Lazy Caturday Reads: Don the Builder

Posted: June 20, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Good Day!!

Mary Cassatt, Children playing with a cat

In the past few months, Trump has managed to turn the White House, its grounds, and nearby areas into a giant mess. Is it possible for the damage the South lawn caused by the cage matches to be repaired by July 4–the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? And what about the reflecting pool? What a boondoggle that turned out to be! And it looks like the East Wing mess is going to be there for a long time, as Trump battles in court to build his imitation-Versailles ballroom.

Trump is obsessed with remaking Washington DC to resemble the Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower aesthetic, with gold plating and marble everywhere. And of course, every project will involve heavy duty corruption as Trump hands all the jobs to old cronies and political donors.

Nina Burleigh writes at American Freakshow: Bob the Builder. All the President’s Toys.

Of all the memes circulated about the American President, the toddler in diapers or giant baby playing with toy bombers in the Iranian LEGO videos probably comes closest to the spectacle inside the gilded bunker. But Trump thinks of himself as a Builder not a warrior. He has spent his life trying to live up to the unmet expectations of Fred Trump, a man who knew foundations and concrete and actually had put hammer to nail. Donald grew up at that man’s side, costumed in hard hat but with hands destined to remain forever soft. He learned the profane patois of New York and New Jersey contractors but farmed out the rest of it.

Trump’s second term is remarkable for more aberrances than we can track. But chief among them are the mysterious, unnecessary projects to demolish East Wing, re-coat the Reflecting Pool, affix gold decorations to the Oval Office with super glue and until stopped, tear down and re-do the Kennedy Center. An arc-de-Trump waits on the drawing board.

The only reasonable explanation for this orgy of wasteful brick and mortar is that the handlers need toys and games to keep the old man from disrupting the serious business of making war, destroying the sciences, defunding humanitarians, filling concentration camps, and wrecking alliances – matters attended to with great devotion by Vought, Miller, Kegseth, Kennedy and Wiles – and nameless administration elves whose allegiances are most definitely not to the American people.

One sure sign that the Bob the Builder projects exist to placate and distract the Old Man is the near total lack of transparency around the contracting processes. Normally, federal agencies like the National Park Service would oversee the reflecting pool, and the National Capital Planning Commission would sign off on the East Wing project. Contracts normally overseen by the federal General Services Administration (GSA) were presented directly by the Executive Residence of the White House. There is no known evidence of GSA oversight.

These baffling, expensive boondoggles seem to serve two purposes. They keep the old man occupied and open the spigot on taxpayer funds for the claque in New York, Jersey and Florida who have either done business with the old man over the years or ponied up for a Mar a Lago membership.

Susie and the Cats,, by Angela Thomson

The peeling algae-choked disaster of the $14 million Reflecting Pool improvement made news this weekend. The White House gave a no-bid $6.9 million contract to a company, Atlantic Industrial Coating….

Atlantic then brought on a subcontractor from Oklahoma, Mid-America Industrial Coatings whose truck was seen at the pool. Reporter Gabe Sanchez tweeted in May that he called Atlantic to inquire about the subcontract. The owner “became evasive and shut down the conversation,” Sanchez reported, stating “That’s none of your business.” And it wouldn’t be the Epstein class-infested administration if a former chief operating officer of the Mid-America didn’t also have multiple felony convictions for child sex abuse.

There there’s the man hired to keep the reflecting pool clear and free of algae: John J. Cafaro, a Taftian cigar chomping dandy with a Hitler haircut and ‘stache, another in a long line of individuals and events that suggest America passed through a wormhole into a Marvel Comic alternative universe around 2016.

Cafaro owns the aptly named Green Water Solutions. He bagged the no-bid $1.6 million contract despite – or because of? – a record of pleading guilty to bribing public officials. There is now more algae on the pool than there was before the project.

Sahil Kapur and Sophie Ziedalski at NBC News: Blue paint seen chipping off in Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after algae turn it green.

President Donald Trump’s makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations is not going according to plan.

