I’m entering my second coughing, sniffling, miserable week of influenza Type 2 and there are only two people I would wish it on. We will get to both of them later because frankly I’m stressed and worried. Not only did we not get an infrastructure week and a signed bill that would help us revitalize our country’s roads, grids, and public goods and services provisions, we’ve got less infrastructure than we did two years ago.
We are facing climate change essentially leaderless. We are facing the potential of the corona virus essentially leaderless and without a fully functional CDC. We are staring down Hurricane and Tornado season and undoubtedly more fires, mudslides, and floods. We essentially have dysfunctional, leaderless agencies ill prepared and staffed for that too.
Okay, I couldn’t make it to the second paragraph with up bringing the two guys least prepared to deal with any of this and who could use a good dose of a bad virus. The current President needs a good dose of something and he can just hang out with the other old white pure ID Geezer and discuss why philosophical diatribes and political purges accomplish anything out here in the real world. Maybe if either of them actually had a few real problems they would go away and we could find some people that actually have lived through some real problems and can deal with it
Momus in 1971, turning from Royal onto Orleans heading to its ball at the Municipal Auditorium. Large parades banned from French Quarter after 1972, due to emerging 'super krewes' and pubic safety concerns. pic.twitter.com/5v2zKZ8eaS
So, down here in New Orleans we’ve been living in dysfunctional infrastructure hell since Katrina. We lack a basic tax commitment to public health and safety. Our sewers and pumping systems do not work adequately. The mega privatized utility that gives us our gas and electricity can’t keep their grid up and the lights on. Building inspectors that okay-ed the Hard Rock Hotel site which collapsed, killed people,and still serves as a macabre sepulchre were shown by their GPS trackers to never, ever been near the site.
And, we’re so stretched by things we’ve ceased doing Carnival safely this year. Two people were killed by floats. Two people fell off floats. Two people fell of a balcony. I feel like Mardi Gras 2020 is way too symbolic of symptoms plaguing our tired old country.
BREAKING: Two people fell from a second-story balcony along the parade route and were rushed to the hospital Sunday evening, EMS says. https://t.co/qwuZAHW5kG
Some of the headlines coming from this Mardi Gras season:
-2 people killed in separate float accidents -2 riders hurt after falling from floats in Thoth parade -1 day of parades postponed due to windy weather -1 sanitation truck catches fire while cleaning up after Endymion pic.twitter.com/PLH3ktjOe8
‘A man was hit and killed by a Mardi Gras float in New Orleans on Saturday evening, the second such death in a week.’ That headline comes from The Guardian. This is probably why the only thing I want to see on the actual Mardi Gras Day are the skeleton Krewes and the Indians. The rest can just take those sewer cluttering, earth damaging plastic beads and slip on mule dung on Bourbon Street. I’m now firmly committed to the stodgy ideas that superkrewes are not a super idea where ever thing is oversized but our public safety and infrastructure commitments. And screw all those Hard Rock Hotel Developers and AirBnB parasites while we’re at it.
The individual, who was not immediately named, was killed at around 7pm after he appeared to fall underneath a large tandem float during the Krewe of Endymion parade near the city centre.
Witness video posted online suggested the man fell at a point in the parade route where there were no barricades to separate onlookers from floats, which often pass close to the roadside.
Eyewitnesses speaking to local media suggested the man jumped to catch an item thrown from the float then slipped on beads left on the floor.
On Wednesday, 58-year-old Geraldine Carmouche was run over and killed by a tandem float. Witnesses suggested Carmouche tripped on a hitch holding the two floats together and fell underneath the second trailer.
Such deaths are rare at the annual carnival event. Local reports suggested the last similar incident occurred in 2008, when a man was struck by a float after the parade ended. In 1981 a three year-old girl was killed by a rolling float.
New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell instructed all remaining parades to end the use of tandem floats.
Krewe of Bacchus will split tandem floats after man killed in Endymion parade https://t.co/g9Jgi4CWL0
CL Thomas of Nashville blogs about and photographs Skeleton Krewe
I will now briefly discuss some of the floats for Krewe D’etat whose good ol boy designers still don’t seem to have gotten over Hillary being succesful or Bill Clinton’s blow job in an “Epstein didn’t kill himself float”, took a huge whack at Bernie in a “communist float”, and then did an ugly parody on the impeachment with a horrible portrayal of Speaker Pelosi. I turned off the TV pretty quickly and returned to coughing fits.
This one was way over the top for the family route imho and you’ll remember I raised very young two daughters in the French Quarter for five years. There is satire and then there is tasteless, tacky, mean, and unfunny. I thought the dick stuff at KDV was a bit much. This was just tacky and gross.
Also, there was a huge Trump 2020 signs at the top of one of the big floats. That’s shenanigans imho. This was clearly just more Trumpy White Male mean spiritedness on display. Save that crap for protests and rallies creeps!!!!
For some reason, all of this clusterfuck seems appropriate during the Trumpist Regime Chaos with the Berner steriods thrown in. All it needed was a bunch of really old guys wagging their fingers and screaming and women and people of color. Really.
In a book out tomorrow, the woman who led the negotiations for the Paris Agreement calls for civil disobedience to force institutions to respond to the climate crisis.
“It’s time to participate in non-violent political movements wherever possible,” Christiana Figueres writes in “The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis,” which will be released tomorrow by Knopf.
Figueres served as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010-16. She co-authored the book with her strategic advisor, Tom Rivett-Carnac. The two also support voting:
“Large numbers of people must vote on climate change as their number one priority,” they write. “As we are in the midst of the most dire emergency, we must urgently demand that those who seek high office offer solutions commensurate with the scale of the problem.”
But they note that electoral politics have failed to meet the challenge, largely because of systemic roadblocks including corporate lobbying and partisan opposition.
Photo by Rick Olivier Mardi Gras Day With The Skull And Bones Gang
We have at hand a bipartisan, rigorous plan to address that danger.
And now it is more than possible that we will end up with two presidential candidates who reject that plan in favor of two varieties of utter unseriousness.
The first is the denialism of President Trump. He either believes or cynically pretends to believe that climate change is not a threat. His administration has gravely aggravated the threat, for example by recklessly relaxing regulation of the super-warming gas methane.
The second version is the fantasy extremism of Sen. Bernie Sanders. He would prosecute oil executives “for the destruction they have knowingly caused” (he “welcomes their hatred”) and phase out carbon-neutral nuclear power. The Vermont independent would ban the fracking of natural gas, which is — if you control the methane emissions — a useful transitional fuel from dirty coal to clean wind and solar.
