Trump Administration Removes Federal Database That Tracked Pollution

More incredible assholery from this huge asshole of an administration. 

Trump To Release Executive Order Criminalizing Homelessness

President Donald Trump is looking to make a move on addressing America’s homelessness crisis, shirking the advice of advocates in favor of a focus on increasing law enforcement involvement in the issue, according to City Lab. 

An executive order could be coming down the pike soon, advocates believe, that would “assign new resources to police departments to remove homeless encampments and even strip housing funds from cities that choose to tolerate these encampments.” 

The White House’s Domestic Policy Council is working closely with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on the issue, with Housing Secretary Ben Carson meeting with officials in Houston earlier this month as part of a push for federal action. The government is looking into repurposing federal buildings and former correctional facilities for housing the homeless, City Lab reported, which is a controversial approach being pushed by Robert Marbut, the White House’s lead on homelessness. 

In Houston, where local officials have succeeded in bringing down the homeless population by about 54 percent in recent years, the approach of Housing First has proven to work wonders. Houston is one of 24 cities singled out by the Trump administration as locations where federal intervention is necessary, and advocates fear federal officials will abandon the Housing First concept in favor of punitive measures. Part of the administration’s problem with cities’ approaches to homelessness involves increasingly visible homeless camps.

"TRUMP HAS TOLD FRIENDS THAT GUTTING MEDICARE COULD BE A FUN “SECOND-TERM PROJECT”"

What a fucking asshole:

When Donald Trump was running for president, he boldly proclaimed that he would not only balance the budget, he would eliminate the entire national debt, which at the time was approximately $19 trillion. 

That, of course, was about as likely to happen as Don Jr. going vegan or Ivanka publicly admitting that her father is a sick individual who needs help. 

Instead, President Trump has pushed the federal deficit to new heights thanks to a tax cut that did not, in fact, “pay for itself,” and a trade war that has turned out to be neither “good” nor “easy to win.” 

On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office said that the federal deficit will reach $960 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, which ends September 30, and breach the $1 trillion mark in 2020. Previously those figures were expected to come in at $896 billion and $892 billion, respectively, but the damage from the president’s tariffs, along with a sharp falloff in revenue thanks to the 2017 tax cuts, have caused deficit projections to rise faster than expected. 

Incredibly, this is all happening against the backdrop of the longest economic expansion on record and the lowest jobless rate in 50 years, conditions that typically cause the budget deficit to shrink. And under the continued tutelage of Donald Trump, the New York Times reports, things are only expected to get worse: 

Mr. Trump has shown little inclination to prioritize deficit reduction, and has instead considered policies that would add to the debt. The president has mused in recent days about reducing the taxes that investors pay on capital gains, a move that is estimated to add $100 billion to deficits over the next decade. He has also talked about cutting payroll taxes, which could reduce revenues by $75 billion a year for every percentage point cut in payroll tax rates. The president also wants to make permanent many of the temporary individual tax cuts contained in the 2017 law, which are scheduled to expire in 2025. The budget office forecast assumes those cuts expire and tax revenues rise; if they do not, future deficit projections would be even larger.

The need to borrow more money has been aggravated by several bipartisan budget agreements to raise military and nondefense domestic discretionary spending. And it could increase if the trade war further chills business investment and consumer spending, resulting in slower economic growth and fewer tax dollars flowing to the Treasury Department. 

But while the nonpartisan CBO has placed the blame squarely on things like the trade war and tax cuts, Republicans—the ones who spent eight years under Obama screaming about fiscal responsibility and bankrupting our grandchildren—have an idea for how to deal with the situation that doesn’t involve taking tax cuts away from the wealthy or reeling in Tariff Man: 

Conservative groups—which largely supported Mr. Trump’s tax cuts—have pushed Congress to cut future deficits by reducing benefits for federal health care and retirement programs, like Medicare and Social Security. “Something must be done soon,” the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks said in a news release on Wednesday, “and that means taking a hard look at mandatory spending, the root cause of the United States’ fiscal woes.” 

While Republicans do not expect Trump to push for cuts while campaigning for reelection, they’ve apparently encouraged him to do so should he win a second term—a proposition to which President “I’m not going to cut Social Security, I’m not going to cut Medicare” has reportedly been receptive. “We’ve got to fix that,” Senator John Thune, the number two Republican in the Senate, told the Times. “It’s going to take presidential leadership to do that, and it’s going to take courage by the Congress to make some hard votes. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road. I hope in a second term, he is interested,” Thune said of Trump. “With his leadership, I think we could start dealing with that crisis. And it is a crisis.” Republicans, said Senator John Barrasso, who seems to regularly chat with the president, have “brought it up with President Trump, who has talked about it being a second-term project.”

Trump's Christmas Gift to Big Oil: Killing Hopes of Electric Car Tax Credit Extension

What a fucking asshole.

More Evil at the Border

The Trump administration has orphaned thousands and thousands of children and babies. They took them from their parents, locked them in cages, and then intentionally lost them. We still do not know where these children are.

And now they want to deport parents and relatives trying to claim children, which will scare these people from getting children. This is evil.

Also

"With flu season in full swing, the immigration crisis at the U.S-Mexico border has become even more dire for migrant children. Three children in U.S. custody have recently died of easily preventable flu-related illnesses."

and of course because they are assholes:
“Border Control has reportedly refused to let a group of physicians administer flu shots to migrant children in custody, even though some doctors have been passionately campaigning to provide this potentially lifesaving medical care.”

After Being Impeached, Trump Attacks Dead Democrat

On Thursday night, shortly after the House voted to impeach him, President Trump proved that point, revealing once again that a black hole exists where his own character should be. In a rage-fueled rally in Dingell’s home state, the president waged an attack on the dead congressman and the grieving widow who now holds his seat in Congress. Trump even joked that Dingell might be watching them from hell. As appalling as the comment itself was the laughter it got from Trump’s fawning supporters. The president’s statement was so vile that — for once — even Republican members of Congress condemned it and said he should apologize (which, of course, he didn’t).

Kentucky’s ex-governor pardoned a child rapist because the 9-year-old victim’s hymen was intact

Matt Bevin is an evil asshole.

Trump Is An Anti-Semite Supporting a Rightwing Religious Asshole

President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at tackling anti-Semitism on college campuses on Wednesday ― but one of the speakers at the event has said that Jews are going to hell. 

Trump signed the order at a White House Hanukkah reception, with several prominent Jewish Americans in attendance, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. 

But the president also called upon evangelical Christian leader Robert Jeffress to speak, claiming he’s a “tremendous faith leader.” 

Jeffress, in turn, called Trump “the most pro-faith president in history.” But Jeffress has a long history of hateful comments toward other faiths. 

In 2010, he called both Islam and Mormonism “a heresy from the pit of hell,” then issued a warning to Jews. “Judaism ― you can’t be saved being a Jew,” he declared on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

"Jewish Groups Accuse Trump of Anti-Semitism Over 'Horrifying' Plan to Define Judaism As a Nationality"

Trump's Vile and Bigoted Comments About Jews

Jewish groups denounced President Donald Trump Sunday for anti-Semitic tropes after he referred to some Jewish voters in the real estate business as “brutal killers” who will vote for him to dodge a wealth tax. 