First, the project overshot Trump’s initial cost estimate of under $2 million — and has already topped $14.6 million, according to a federal spending database.

Then, the new Trump-branded “American flag blue” color was short-lived as algae turned the pool green, causing the administration to send crews to dump hydrogen peroxide into the expansive pool to deal with the problem.

In recent days, NBC News spotted some blue paint chipping off the surface, with strips of it peeling away and floating atop the pool for visitors and passers-by to see as the busy summer tourist season in the nation’s capital gets underway.

On the west side of the pool Thursday, a small section of the blue painted surface appeared to be lifting away, exposing the darker unpainted layer underneath. A strip of detached paint could be seen floating beneath the water’s surface.

Algae still remain visible along the edges of the pool despite ongoing cleaning efforts. The developing deterioration drew the attention of onlookers who stopped to take a closer look.

The Trump administration is hardly the first to struggle to clean up the Reflecting Pool. But the algae-infused green color has drawn significant attention in recent days after the president slammed the pool earlier this year as “filthy” and “dirty,” promising to make it “beautiful” and blue at minimal expense.

Read more at the NBC link.

Maura Judkiss at The Washington Post: The blue paint is peeling off the Reflecting Pool.

For days, workers have been trying to rid the Reflecting Pool of algae after a more than $14 million renovation that President Donald Trump said was “done properly” and “could last for 100 years.”

But now workers have another problem to contend with: peeling paint. On Thursday, a sheet of the pool’s surface — painted in “American Flag Blue,” a color selected by the president — was seen floating in the water on the north side of the pool. It undulated in the water as curious tourists gathered, some of whom had come to see the green algae.

Pause, by Rosie Phillips

At 5:35 p.m. on Thursday, a worker came to remove the sheet of pool surface, telling a Washington Post photographer not to photograph it, despite being on public land.

The Interior Department did not immediately respond to questions about the paint and why the pool surface is separating. The agency said in a statement on Wednesday that it is treating the pool with hydrogen peroxide and “high-tech nanobubble ozone technology” to effectively cut off the algae’s food supply.

Steve Goodale, a swimming pool expert who viewed footage of the peeled sheet of paint, believes the pool’s surface may have been improperly prepared for the treatment.

“If there are any deficiencies with the surface prep, the surface can fail just like you see here,” he said, via email, “sheets and chunks peeling off.” Another culprit, he added, could be groundwater or pool water seeping underneath the lining.

Hydrogen peroxide can affect a pool’s surface, too, but not in the same way: “Less of a sheet peeling off and more like fading, hazing or breakdown of the material,” he said.

A bit more from the article:

On Thursday, the Interior Department press office posted on X that “the Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool — just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.”

Indeed, some areas of the Reflecting Pool were looking cleaner compared with earlier in the week. Workers in chest-high waders stood in the middle of the pool and vacuumed the algae. The neon green-tinted water could be seen pouring out of tubes into nearby drainage grates. The center of the pool, though, was still neon green, and residual algae remained in the cleaned portions of the pool.

Within days of the renovation’s completion, the Reflecting Pool had more algae in it than at any recorded point in the month of June for at least five years, according to a specialized analysis of satellite data.

$14.6 million for this mess, and now the taxpayers will have to foot the bill for the efforts fix it. Trump has handed out another no-bid contract to another crony for the clean-up.

Arden Farhi and Joes Walsh at CBS News: Company owned by Trump donor won $1.7 million no-bid Reflecting Pool cleaning contract.

The federal government awarded a company owned by a Trump donor a $1.7 million contract to install a new water cleaning system for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, federal records show, as President Trump pushes to overhaul the pool — and struggles with a bout of algae and a peeling paint job.

The no-bid contract to install a “Nano Bubble” filtration system went to Green Water Solutions, an Ohio-based company whose owner is listed on federal contracting documents as “JJ Cafaro Investment Trust.” The president and CEO of that trust is identified as John J. Cafaro on Federal Election Commission filings.

