Accusations of abuse of power

Nov 20th, 2018 3:08 pm | By

Wow.

President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.

Soon we’ll learn that he wanted to gas us all, and his staff wrote a memo saying that might get him in trouble with anyone who survived the gassing.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump read Mr. McGahn’s memo or whether he pursued the prosecutions further. But the president has continued to privately discuss the matter, including the possible appointment of a second special counsel to investigate both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Comey, according to two people who have spoken to Mr. Trump about the issue. He has also repeatedly expressed disappointment in the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, for failing to more aggressively investigate Mrs. Clinton, calling him weak, one of the people said.

…

Perhaps more than any president since Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Trump has been accused of trying to exploit his authority over law enforcement. Witnesses have told the special counsel’s investigators about how Mr. Trump tried to end an investigation into an aide, install loyalists to oversee the inquiry into his campaign and fire Mr. Mueller.

In addition, Mr. Trump has attacked the integrity of Justice Department officials, claiming they are on a “witch hunt” to bring him down.

His friends at Fox are helping.

Some of his more vocal supporters stirred his anger, including the Fox News commentator Jeanine Pirro, who has railed repeatedly on her weekly show that the president is being ill served by the Justice Department.

Ms. Pirro told Mr. Trump in the Oval Office last November that the Justice Department should appoint a special counsel to investigate the Uranium One deal, two people briefed on the discussion have said. During that meeting, the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, told Ms. Pirro she was inflaming an already vexed president, the people said.

Shortly after, Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote to lawmakers, partly at the urging of the president’s allies in the House, to inform them that federal prosecutors in Utah were examining whether to appoint a special counsel to investigate Mrs. Clinton. A spokeswoman for the United States attorney for Utah declined to comment on Tuesday on the status of the investigation.

Mr. Trump once called his distance from law enforcement one of the “saddest” parts of being president.

“I look at what’s happening with the Justice Department,” he said in a radio interview a year ago. “Well, why aren’t they going after Hillary Clinton and her emails and with her, the dossier?” He added: “I am not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I am very frustrated.”

He would love to be another Stalin, and he’s very frustrated.

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Mean nasty world out there

Nov 20th, 2018 12:11 pm | By

Pompeo is fine with it, because hey, cruel world.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to reporters after meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Meylut Cavusglu Tuesday afternoon, after President Trump released a statement saying the U.S. would stand with Saudi Arabia, regardless of what the intelligence community concludes about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s involvement in the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in October.

The CIA has assessed that Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, ordered the killing of Khashoggi, based mainly on an understanding of how the kingdom operates and the proximity of several participants in the killing to the heir-in-waiting, as well as the organizations involved.

While Trump has just thrown his stumpy little hands in the air and said “Who knows, who knows, no one can possibly know, now hand over the billions.”

Turkey has said it shared evidence with its partners, including the U.S., that shows it was a pre-meditated murder. The Turkish president has said it was a execution ordered from the “highest level” of the Saudi government.

“It’s a mean nasty world out there, the Middle East in particular,” Pompeo said. He said that the president’s chief concern was American safety. He said the “long, historic” relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia was critical for national security.

Pompeo also denied that Mr. Trump, in his statement about Khashoggi, suggested that the extrajudicial murder of a journalist was less important than U.S. security interests.

Can you say “non sequitur”?

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Annotated

Nov 20th, 2018 11:30 am | By

Aaron Blake at the Post on Trump’s disgusting “statement”:

Perhaps anticipating a damning report, Trump released a long, exclamation-point-laden statement preemptively making the case for not punishing Mohammed or his father, King Salman, even if they were involved. It’s a remarkable statement that even includes a smear against the slain journalist, while insisting that Trump didn’t believe the smear.

Below is the statement in full, with our annotations.

Exclamation points don’t belong in official presidential statements. He might as well do a press conference with his underpants on his head.

Statement from President Donald J. Trump on Standing with Saudi Arabia

Annotation: As much as the content of the statement, the headline reveals exactly what it is: A pass. A statement “on standing with” another country is what you put when that country is unfairly maligned or experienced a crisis. It’s not what you say when you are going to hold someone accountable for wrongdoing.

That is a pretty pregnant choice of words.