Trump also complained that some Jews “don’t love Israel enough” in a speech Saturday at the Israeli American Council National Summit in Florida before a supportive crowd that chanted “four more years.” 

Halie Soifer, the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, called Trump’s comments “vile and bigoted” in a statement. Trump’s “deeply offensive remarks ... including his unconscionable repeating of negative stereotypes that have been used historically to target Jews, only reinforce our belief ... that Donald Trump is the biggest threat to American Jews,” Soifer added. 

Author Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg tweeted: “It’s not even coded anti-semitism. It’s not a dog whistle. He’s saying this. Out loud. To a room full of Jews.” 

The president also resurrected his own version of a Native American slur by again calling Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) “Pocahontas,” who he falsely claimed wants to take “100% of your wealth away.” 

Trump told the crowd: “A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers. Not nice people at all.” Some in the crowd laughed. “But you have to vote for me; you have no choice. You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that ... You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax.” 

AG Barr debases himself for Trump by contradicting the new DOJ IG report on Russia probe

What an asshole. 

On Monday, as Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee continued to flail about with their claims that the impeachment process is tainted, a long-awaited report by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General was released concluding that the FBI’s investigations into Russian interference in the election–and its probe into the activities of Carter Page, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort–were proper, grounded in fact and that there is no “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions” to pursue them. 

For months, conservatives have been promising that the report–and a parallel investigation launched by Attorney General William Barr–would blow “Spygate” wide open, leading ultimately to the convictions of various law enforcement officials whom they claimed had hatched the investigation as part of a coup d’état by the Deep State. 

The finding should come as no surprise. The entire narrative began with a typically incoherent tweet from Donald Trump shortly after he took office. At the time, Trump’s claim that the Obama administration had spied on his campaign was too ludicrous even for Republicans to embrace. The House Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)–who would later become one of “SpyGate’s” most prominent advocates–sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding that they provide evidence to support Trump’s tweet. Kellyanne Conway, then a senior advisor to Trump, admitted that there was zero evidence to support Trump’s claim, but argued that it was possible that the CIA spied on the campaign through microwave ovens. 

When Trump resurfaced the conspiracy theory, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said, “it appears that there was an investigation not of the campaign but of certain individuals who have a history that we should be suspicious of.” His colleague, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who had pushed hard on equally dubious charges related to Benghazi, told Fox News that, having been briefed on the intelligence, he was “even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do.” 

And yet, moments after the report was released, William Barr released a statement contradicting his agency’s own Inspector General. “The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” it reads in part.

Trump Declares Himself the 'Greatest of All Presidents' in Saturday Rant

What an asshole.

70,000 Children Separated: Pure Evil

Causing 'Profound' Trauma, Trump Administration Detained Record-Breaking 70,000 Children in 2019

The U.S. held a record 69,550 migrant children in detention facilities in 2019, a Tuesday report from The Associated Press and PBS Frontline found, leading to major psychological and physiscal harm and lasting trauma. 

"No other country held as many immigrant children in detention over the past year as the United States—69,550," said AP tech reporter Frank Bajak in a tweet promoting his colleagues' work. "The physical and emotional scars are profound." 

The story lays out in excrutiating detail the emotional pain of victims of President Donald Trump's child separation policy, focusing on, among others, a Honduran father whose three-year-old daughter can no longer look at him or connect with him after being separated at the U.S. border and abused in foster care.

Trump's Senior Advisor Stephen Miller Is a White Nationalist

Anybody who caught his warm-up act on the campaign trail in 2016 tumbled in less than two minutes to the fact that Stephen Miller was a creature of the primordial political ooze. He was a nasty bit of business, unleavened even by the slightest bit of wit or humor. He looked on the campaign crowds as though they’d come to watch him torture puppies to death with a flamethrower. Not only was this a guy you didn’t want close to any source of political power, this was a guy you didn’t want close to power tools. On Tuesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s newsletter, Hatewatch, published a collection of e-correspondence from Miller that fairly well frames him as an outright white nationalist with more than a little of that Nuremberg torchlight illuminating his thinking. My god, how low have we slipped that this guy commands any part of a democratic self-government?

In the Trump administration, where staffers come and go quickly, White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller has managed to stick around since the campaign days when he worked as a speechwriter. Miller, who previously worked as a communications director for then Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, became Trump's point person on immigration, particularly after the departure of Kirjsten Nielsen as secretary of Homeland Security. And insiders have credited him with some of the administration's most extreme anti-immigration policies: family separation policy; attempts to undo protections for immigrants in the U.S. legally; and a proposal to permanently block green card access for any immigrant who relied on social services. Miller has long drawn accusations of white supremacist leanings both within and outside the Trump administration. After poignant images circulated of migrant family separations at the border, one outside White House advisor told Gabriel Sherman at *Vanity Fair: “Stephen actually enjoys seeing those pictures at the border. He’s a twisted guy, the way he was raised and picked on. There’s always been a way he’s gone about this. He’s Waffen-SS.” Now there is public record of Miller promoting explicit and virulent white nationalist propaganda. On Tuesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks and monitors U.S. hate groups and extremists, released a series of e-mails between Miller and Katie McHugh, a former editor at the far-right website Breitbart. McHugh—who renounced the far right since being fired from Breitbart—told the SPLC that other editors at the site introduced her to Miller to use for direction when covering immigration. Spanning 2014 to 2017, the messages include many examples of Miller referencing white supremacist websites, writers, and books, as well as railing against U.S. immigration policies he would later work to undo in the Trump White House.

Trump Is a Psycho, Part 651,234,001

Yesterday, President Donald Trump spoke in front of a gaggle of reporters and made a series of unhinged and outright false claims about his political opponents, the still-anonymous whistleblower, and the news media. 

"Highlights":

 1.) Trump says that the whistleblower should be exposed and the whistleblower’s lawyer “sued for treason.” The president continued calling for the public release of the whistleblower’s name, which would be against the law, before serving up a particularly weird attack on Mark Zaid, the attorney representing the whistleblower. According to PBS News’ Yamiche Alcindor, the president said Zaid should be sued “maybe for treason.”

 2.) Trump says he might endorse Jeff Sessions after all because the former attorney general said “very nice things” about him in his campaign launch video. Even though the president still reportedly loathes Sessions for not doing enough to block special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, he said on Friday that he might be open to endorsing him in the Alabama Senate race next year. “I saw he said very nice things about me last night,” Trump said of Sessions. “But we’ll have to see.”

 3.) Trump says he doesn’t know the man whom he appointed to be America’s ambassador to the European Union. American EU ambassador Gordon Sondland testified this week that he told Ukrainian officials that military aid to their country would not be released unless they agreed to launch investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden. When asked about this by a reporter, Trump began by saying, “I hardly know the gentleman.” Other witnesses have testified that Sondland was regularly in contact with Trump this year, however, and Trump called Sondland “a really good man and great American” just one month ago.