Prisac Nicholai, Self portrait with my cat

Cafaro has donated to several GOP candidates and conservative causes in recent years. He has donated extensively to Mr. Trump’s campaign and to Trump-linked groups, giving $250,000 to the Trump Victory fundraising committee at one point in 2020. FEC records show he also made donations to Democrats at various points.

A businessman and real estate developer, Cafaro pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in 2010 over donations to his daughter’s congressional campaign. Nearly a decade earlier, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe Democratic Rep. James Traficant, and cooperated with prosecutors.

Cafaro and his wife own a home in Palm Beach, Florida, less than a mile from the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Green Water Solutions is also known as Greenwater Services. Inquiries to Cafaro did not yield a response, and the company referred CBS News to the National Park Service, a division of the Department of the Interior. The New York Times was first to report on Cafaro’s involvement in the Reflecting Pool project.

On its website, Green Water Solutions describes its specialty as purifying water to remove algae, bacteria and other contaminants using a system that injects ozone-infused “nano bubbles” into the water.

Lets hope it works.

Last night, Trump decided to blame his reflecting pool on “vandals.”

At NPR, Rachel Treisman asked some scientists about Trump’s algae problem: Algae clouded Trump’s vision for the Reflecting Pool. But scientists aren’t surprised.

“It’s called ‘New Pond Syndrome,'” says Steve Goodale, a Canadian swimming pool specialist known online as “Swimming Pool Steve.” “It’s a known thing that happens when you take a natural, clear body of water like this that sits in an open air environment and you try to start it up, very often you end up with green water almost immediately.”

Goodale says the process took longer — a matter of days — to unfold in this case likely due to the sheer size of the pool, which measures 2,030 feet long and has a surface area of approximately 338,000 square feet….

Rosalina Stancheva Christova, a professor of aquatic ecology at George Mason University in Virginia, took water samples from the pool on Tuesday. She confirmed the algae belongs to the genus Desmodesmus, which she said is “growing in excessive amounts” but is not toxic or harmful.

Christova says this kind of common green algae is found all over the region, especially this time of year. The reflecting pool in particular provides “excellent conditions” for algae growth, she said: shallow, stagnant water, strong sunlight and no shade.

“It could happen every single summer,” she added. “But it seems that the disturbance of the pond during the renovations [is] accelerating this process.”

Christova said last month’s renovations may have affected the balance of nutrients in the pool, potentially accelerating the algae blooms. Goodale similarly views the resurfacing as one of several contributing factors.

“The new, darker interior surface is going to absorb more sunlight,” Goodale says. “It is going to result in water that’s warmer, and that ultimately is going to lead to more prolific algae growth.”

There’s more at the NPR link.

Mary Papenfus at The Daily Beast: Trump’s Reflecting Pool Mess Poses an Unexpected New Threat.

As National Park Service workers poured gallons of hydrogen peroxide into Donald Trump’s newly overhauled Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, observers worried about the families of nonvoters that actually use the water: ducks and their ducklings.

It’s a “bad day to be a duck,” remarked a NOTUS reporter on X this week while watching the desperate bid to control blooming algae with chemicals. Some people on social media claim to have seen dead ducks in the pool….

A little girl in peasant dress, playing with a cat by Danish-Norwegian artist Peder Severin Krøyer.

A 3 percent concentration is generally considered safe. Containers of hydrogen peroxide being poured into the Reflecting Pool were marked as a “12 percent” solution, Common Dreams reported. A 12 percent solution is strong enough to “cause problems if inhaled and burns if the chemical touches the skin,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has detailed warnings and suggestions for “medical management” of the chemical.

Hydrogen peroxide is “not absorbed by the skin, but can cause systemic toxicity when inhaled or ingested,” notes the CDC. It’s also a “powerful” oxidizing agent; when it comes in contact with organic material, spontaneous combustion can occur,” the agency warns.

It’s not known how much of the bleaching chemical is being dumped into the Reflecting Pool that many ducks use as a pond. In addition, at this time of year several tiny ducklings are trailing their moms in the water. Their size could make them more vulnerable to toxins.