As though by magic, Sanders’s proposals will “dramatically decrease the cost of energy storage” and (why not?) make electricity “virtually free” after 2035 (though, sadly, we would still have to pay for “operations and maintenance costs”). All fossil fuels will be gone by 2030, the renewable energy that takes its place will be “publicly owned,” and — not to worry — the plan “will pay for itself over 15 years.”
Unfortunately, there is no magic wand to make such things happen, as Patrick Pouyanné told me last week. Pouyanné is one of those people whose hatred Sanders might welcome; he is chairman and chief executive of Paris-based Total, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies.
I particularly liked this point made by Pouyanné:
Pouyanné said a U.S. ban on fracking — or the jailing of oil executives, for that matter — would have little impact on climate change. Why? Because much of the world’s oil is located in poorer countries that depend desperately on oil exports, and they will gladly make up any shortfall.
“Change will not come from changing the source of supply,” he said. “You have to reduce demand.”
“Which brings us back to the plan, put forward this month by the Climate Leadership Council, that would actually work. Supported by energy companies (including Total) and environmental groups alike, it would impose a steadily rising tax on carbon. That would lead to reduced consumption and increased innovation in alternatives, including battery storage for solar and wind power. To get buy-in from industry, the plan would do away with a lot of regulation — but only so long as emissions were, in fact, going down.
And we’ve lost one of the best math minds on and off the planet. She was recently celebrated in a movie. “Katherine Johnson Dies at 101; Mathematician Broke Barriers at NASA” is the lede for her NYT Obit. Katherine Johnson was part of a small group of African-American women mathematicians who did crucial work at NASA, in 1966. They were featured in “Hidden Numbers” in 2016.
They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them.
Wielding little more than a pencil, a slide rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, who died at 101 on Monday at a retirement home in Newport News, Va., calculated the precise trajectories that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong’s history-making moonwalk, let it return to Earth.
A single error, she well knew, could have dire consequences for craft and crew. Her impeccable calculations had already helped plot the successful flight of Alan B. Shepard Jr., who became the first American in space when his Mercury spacecraft went aloft in 1961.
The next year, she likewise helped make it possible for John Glenn, in the Mercury vessel Friendship 7, to become the first American to orbit the Earth.
Yet throughout Mrs. Johnson’s 33 years in NASA’s Flight Research Division — the office from which the American space program sprang — and for decades afterward, almost no one knew her name.
The World Health Organization declined to declare the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic on Monday, saying the rapidly spreading disease has “pandemic potential” but does not yet require that designation.
China’s leaders also postponed the biggest event on their political calendar, the National People’s Congress, as the country’s battle against the virus disrupts the ruling Communist Party’s agenda and hammers the domestic economy.
In a speech to party officials Sunday, President Xi Jinping warned that the outbreak was a “crisis” that would inevitably jolt the country’s economic development, but he pledged that the disruption would be temporary and manageable.
Meanwhile, the epidemic is surging around the world. Just four days ago, Italy had only confirmed three cases. As of Monday, it has the largest known outbreak outside Asia.
OffBeat Magazine Photographer: Rick Olivier Chief Al Morris
This is bad news for the US Intelligence community. Eli Clifton writes this for Responsible Statecraft: “Trump’s new acting Director of National Intelligence conducted undisclosed work for Hungary’s far-right government”.
An investigation by Responsible Statecraft has found that President Trump’s newly installed acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, knowingly provided public relations services directed at U.S. media on behalf of a project funded by Hungary’s far-right government. Grenell didn’t register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), which is a requirement applying to individuals and entities operating inside the U.S. as an “agent” of a “foreign principal.”
Grenell’s appointment as acting Director of National Intelligence, which was announced last week, was met with widespread ridicule and disbelief.
“President Trump selected an unqualified loyalist as his top spy,” said International Institute for Strategic Studies senior fellow Jonathan Stevenson in a New York Times op-ed.
“Mr. Grenell, who currently serves as ambassador to Germany, is manifestly unqualified for the job, even in an acting capacity,” the Washington Post editorial board said. “He has no experience in intelligence or in managing large organizations – like the 17 agencies that will now report to him.”
Craig Engle, Grenell’s attorney, told Responsible Statecraft that Grenell “knew that the Hungarian government was the sponsor” of work he undertook, but claimed that Grenell’s activities did not require him to file under FARA.
According to the Justice Department, activities requiring registration as an “agent” to a “foreign principal” includes engaging in “acts within the United States as a public relations counsel, publicity agent, information-service employee or political consultant for or in the interests of such foreign principal.”
On Friday, ProPublica reported that Grenell took undisclosed payments for advocacy work on behalf of Vladimir Plahotniuc, a Moldovan politician who was later accused of corruption. Engle told ProPublica that Grenell was not required to file under the FARA because “he was not working at the direction of a foreign power.”
Grenell’s history as a Twitter troll and political operative is well documented, but his work for foreign entities and governments has largely gone unreported.
In 2009, Grenell founded Capitol Media Partners (CMP), a public relations firm with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, DC.
And then there is this:
The Fed Government will pay a lot money in lawsuits once Trump’s pawn McEntee implements plan. You can’t fire people because of political beliefs. Feds tie up lawsuits 4+ yrs to bankrupt people. A class action lawsuit may get settlements faster @lauferlawhttps://t.co/BSHCSg0F9C
During the early 20th century, one tiny recording studio in Richmond, Indiana, had a big impact on the soundtrack of the Jazz Age. The Music Makers of Gennett Records tells the unlikely story of the Gennett Recording Studios, where many of the greatest artists in American jazz, blues, country, and gospel music first recorded.
Discover the unlikely story of the Gennett Recording Studios, where many of the greatest artists in American jazz, blues, country, and gospel music first recorded. The documentary traces the careers of early Gennett musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, and the singing cowboy Gene Autry, among other popular artists of the era, and features several of their rare 1920s recordings.
And, I have officially thrown in with Elizabeth Warren. I wrote her a check and I’m making phone calls for her. I’m really at a loss of what else to do at this point. I’m also slightly less panicked about Joe Biden because what will be a complete disappointment is better than the other two shitfests at the top of their respective nominations now.
If she gets through SC and Super Tuesday I will likely vote for her. I’m pretty sure that Louisiana will not be an important state for any one but I’m just going to do what I can.
So, that’s enough for me today. Back to coughing and escapism.
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What happens in an autocratic government when someone tells the Tin Pot Fattie something he doesn’t want to hear? Well, it’s something akin to off with his head Amerikkkan style. Heaven forbid we get to decide our own elections here without Russian or Saudi or Chinese or Israeli interference! Yeah, if we’re lucky Susan Collins might raise an eyebrow and Lindsey Graham might find one tiny pearl to clutch on Sunday’s news programs. But, it’s more like Moscow Mitch will keep them all in the pack like good little playing card soldiers.