Very. It’s most familiar to me from aggrieved dudebros on Twitter vowing to “stand with” Sam Harris or Jordan Peterson or Lawrence Krauss or [the list is long].

America First!

The world is a very dangerous place!

Annotation: This is not how presidential statements usually begin – particularly on sensitive foreign policy matters involving tragedy.

There are eight exclamation points in it, including six that Trump used on his own (separate from quoting someone else).

And why don’t presidential statements usually begin with exclamations? Because it looks childish in an official government statement. It also looks overexcited, out of control, disinhibited.

Representatives of Saudi Arabia say that Jamal Khashoggi was an “enemy of the state” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but my decision is in no way based on that — this is an unacceptable and horrible crime.

Annotation: 1) This is a baseless smear against a slain journalist, and the president is repeating it while insisting that it doesn’t matter to him. Then why include it? Trafficking in this kind of innuendo in a presidential statement is remarkable, and will likely be criticized even by Republicans.

2) Trump is disclosing something that Saudi Arabia actually denied.

On the one hand Saudi Arabia says this so let’s drag it in, on the other hand the CIA says that so let’s throw up our hands and say how can we ever know.

Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!

That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi.

Annotation: To be clear: The CIA is preparing to report that it has high confidence that Mohammed was behind Khashoggi’s killing. Trump is basically arguing that we’ll never know for sure.

As I argued this weekend, intelligence is an imprecise business, but if you require 100 percent proof of anything, you’ll never hold countries accountable for taking advantage of you. It’s an impossible standard.

Trump is also bucking his own intelligence community again – just as he did with Russia’s 2016 election interference.

Aaron Blake does good annotations.

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A message to anyone in a position of power

Nov 20th, 2018 11:05 am | By

More.

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Least finest hour

Nov 20th, 2018 10:55 am | By

I’m not the only one who thinks so.

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Trump stands with Saudi Arabia

Nov 20th, 2018 10:33 am | By

The White House has issued an official Statement by Trump on Saudi Arabia.

Office of the Press Secretary

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 20, 2018
Statement from President Donald J. Trump on Standing with Saudi Arabia

America First!

The world is a very dangerous place!

Wait.

Seriously?

That’s an official statement by the president?

Then there’s a paragraph saying Iran bad, then one saying Saudi Arabia good. Then we get to the money part.

After my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States. This is a record amount of money. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States. Of the $450 billion, $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries – and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business. It would be a wonderful gift to them directly from the United States!

Well let’s draw up an actual price list then, so we can see where we are. How many Saudi billions for how many pesky critics sliced into pieces on an ambassador’s desk? Where in the price list do we locate Saudi investments in madrassas and mosques and university departments? What’s the profit we derive from the spread of Wahhabism?

The crime against Jamal Khashoggi was a terrible one, and one that our country does not condone. Indeed, we have taken strong action against those already known to have participated in the murder. After great independent research, we now know many details of this horrible crime. We have already sanctioned 17 Saudis known to have been involved in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, and the disposal of his body.

It’s reassuring to learn that their independent research was “great” but do we know great for whom? Also…is Trump hoping we will think the “17 Saudis known to have been involved in the murder” acted on their own, without any orders from higher up?

Representatives of Saudi Arabia say that Jamal Khashoggi was an “enemy of the state” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but my decision is in no way based on that — this is an unacceptable and horrible crime. King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!

Trump epistemology at its finest. One, the accused deny it! Add many exclamation points and intensifiers! Putin really really really said he never did! MbS swears up and down he never did! It could very well be that he did but…he didn’t he didn’t he didn’t!

And this is in an official statement – “maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Jesus god.

That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran. The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region. It is our paramount goal to fully eliminate the threat of terrorism throughout the world!

By saying the terrorist state murder of a critic in an embassy in another country is not significant enough to trouble this important relationship-alliance-partnership-bromance – with exclamation points!!!

The murder of Khashoggi is terrorism. Saudi Arabia is a terrorist state. The murderous Saudi version of Islam is a terrorizing religion. But the Saudis have $$$$ and that’s all Trump gives a rat’s ass about.

