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, advocated for birth control because she was hoping to kill black people.
From Salon:
We know that Thomas' rant was an attack on birth control because, as he admits, Sanger was not actually supportive of abortion, which she called an "abnormal, often dangerous, surgical operation" that she strongly condemned as "dangerous and vicious."
Sanger's hatred of abortion was wrong-headed, but in fairness, it was likely rooted in her experience as a nurse working in the tenements in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 20th century. There she bore witness to the gory injuries caused by "slippery-elm sticks, or knitting needles, or shoe hooks into the uterus" to which women resorted in order to abort.
Thomas tries to massage his opinion into making some approximate sense by saying that the arguments against contraception "apply with even greater force to abortion." This is a legalistic version of the "contraceptive mentality" argument popular in anti-choice circles, which holds that contraception causes abortion by convincing people that non-procreative sex is acceptable. If people only had sex for procreation and within the bounds of heterosexual marriage, the argument goes, then there would be no need for abortion.
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