Intelligence officials briefed House lawmakers last week that Russian actors were interfering in the 2020 elections, once more to the benefit of Donald Trump. The contents of the briefing, which was first reported by The New York Times, sparked a series of dramatic events that have further eroded relations between Hill Democrats and the White House, and prompted the president—it appears—to appoint a top political ally to oversee the nation’s national security apparatus.
The meeting, which took place on Feb. 13, was conducted for the House Intelligence Committee by an aide to the outgoing acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. According to a legislator who was present, the aide, Shelby Pierson, Maguire’s election security chief, described a Russian elections-intrusion effort that never stopped from 2016.
“It continues with the same target, and the same purpose, and it’s clear that they [the Russians] favor one candidate over the other,” is how the lawmaker described it.
“The Republicans [on the committee] went nuts,” over Pierson’s presentation, the member told The Daily Beast. A second source familiar with the briefing said that Republicans didn’t understand why the Kremlin would try to boost Trump, since he had been so tough on Russia, in their view. Reps. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), Will Hurd (R-TX) and Chris Stewart (R-UT)—who, according to The Times, has been a Trump favorite to replace Maguire—were particularly vocal in their skepticism, the member said. A spokesperson for Wenstrup said the congressman does not comment on classified or closed-door matters before the Intelligence Committee. Spokespersons for Stewart and Hurd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Raise your hand if you learned in first or second grade why the Russians want our country in eternal and internal disarray. So now, The Tin Pot Fattie has replaced an experienced National Intelligence official with a Republican Politico operative that goes on Fox and twitter to stroke the orange snot blob’s bottomless need for adoration. This is from WAPO: “Senior intelligence official told lawmakers that Russia wants to see Trump reelected”. Yes he knows his electoral illegitimacy really knows no bounds!
Trump announced Wednesday that he was replacing Maguire with a vocal loyalist, Richard Grenell, who is the U.S. ambassador to Germany. The shake-up at the top of the intelligence community is the latest move in a post-impeachment purge. Trump has instructed aides to identify and remove officials across the government who aren’t defending his interests, and he wants them replaced with loyalists.
A senior U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers last week that Russia wants to see President Trump reelected, viewing his administration as more favorable to the Kremlin’s interests, according to people who were briefed on the comments.
After learning of that analysis, which was provided to House lawmakers in a classified hearing, Trump grew angry at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office, seeing Maguire and his staff as disloyal for speaking to Congress about Russia’s perceived preference. The intelligence official’s analysis and Trump’s furious response ruined Maguire’s chances of becoming the permanent intelligence chief, according to people familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
…
Maguire, a career official who is respected by the intelligence rank and file, was considered a leading candidate to be nominated to the post of DNI, White House aides had said. But Trump’s opinion shifted last week when he heard from a Republican ally about the official’s remarks.
The official, Shelby Pierson, said several times during the briefing that Russia had “developed a preference” for Trump, according to a U.S. official familiar with her comments. That conclusion was part of a broader discussion of election security that also touched on when the U.S. government should warn Democratic candidates if they are being targeted by foreign governments.
So, now what? He’s got help from the Russians and as usual, we’ve got the GOP trying to suppress the vote and minority participation in the US Census which sets up all kinds of political and funding priorities in the country. From the L.A. Times: “GOP is accused of sending misleading ‘census’ forms ahead of the actual count”
The Republican National Committee is sending documents labeled “2020 Congressional District Census” to people in California and across the country just weeks before the start of the official nationwide count of the country’s population.
Critics say the misleading mailers — in envelopes labeled “Do Not Destroy. Official Document” and including a lengthy questionnaire on blue-tinted paper similar to the type used by the real census — are designed to confuse people and possibly lower the response rate when the count begins in mid-March.
The top of the mailer states it is “commissioned by the Republican Party.” In smaller print on the second page, below a request for donations, is a notice that it is paid for by the Republican National Committee. Included in the envelope is a four-page letter from National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel asking for donations to the party and a promise to support Trump in 2020.
Unlike the official census form, the RNC survey is largely made up of political questions, such as whether the respondent supports using military force against Iran, thinks race relations in the country are getting worse and believes “political correctness” has gotten out of hand.
What they leave out is that Russian interference did jack shit in 2016 and will do jack shit in 2020 but they love the bullshit narrative to keep "the resistance" in panic mode
One lawmaker told the Daily Beast that the officials briefed them that: ‘It continues with the same target, and the same purpose, and it’s clear that they [the Russians] favor one candidate over the other.
Trump was furious when he learned that Schiff had been briefed that intelligence officials believe Russia is trying to aid his re-election – and wrongly believed it was only the Democrat who had been briefed.
The president believed the information would be used against him, sources told the New York Times.
Schiff was the lead Democratic house manager at Trump’s impeachment trial, which ended in his acquittal earlier this month.
In the wake of learning that Schiff had been briefed, Trump had a furious confrontation with the acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire.
Maguire was replaced Wednesday night by Rick Grenell, Trump’s ultra-loyal ambassador to Germany.
The New York Times reported that two Trump officials said the timing was a coincidence and not because of the row about the briefing.
The official who told lawmakers Russia was meddling was named as Maguire’s aide Shelby Pierson, who serves as the intelligence community’s top election security official.
Trump blew up at Maguire in the Oval Office last week over what the president perceived as staff disloyalty, citing Pierson’s briefing.
That ruined Maguire’s chance of becoming the permanent intelligence chief, sources told The Washington Post.
Trump incorrectly believed Pierson gave the information exclusively to Schiff and gave Maguire a ‘dressing down’ that left him ‘despondent,’ sources told the newspaper.
Pierson chairs the Election Executive and Leadership Board, which was created in July 2019 to specifically deal with election security matters.
She gave the closed-door briefing to the House Intelligence Committee last Thursday.
One of Trump’s Republican allies on the committee told him what she said, the Post reported.
Some of Trump’s biggest defenders during the House impeachment inquiry – including Reps. Devin Nunes and Elise Stefanik – sit on the intelligence panel.
So, the president is still a moron. This may not rival the Night of the Long Knives but combined with granting pardons to people who have abused their power in public positions and absconded with public treasure seems particularly relevant to the crime family occupying the Oval Office.
Guess who is in charge of that process now? This is from Salon: “Trump’s controversial pardons came after Kushner wrestled control from Justice Department: report. Kushner supported clemency for Rod Blagojevich even as White House officials allegedly “argued heavily against it”
I suppose after you’ve cribbed and stolen your plan for an Israeli Palestinian peace process off of a 40 year old book and it’s going nowhere you have to look for other hobbies.