I understand there are members of Congress who, for political or other reasons, would like to go in a different direction – and they are free to do so. I will consider whatever ideas are presented to me, but only if they are consistent with the absolute security and safety of America. After the United States, Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producing nation in the world. They have worked closely with us and have been very responsive to my requests to keeping oil prices at reasonable levels — so important for the world. As President of the United States I intend to ensure that, in a very dangerous world, America is pursuing its national interests and vigorously contesting countries that wish to do us harm. Very simply it is called America First!

As it was in 1939 and 1940 and nearly all of 1941.

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The rule flouted longstanding asylum laws

Nov 20th, 2018 9:52 am | By

Judge to Trump: no you can’t.

A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to resume accepting asylum claims from migrants no matter where or how they entered the United States, dealing at least a temporary setback to the president’s attempt to clamp down on a huge wave of Central Americans crossing the border.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order that blocks the government from carrying out a new rule that denies protections to people who enter the country illegally. The order, which suspends the rule until the case is decided by the court, applies nationally.

“Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Mr. Tigar wrote in his order.

I hear a chorus of Republicans in Congress…”What? Who, us? No we didn’t! That was that other Congress! We totally want Trump to drop the hammer on asylum seekers. It’s the American way!”

As a caravan of several thousand people journeyed toward the Southwest border, President Trump signed a proclamation on Nov. 9 that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. Only those who entered the country through a port of entry would be eligible, he said, invoking national security powers to protect the integrity of the United States borders.

Within days, the administration submitted a rule to the federal register, letting it go into effect immediately and without the customary period for public comment.

He wants to be an absolute ruler.

But the rule overhauled longstanding asylum laws that ensure people fleeing persecution can seek safety in the United States, regardless of how they entered the country. Advocacy groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, swiftly sued the administration for effectively introducing what they deemed an asylum ban.

It may go to the Supreme Court, which is now well packed with reactionaries.

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But her emails

Nov 19th, 2018 4:07 pm | By

Oops.

Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails last year to White House aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records rules, according to people familiar with a White House examination of her correspondence.

White House ethics officials learned of Trump’s repeated use of personal email when reviewing emails gathered last fall by five Cabinet agencies to respond to a public records lawsuit. That review revealed that throughout much of 2017, she often discussed or relayed official White House business using a private email account with a domain that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner.

The discovery alarmed some advisers to President Trump, who feared that his daughter’s practices bore similarities to the personal email use of Hillary Clinton…

Ya think?

Some aides were startled by the volume of Ivanka Trump’s personal emails — and taken aback by her response when questioned about the practice. Trump said she was not familiar with some details of the rules, according to people with knowledge of her reaction.

Why are they surprised? It’s obvious that Princess thinks she is entitled to her job in the administration with no qualifications demanded or rules imposed. She’s the first daughter, as she yelled at Steve Bannon when he tried to tell her to back off. (Not that I have any sympathy for Bannon. I think each is as disgusting as the other.)

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The Decorum Files

Nov 19th, 2018 3:22 pm | By

The White House said ok ok ok he can have his stupid press pass back, jeeeez. But he has to follow our new rules we just wrote down!

CNN dropped its lawsuit against the White House on Monday after officials told the network that they would restore reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials as long as he abides by a series of new rules at presidential news conferences, including asking just one question at a time.

…

The White House’s move to restore Acosta’s pass, announced in a letter to the news network, appeared to be a capitulation to CNN in its brief legal fight against the administration…

…

Sanders and Shine said they had made a “final determination” that Acosta’s pass would be restored permanently as long as he followed new rules guiding reporters’ conduct at White House news conferences.

In a letter to Acosta, they wrote, “Should you refuse to follow these rules in the future, we will take action” to remove the pass.

Among the rules: Reporters must ask only one question of the president at news conferences, but they can follow up with another if the president consents. A reporter must then “yield the floor,” including giving up a microphone. Failure to abide by these rules, the White House letter said, will result in revocation of a journalist’s White House pass.

Any rules about the president and the press secretary not lying? No, of course not.

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He wants a GREAT climate

Nov 19th, 2018 12:28 pm | By

Particularly…erm…let’s call it questionable.

Voice off camera: “Does seeing this devastation change your opinion on climate change at all Mister President?”