4.) Trump melted down and kept yelling, “Quiet!” at a reporter. While the president was trying to accuse former Vice President Joe Biden of corruption, a reporter interrupted him with a question, which made Trump visibly angry.  “Be quiet,” Trump said. “Be quiet! Quiet! Quiet!”

 5.) Trump stuns reporters by saying he might attend Russia’s May Day military parade. Trump revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has invited him to attend next year’s May Day Parade in Moscow. “President Putin invited me to the — it’s a very big deal!” he said. “Celebrating the end of the war, etc., etc. A very big deal. So I appreciate the invitation… I would love to go if I could.”

Trump Flips Off Female Astronaut

What an utter piece of shit he is.

Trump Approves of Ethnic Cleansing

Video Showing Trump As A Mass Murderer

Disturbing as fuck:

With that in mind, The New York Times reported this incident Sunday night: 

A video depicting a macabre scene of a fake President Trump shooting, stabbing and brutally assaulting members of the news media and his political opponents was shown at a conference for his supporters at his Miami resort last week, according to footage obtained by The New York Times. Several of Mr. Trump’s top surrogates — including his son Donald Trump Jr., his former spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis — were scheduled to speak at the three-day conference, which was held by a pro-Trump group, American Priority, at Trump National Doral Miami. Ms. Sanders and a person close to Mr. Trump’s son said on Sunday that they did not see the video at the conference. The video, which includes the logo for Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, comprises a series of internet memes. The most violent clip shows Mr. Trump’s head superimposed on the body of a man opening fire inside the “Church of Fake News” on parishioners who have the faces of his critics or the logos of media organizations superimposed on their bodies. It appears to be an edited scene of a church massacre from the 2014 dark comedy film “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” 

Politico adds details of "targets" from the video: 

Besides journalists, other targets depicted include the late John McCain, California Reps. Adam Schiff and Maxine Waters, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The Trump character in the video shoots, stab and beats his victims; at one point, he sets Bernie Sanders’ head on fire. Other past and present election rivals also are depicted. 

NBC News reports a video matching this description appeared on YouTube in September 2018. 

The White House Correspondents Association responded in a statement: 

“All Americans should condemn this depiction of violence directed toward journalists and the President’s political opponents. We have previously told the President his rhetoric could incite violence. Now we call on him and everybody associated with this conference to denounce this video and affirm that violence has no place in our society.” 

Organizers denounced the video and claim it was part of a "meme exhibit" submitted by third parties. 

An American Priorities spokesman told NBC News, "The organizers of #AMPFest19 were not even aware of the video until they were contacted by the New York Times." A Trump campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, told the Times he had no knowledge of the video and said, “That video was not produced by the campaign, and we do not condone violence.” 

Someone at the campaign ought to alert the boss: 

“I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information because that’s close to a spy,” Mr. Trump said. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

The Sliming of Ambassador Marie Yavonovitch

Opening Statement of Marie L. Yovanovitch to the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee onIntelligence, Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Committee onOversight and Reform 

For the last 33 years, it has been my great honor to serve the American people as a Foreign Service Officer, over six Administrations—four Republican, and two Democratic. I have served in seven different countries, five of them hardship posts, and was appointed to serve as an ambassador three times—twice by a Republican President, and once by a Democrat. Throughout my career, I have stayed true to the oath that Foreign Service Officers take and observe every day: “that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;” and “that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” Like all foreign service officers with whom I have been privileged to serve, I have understood that oath as a commitment to serve on a strictly nonpartisan basis, to advance the foreign policy determined by the incumbent President, and to work at all times to strengthen our national security and promote our national interests.

She goes on to explain her history and work in Ukraine and how she was slimed by the Trump administration, the worst most corrupt and treasonous POTUS ever.

Grieving Parents ‘Ambushed’ by Trump, Who Had Teen’s Killer Waiting at White House

This story is unbelievable but indeed, this is the psychotic asshole we have as president:

You can almost imagine the reality-show excitement that surely went into the ill-considered plan to introduce Anne Sacoolas, the American diplomatic wife who killed 19-year-old motorcyclist Harry Dunn when she drove down the wrong side of an English lane in August, to Dunn’s grieving parents. 

Sacoolas left the U.K. in early September under diplomatic-immunity protections and has not been seen in public since. The Dunn family, now in the United States to drum up support to send Sacoolas back to the U.K. to face justice, had accepted an “urgent” invitation by the White House from National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, to visit Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. 

Trump, it seems, thought he could convince the Dunns to meet the woman who killed their son, and would do so by opening a side door through which she would walk. The whole scene would be captured by a pool of photographers who had been summoned for the meeting. 

But the Dunns would have none of it and refused to meet her. Dunn family spokesman Radd Seiger said that the family felt “ambushed” when the “bombshell” was dropped that Sacoolas was next door.

The Psycho POTUS Yells Treason

Two weeks ago the President of the United States said that Democratic US Congressional Representative Adam Schiff should be arrested and charged with treason. 

He said Schiff committed treason by paraphrasing what Trump said in a phone call, and used a sarcastic manner.

Basically everyone just laughed it off and ignored it as the ravings of a lunatic and nothing was done about it. 

But this is the *President of the United States*. 

Trump basically has no credibility at all and can be laughed at and ignored because he is a ridiculous person. 

Great job, Republicans. 

MAGA.

More Air Pollution is the GOP Way

The Trump administration is expected on Wednesday to formally revoke California's legal authority to set tailpipe pollution rules that are stricter than federal rules, in a move designed by the White House to strike twin blows against both the liberal-leaning state that President Trump has long antagonized and the environmental legacy of President Barack Obama. 

The announcement that the White House will revoke one of California's signature environmental policies will come while Mr. Trump is traveling in the state, where he is scheduled to attend fund-raisers in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. The formal revocation of California's authority to set its own rules on tailpipe pollution -- the United States' largest source of greenhouse emissions -- will be announced Wednesday afternoon at a private event at the Washington headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency, according to two people familiar with the matter. A White House spokesman referred questions on the matter to the Environmental Protection Agency. A spokesman for the E.P.A. did not respond to an email requesting comment. Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, wrote in an email: "California will continue its advance toward a cleaner future. We're prepared to defend the standards that make that promise a reality." 

1) How do you revoke the right of a state to set a policy like this? What happened to state's rights? Revoke authority? Like they can't make their own laws? WTF???

2) Fuck anyone in California who donates to this psychopath's campaign !!!

Gutting HealthCare Protections

Health Insurance That Doesn’t Cover the Bills Has Flooded the Market Under Trump

The administration’s moves to weaken the Affordable Care Act have taken hold, and companies are cashing in.

Many patients are giving these new kinds of insurance where it covers next to nothing and almost no facilities are in network because the insurance gives payouts that are totally inadequate.

This results in people thinking they have health coverage and then getting a terrible surprise once they are sick and in the hospital.

