February 11, 2022: Trump Absconds with Fifteen Boxes - and Hillary's Emails

2/11/22: Since we were talking in our post for February 6, about the Orange God of Mar-a-Lago tearing the U.S. Constitution to pieces, let’s jump to a story about the real rending of government documents by the O. G. 

You may remember that happier time, when the Orange God ranted and raved regarding Hillary Clinton and her missing 33,000 emails. Now we learn, in almost comical fashion, that in contravention of federal law, the OG decided to haul off fifteen boxes of presidential records that he was required to leave behind in D.C., to be catalogued by the National Archives. 

I did a quick estimate of how many pages of documents might fit in one fold-up cardboard file box, and figure you could get 6,400 pages in a box easy – or 96,000 pages of material. 

So, Russia, if you’re listening….

Nor is this “Fake News,” as Trump has already hinted. His own lawyers admit “they are continuing to search for additional presidential records that belong to the National Archives.” 

There’s really no reason to be surprised – that Donald would swipe documents in disregard of the law – or tear up documents in contravention of the same (as was reported by Politico in 2018) – or wad them up and stuff them down the White House toilet, as reported in a new book. 

We also hear that some of the documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago were clearly marked as classified, including some labeled “top secret.”

 

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NEED MORE PROOF that we don’t need to coddle millionaires and billionaires at tax time? A painting by Sandro Botticelli sold at auction a few days ago, for $45.4 million. The work, “The Man of Sorrows,” depicts Jesus, wearing his crown of thorns, and was painted around 1500. Someone bought it in seven minutes. 

Because – pocket change. 

Last January another work by the same artist, “Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel,” fetched $92.2 million. 

Someone is a big fan of roundels.

 

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SINCE WE’RE talking vast wealth, let’s give it up to Apple. The company saw profits jump in the fourth quarter of 2021 to $34.6 billion. In similarly good news, McDonalds raised prices in 2021. So consumers had to pay more if they wanted a lukewarm order of Chicken McNuggets and fries – and then had to blame Joe Biden for inflation. Somehow, McDonalds managed to power through all the supply chain issues we heard about and increase profits by 59%, compared to 2020. Also, Chevron piled up some serious profits in the last quarter of the year, to the tune of $5.1 billion. That meant the company had earnings of $15.6 billion for the year. 

So, sure. Gas prices had to go up, or Chevron couldn’t remain afloat.

 

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IT’S ALSO TRUE that not all businesspersons can be trusted. Case in point: Hewlitt Packard won a $5 billion settlement this month in a fraud lawsuit. A decade ago, for $11 billion, they bought a software company called Autonomy, which appeared to be doing an extremely lucrative business. 

It turned out, too late, that the chief financial officer for Autonomy, Sushovan Hussain, had been cooking the books. Yet more evidence that sometimes government control of business is a positive good.

 

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IN A RECENT Gallup poll, 68% of Americans said they approved of labor unions, even though only 6% of private sector workers in this country are unionized today. In 1983, 20% of American workers had union protections – down today to just over 10%, led mostly by local, state, and federal workers. 

The president who helped precipitate that decline: Ronald Reagan, who up and fired more than 11,000 of the nation’s air traffic controllers when they had the audacity to go out on strike.

 

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FINALLY, Fox News! Fox hosts are still trumpeting disease, hospitalization, and death, as they battle any and all mask and vaccine mandates, requirements or even subtle hints. Such as: Get vaccinated, or it’s curtains for granny! 

In fact, remember when Fox was howling that Obama’s healthcare plan meant death panels for granny? 

Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are both in big on the trucker protest in Canada, where a few drivers with big rigs, and their nutty we’d-rather-die than get a shot that would protect us (and our grannies) supporters are blocking the streets of Ottawa. (That’s the capital of Canada, right?) 

To listen to the nighttime bloviators at Fox, you might think this was historic Boston Tea Party-level protest – assuming the boys in Boston who dumped the tea were hoping to catch smallpox.

 

The New York Times explains:

 

Mr. Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” called the Canadian trucker convoy the “single most successful human rights protest in a generation” on Thursday.

 

“It has been a very useful reminder to our entire ruling class that working men can be pushed, but only so far,” Mr. Carlson said.

 

Mr. Hannity, host of “The Sean Hannity Show,” called the protests “inspirational” and “powerful” last week. He has also had Brian Brase, who is organizing a protest in the United States, on his radio show. “No more failed mandates, no more hysterical counterproductive, draconian restrictions, Johns Hopkins, and no more needless, divisive attacks against essential workers or anyone else for that matter,” Mr. Hannity said last week.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: So, where do we stand on this protest in favor of infection? Posting this item late, we can check with CDC.

 

As of February 20, 80.9% of all American adults, including most truckers, and most members of the ruling and working classes had been vaccinated. Where this blogger’s son works, his company is offering workers a $2,000 bonus to get the shots and stop the spread. And some workers – likely fans of Tucker and Sean – are proving their love for freedom by coughing on each other, vaccine-free. On February 11, the U.S. was averaging 2,267 deaths from the virus per day, for a loss in one week of 15,869 human beings. Almost 931,000 Americans have died since the virus started to spread. But sure. Sen. Ted Cruz was dead-on when he washed up on “Sunday Morning Futures,” also on Fox, and said the Canadian truckers were patriots and heroes, “marching for your freedom and for my freedom.”

 

So, add it to the Bill of Rights: The right to sneeze on your family, friends, and innocent bystanders.