Aleena Fayaz at CNN: Trump claims Reflecting Pool was vandalized and says law enforcement is investigating.

President Donald Trump on Friday claimed the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was intentionally vandalized and said law enforcement is actively investigating, as the administration has scrambled to fix the pool’s recent deterioration just days after Trump’s nearly $15 million renovation.

“We’ve had some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool,” Trump said in a late night post on Truth Social without providing evidence. “The algae is 75% gone, and the condition will soon be completely remedied, and the area that was vandalized, fortunately, is just a small area of damage, and will be fixed early next week.”

The post comes one day after blue material at the bottom of the pool began peeling off. The Reflecting Pool was painted blue and refilled in recent weeks as part of the pricey renovation ordered by Trump.

The president linked the alleged vandalism at the Reflecting Pool to the mysterious etching of “8647” into the grass on the National Mall days prior.

Johannes Albert Neuhuys, A girl playing with the cat 1877

“Just like three days ago, they destroyed the grass outside of the Pool, they’ve also done everything possible to hurt the inside surface that was just installed. No different than the chemicals that were used on the National Mall, they used something similar in the Reflecting Pool to try to destroy and demean our beautiful work,” Trump claimed.

When used as slang, the number 86 can refer to getting rid of or tossing something out. Trump is currently the 47th president. The phrase has recently been used to signal opposition to Trump.

A new image shows the numbers appearing even bolder than when they were originally discovered etched in the grass on the National Mall in Washington, DC more than a week ago.

Keep telling yourself that, you demented old geezer. Don the Builder has created this tremendous mess with a relatively small project. Can you imagine how bad it could get when when he really gets going with the ballroom and his idiotic arch?

Yesterday Trump held an event to display another renovation project: his new Airforce One plane, which he somehow grifted from the government of Qatar.

Lawrence Hurley at NBC News: Trump unveils new Air Force One jet gifted by Qatar.

President Donald Trump on Friday officially unveiled his new Air Force One jet that was contentiously given to him by the Qatari government, declaring it would be used during a ceremonial flyover in Washington on July 4 to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Trump welcomed the delivery of the luxurious Boeing 747 in an appearance at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington that began with him exiting the aircraft and walking down the steps.

Decked out in a red, white and dark-blue blue color scheme — a departure from the lighter blue on the previous model — the jet is set to be used by Trump during events marking the nation’s landmark anniversary.

“Nobody tops this one, and that’s the way we have to have it for our country. Nobody even comes close,” Trump said.

The jet will lead a flyover — “the likes of which we’ve never seen before,” Trump said — involving various other military planes on July 4.

He repeatedly praised the plane, calling it “the largest and the greatest in every aspect.” It will be a “flying White House at a level of luxury no one has ever seen before,” he added.

The plane is estimated to be worth $400 million, but the U.S. government has likely spent substantially more to make it ready for use.

Meanwhile, Americans are struggling to pay for gas, groceries and health care.

And what is going on with the Kennedy Center? Trump was ordered by a judge to remove his name from the building and cancel his plans to shut it down for 2 years. Workmen came and did something, but no one can tell if the Trump name has really been removed, because he is hiding the front of the building with huge tarps.

Elizabeth Williamson at The New York Times: ‘A Literal Coverup’: What Is the Kennedy Center Hiding Behind Those Tarps?

In the early hours of June 13, in an action that turned out to be news around the world, workers hung massive tarps from scaffolding across the front of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and under court order removed President Trump’s name from the marble facade.

Or did they?

Natalie and Persik, by Daniel Pagán

True, the center’s operations chief, Matt Floca, filed a sworn declaration with a federal court later that day saying that Mr. Trump’s name had been removed. And true, a New York Times photographer captured evidence through an opening in the tarp that the letter “A” came off. Another photographer recorded evidence of the demise of a “D.”