And who gets blamed for this? Obamacare ... not the fact that the GOP has gutted the regulations that were intended to keep insurance companies accountable.

It's pure evil.

Poisoning the Planet for Fun and Profit

GOP motherfucking assholes:

Trump administration rolls back landmark water protections
By ANNIE SNIDER 09/12/2019 10:21 AM EDT 

 The Trump administration will on Thursday repeal one of the Obama era's most sweeping environmental rules — a set of pollution protections for small streams and wetlands that had riled up opposition from coal miners, home developers, farmers and oil and gas drillers. 

The action creates instant doubts about the legal status of myriad seasonal or isolated wetlands and thousands of miles of waterways, including vast swaths of the arid West. And it clears the way for the Environmental Protection Agency to finish a follow-up regulation in the coming months that could leave most of the nation's wetlands without any federal safeguards.

The Latest Actions of President Satan

In just the past 2 days, we've learned that President Satan wants to: 

--pardon criminals who clear the way for his evil border wall

-- deny citizenship to children born to US service-members overseas

-- massively increase logging in an old-growth forest in Alaska

-- decrease regulations on methane pollution, an extremely potent greenhouse gas

-- deport immigrant kids who are in the US for life-saving medical care, giving extremely sick kids a death sentence

"I'm Not Willing to Do That": Trump Says He Won't Take Climate Action Because It Would Threaten Corporate Profits

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is at a record high, Europe is in the midst of a hellish heat wave, and extreme weather is ravaging large swaths of the globe, but President Donald Trump dismissed the need for climate action during the G20 summit in Japan on Saturday and falsely claimed that air and water in the U.S. are the "cleanest" they have ever been. 

(snip) 

Trump's comments came amid reports that the U.S. president attempted to pressure allies to weaken the G20 commitment to fighting climate change. 

According to Politico, Trump tried "to enlist the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Australia, and Turkey in opposing commitments to stand by the Paris climate agreement made at previous G-20 summits." 

Trump's efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, as the U.S. remained the sole outlier in refusing to back the summit's climate declaration.

The Trump Administration Asked The Supreme Court To Legalize Firing Workers Simply For Being Gay

What fucking assholes.

The Demoralizing Reality of Life Under Trump for Any Decent Sane Person

It’s boring, at this point, to talk about the cost of living with Donald Trump as president—it’s the water we all swim in now, so it’s neither unique nor new nor surprising. 

And yet it’s still true, which is why it’s refreshing to read Matt Ford’s excellent piece in the New Republic, “Trump’s Tax on the National Psyche.” 

Ford’s formulation is a useful way to think about the massive toll, in terms of time and energy stolen from Americans forced to pay attention to inane tweets and half-baked policy, this presidency has had on all of us. 

As Ford observes, Trump, himself an inveterate squanderer of time, is wasting all of ours: “Trump’s haphazard style of governance,” he writes, “forces journalists, lawyers, and government officials to expend innumerable hours on doomed initiatives and errant tweets. 

His corrosive effect on American politics forces Americans to devote far more hours of their life to thinking about him than they should.” 

The problem is that we have no choice but to follow the inane tweets and oppose the half-baked policy. 

There are serious consequences that follow to transgender soldiers, DACA kids, green card holders, and, of course, families at the border when we don’t. 

As Ford further notes, the psychic costs of following and resisting all of this stupidity are not borne equally by all Americans: “A Gallup poll from April found that younger and less affluent Americans felt more daily stress in general. Women reported higher rates than men in the APS survey; black and Hispanic Americans also registered higher levels of anxiety about the future than their white counterparts.” 

And this stress, in turn, has marked health impacts, again borne unequally by communities with less power. Still, it’s not just that families are ripped apart in immigration raids and that Latina mothers suffer higher rates of miscarriages—everyone following along with the cruelty at home is suffering too. 

In the spring, Pew polled Americans asking them to describe how Trump’s comments and statements made them feel. 

The top seven responses, in descending order? They felt concerned (76 percent), confused (70 percent), embarrassed (69 percent), exhausted (67 percent), angry (65 percent), insulted (62 percent), and frightened (56 percent). 

In the Washington Post, William Wan and Lindsey Bever write that “Researchers have begun to identify correlations between Trump’s election and worsening cardiovascular health, sleep problems, anxiety and stress, especially among Latinos in the United States.” 

In other words, it’s not just that Trump is wasting our time and mental space; he’s also making us physically ill. 

Buried in there is part of the answer to the age-old question of whether Donald Trump’s words—packed with lies and hubris and threats—really have any force. 

Given that those words are likely not to be truthful, we may not need to take them literally or seriously, as the formulation goes. But meaningless or gibberish or lies or all three, his words still make us anxious, worried, and stressed. 

As Ford notes, it’s not just the opportunity cost of what we could be doing with our time, though I could have learned to be a master baker in the time I’ve spent chronicling the outrages of this administration. 

The actual physical and mental toll being taken is even worse than what my family has missed out in chocolate amaretto soufflés. 

The actual psychic toll on our mental health is crippling. The lost sleep, the grinding anxiety, the escalating fears don’t just represent squandered time. They start to chip away at your health and at your soul. 

The healthy response would be to tune it out altogether, but since actual people are actually suffering the brutal consequences, we cannot. 

And so here we are back in the narcissist’s loop, fueling his need to be at the center because, well, there he is at the center.I have been writing about Trump burnout for a while now, but I confess that this summer has been harder, both because the cruelty we once dreaded and feared is manifestly occurring all around us every day and because vast numbers of our friends and neighbors are either exulting in it or sidelining themselves as a result of what Vox, waaaay back in 2017 once dubbed “Trump fatigue syndrome,” a kind of fugue state involving numbness, burnout, and a corresponding loss of reality. 

This is then doubly concerning, because in addition to being jealous of these people’s newfound freedom, as Nesrine Malik writes, for the Guardian, the real jeopardy of authoritarianism starts with fatigue. 

Moral seriousness seems to require being aware enough of the chaos everywhere that you accept being punched in the mouth with it every day. 

The email I have received most often this summer goes something like this: “I am doing too much. I am not doing enough.” The same can be said for all of us. Self-care in the form of manicures and time with the kids isn’t making a dent in it. 

And if one stops to think about the cumulative effect of gerrymandering, election interference, vote suppression, and a president signaling that he will not concede even if he loses in 2020, pinning all hopes in the next election feels one notch more sanguine than we can afford to be. 

So, Donald Trump, who just in the past two days refused to visit Denmark because it wouldn’t sell Greenland, tossed an anti-Semitic canard out to see how it landed on American Jews, retweeted a conspiracy theorist who claims Trump is the king of the Jews, reversed himself on gun policy and payroll taxes, and mulled ending birthright citizenship by way of executive order, just keeps on trucking. No check in sight. 

Don McGahn is not going to do anything to stop him, Congress is not going to do anything to stop him, Senate Republicans are not going to do anything to stop him, and Sean Spicer is on Dancing With the Stars. Cold comfort perhaps, but if you don’t feel that you are losing your damn mind, something would be profoundly wrong with you. We are all doing too much. And we are all also not doing enough. And there is nothing wrong with you, beyond being a human being in categorically insane times.