Trump: “No, no, I have a strong opinion, I  want [lifting hand in idiot OK gesture, waving it back and forth in direction of Voice] great climate. We’re going to have that, and we’re going to have forests that are very safe, because we can’t go through this every year we go through this, n we’re gunna have safe forests, and uh [licks lips] that’s happening as we speak.”

Then he says, obviously groping around in the empty cupboard of his brain for something to promise, we’re going to “see something very spectacular over the next couple of years.” Spectacular? How is he planning to make a reduction in wildfires “spectacular”?

But that’s a side issue, the real issue is that he apparently thinks he can simply will us into having “a great climate.” The real issue is that he’s that dumb and that ignorant. I know we already know that, but seeing the stuffed windbreaker and khakis stumbling around trying to be a real adult with real plans to do real harm reduction just underlines the point further.

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Must have

Nov 19th, 2018 11:30 am | By

Says it all.

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A-plus

Nov 19th, 2018 10:52 am | By

The Post looks back on Trump’s lively weekend:

Asked how he would grade his presidency during a Sunday morning interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News, President Trump offered only the smallest amount of hesitation before giving himself top marks.

“Look, I hate to do it, but I will do it, I would give myself an A-plus,” he answered. “Is that enough? Can I go higher than that?”

It wasn’t even hesitation, really. It was saying “I know this is gross and conceited but hey I am gross and conceited.”

The weekend kicked off with Trump’s bizarre comments about raking leaves. Touring California communities that have been decimated by the deadliest fires in the state’s history, Trump told reporters on Saturday that he had recently been talking to the president of Finland. “He called it a forest nation,” Trump said, referring to Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, “and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don’t have any problem.”

As The Washington Post’s Avi Selk pointed out, Trump had made similar remarks on Friday before his California trip, telling Fox News Sunday: “I was watching the firemen the other day, and they were raking areas. They were raking areas! They’re raking trees, little trees like this — nut trees, little bushes, that you could see are totally dry. Weeds! And they’re raking them. They’re on fire.”

I saw that clip at the time. He was all wound up, the way he gets. “They were raking areas!” It’s so frustrating for him, how stupid people are – leaving all that rubbish on the floor! If they would only pick it all up these things wouldn’t happen!

The remarks provoked a fair amount of head-scratching, as Finland’s forestry-management practices are not ordinarily considered germane to the issue of wildfire suppression in the arid West. Niinisto was no less baffled: While he had discussed forest management with Trump, he told the Associated Press, leaf raking had not entered the conversation. Meanwhile, bemused Finns clarified that they didn’t actually spend their spare time raking up leaves in the nation’s forests, and responded with a hashtag: #MakeAmericaRakeAgain. Some posted humorous photos of their rakes.

Or their snow.

And then there was the part where he couldn’t manage to remember the name of the town that was devoured by the Camp fire.

“If you’re watching from New York or you are watching from Washington, D.C., you don’t really see the gravity of it,” he told reporters. “As big as they look on the tube, you don’t see what’s going on until you come here. And what we saw at Pleasure, what a name right now. But we just saw, we just left Pleasure —”

“Paradise,” interjected a slew of officials.

“Paradise,” Trump confirmed, then moved on.

Not quite, actually. He said “Or Paradise.” See what he did there? He pretended the town has two names, and he was using one while the slew of officials was using the other. It’s what he does when he flubs a word in a written speech, too – he pretends he didn’t make a mistake but is just expanding on the point.

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It’s about the decorum

Nov 19th, 2018 10:23 am | By

So the White House is throwing down, Colonel Jessup style: you’re god damn right we’re going to use our power to shut down reporters we don’t like.

CNN and the network’s chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta have asked a federal judge for an emergency hearing after the White House sent Acosta a letter saying it planned to suspend Acosta’s press pass again, just hours after the same judge ordered the White House to temporarily restore Acosta’s credentials Friday. Unless the judge extends that 14-day order, it will expire at the end of the month.

Dear Jim: We’re gonna take your press pass away again in 11 days because we’re just that authoritarian and proud of it, love Sarah.

CNN’s lawyer asked the judge to issue a preliminary injunction on an expedited schedule in light of the administration’s defiance.