But in a downer denouement for Mr. Trump’s critics, a week later the tarps are still there, prompting some to wonder whether at least some of the letters are, too. As of Friday evening, there was no visual evidence that the letters splashed across the building had been restored to “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

Peering behind the tarps is impossible because they now lie tight against the building’s front.

“I don’t know if they took down the sign, because I can’t see it,” said Luna Woo, a violinist visiting from Portland, Ore., as part of the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute. She and other young musicians in the program have been trying to see behind the tarps from a practice room overlooking them. No luck.

So when will the tarps come down?

A Kennedy Center spokeswoman, Roma Daravi, emailed a terse response:

“The scaffolding and tarp will remain up as crews address maintenance needs of the marble and soffit panels. Best, Public Relations.”

I know this seems like a lightweight post, but these are the issues that our “president” is focused on. I’m not sure if the country can survive 2-1/2 more years of this chaos–not to mention the grifting and outright corruption.

Anyway, I hope you are all enjoying the weekend, despite the insanity in Washington DC.

Tuesday Reads: Trump Infects the U.S. Military with His Political Corruption

Posted: November 26, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments

Good Morning!!

Today fallout continues from Trump’s pardons of accused and/or convicted war criminals. Yesterday Dakinikat wrote about the firing of Navy Secretary Richard Spencer over an internal review board investigation of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy Seal who was convicted of posing for a trophy photo of a dead ISIS fighter. Gallagher was also accused of stabbing to death the teenager in the photo was acquitted.

In today’s New York Times, two former Navy secretaries Richard J. Danzig and Sean O’Keefe write: Trump and the Military Do Not Share the Same Values.

“Get back to business!” With this tweet, President Trump directed his secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, to stop the naval officers charged with oversight of the SEALs from disciplining one of their own. That order was confirmed on Monday by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and over the weekend, Mr. Spencer was fired.

Richard Spencer

There are three problems with Mr. Trump’s action. The first is that it is very much the Navy’s business — and every military’s business — to maintain, as the military so often recites and Mr. Spencer put it in his final letter to the president, “good order and discipline.” In conducting their “business,” our military services are not and must not be commanded in support of political ends, as Mr. Trump was apparently doing here.

How the president chooses to value order and discipline in his White House, and if at all, is of real concern to all Americans. But the military is not an extension of his White House. Some may argue that all actions by a president may have some political component, yet instead of constraining that component, this action by this president celebrates and encourages it.

The second problem intensifies the first. Contamination from the president’s approach is amplified when his judgment is largely shaped by television commentators and his decision announced by tweet. The military has well-established procedures for assuring good order and discipline. They begin by eliciting a judgment by peers. No one is as well positioned to balance the exigencies of combat and the demands of law and ethics as a panel of fellow sailors, Marines, airmen or soldiers….

Mark Esper

Finally, there is the judgment itself. An American service member shared a photograph of himself with a corpse along with the message: “I have got a cool story for you when I get back. I have got my knife skills on.” Our president’s endorsement of the perpetrator will be taken as a representation of our values. Our own troops, many of them teenagers, will be misled by the president’s sense, or lack of sense, of honor.

Paul Waldman at The Washington Post: How Richard Spencer’s firing illustrates some of Trump’s most corrupt impulses.

One key reason Donald Trump’s presidency has been so damaging is that he has a way of corrupting all the people and institutions he comes in contact with, infecting them with his virus. No one remains untouched.

As the sudden firing of Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer shows, that includes the military. Spencer’s story also bears a remarkable resemblance to the Ukraine scandal, in the way people with their own agendas played on Trump’s most repugnant impulses to manipulate him.

Spencer’s firing has its roots in the case of Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who became a Fox News hero. Gallagher’s long and complicated case began when members of his own unit accused him of a series of war crimes, including firing on civilians and murdering a wounded teenage Islamic State fighter receiving medical treatment from his unit.

Gallagher allegedly stabbed the wounded fighter multiple times, then took a picture with his corpse and texted it to friends, with the caption “Got him with my hunting knife.” He was also charged with covering up his crime by threatening to kill members of his platoon if they reported it. They did anyway….