President Donald Trump’s controversial pardons of numerous supporters convicted of corruption came after his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner wrestled control of the process from the Department of Justice, according to a new report.
While the Justice Department has traditionally overseen the pardon process and made recommendations to the White House, Kushner has taken “a leading role” as the Trump administration seeks to exert more control over clemency decisions, The Washington Post reported.
Trump, who granted clemency to 11 people on Tuesday, tasked Kushner and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who served on the president’s impeachment legal team, last year with revamping the pardon process, according to the report. All clemency applications must now be submitted directly to the White House Office of American Innovation, which is headed by Kushner. Trump’s son-in-law has also been tasked with solving Middle East peace, reforming the immigration system, building the border wall and re-electing the president, among a variety of other responsibilities.
Kushner has personally reviewed applications before presenting them to Trump for approval, two senior administration officials told the outlet.
😳 “Kushner has reportedly advocated for the White House wrestling control of the clemency process away from the Justice Department.” https://t.co/2kiUx7TJzw
So far, this is going really well for crooked elected officials and political appointees isn’t it? What’s next? Pardoning Jared’s Dad? Or Roger Stone? This is via CNN.
“I’m not going to do anything in terms of the great powers bestowed upon a president of the United States, I want the process play out, I think that’s the best thing to do,” Trump said in Las Vegas. “Because I’d love to see Roger exonerated and I’d love to see it happen because I personally think he was treated very unfairly.”
The President didn’t rule out an eventual pardon or commutation, but said the process should play out first.
“At some point I’ll make a determination, but Roger Stone and everybody has to be treated fairly. And this has not been a fair process,” Trump said. Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison earlier Thursday. He was convicted last fall of lying to Congress and threatening a witness regarding his efforts for Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Grenell, a vocal Trump loyalist who is currently the ambassador to Germany, brings to the job of acting Director of National Intelligence years of experience aggravating the German government coupled with a background in strategic communications.
The political operative’s appointment has raised questions of his fitness for the job. As director of national intelligence, Grenell will oversee the 17 constituent agencies of the country’s intelligence community, managing the flow of information gathered by the country’s spies to President Trump.
“It’s difficult to contemplate managing 17 different organizations without having any experience with the intelligence process overall,” Jeffrey Edmonds, a former director for Russia on the National Security Council and a former CIA intelligence analyst, told TPM. “I just think it’s quite dangerous in the sense that the right information might not get to the right people.”
Since DNI Dan Coats stepped down from the position in August 2019, the government has lacked a Senate-confirmed official in the job.
So, I’m depressed enough and still coughing way too much with this flu so I’ll end with these two things. But, please add more!
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A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
—James Madison, in a letter to W T Barry, Aug 4, 1822
Good Day Sky Dancers!
We’re deep in parade season down here in New Orleans which gives me a much needed escape from the reality of living in Trumpist America. I never quite know what to do with it, the Trump cult, and the surprised old Republicans who can’t believe all that race-baiting, gun fetishism, and radical religious right enabling they’ve done for their base has finally left the dreamland of ‘Give us your votes and we’ll talk a good story at you’ in trade for the cult of a mobster/monster that will do anything for money and attention.
Jennifer Rubin is an outspoken never-Trumper but fed the beast that now consumes the US Constitution when she thought it was simply tax cuts and lip service. Her op-ed today makes for interesting reading: “The descent of the GOP into authoritarian know-nothingism”.
I could have told you they were headed there back in the 1980s when I was in my 20s. But, anyway … she’s got its number now. I always thought Ronald Reagan was the smiley face version of ‘GOP authoritarian known knowthingism ‘ back then when Rubin was still thinking it was all fine and good. Trump talked about Mexicans as ‘criminals and rapists’ for his announcement while Reagan was all ‘welfare queens with Cadillacs.’ Come at me and tell me that you think both those sentiments don’t go at the same dark vision of the non-Anglo American. I can give you more quotes than that. We can talk policy. Anyway, more follows below.
It is not as if anti-intellectualism suddenly appeared with the election of President Trump. The habitual rejection of expertise on everything from climate change to the economic impact of immigration has been rampant in the Republican Party for some time. It is part and parcel of the invented victimization of mostly white, non-college-educated men who attribute their loss of prestige and status to “elites,” especially those in colleges and the media. Even right-wingers who should know better have felt compelled to pander to audiences that wear ignorance and anti-intellectualism as a badge of honor.
With Trump, the resort to lies, conspiracies and propaganda has become a matter of political survival for the ambitious right-wingers. Trump’s authoritarian contempt for truth sets the tone, forcing military hawks such as Cotton to remain mum when Trump dismisses traumatic brain injuries as “headaches” and former Cold Warriors such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to parrot Russian propaganda on Ukraine.
Their know-nothingism is sustained and hardened inside the right-wing media loop. Trump and his sycophants can repeat whatever falsehoods required to support Trump without fear of contradiction, let alone mockery, in the right-wing media world. It is only when Republicans venture out into legitimate media that refuses to play along with conspiracy theories that they run into trouble.
Trump has merged the know-nothingism of right-wing populism with a far more dangerous intellectual evolution from defense of limited-government conservatism, which was formerly at the heart of modern conservatism, to outright worship of authoritarianism. Now, far too many conservatives have reverence for executive power and reject constitutional government.
Attorney General William P. Barr and his cheerleaders from the Federalist Society embody this frightening development. Donald Ayer, former U.S. deputy attorney general under George H.W. Bush, writes that Barr advocates “the need for a virtually autocratic executive who is not constrained by countervailing powers within our government under the constitutional system of checks and balances.” For Barr, limited government means limited checks on the president, the antithesis of the framers’ vision.
So, we’ve got Sen Tom Cotton spreading conspiracy theories about the Coronavirus. The entire party denies climate change and still believes wholesale tax cuts to the rich do something other than blow up the deficit and lead to problems with infrastructure and basic necessary services like dealing with the actual potential threat of the Coronavirus.
The only Republican news recently that I find really hard to believe that seems to be verifiably true is that Stephen Miller found a woman dumb enough to marry him and the spoils of the wedding went to a Trump hotel. See, there’s enough truth can be strange in that Party that you’d think they’d just thrive on that rather than baseless conspiracy theories. And he’s the embodiment of policy shaped by the vision of both Reagan’s ‘welfare queens’ and Trump’s ‘rapists and criminals’ that are still as odious as they day either were spoken.