In the letter, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders and Bill Shine, assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff for communications, told Acosta that his behavior at a Nov. 7 news conference “violated the basic standards governing [news conferences], and is, in our preliminary judgment, sufficient factual basis to revoke your hard pass.”

President Trump, the letter makes clear, “is aware of this preliminary decision and concurs.”

That is, Trump told them to do it, no matter how stupid and reckless it is.

[Judge] Kelly’s decision to issue the 14-day temporary restraining order Friday while he considers the merits of the case was grounded mostly in the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee. Kelly said the White House has an obligation to afford due process to Acosta before it can revoke or suspend his access, and found that the White House’s decision-making process in this case was “so shrouded in mystery that the government could not tell me . . . who made the decision.”

CNN’s motion characterized the letter from Sanders and Shine as an “attempt to provide retroactive due process.” Ted Boutrous, an attorney for CNN, told Justice Department lawyers in an email that he found the White House’s letter to be a “disappointing response to the court’s decision and our attempts to resolve the matter amicably.”

Aka “like adults.” It’s so odd, this spectacle of a guy at the pinnacle of power flatly refusing to do what we all learn we have to do in order to function, which is to tame our crudest emotional impulses when we interact with other humans. We all recognize these fits of rage and pageants of vanity, but we also understand that they are repulsive to everyone who is NotSelf. Trump doesn’t even seem to understand that much. I guess it’s unusual to see the combination of lotsa money and complete lack of executive function. Television fame makes the combination possible? I guess?

“More fundamentally, though,” he wrote in the email, “it is further evidence of your clients’ animus towards Mr. Acosta based on his work as CNN’s chief White House correspondent.”

And their total lack of inhibition about putting that animus on display. Where are their inhibitions?

Sanders and Shine gave Acosta the opportunity to contest its “preliminary decision” to again suspend his press pass by 5 p.m. Sunday. In a response from lawyers, Acosta contested the decision, saying that despite the White House’s previous admission that there are no actual written rules for journalists participating in press conferences, Acosta is now being punished “based on a retroactive application of unwritten ‘practices’ among journalists covering the White House.”

This application “of vague, unarticulated standards to a journalist’s access to the White House is not only different from your original explanations, but it is the same sort of due process violation that led the district court to issue a temporary restraining order against you on Friday.”

There are no rules but we gonna punish you for violating the non-existent rules anyway, because we think we can.

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What big teeth you have, Granny

Nov 18th, 2018 4:58 pm | By

From the annals of Women Who Pimp Their Granddaughters:

Davie was a client of the woman’s and kept in touch when he moved away from the Wellington area, where the woman lived.

The pair exchanged text messages, during which he asked her if she knew of any young people available for sex.

She sent him four nude photos of her granddaughter in exchange for a $40 mobile phone top-up, and he asked if she would be interested in making money from the child.

They discussed prices – Davie offered $1000, but the grandmother said she wanted a cheap car – what kind of contact would occur, and dates.

How old is the granddaughter? Ten. Plenty old enough to be raped by granny’s john, yeah? Granny probably would have taken the kid for a nice ride in her cheap car once she stopped bleeding.

Davie also said he knew someone who could train the child in sexual behaviour – Morgana Platt.

Platt, who was known as Malcolm John Platt, but now identifies as a woman, was jailed in 2009 for raping a 16-year-old girl in Christchurch, who later took her own life.

According to Parole Board documents, the 16-year-old indicated she killed herself because of Platt’s offending.

Platt and Davie had come up with a plan to find a vulnerable girl for Platt to train as a sex worker.

Well…to train as a rape victim. It seems just a tad euphemistic to call a ten-year-old pimped by her grandmother a “sex worker.”

Davie forwarded to Platt one of the photos of the 10-year-old. Platt described the girl as “yummy” and “delicious”.

Like a nice big bowl of ice cream, but with thoughts and feelings. Yum.

H/t Rob

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Works of fiction must be inclusive of all people

Nov 18th, 2018 12:34 pm | By

Can people even think any more?

Another one of those “let’s decide to put on The Vagina Monologues so that we can then decide to cancel it and get into the news” situations.

Leaders at a college in Michigan decided to cancel its production of “The Vagina Monologues” because it’s discriminatory, given “not all women have vaginas.”