Eddie Gallagher

Trump pardoned him, along with two other service members who had also been accused of war crimes.

Those pardons generated enormous controversy both inside and outside the military, but they were not surprising. From the time he began running for president, Trump has shown nothing but contempt for ideas like military order and discipline, respect for human rights and standards of wartime conduct. He has advocated torturing detainees, suggested that a way to fight terrorism would be to murder the families of suspected terrorists and mused about committing genocide. Accused war criminals are his kind of people.

There’s much more at the link. I hope you’ll go read the rest.

CBS News: Ousted Navy Secretary Richard Spencer defends handling of Navy SEAL case.

Spencer stepped down at the request of Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday amid an ongoing controversy over Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, whose case attracted President Trump’s attention.

Esper told reporters Monday that he fired Spencer after “losing trust and confidence in him regarding his lack of candor.” He accused Spencer of secretly proposing a deal to the White House that would allow Gallagher to retire and retain his Trident pin, which denotes his status as a SEAL, a move Esper said was “completely contrary” to what the two had discussed.

In an interview Monday, Spencer told CBS News he spoke with White House counsel Pat Cipollone on November 15 and proposed an arrangement in which Gallagher would be allowed to retire as a SEAL if the president agreed not to intervene in the case and “let the Navy do its administrative work.” Spencer said Cipollone called back the same day to decline the offer, saying the president would be involved.

“In order to preserve the resiliency of the naval institution, I had to step up and do something when it came to the Gallagher case,” Spencer said.

Spencer acknowledged not telling Esper about the proposal.

Navy Seals on the front lines in Afghanistan

“I will take the bad on me, for not letting him know I did that,” Spencer said. “But as far as I was concerned, at that point, the president understood the deal. Arguably, he doesn’t have to deal with anyone. He said, ‘I’m going to be involved.’ He sent a signed letter to me, an order with his signature on it, saying, ‘Promote Edward Gallagher to E7,'” the rank of chief petty officer.

Esper acknowledged Monday that when confronted about his secret negotiations with the White House, Spencer “was completely forthright in admitting what had been going on.”

Read more at the link.

The Independent spoke to veterans about the situation: US veterans say Trump views military ‘as tool for massacres’ after reinstating accused war criminal to Navy.

Numerous veterans spoke out about the move to The Independent after Secretary of Defence Mark Esper confirmed he was ordered by the president to retain Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher’s status in the elite service, as well as his Trident pin, a prestigious special warfare insignia.

“Ever since Donald Trump became president he’s been tearing the military apart, putting troops in the difficult position of needing to choose between obedience to his unhinged orders, and staying true to our code of honour,” said Alexander McCoy, a former Marine and political director of the veteran group Common Defence. “By pardoning war criminals because Fox News told him to, Trump showed he sees our military as a tool for massacres, not as the professional, honourable force we aspire to be.” [….]

The president’s demands could cause “significant long-term damage to the Naval Special Warfare community,” according to James Waters, a former Navy SEAL platoon commander and White House staff member in the Bush administration, who told The Independent: “The only people who weigh in on whether a Navy SEAL deserves to keep his Trident are people who have their Trident.”

James Waters, former Navy Seal and GW Bush WH staffer

“Every SEAL knows he must ‘earn your Trident every day’ – even after officially qualifying – and the same standard should apply here,” Mr Waters said. “Unless you’ve been through Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training and served in the Teams and know the specific facts related to a person’s performance, you’re not qualified to weigh in.” [….]

“There’s a reason we have the Geneva Convention. There’s a reason we have the Universal Code of Military Justice. There’s a reason we have the morale and ethics that we learn in training,” said Josh Manning, a former Army intelligence officer. “For Trump to just step in and undermine centuries worth of morale and discipline undercuts the very military that he’s trying to command.” [….]

Charlotte Clymer, an Army Veteran and press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign, said Mr Trump appeared to be “hell-bent on exploiting” the military justice system for his own purposes.