Trump Is A Blatant Anti-Semite

So when Trump claims that Jews have not just dual loyalties, but that, in fact, their primary loyalty lies elsewhere, it’s hard to ignore. IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish group that has been protesting Trump’s immigration policies, told Newsweek that “this is an explicit dual loyalty charge wielded by the President of the United States against 80% of American Jews who voted against him. It is not [merely] an antisemitic dog whistle—it’s a bullhorn to his white nationalist base.” Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, again attempting to decipher what exactly Trump was talking about, while knowing it was nothing good, told the Hill: “At a time when anti-Semitic incidents have increased—due to the president’s emboldening of white nationalism—Trump is repeating an anti-Semitic trope. If this is about Israel, then Trump is repeating a dual loyalty claim, which is a form of anti-Semitism. If this is about Jews being ‘loyal’ to him, then Trump needs a reality check.”

Right-Wing billionaire David Koch Dead-- He Was Supremely Evil

Right-wing billionaire David Koch died on Friday and like so many other people who have died and wielded influence over our society, there is the desire to immediately whitewash their record and play up the good they supposedly did. 

Meanwhile we’re just supposed to sweep their malevolence under the table and definitely don’t mention it in polite company. That’s nonsense. 

David Koch, along with his brother Charles, control Koch Industries. Koch is a multinational industrial mega-corporation. Among its many brands the most well-known is Georgia-Pacific. Koch Industries is one of the worst polluters in American history. 

Over its 79 years of existence, Koch Industries have polluted the land all across America, pursuing financial gain for the Kochs and their families over the long-term health of the planet. 

In 2000, Koch settled with the government and paid a $30 million fine for their practice of pollution, which set a record for the largest such fine in American history. The company was sued for over 300 oil spills across facilities in 6 states. 

(snip)

The company has a list of environmental violations affecting the lives of millions of people that goes on for years and years and years. Chlorine dioxide chemical leak (2014), 17,000 gallons of crude spilled (2013), sending toxic dust into homes, soil and groundwater contamination, releasing hazardous chemicals including benzene, hydrogen cyanide, releasing millions of gallons of toxic paper mill waste (as much as 45 million gallons per day). 

The company also illegally removed oil from federal and Indian lands. 

It just goes on and on and on. Violation of the public trust, the Earth, and human health and safety, all so David Koch could line his pockets with billions of dollars. 

In the process, he also donated money to ballets and museums. He even supported criminal justice reform. So what? 

The man and his brother were and are a malign influence on our society. The actions they engaged in are the worst sort of evil. 

They give those who purportedly support capitalism a bad name, because capitalism simply does not have to be this evil. 

The Kochs chose this evil path to pad their bank accounts. Why make 40 cents when you can make a dollar? So what if the ground is poisoned and children and families get sick and hurt? Who cares, right? 

And yes, on top of all their gross defilement of the environment and our communities, the Kochs poured billions into American politics. 

They backed policies like limiting how many people have access to health care, cutting taxes for the super-rich (like them), limiting government oversight of polluters (like them), and backing a whole host of policies designed to keep people like the Kochs wealthy while stomping on the faces of everyone else.  

(snip)

David Koch should be remembered for being evil and to hopefully remind others – because most like him are beyond conscience – that society will and should judge you for the life you lived, so it’s best to live a good and moral life instead of one like David Koch’s.

Oddly, this article doesn't even mention the horrible anti-climate change, anti-climate action agenda that the Koch's took, that have put the entire planet on the brink of crisis in the service of enriching themselves and a few other fossil fuel billionaires. 

If ratcheting up inequality were all the Kochs did, they would still be arch-villains. But the Koch brothers’ businesses from fossil fuel extraction and refining to petrochemical and fertilizer production all rely on being able to emit carbon pollution with abandon. In the 1990s, as the world moved toward an awakening on climate change and the need to address it, the Koch machine moved to block any regulations or price on carbon that would cut into their profits by funding doubt and denial. 

Greenpeace estimates the brothers spent $127 million from 1997 to 2017 funding 92 organizations that muddied the waters on climate change, a move that helped make international efforts to combat climate change, like the Kyoto Protocol, worthless. They funded a network of overlapping climate denial organizations to kill a 2009 bill that would have created a cap and trade system, a very business-friendly climate solution they rejected on principle. 

Now David Koch is dead. And he will never have to live with the consequences of his actions... 

Ditto for the other largely anonymous small cadre of conservative billionaires and fossil fuel executives who have peddled climate denial over the years all while making the problem worse by extracting more poison from the ground and putting it in the atmosphere. 

They’ll likely die long before things get really bleak, and the profits they made as one of the biggest market failures in human history will almost certainly ensure their descendants are insulated from the worst impacts. 

If David Koch and his brother hadn’t funded denial—as Charles is likely to continue to do—it’s possible that the world would have taken steps to drawdown carbon pollution decades ago. 

If the world began cutting emissions in 2000, it would have had to do so at a rate of 4 percent per year to keep warming under the 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold. 

Starting today means “monumental” cuts. If we don’t do anything for 10 years, we’re in deep trouble. All the funding Koch kicked in for arts and cancer research won’t matter if the world burns down, a thing that’s actively happening to the Amazon rainforest on the same week he passed away. 

Thanks, Koch brothers! Thanks, Koch brothers! 

David Koch will never have to watch the world struggle to climb the steepening curve he helped propel into existence. And he’ll never have to live with the consequences if we don’t. If the world misses the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal, the impacts will be severe. Coral will likely disappear. Large swaths of island nations could become uninhabitable by midcentury. Millions of more people who rely on rainfed agriculture will face hunger as the weather becomes more erratic. Livelihoods will disappear. Societies will vanish. People, in short, will die.

Farmers Reel After Sonny Perdue Mocks Them As ‘Whiners’ Amid Trade War Bankruptcies

Asshole!!!

America’s farmers have apparently been demoted by the Trump administration from “great patriots” to “whiners,” according to a tone-deaf joke by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. Farmers, struggling with plunging income and bankruptcies amid President Donald Trump’s trade war, were stunned. 

Perdue made the joke while getting heat last week from Minnesota farmers complaining about, among other things, the latest blow to their businesses from the trade war. China has canceled all purchases of U.S. farm products in retaliation for Trump’s decision to impose 10% tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese imports.

U.S. Rep. Steve King: If not for rape and incest, 'would there be any population left?'

Such a goddamned fucking asshole.

U.S. Rep. Steve King told the Westside Conservative Club on Wednesday that humanity might not exist if not for rape and incest. "What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?" he said at in Urbandale, Iowa. 

"Considering all the wars and all the rapes and pillages taken place and whatever happened to culture after society? I know I can't certify that I'm not a part of a product of that." 