Right. By the same token, let’s cancel productions of “The Cherry Orchard” because not all orchards have cherry trees.

It’s not “discriminatory” for a play to be about some people as opposed to all people. A play about all people would be unwieldy and so long that it could never end, because new people keep getting born. Women who don’t have vaginas might like “The Vagina Monologues” despite its failure to be about them.

The women’s resource center at Eastern Michigan University put the kibosh on the famous production since it caters only to women who have the physical anatomy that accompanies the female sex, according to The Ann Arbor News.

Caters to? Since when are plays supposed to “cater to” anyone at all, let alone particular categories of people?

The decision came after the resource center conducted a survey, asking respondents about “The Vagina Monologues.” Those opposed to the drama said they were concerned about the fact that the production excludes some women, namely those who don’t have vaginas.

But, again – all plays exclude 99.99% of people, just as all novels do, all tv dramas do, all radio dramas do, and so on.

The resource center issued the following statement on the show’s cancelation:

We feel that making this decision is in line with the WRC mission of recognizing and celebrating the diverse representations of women on campus along with the overall mission of the Department of Diversity and Community Involvement, in which the WRC is housed, of supporting and empowering minoritized students and challenging systems and structures that perpetuate inequities.

We truly believe that it is important to center our minoritized students and this decision is in line with this mission driven value.

Some of the survey’s respondents said it’s just time to give up on “The Vagina Monologues,” written in 1994 by activist Eve Ensler, because the play can’t fit into today’s far-left feminist movement.

Oh but it’s not far-left (and it’s not feminist, either). This Mai IdenTitY shit is very right-wing and individualist, as well as very apolitically delusional and fantasy-based and fucking loony tunes.

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Decorum

Nov 18th, 2018 11:30 am | By

In his Fox News performance this morning Trump gave himself an A plus as president and asked if he could go higher.

An hour ago he called Representative Adam Schiff “Adam Schitt” in a tweet. Yes, the president of the United States really did that.

On Friday, when a judge ruled that the White House had no business taking away Jim Acosta’s press pass, Trump responded that there had to be decorum.

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What are you hiding, Justice Department?

Nov 18th, 2018 10:16 am | By

Here’s an issue to keep an eye on – Whitaker’s financial disclosure should have been made public long ago, and it hasn’t been.

Megan Keller at The Hill has more:

Watchdog group American Oversight is calling for Acting Attorney General Whitaker’s financial disclosures to be made public.

“Transparency is a critical component of the government ethics program,” wrote the group’s executive director, Austin Evers, in a letter on Friday to Emory Rounds in the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE).

Evers pointed to the financial disclosure provisions of the Ethics in Government Act, which he said “facilitate transparency regarding potential financial conflicts of interest” by requiring the public financial disclosure of senior government officials within 30 days of them assuming office, in most cases.

120 days at the outside. Whitaker was appointed chief of staff to Sessions on October 4, 2017. More than 120 days have elapsed since then.

“In light of his recent appointment as Acting Attorney General, American Oversight requested that the Department of Justice provide access to the two public financial disclosure reports that Mr. Whitaker was required to file as a new entrant and incumbent in a covered position.”

He wrote that the Department of Justice  “has not yet permitted inspection or furnished a copy of these public financial disclosure reports.”

Evers added that it is “quite troubling” that Whitaker’s records have not been made public sooner.

That seems like an understatement. It’s mandatory for Whitaker to file and it’s mandatory to make his info public – so what the hell is the Justice Department doing? Is Trump holding them hostage?

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Look, it’s going to be up to him

Nov 18th, 2018 10:07 am | By

Trump did another Blab All with Fox News today.

President Trump said he would not overrule his acting attorney general, Matthew G. Whitaker, if he decides to curtail the special counsel probe being led by Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 election campaign.

“Look, it’s going to be up to him . . . I would not get involved,” Trump said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

Oh, suddenly the AG has all kinds of autonomy, when the previous one (who was for real as opposed to Acting) was supposed to protect Trump instead of recusing himself. Funny how the rules work in Trump-world. Sessions was supposed to jump when Trump said jump, and Whitaker is supposed to chart a courageous lonely course through the murky waters of How Exactly To Kneecap Mueller.