In 1976, Reagan repeatedly invoked his own female bête noire as he barnstormed the country in a doomed bid to primary President Gerald Ford. There’s a woman in Chicago, Reagan told voters, who “used eighty names, thirty addresses, fifteen telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four non-existent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare.” And she wasn’t the only one. Reagan bemoaned a welfare system infested with fraud, although he kept returning to the woman in Chicago. She wore a fur coat. She drove a Cadillac. She paid for T-bone steaks with food stamps. He didn’t refer to her by name but by a sobriquet—one he didn’t invent, but which he repeated so often it metastasized into an ugly stereotype: She was the welfare queen.
We cannot be a more perfect union until the racist tropes of Trump and his Republican cronies are removed from the American political lexicon.
“Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes”
—Benjamin Franklin in a letter written in November 1789, to French scientist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy,
Why it matters: GDP is the most comprehensive economic scorecard — and something presidents, especially Trump, use as an example of success. And it’s especially relevant since Trump is running for re-election on his economic record.
Between the lines: Economists dispute how much credit presidents can take for a booming or sagging economy under their watch. There are factors that can boost or reduce growth outside of their policies.
Where it stands: Unlike other presidents, Trump inherited a steady economy that’s since entered the longest stretch of growth in history. Interest rates remain low. Growth picked up in the wake of the 2017 tax cuts, but now the pace has moderated.
What he’s saying: “Our economy is the best it has ever been,” Trump said earlier this month in his State of the Union speech.
But some aspects of the Trump economy, like wage growth and business investment, pale in comparison to other periods.
While solid, “this is not a gangbusters economy,” Nathan Sheets, who’s held roles at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, tells Axios.
There have been periods with “high growth, low inflation, rapid productivity, and the gains from growth were being broadly shared across society. That was gangbusters,” says Sheets.
By the numbers: Last year the economy grew at 2.3%, after year-over-year accelerations in 2017 and 2018 — marking he slowest annual growth rate since Trump took office. Growth under Trump has yet to hit his oft-promised 3% mark annually.
Economists say the effects of the tax are wearing off. Businesses were too unnerved by the trade war to spend money on new factories or equipment — a key driver of growth.
Yes, but: If history is any guide, an incumbent president isn’t going to have a great shot at re-election if the economy tips into a recession under their watch.
The press needs to really speak out on our average economy and all its underlying problems like farm bankruptcies and more loss of manufacturing and export related jobs and industry.
“
“For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”
—George Washington, in an address to the officers of the army on March 15, 1783
In the past four years, I saw people in my clinical practice experiencing a level of anxiety specific to the political climate that we really hadn’t seen before. It’s why I started writing about “Trump anxiety disorder.” The American Psychological Association does a “Stress in America” survey, and the 2019 one had 62 percent of American adults citing the current political climate as a source of stress, which has gone up since Trump took office. It’s not unlike a child living in a home that’s chaotic; we don’t have faith in the leaders we have historically put trust in, and that’s creating a lot of trauma. If Trump does get reelected, we’ll see a spike in this feeling of fear like we haven’t seen before. People will have to come to terms with the prospect of another four years of trying to keep up the fight. We can feel anxious for only so long, because anxiety is exhausting, and eventually that fatigue could transform into depression and leave us feeling really helpless. All of that could lead to more civil unrest or unhealthy behaviors such as drinking and emotional eating — people trying to deal with the stress in any way they can.
—Dr. Jennifer Panning
After Trump’s tweet, claiming the right to interfere in DOJ prosecutions, I conclude that If William Barr Believed in Rule of Law, He Would Resign. New from me for @time. https://t.co/nFqhABUs6R
Watching a country either recover from the grips of despotism or fall into it has always been a bit of a mental history assignment for me. It probably developed in the 1960s some time from watching way too much news with my parents during dinner. However, I even admit to enjoying that old movie The Year of Living Dangerously which overly romanticized the overthrow of President Sukarno in Indonesia. Well, it had an exotic setting and Sigourney Weaver. What can I say. It seems like almost all of that kinda thing had an exotic setting and a woman say, like Evita Peron.
I never could figure out what the appeal could possibly be of a Hitler, a Stalin, or a Mussolini. I understood revolutions and military coups–like those plaguing South America and parts of Asia–because they were such obvious power grabs. I also sat through The Killing Fields. It’s always been easier to write off a foreign banana republic that never really established rule of law than to think such a thing would ever be seen again after all the lessons of 20th century fascism.
Our country appears more infected by a disease than something like an obvious coup. But, whatever it is, Mitch McConnell and his republican cronies have taken down our rule of law rather slowly and deliberately.
Here we are. We have messianic theocratic aspirants like Iran did in the 1970s. Only these are in charge of the State Department and the Department of Education. They’re not mullahs. They’re Rev. Franklin Grahams. They’re even masking as Catholics and Methodists under names like Alito, DeVose, and Pompeo. We have the greed of oligarchy in the form of barely legal corporate kleptocracy. It’s no wonder they’ve teamed up to overthrow the judiciary by stacking it with hapless 30 something judges that couldn’t even find a job arguing before a court before they get a life time appointment to determine what is the rule of law. We have a representative democracy with a Constitution.–providing checks and balances on paper–but it seems in theory only today.
We now have that typical gross, disgusting tin pot fattie who’ll sell anything to anybody as long as he gets his way, gets attention, and can pocket gobs of tax payer dollars while he’s blowing up vital institutions. Trump’s got a worse case of the uglies than Idi Amin or Kim Jong Un or Vladimir Putin or Benito Mussolini or any of them. And btw, why are the worst autocrats basically the most unattractive men you’ve ever put eyes on?
So, now, here’s our justice department being ruled over by another unattractive blob of a man who thinks an Iron Age book of Roman mythology gives him the right to do whatever. That, and I swear there’s some paperwork somewhere on Jeffrey Epstein that has his family name on it that he’s still searching for. I just can’t figure out if it’s his father’s or his because, well, that’s what all those ugly little toadie men professing way too much religion do. They abuse women and children and say nasty things about gay men and pass laws to make it all acceptable.
LIBERTY HEAD, Peter Max
And, I’m tired of it.
The Republican Party has become a grab bag of men with the worst tendencies held in low regard by history. Mitch McConnell may be the worst of them because he’s got the job that’s supposed to stop all this from happening because it’s in his oath of office to uphold the US Constitution. He just keeps letting Trumpist corruption roll on and on and over everything that was every sacred in this country.
I’m trying not to turn this into a lecture but as an economist, I can only tell you that the single most important thing to an economy’s well being is rule of law. It’s that thing that stops corruption and thugs from taking stuff that doesn’t belong to them which was has been an understanding of good governance since the Magna Carta.