The Kiron Republican was discussing his defense of not allowing exceptions for rape and incest in the anti-abortion legislation he tried to pass in Congress. Republican leadership had prevented bills he sponsored on banning abortions from advancing through the House, despite GOP support for the measures, King said. Just because a conception happened in bad circumstances doesn't mean the result isn't a person, King, who is Catholic, argued.

Trump Official Revises Statue of Liberty Poem to Defend Migrant Rule Change

A top US immigration official has revised a quote inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in defence of a new policy that denies food aid to legal migrants. The head of Citizenship and Immigration Services tweaked the passage: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free". The official added the words "who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge". 

It comes as Trump officials debuted a regulation that denies aid to migrants. Ken Cuccinelli, the Trump administration's acting head of Citizenship and Immigration Services, announced on Monday a new "public charge" requirement that limits legal migrants from seeking certain public benefits such as public housing or food aid, or are considered likely to do so in the future.

GOP Death Cult, Literally

Trump rolls back endangered species protections

The Trump administration on Monday announced it has finalized a controversial rollback of protections for endangered species, including allowing economic factors to be weighed before adding an animal to the list. The Interior Department regulations would dramatically scale back America’s landmark conservation law, limiting protections for threatened species, how factors like climate change can be considered in listing decisions and the review process used before projects are approved on their habitat.

“It means that in all likelihood that the federal government itself and individuals will be damaging the habitat and likely increase the timetable and likelihood of a species going extinct,” David Hayes, executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center and a former deputy of Interior, said in a previous interview with The Hill.

Going forward, the Endangered Species Act will no longer offer the same protections for threatened species — those at risk of becoming extinct in the foreseeable future — as those that are already endangered. Monday’s rule finalizes an earlier proposal from the Interior Department and prompted threats of lawsuits from many environmental groups who say the changes will gut the law. The Endangered Species Act, first passed in 1973, is considered a success globally, surpassing protections for flora and fauna in many other countries.

Environmentalists see it as one of America’s premier environmental laws. But in the U.S it has been a target of industry, heavily criticized by some developers and lawmakers for working almost too well, making it difficult to encroach on habitat even once a species rebounds. Many would like species to be more easily removed from the list.

Interior described the new regulation as a modernization of the act “designed to increase transparency and effectiveness and bring the administration of the Act into the 21st century,” the agency said in a press release. But environmentalists argue many of Interior’s changes will weaken protections for threatened and endangered species.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife, said the law creates two tiers of animals by ending the practice of offering threatened species all the same protections as endangered ones “You’ll see a parade of species listed as threatened because they will have no protective teeth behind them,” she said. “It’s absolutely driving species closer to extinction.”

Trump is a Demon from Hell

Check out this pair of fucking ghouls, acting like they just stole a baby to drink its sweet, young blood so they can live on for a few precious days before they suck another child dry. What you're looking at is Donald Trump, a worn-out sack of lies painted orange and shoved into a terrible suit, and Melania Trump, a lamprey in human form, who happen to be the President and First Lady of the United States, smiling as they hold an orphan named Paul. 

Paul became an orphan because an immigrant-hating fuckworm decided to gun down people in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart. Paul's parents, Andre and Jordan Anchondo, died protecting Paul when the fuckworm opened fire. More specifically, his mother, Jordan, was protecting Paul, and Andre leapt in front of Jordan to protect her. When Jordan was shot dead, she fell on Paul, breaking some of his tiny fingers. He had been sent home after treatment. Well, not home, per se, because that doesn't really exist anymore, but sent with family. 

But when our First Couple of ghouls needed a prop for their visit to a hospital in El Paso and almost none of the victims there could or would act as that prop, Trump's goons called and asked if Paul could be brought back. There is something so fucked up about those smiles, something so empty and soulless, something chilling and depraved, that it should hurt us to our bones to see it. 

The failure to act humble in the face of pain, pain that was caused in part by Trump's own words and actions, echoed in the fuckworm's 8chan post, is galling. And Trump's pathetic thumbs-up may as well just be a middle finger. They don't care, at least not in the sense that we generally think of empathy. They care about how they are perceived, yes, but they don't care about Paul or any of the dead or dying or wounded. 

They are our American void, the abyss we have earned, the black hole that we have come to deserve. Halfway across the country, just before Trump bragged about how his El Paso crowd size was bigger than Beto's to hospital staff who had been putting people back together, 600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had surrounded chicken processing plants in several small Mississippi towns and then arrested 680 workers for "not having proper documentation to be in the United States." 

You ever spoken to anyone who works in a chicken processing plant? Or worked there yourself? It's a fucking nightmare of slaughter and blood and guts. It is horrible, hard work. Jesus, just imagine the noise you must deal with. 

After traumatizing the children of the workers, who had just started their school year, ICE ended up releasing 300 of the people they had taken into custody who had kids waiting for them. The parents promised that they would return for their immigration hearings. You got that? You understand that? It was literally catch and release. And while ICE claims they were always cognizant of ensuring that the mostly American children of undocumented workers were taken care of, you can fucking well bet that it wasn't until video of sobbing, pleading kids got onto the news that anything was done. 

And what did our emotionally and morally vacant president say about this today? "I want people to know that if they come into the United States illegally, they’re getting out; they’re going to be brought out. And this serves as a very good deterrent...when people see what they saw yesterday, and like they will see for a long time, they know that they’re not staying here." 

What a baldly inhuman statement, essentially saying that it's good to see children sobbing because...fuck it. I just don't want to tease that out. Fuck him. The saddest part is how many of taint-licking supporters think he's right. "Hey, if those parents didn't want their kids to suffer, they shouldn't have been here illegally," they say, as if the decision to come here was made on a whim, as if they hadn't faced extraordinary suffering and deprivation in order to take a goddamn chance and work in one of the worst fucking jobs in the nation. Trump is a leader of monsters. 

But the only funny part of this is that the raid, where no Americans who hired the undocumented workers were touched and no executives who want this cheap labor force were rounded up and driven away, is going to hurt the bottom line of the companies to the tune of millions because, well, fuck, ICE just took away a shitload of their employees. One of the plants was partially shut down today because of a lack of workers. That's what your donations to Trump got you, motherfuckers. 

It's not just that cruelty is the point, as we say all the time since Adam Serwer coined that phrase. It's also that, given the chance to even pretend not to be cruel, Trump will shove that aside, as if anything but cruelty is weakness. The orange ghoul in the White House will not soften for your dead; he will not bend for your children's pain.

It's worth noting that the El Paso shooting was the biggest attack and massacre of Hispanic Americans in our history. The shooter in that attack was motivated by anti-immigrant feelings and what does Trump do then in the aftermath but try to push for tighter immigration laws and he also had a massive sweep of illegal immigrants last night, both of which definitely are not going to calm down anti-immigrant sentiment. In fact, these acts will make things worse.

Trump Makes Sick Joke About Stage Collapsing Under First Responders During 9/11 Bill Signing

"“Now I am going to sign this bill into law, and I don’t know if this stage will hold it, but if it doesn’t, we are not falling very far,” Trump said at the 9/11 bill signing." 