“My colleagues and I, those still serving and not, are openly horrified by the way this coward has explicitly condoned war crimes, seemingly to pander to people who don’t understand how this undermines our moral authority,” she told The Independent. “I’ve talked to other service members and veterans, and none of us are sure how this could get worse.”

They’re suggesting that Trump wants to take us back to Vietnam years when we had shameful incidents like the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

In a final outrage, Trump now says he wants to use the pardoned war criminals in his 2020 campaign. Daily Beast: Trump Tells Allies He Wants Absolved War Criminals to Campaign for Him.

If Donald Trump gets his wish, he’ll soon take the three convicted or accused war criminals he spared from consequence on the road as special guests in his re-election campaign, according to two sources who have heard Trump discuss their potential roles for the 2020 effort.

Despite military and international backlash to Trump’s Nov. 15 clemency—fallout from which cost Navy Secretary Richard Spencer his job on Sunday—Trump believes he has rectified major injustices. Two people tell The Daily Beast they’ve heard Trump talk about how he’d like to have the now-cleared Clint Lorance, Matthew Golsteyn, or Edward Gallagher show up at his 2020 rallies, or even have a moment on stage at his renomination convention in Charlotte next year. Right-wing media have portrayed all three as martyrs brought down by “political correctness” within the military.

“He briefly discussed making it a big deal at the convention,” said one of these sources, who requested anonymity to talk about private conversations. “The president made a reference to the 2016 [convention] and where they brought on-stage heroes” like former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, who refused to execute detained civilians ahead of a devastating Taliban attack.

So next year he wants to celebrate men who chose to execute civilians and detainees?

What stories are you following today?

Tagg Romney Followed Mitt’s Advice: “Borrow Money…from Your Parents; Start a Business.”

Posted: May 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 31 Comments

Who names their kid "Taggart?"

The New York Times has an interesting story about Solamere Capital, a private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney’s son Tagg (short for Taggart) shortly after his dad’s last campaign for POTUS ended in 2008.

About a month after Mitt Romney ended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in February 2008, his eldest son, Tagg, and Spencer Zwick, the campaign’s top fund-raiser, met with a beef company executive who had been a major campaign donor over dinner at the posh Torrey Pines resort in San Diego….

Neither had experience in private equity. But what the close friends did have was the Romney name and a Rolodex of deep-pocketed potential investors who had backed Mr. Romney’s presidential run — more than enough to start them down that familiar path from politics to profit.

I’m sure you recall Mitt Romney’s advice to community college students at a recent campaign appearance in Ohio.

WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney offered a group of college students this advice on Friday: If you want to start a business, borrow money from your parents.

Romney, a wealthy former investment banker who has struggled to soften his image as a member of America’s super elite, was discussing ways of achieving the American dream at Otterbein University. He said, “We’ve always encouraged young people: Take a shot, go for it. Take a risk. Get the education. Borrow money if you have to from your parents. Start a business.”

Well, Mitt knows whereof he speaks! He kicked in $10 million to help Tagg and some friends start up Solamere. On top of that, he gave his eldest son access to his superrich campaign donors. What a guy.

The small firm, including Tagg Romney, 42, Mr. Zwick, 32, and a third partner they brought in, Eric Scheuermann, 47, the only one with a private equity background, is in line to collect at least $16.8 million in fees over the first six years of the fund, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm has earned a 20 percent return since 2010, despite having invested only about half of its money so far.

And guess what? Solamere’s employee roster is practically a who’s who of Romney campaign personnel:

While Solamere has not operated exactly as a subsidiary of the Romney campaign, it has seemed that way at times. The firm shared its first address with the Romney campaign headquarters in Boston. Later, the company was located in the same building as Mr. Romney’s leadership PAC, Free and Strong America, before moving to trendy Newbury Street in Boston.

Please go read the whole article. If Mitt Romney is elected POTUS this time, will he be the leader of the American people or will the U.S. government simply become a wholly owned subsidiary of Romney family enterprises?

Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out

Posted: May 5, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Main Stream Media, New Orleans | Tags: , , | 5 Comments
The military patrols in front of my house after Hurricane Katrina: Hummers, guns, and soldiers

The military patrols in front of my house after Hurricane Katrina: Hummers, guns, and soldiers

I moved to New Orleans sight unseen about 14 years ago.  It’s a city with much charm and beauty, tons of eccentricities and eccentrics, and it’s own brand of food, architecture and music that make you feel like you’re not quite in the US.   For as much culture shock as I experienced when I first moved down here from cold, efficient, clean, crime free,  marvelously developed and governed Minneapolis, I’ve learned to love my quirky home.  I really don’t feel right when I go other places these days.  It always feels like something is missing.   I come back again to New Orleans own brand of wonderful food which rivals its music and architecture for my love and adoration.  All of them are cheap, readily available, and wonderful.  For those of us that live here, those cultural things completely outweigh the lack of amenities and civilities found around the rest of the country.

Hurricane Katrina changed some things.  I was hoping that the aftermath would bring the best parts of this city to light so that we would be appreciated as the National Treasure that is New Orleans.  It seems folks were fascinated with us for awhile, but there’s always a new thing to distract our fickle media and citizenry.  For every celebrity and charity that is still hanging in here with our painfully slow recovery, there is now the old refrain that there is something ‘not quite right’ with us.

The first thing I would like to do is to ask Time Magazine if this headline is really necessary?  Is Baghdad Now Safer Than New Orleans? The article uses murder statistics around the world to compare to the level of violence experienced in Baghdad.  Even this quote shows the reach to meet the comparison.  It further dismisses the roots of our problems which are related to our huge problems with black-on-black crime associated with drug use, poor education systems, and basic lack of opportunity for inner city teenagers.  How do the problems of a largely ignored, poorly run and funded US city compare on any level with a city in a developing nation that we invaded only to unleash a set of bloody tribal wars?

Let’s go to the numbers: Caracas, with about 3.2 million people, is in a bloody league of its own, with an estimated murder rate of 130 per 100,000 residents according to government figures. Cape Town is about the same size as Caracas but nearer to Baghdad’s murder rate with 62 violent deaths per 100,000 people. New Orleans, with an estimated post-Katrina population of just over 300,000, is tiny in size compared to its rivals. But the number of murders is huge; figures vary, but even the low estimate puts the city on a par with Cape Town. By way of comparison, Moscow, one of the most violent cities in Europe, has an estimated murder rate of just 9.6 per 100,000 residents. New York City’s murder rate is 6.2, Washington D.C.’s about 32.

Today, the NY Times had a feature article on our goofball mayor, Ray Nagin who may have just achieved the lowest approval rating of all times, any where. Here’s the article: Term Limits Say New Orleans Mayor Can’t Return; Residents Say They Don’t Mind.

In a recent poll by the University of New Orleans, Mr. Nagin was cited as one of the “biggest problems” for the city, coming in third after crime and education. Just 24 percent of residents over all said they approved of the mayor, a drop from 31 percent the year before.

“It’s the worst approval rating we’ve reported since 1986,” when the poll was first conducted, said Robert T. Sims, the director of the university’s survey research center.

Among African-Americans, support dropped to 36 percent from about half of those polled last year. Among whites, who constituted much of Mr. Nagin’s voting base in his first election, the approval rating was 5 percent. (The survey’s margin of sampling error for whites was plus or minus five percentage points.)

Edward F. Renwick, a retired professor of political science at Loyola University and a pollster himself, said he found that figure surprising. “I have hardly ever seen 5 percent,” Dr. Renwick said. On the other hand, he added, “I have never met a white person who doesn’t hate him.”

That sentiment can be seen in a $2 bumper sticker that has become popular in the city’s souvenir shops. In vivid Mardi Gras colors, it says: “May 31, 2010: Nagin’s Last Day. Proud to See Him Gone.”

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