It is the necessary insurance for risk-taking in a real market economy. In history and in recent empirical studies, we see all the time that the rule of law countries have economic growth, stability, and the protection to property owners that makes small businesses thrive. Once lost, it’s like a bad reputation, you don’t get it back quickly or completely, ever. What we’ve lost the last three year we will never earn back in earnest because trust remembers.
So, with that, I continue what BB started yesterday and that’s the sad mess state of affairs at the Department of Justice and the ongoing shitshow being exposed by folks willing to leave their jobs to expose it. If you read anything, go back to her post and read the top item. It’s Michael Gerhardt at The Atlantic: Madison’s Nightmare Has Come to America.
And let me start off with what Rachel said last night in her A block because this and the historian she interviewed are so incredibly spot on that crying for the death of one’s country is in order.
Such a way to ensure justice for the People and to uphold the Constitution and RULE OF LAW!
Barr ignited a firestorm this week after top Justice Department officials intervened in the sentencing of Roger Stone, a longtime friend and former campaign adviser to the president who was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice.
In a stunning reversal, the Justice Department overruled a recommendation by its own prosecution team that Stone spend seven to nine years in jail and told a judge that such a punishment – which was in line with sentencing guidelines – “would not be appropriate.”
The about-face raised serious questions about whether Barr had intervened on behalf of the president’s friend. It also raised questions about whether Trump personally pressured the Justice Department, either directly or indirectly.
In the interview with ABC News, Barr fiercely defended his actions and said it had nothing to do with the president. He said he was supportive of Stone’s convictions but thought the sentencing recommendation of seven to nine years was excessive. When news outlets reported the seven to nine year sentencing recommendation last Monday, Barr said he thought it was spin.
“Statue of Liberty” 1963, Andy Warhol
So, this is Barr’s really, really dim excuse. The Orange Snot Blob ate his homework!
“I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” Barr told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas.
When asked if he was prepared for the consequences of criticizing the president – his boss – Barr said “of course” because his job is to run the Justice Department and make decisions on “what I think is the right thing to do.”
Yes, Shifty Bar says it was in the works the entire time and ignore the man twittering away from the shitter in the Oval Office.
Can we get some congressional oversight again please? At least in the House?
NEW:
Numerous House Dems are privately pushing to hear testimony from the prosecutors who quit the Roger Stone case in protest against Bill Barr's meddling, aides tell me.
This would ratchet up the response to Barr big time.
Numerous House Democrats are now advocating for the House to solicit testimony from the four prosecutors involved in the initial recommendation for Stone, aides tell me. Four have withdrawn from the case, and one quit his job.
Two senior Democratic aides told me many House members want to see these hearings well in advance of Barr’s planned testimony to the Judiciary Committee on March 31.
“Time is of the essence, since this scandal gets worse by the hour,” one senior aide to a member of Judiciary told me, adding that hearing from the four prosecutors could help create “a record of what happened before Barr gets to set the narrative.”
Another senior House aide told me there’s a “pretty widespread sentiment” among members that the four prosecutors must be heard from, “to get the full story of what’s happening under Barr’s tenure.”
Yeah, and what happened here?
Senate-confirmed Jessie Liu is out as US Atty and Barr’s close aide Tim Shea is in as acting US Atty without Senate confirmation, just as key decisions are being made for Flynn, Stone and McCabe. Just a coincidence? https://t.co/HYwNL7xhlx
So, I watched TV yesterday afternoon while getting my lecture notes in order and over and over again I saw this parade of lawyers discussing how unprecedented this massive walk out was. All I could think was Nixon but yet, again, the catalyst is more brazen than Nixon’s messing with the special investigator resulting in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre in 1973.
The former U.S. attorney whose office oversaw the Roger Stone prosecution resigned from the Trump administration Wednesday, two days after President Donald Trump abruptly withdrew her nomination for a top job at the Treasury Department.
Jessie Liu had headed the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., which oversaw several cases that originated with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including prosecutions of longtime Trump associate Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Liu was moved from the U.S. attorney’s office after Trump nominated her to serve as the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes, a top position overseeing economic sanctions.
A source told NBC News earlier this week that after Liu was nominated, she told the lawyers in her office that she would stay put until she was confirmed. However, Attorney General William Barr asked her to leave around Feb. 1 to ensure continuity in the office, and she agreed.
Such a Republic! If we can keep it!
But now Jessie Liu has resigned from the administration after Trump withdrew her nomination for a top Treasury position. Reporters are still looking into this.
Now, the president clearly feels vindicated, he is more popular than ever, and Rudy Giuliani is out there saying he’s going to keep investigating Joe Biden. If Giuliani continues using the powers of the executive branch to do that, what options do you have?
Rudy Giuliani is totally out of control. He is a failed mayor, a failed lawyer, and a failed presidential candidate. Someone needs to undertake a clinical intervention as it relates to Rudolph Giuliani running around the world, trying to do the president’s political bidding—
Clinical intervention? Are you saying he should be institutionalized?
—in a manner that resulted, in part, in Donald Trump’s impeachment. But ultimately, Donald Trump is the one who is responsible for executing a corrupt scheme and a geopolitical shakedown to solicit foreign interference in the American election. House managers made clear that we don’t believe that Donald Trump will learn a lesson from his political near-death experience. It is clear that Donald Trump is further emboldened to cheat in the election—and that’s on the United States Senate.
Does the House have any recourse? Is a second impeachment in the cards?
In my view, no. It’s in the hands of the American people at this point to decide the fate of Donald Trump.
What if he’s re-elected, would you undertake a second impeachment?
It’s my expectation that he will not be re-elected. In fact, I disagree with the premise that some have articulated, which is that President Trump has emerged from the impeachment more popular than ever before. A Quinnipiac poll that came out this week showed President Trump decisively losing to every single Democratic candidate.
To be fair, polls had him losing to Hillary Clinton, but we know how that worked out. He says he feels totally vindicated, and he fired two of the witnesses who testified in the impeachment trial. Should we just stay off Fifth Avenue if he’s in the area?
Well, Donald Trump clearly feels that he can shoot holes in the Constitution on Pennsylvania Avenue and get away with it. But ultimately I believe the American people will have the final decision and that his out-of-control, erratic, corrupt behavior will not be tolerated and he will be decisively defeated in November.
This is from a Susan Glasser piece in the New Yorker discussing our unhinged president and the entire situation. Again, the parallels to countries with no apparent rule of law are highlighted. This time it’s Putin’s Russia. The difference is that Putin is not the same kind of insane that Donald Trump daily displays.
I found myself thinking a lot this week about my experience of covering the former Soviet Union and watching aspiring authoritarians in action. Before Vladimir Putin refused to give up power, despite the Russian Constitution’s two-term limit, two senior Bush Administration officials told me that he would not do so, simply because Putin had personally assured them that he wouldn’t. These same officials believed that Putin would never arrest Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, until he did. They also believed that Putin would never renationalize Khodorkovsky’s oil company. But he did that, too.