Yes, he really said that. What a freaking psychopath.

The Fog of Trump

David Rothkopf:

It's being a traitor. But it's not just being a traitor. It's the obstruction of justice but its not just the obstruction of justice. It's the attacks on rule of law. But it's not just the attacks on the rule of law. It's the assault on freedom of the press.

But it's not just the assault on freedom of the press. It's the pathological lying. But it's not just the pathological lying. It's the unfitness for office. But it's not just the unfitness for office. It's the incompetence. But it's not just the incompetence.

It's the attacks on our most important allies and alliances. But it's not just the attacks on most important allies and alliances. It's the systematic destruction of our environment. But it's not just the systematic destruction of our environment.

It's the violation of international treaties and agreements. But it is not just the violation of international treaties and agreements. It's the embrace of our enemies. But it is not just the embrace of our enemies.

It's the defense of murdering dictators but it is not just the defense of murdering dictators. It is the serial undermining of our national security. But it is not just the serial undermining of our national security. It is the nepotism. But it's not just the nepotism.

It's the attacks on our federal law enforcement and intelligence communities. But it is not just the attacks on our federal law enforcement and intelligence communities. It's the fiscal recklessness. But it's not just the fiscal recklessness.

It's the degradation of the office and of public discourse in America. But it's not just the degradation of the office and of public discourse in America. It's the support of Nazis and white supremacists. But it's not just the support of Nazis and white supremacists.

It's the dead in Puerto Rico and the at the border. But it's not just the dead in Puerto Rico and at the border. It's turning the US government into a criminal conspiracy to empower and enrich the president and his supporters.

But it's not just the turning the US government into a criminal conspiracy to empower and enrich the president and his supporters. It's weaponization of politics in America to attack the weak. But it's not just the weaponization of American politics to attack the weak.

It's all these things together and the threat of worse to come. It is the damage that can not be undone. It is pathology that has overtaken our politics and our society, the revelation that 40 percent of the population and an entire political party are profoundly immoral.

It is a disease that has infected our system and is killing it. At the moment, we still have the wherewithal to fight back. But even those who recognize the dangers of this litany of crimes are proving too complacent, too inert in the face of this threat.

It is one of those moments in the history of a country when there is a choice to be made, a choice between having a future and not, between growth and decay, between democracy and oligarchy, between what we dreamt of being and what even our founders feared we might become.

The litany of crises and crimes is so long that we are becoming numb. You have heard of the fog of war. This is the fog of Trump. The volume of wrongs becomes its own defense. Is the president accused of being a rapist? Well, then remind them he is a racist and they'll forget.

This is a moment for leaders to step up. To challenge each of these abuses via every legal means available. To organize and draw attention to them. To blow the whistle if you are in government and you are being asked to violate your oath. To resist and refuse to be complicit.

If you can't do those things that make your voice heard and join a movement, support a political candidate, donate money, register voters, fight voter suppression. But whatever you do, resist becoming numb. Resist the temptation to let the recitation of old crimes and new...

...become a deadening drone. Every one matters in times like these. Every one must stand up for what is right. In their homes. In their schools. In the workplace. In their churches and synagogues and mosques.

We are approaching a great national decision about whether the American experiment will succeed or fail, whether this moment does what two world wars, a civil war and countless past misjudgments and missteps could not.

We will make it together, resist, offer a better alternative, embrace that alternative and the best leaders we can find...or succumb, let the inertia of some among us mark the end of what for two and half centuries was an idea so compelling it inspired the world.

Nothing Says "Independence" and "Freedom" Like Tanks in the Street!

Heeeere's fascism:

The Insane Criminal Infinity President

Scary weird shit, not a joke. Trump’s new campaign ad shows him re-elected hundreds of times as president into infinity. Beside completely ignoring the constitution, he also thinks he’s immortal. This is off-the-wall bonkers idiocy and creepiness.

pic.twitter.com/JDS4zUXXJG

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2019

Migrant Concentration Camps: Kids Underfed and Wallowing in Filth

GOP evil:

Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met ... Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants. Teenage mothers are wearing clothes stained with breast milk." All overseen by "guards wearing full uniforms — including weapons — as well as face masks to protect themselves from the unsanitary conditions.

The children told the lawyers they were given the same meals every day — instant oats for breakfast, instant noodles for lunch, a frozen burrito for dinner, along with a few cookies and juice packets — which many said was not enough. “Nearly every child I spoke with said that they were hungry,” Ms. Mukherjee said. 

Another group of lawyers conducting inspections under the same federal court settlement said they discovered similar conditions earlier this month at six other facilities in Texas. 

At the Border Patrol’s Central Processing Center in McAllen, Tex. — often known as “Ursula” — the lawyers encountered a 17-year-old mother from Guatemala who couldn’t stand because of complications from an emergency C-section, and who was caring for a sick and dirty premature baby. “When we encountered the baby and her mom, the baby was filthy. They wouldn’t give her any water to wash her. And I took a Kleenex and I washed around her neck black dirt,” said Hope Frye, who was leading the group, adding, “Not a little stuff — dirt.”  

Donald Trump-- the Mobster President

How did Donald Trump, a self-serving promoter who lost billions of dollars for his investors, convince the world that he is a financial genius? It wasn’t just by fabricating tales of his success. It was also by bullying and silencing people who could have stopped those deceits — particularly reporters and Wall Street analysts — forcing all but a very few into a conspiracy of silence.

These tactics, which form a core element of his politics, were something I saw him hone firsthand in the 1980s and 1990s as Trump’s company was imploding. 

I was the lead real estate wealth estimator for the Forbes 400 list in its early years. Trump called me twice in 1984, posing as his fictional “VP of finance” John Barron and professing the kind of riches that ought to land him on the list, despite failing to document them. So when a New York Times exposé last month showed that Trump had lost $1.1 billion between 1985 and 1994, I looked back at my archives and began calling old colleagues to compare these figures with what Trump was telling journalists three decades ago.

First, I turned up three never-before-published letters from Trump to Forbes from 1989, in which he claimed to be worth $3.7 billion. We now know that he reported losses of about $100 million that year and that he was treading near insolvency. Then I started to contact other people who had collided with Trump in those years. Journalists told me how he’d tried to block their reporting on his empire — by making up ethical scandals about them, furnishing fake documents and, in one case, threatening to expose the private life of a closeted media executive. Wall Street analysts witnessed a campaign of intimidation that began when Trump got one of them fired for (correctly) doubting his casinos’ ability to pay off their debts.

Even while he was suffering tremendous financial setbacks — and precisely because he was suffering those setbacks — these efforts show Trump in the desperate act of spinning a mythology about himself (rich) that would sweep aside the facts (broke). And he did it by imperiling the livelihood of his doubters, silencing them and inducing a chilling effect both in the press and among the very people who are supposed to protect investors from terrible gambles like Trump’s businesses. If this self-promotion scheme had failed, Trump would never have become a reality-TV-starring symbol of business acumen. He would have skulked off into anonymity or ignominy, just another failed real estate developer and speculator.