In the weeks since Trump forced Jeff Sessions to resign as attorney general and chose Whitaker to serve as his interim replacement…

How do journalists lose track of time so easily? It’s been eleven days, not “weeks.”

In the weeks since Trump forced Jeff Sessions to resign as attorney general and chose Whitaker to serve as his interim replacement, Whitaker has faced calls from Democrats to recuse himself from oversight of the probe given his previous criticism of the investigation. Trump said in Sunday’s interview that he “did not know [Whitaker] took views on the Mueller investigation as such” before he appointed him to his position.

Big lie. Big obvious flashing-lights almost-funny lie.

During Sunday’s wide-ranging interview, Trump said he does not feel it is necessary for him to listen to an audio recording of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month.

“We have the tape. I don’t want to hear the tape. No reason for me to hear the tape,” Trump said. He described it as “a suffering tape” and told Wallace, “I know everything that went on in the tape without having to hear it. . . . It was very violent, very vicious and terrible.”

So he lets himself off the hook, while maintaining his tight embrace of Saudi Arabia.

The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Saudi leaders and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. But Trump maintained on “Fox News Sunday” that the crown prince had told him “maybe five different times” and “as recently as a few days ago” that he had nothing to do with the killing.

Ya, same with Putin, who said several times that he didn’t interfere with the US election. Meanwhile, lock her up, and the Central Park Five totally did it and should be executed, or perhaps lynched. Top class epistemology.

“Well, will anybody really know?” Trump said in Sunday’s interview when asked whether the crown prince might have been lying to him. He added: “You saw we put on very heavy sanctions, massive sanctions on a large group of people from Saudi Arabia. But, at the same time, we do have an ally, and I want to stick with an ally that in many ways has been very good.”

Good at indoctrinating the guys who knocked down the twin towers, for instance. Very good at that.

Trump praised Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen but also suggested that she may leave his administration at some point. Trump has voiced dissatisfaction about Nielsen’s performance on immigration enforcement and has previously told advisers that he has decided to remove her in the coming weeks.

“I want her to get much tougher, and we’ll see what happens there. But I want to be extremely tough,” Trump said in Sunday’s interview.

By which he means, he wants to violate human rights, imprison children, turn asylum seekers away contrary to international law, and generally be as sadistic and brutal toward brown people as he possibly can. Extreeemlee tufff.

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Tuty Tursilawati

Nov 17th, 2018 6:56 pm | By

Late last month:

Indonesia has responded with outrage after Saudi Arabia executed an Indonesian domestic worker who was convicted of killing her Saudi employer — even though an activist group says the maid had been defending herself from being raped.

The case highlights the tough position of many of the estimated 11 million foreign workers, from more than 100 nations, who reside in Saudi Arabia. An estimated 2.3 million of them work in households, often as maids.

And are treated like dirt.

Activists say migrant workers in Saudi Arabia can be exploited under its visa sponsorship system, known as kafala. The kafala system is used in several Persian Gulf states. The Saudi government has made some effort to reform the system, including setting up a website to inform foreigners of their rights, and some Saudis have called for it to be scrapped.

Tursilawati was sentenced to death in 2011 for the premeditated murder of her employer in the Saudi city of Thaif the year before. The mother of one had arrived in Saudi Arabia only nine months before the crime occurred. Migrant Care, a group that supports the rights of Indonesians working aboard, said she had been fearful of being raped by the man and acted in self-defense.

God is great.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments


Raking and cleaning and doing things

Nov 17th, 2018 3:40 pm | By

Oh, hold the phone, I was wrong, he’s got it all figured out. This is great.

The floors. Cleaning them. You have to clean them. If you clean them everything will be fine; no more fires. It’s all a matter of hygiene.

He was with the president of Finland who lives in a farrest nayshn, he called it a farrest nayshn. “They spend a lot of time on raking, and cleaning [big back and forth hand gesture here, to represent ‘raking, and cleaning’ for those who don’t understand], and doing things, and they don’t have [pause, tiny shrug] any problem. Or if they do it’s a very small problem. I know everybody’s looking at that, and – and it’s going to work out well.”

No one was rude enough to tell him that Finland has a rather different climate from that of California.

Update: oh but an actual Finn was rude enough to tweet no we don’t.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 9 comments