In Azerbaijan, in 2003, I watched thousands of protesters in the streets on the night of a rigged election, in which Ilham Aliyev, the widely derided playboy son of the country’s gravely ailing dictator, received an implausible seventy-seven per cent of the votes. Western observers condemned the balloting as neither free nor fair, but the real insight for me came the next day, while I was flying back to Moscow. On the plane with the Russian election-observation team, which had seen nothing to object to, I wondered why Aliyev and his ruling party had seemed to go for such overkill, such an obviously fake result, rather than stealing the election with a more credible fifty-five per cent. One of the Russians laughed at me, saying, in effect, that the overkill was the point. That’s how power works around here. Strength lies in forcing people to accept the unacceptable. Aliyev, incidentally, remains in charge to this day.
Neither Putin’s bald decision to rewrite the rules so that he could stay in office nor Aliyev’s election fraud were in the least bit surprising to their subjects. But they were important moments, nonetheless. Blowing through previously established rules and norms matters. Having suffered no consequences for such acts, leaders move on to bigger and more audacious targets. The appetite grows while eating, as the Russian saying goes.
Still, this isn’t Russia, and, for Trump-watchers, there was a notable familiarity to the week of mayhem that followed the President’s acquittal. Although it is often difficult to look back when so much is happening each day, Trump has been nutty and angry before, ranting and vindictive, blasting norms and lying with abandon. Trump has been insulting his enemies and wreaking vengeance and claiming the “absolute right” to do things that he does not have the absolute right to do—for years. The Washington Post counted more than sixteen thousand lies, misstatements, and untruths from the President—before a single senator voted to acquit him. Months before he hijacked U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine, in service of his personal political interests, he ordered the U.S. military to the Southern border to combat a nonexistent “invasion,” only days in advance of the 2018 midterm elections. Is this time really different?
The answer, I’m afraid, is yes. In his post-impeachment rage, Trump wanted vengeance, and he wanted us to know it. There was no one inside his Administration to stop him. A month ago, Congress had at least the theoretical power to do something about his overreaching. Today, thanks to the Senate’s very clear vote, it does not. So, although the President himself is unchanged, the context around him is very much altered. In the history of the Trump Presidency, there will be a before impeachment and an after. It’s too late for lessons learned, and it’s most definitely too late for Bill Barr to complain about the President’s tweets. The constraints are gone. The leverage is lost. One ABC News interview with a single Cabinet official is not going to restore it. Trump, unhinged and unleashed, may actually turn out to be everything we feared.
United We Stand, Four Statues of Blue Liberty. Peter Max, 2001
Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.
So, we are on this path together and the only thing I know for certain is that this year will be quite long. I’m disheartened by the many good people losing jobs that were basically in service to us yet made optimistic by the fact that they while they lost their jobs and we lost their divine service, we still have heroes among us. They quit on principle. It is just sad that they are the ones that may not get the big bucks for speaking or writing books. But perhaps it is better they don’t because that circumstance has shut the mouths and conscience of a lot of higher ups thrown over by the Trumpist Regime who enabled him when they had their chance at doing something principled.
And I give you Joni Mitchell asking the rhetorical question is Justice “Just Ice”? I add my own question to you now.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Thomas Moran’s The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1872
Good Day Sky Dancers!
The Trumpist regime is sneaking a lot of bad policy in while all of us are focusing on the things the media wants to put on TV, Trump is definitely feeding our Treasury, our people, and our Country’s gifts of nature to his cronies. Here’s some links on what the Bureau of Land Management is doing to roll back land and animal protection and to ensure every bit of nature in the country is turned into oil, gas, and a dust bowl.
Pendley, a 74-year-old former Marine who ran the MSLF from 1981 until his appointment last year at the BLM, pursued Watt’s vision with admirable tenacity and has continued to pursue it in his new office. This month, he greenlighted rampant expansion of oil and gas drilling on previously off-limits areas, including on one million acres in central California. On January 17, he announced the loosening of regulations for the public lands cattle industry, making it easier for livestock operators to violate federal environmental laws and not face consequences. He has sowed chaos at BLM by uprooting long-standing Washington D.C. staff with a forced move of the agency’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, where energy companies rule the roost. The goal, his critics say, is to bring BLM regulators into closer quarters with the oil and gas industry to be more easily captured. In response, staffers in the D.C. quarters have attempted to unionize: The National Treasury Employees Union filed a petition to represent BLM employees with the Federal Labor Relations Authority in December.
Pendley’s actions are accompanied by extremist and inflammatory rhetoric supporting lawlessness on the public lands. Pendley has praised the criminal Cliven Bundy clan, whose infamous armed standoffs against federal land regulators amounted to acts of domestic terrorism. When Bundyite militiamen pointed sniper rifles at BLM law officers in Nevada, in 2014, and took over at gunpoint the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016—in both instances announcing their willingness to kill federal law officers if need be—Pendley cheered in the pages of National Review, reiterating the Bundy family’s crackpot theory that the Constitution forbids federal ownership of land.
In an op-ed published last November in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Pendley stated it is now policy that BLM law officers will defer to self-proclaimed “constitutionalist” county sheriffs who have vowed not to enforce federal environmental laws on public lands. Pendley’s Review-Journal piece was “a dog whistle to the extremists of the anti-public-lands movement,” wrote Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, an environmental nonprofit in Idaho. That’s in part because of the belief system of the “constitutionalist” sheriffs, not mentioned in Pendley’s piece. The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which Pendley has long claimed as an ally, declares on its website that “federal agencies now claiming control of land within a state should be drastically downsized and/or dismantled. County sheriffs in these states should take their rightful position and use their authority to assist in the transfer of control of the land.”
Dennis McLane, who was deputy chief of law enforcement at BLM from 1996 to 2003, explained to me how this would shape out on the ground. County sheriffs allied in the CSPOA, he said, would serve as the local vanguard for the evisceration of federal public lands regulations. “In many western counties,” McLane told me, “the sheriffs would use their newfound authority to just ignore the enforcement of federal resource laws.” In other words, it would be a free-for-all of extractive interests engaging in lawless behavior for maximum profits—the vision of James Watt and the MSLF.
The U.S. Interior Department on Thursday finalized land use plans for two Utah national monuments that President Donald Trump shrank soon after taking office, a move environmental groups said would leave cultural sites vulnerable to destruction and boost development in pristine wilderness.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proceeded with the plans despite pending litigation challenging the 2017 proclamation by Trump that slashed the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
BLM officials told reporters in a call that the land use plans for the Grand Staircase-Esclalante monument, as well as 860,000 acres (348,030 hectares) that were excluded from the monument by Trump, were necessary because the existing plan had not been updated in 20 years and that the number of visitors to the area had exploded in that time.