Instead, he fooled the world. Although he’d struggle for the rest of his career to get most legitimate banks to extend credit, the gambit basically worked: It turned him, rather than his empire, into the product, enabling decades of tabloid coverage, countless eponymous goods from casinos to steaks to airlines, dozens of film and TV cameos, and ultimately his image-defining show, “The Apprentice.” It made a man with limited business savvy and less money than he claimed into someone famous for having a surfeit of both. These early (and shockingly impudent) fabrications built one of the greatest brands in American history — one that made Trump a household name and, eventually, president.

(snip)

Trump had waged a relentless, vindictive campaign to build his own myth by suppressing the facts: Between the collapse of his empire in 1991 and the issuance of more than $1 billion in Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts stock and junk bonds by 1996, he’d compromised the truth-telling capacity of Forbes magazine, the Wall Street Journal, TV broadcasters, Arthur Andersen and casino analysts on Wall Street. By the time Trump resigned in 2009 as chairman of the public company he founded, he had paid himself an estimated $82 million in personal compensation, while the company’s stocks and bonds had become nearly worthless.

His brand survived all that, and even thrived, because he wasn’t just concocting tales of his greatness; he was also forcing others to repeat them, or at least not to contradict them. It was a strategy that more recently has paid off handsomely against onetime opponents like Sen. Lindsey Graham. Nobody can succeed on this scale simply by lying. Trump’s greatest and most cynical skill, honed during the 1980s and 1990s, was learning how to win by silencing truth-tellers and suppressing the truth when it matters most.

So bizarre and fucked up that this guy can bully people into submission. 

McConnell Is a Massive Evil Asshole

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went full-fledged off-the-wall red-baiting in a Fox News interview on Friday’s “Ingraham Angle.”

The Republican from Kentucky told host Laura Ingraham that allowing Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. to become states – which would mean full representation in the U.S. House and Senate along with voting rights, would be “full bore socialism.” Democrats “plan to make the District of Columbia a state and give them two Democratic Senators,” Leader McConnell said, adding they would also make Puerto Rico a state which “would give them two more Democratic Senators. They plan to expand the Supreme Court. So this is full bore socialism on the march in the House, and, yeah, as long as I am Majority Leader in the Senate none of that stuff is going anywhere.”

McConnell, who proudly posted the video clip (below) to his Twitter account, was not asked to defend his remarks, nor to explain how basic values of American democracy that 50 states currently enjoy and have since the founding of the Republic, are socialism.

He also admitted he wants to be called the “Grim Reaper” when it comes to bills passed by the House.

McConnell is currently sitting at least 100 bills passed by the House of Representatives. He has zero plans to allow any of them to come to the floor for debate or a vote.

U.S. citizens living in Washington, D.C. have no representation in the Senate, and their House Representative cannot vote on actual legislation. They are allowed to vote for president but are allotted only the same number of Electoral College votes as the least-populous state.

Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, but U.S. citizens who reside there have no representation in the House or Senate, and are not allowed to vote in presidential elections.

Democracy is not socialism. McConnell is a freaking fascist.

The Problem Is That Mitch McConnell Doesn't Give a Fuck About Ethics, Morality, or Law While Democrats Do

Rude Pundit does his thing.

Today, malevolent dry turd Mitch McConnell, who is the goddamn Senate Majority Leader, was at a luncheon at the Chamber of Commerce of Paducah, Kentucky (motto: "Sure, we're filthy with heroin and racism, but we have a quilting museum!"). He was asked, "Should a Supreme Court justice die next year, what will your position be on filling that spot?" See, this is a reference to 2016, when Justice Antonin Scalia died and McConnell declared that the seat shouldn't be filled until after the presidential election so "the people could decide" or whatever fucking excuse he used. 

Next year will be another presidential election, and I think you know where this is going. 

Here's his response: "The leader took a long sip of what appeared to be iced tea before announcing with a smile, 'Oh, we'd fill it,' triggering loud laughter from the audience." 

Oh, man, that's hilarious. See, he doesn't have any principles. He doesn't give a happy monkey fuck about hypocrisy. All he cares about is winning, fuck everything else. He took joy in saying that shit. It's just so funny. 

That a giant hand didn't descend from the sky and squeezed McConnell until he popped like a fat bullfrog under a steamroller is absolute proof that there is no God.

Trump Acts Treasonously with North Korea

He saluted a North Korean General back in 2018.

Now in 2019, Trump joins Kim Jung Un in calling Obama's VP Joe Biden a low IQ person, and it turns into the official White House position.  Disgusting beyond words:

Sanders: Trump and Kim Jong Un agree on assessment of Biden. 

“I think they agree in their assessment of former Vice President Joe Biden,” the White House press secretary said in an exclusive interview.

Trump Makes Massive Cuts to Federal Wildfire Fighting Crews

Trump takes aim at firefighting jobs with largest federal cut in a decade, as the West prepares for a brutal wildfire season.

Traitor Trump Accuses People Investigating His Treason of Treason

and implies they should be put to death.

There is no bottom with this psychopath.

Republicans Love Rape Babies, Incest Babies and Forced Pregnancies

In other words, they hate women:

The bill signed by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) on Wednesday prohibits abortion in almost every circumstance and is considered the most restrictive abortion law in the country. The legislation makes exceptions only for the health of the mother and for fetuses with “fatal anomalies” that make them unlikely to survive outside the womb. Rape and incest are not exceptions to Alabama’s ban.

Missouri’s Republican-controlled House on Friday voted to ban abortions at eight weeks of pregnancy, after the state’s Senate passed the measure a day earlier. Gov. Mike Parson (R), who has said the bill would make Missouri “one of the strongest pro-life states in the country,” has said he would sign it into law.

Like with the law in Alabama, rape and incest would not be exceptions to the ban in Missouri.

Some bills, like the one in Georgia, prohibit abortion after the detection of what the bills call the fetal heartbeat,which usually happens about six weeks into pregnancy. This time period is about two weeks after a woman’s missed period, when many women do not yet know they are pregnant.

Supporters of this type of abortion ban refer to the legislation as “heartbeat bills,” while many abortion rights activists say the term is inaccurate because an embryo’s heart has not fully formed at that point.

An ultrasound will usually show electric activity in an embryo’s forming heart at about six weeks of pregnancy, said Jen Villavicencio, an OB/GYN and member of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She said although that activity is not the same as a heartbeat that pumps blood, she often uses the term “heartbeat” with her patients at that point because they are familiar with that terminology.

Villavicencio said it technically is an inaccurate description.

“I think that when you are legislating biology in this way, you need to be really, really precise,” she said.

Doctors date a pregnancy from the first day of a woman’s last period, not from the date when she had sexual intercourse. Most women are at least four weeks pregnant when they discover the pregnancy, Villavicencio said.

Many women do not realize it until the fifth or sixth week, she said, especially if they did not expect to become pregnant. Women are taught to suspect pregnancy if they miss their period, but other factors — like stress, obesity or new medications — can also disrupt a woman’s menstrual cycle.