“Implementing these plans means that the BLM can improve visitor services and support local businesses and permitees and help them thrive, help the economy here, all while protecting this great American landscape,” Harry Barber, manager of BLM Utah’s Paria River District, said on the call.
Scenery in the Grand Tetons by Albert Bierstadt (MABI 2843) circa 1865 -1870
Nothing is literally sacred. Not only are lands being pillaged for greedy extraction profiteers but the wall threatens native burials as well as the land. I’ve seen this park and the ones in Utah as a kid.
The grandeur of the land in the American West is simply unimaginable until you stand on it and look around! Seeing these natural wonders and parts of our history is the single most humbling experience you can imagine. You just stand there breathless. And then, you see your first herd of buffalo, or your first family of mountain goats, or a mother bear and her young! Ever scaled a cliff dwelling or crawled through a Kentucky cave with just an oil lamp? Seen a geyser erupt, ventured to peer over the deepest part of a canyon cut from water? Seen water weep over a huge cliff? I have and I want that experience to be available to every one!
It is so worth keeping for generations ahead and I am so glad that the generations behind me felt the same. This goal to monetize everything is just surreal to me. From CBS:
A national monument in Arizona, home to rare species and sacred Native American burial sites, is being blown up this week as part of construction for President Trump’s border wall, Customs and Border Protection confirmed to CBS News. “Controlled blasting” inside Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument began this week without consultation from the Native American nation whose ancestral land it affects, according to the congressman whose district includes the reservation.
“There has been no consultation with the nation,” said Congressman Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, who is the chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources and whose district contains the reservation and shares 400 miles of border with Mexico. “This administration is basically trampling on the tribe’s history — and to put it poignantly, it’s ancestry.”
Customs and Border Protection told CBS News that the blasts are in preparation for “new border wall system construction, within the Roosevelt Reservation at Monument Mountain in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector.”
Trump is desecrating a Indian burial site for his idiotic border wall.
But there is more. Here’s more form the desert areas and again, it’s big energy related. This is from the LA TImes.
In step with President Trump’s push for more energy development in California’s deserts, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced Thursday it wants to transform 22,000 acres of public land in the southern Owens Valley into one of the largest geothermal leasing sites in the state.
The agency has determined that the aquifer deep beneath the surface of the vintage Old West landscape of Rose Valley, about 120 miles north of Los Angeles, is a storehouse of enough volcanically heated water to spur $1 billion in investments and provide 117,000 homes with electricity.
Yet the decision is sure to set off a new water war in an arid part of the eastern Sierra Nevada that is sprinkled with dormant volcanoes, spiky lava beds and rare species, such as desert tortoises.
Trump team rolls back desert protections in bid to boost geothermal energy https://t.co/mZIEBMJ7m9
Conservation groups are suing the Trumpist Regime. This is especially true for California. This is from the NRDC:
Conservation groups sued the Trump administration today challenging the last step in the administration’s plan to allow oil drilling and fracking on more than 1 million acres of public lands and minerals in Central California.
Today’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, says the Bureau of Land Management violated federal law by failing to consider fracking’s potential harm to public health and recreation in the region, as well as harm to the climate and possible groundwater and air pollution. The suit also notes the potential for oil-industry-induced earthquakes.
The BLM plan would allow drilling and fracking on public lands across eight counties in California’s Central Valley and Central Coast: Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura.
“Trump’s illegal, deeply unjust fracking plan would be a disaster for Central Valley communities, as well as our climate, wildlife and water,” said Clare Lakewood, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We need to phase out fracking and oil drilling, not throw open our public lands to polluters. The future of our beautiful state and our children depends on it.”
The Trump administration also plans to allow fracking on an additional 725,500 acres across 11 counties in California’s Central Coast and Bay Area. In October conservation groups filed suit to challenge that decision.
“BLM’s ill-considered plan to fling wide the door to fracking on public lands is yet another assault on California’s efforts to protect its environment and move away from dirty fossil fuels,” said Ann Alexander, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Gov. Newsom just announced curbs on oil drilling, but BLM is charging full speed ahead with it. California is trying to find a way to rationally address its limited water supply, and now BLM is greenlighting activities that can contaminate it with toxic chemicals. This federal war on California really needs to stop.” In an expert blog, Alexander further explains the implications of this rash move by the administration.
Under Trump’s plan, theadministration predicts the federal deficit would shrink to $966 billion next fiscal year and to $261 billion by 2030.That gap between government spending and revenue is forecast to exceed $1 trillion this year.
As with his previous budget proposals, Trump is once again seeking deep and unrealistic cuts to most federal agency budgets, according to the budget summary tables. The cuts are unlikely to be embraced by Congress.
For example, the administration is seeking an 8 percent cut to USDA’s budget over current funding levels. Trump’s plan would cut the Commerce Department by 37 percent, the Education Department by 8 percent, the Energy Department by 8 percent, the Department of Housing and Urban Development by 15 percent, and the Department of Health and Human Services by 9 percent.
The administration is also seeking a 13 percent cut to the Interior Department, a 2 percent cut to the Justice Department, an 11 percent cut to the Labor Department, a nearly 21 percent cut to the State Department and a 13 percent cut to the Department of Transportation. The EPA’s budget would see a nearly 27 percent chop, the Army Corps of Engineers would see a 22 percent reduction and the Small Business Administration would see an 11 percent decrease.
On immigration, health care, infrastructure and the deficit, the final budget pitch of Trump’s first term will look much different from the campaign platform he offered four years ago.
The president’s 2015 promise to protect Medicaid from cuts has been repeatedly ignored, as he has sought to slash some $800 billion over a decade from the health program for low-income Americans. The latest evidence of this came on Saturday, when he wrote on Twitter that the budget proposal “will not be touching your Social Security or Medicare.” He made no mention of protecting Medicaid, even though he had vowed to guard it during his first presidential campaign.
He is also seeking to gut the Affordable Care Act through the courts despite pledging to safeguard one of its key tenets: insurance coverage for people with preexisting conditions.
Seniors arise! Trump is comin' after your Social Security and your Medicare. https://t.co/lcLyf6GPS8
While it is important to focus on things that remove this abomination from the White House. We cannot ignore what is being pushed through by the white nationalist, radical rightist republican party. Please watch for these actions and write and call your congress critters as required!
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
So, we’ve got Sen Tom Cotton 
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ow Jessie Liu 
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