July 10, 2019: More Bad News on Climate Change, Stripper Caddies at Trump National Doral

 

7/10/19: U.S. Customs and Border Protection announces that a vessel seized after docking at Philadelphia in June was carrying 20 tons of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $1.3 billion. 

This would never happen if we had a big, beautiful wall along the southern border. (See: 7/12/19.)

 

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TRUMP NATIONAL DORAL makes news when the club cancels a charity golf event in the wake of bad publicity. “The Shadow All Star Tournament” was originally organized by a strip club. The Trump Organization thought it was a good idea. Golfers were going to have a chance to bid on scantily-clad “dancers” to serve as caddies.  

When it comes to keeping young women safe, canceling a strippers/golf tournament looks like a good move. 

Locking up Jeffrey Epstein forever is a better idea. Jennifer Araoz, 32, comes forward to add fresh accusations against him. She says she was approached by a woman several times outside her high school, when she was fourteen. Epstein, she was told, could help launch her Broadway career. (See: 7/9/19.) 

As Time describes it: 

Araoz said her first few encounters with Epstein and the woman at Epstein’s home were friendly – they talked, she was given wine and $300 after every visit. Eventually she began meeting with Epstein alone, and that’s when the sexual abuse began, she alleges.

 

At first, she was paid for stripping down to her underwear and giving him massages. Soon after she turned fifteen, he held her down during a visit and raped her. She never returned to his home again.

 

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IN ANY CASE, if Epstein, his enablers, and his powerful friends made America unsafe for teen girls, Trump climate change denials have made Planet Earth unsafe for all 7.6 billion people riding this carousel round the sun. 

Fresh warnings of danger are issued when scientists note that the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, a glacier the size of Florida, is becoming unstable. It could begin breaking up soon. 

The science, if you check the original report, is incredibly complex and could never be explained in a Trump tweet. 

The blogger will be honest: He doesn't get this, either.

 

The danger, however, is clear from the first sentence of the report: “We also find that the collapse of marine ice sheets makes worst-case scenarios of rapid sea-level rise [emphasis added] more likely in future projections.”

This one, even Trump might be able to figure out, if he ever stopped tweeting.

  

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MEANWHILE, CBS NEWS REPORTS that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is deserted. The last three staffers left the building June 30. Eleanor Celeste, assistant director for biomedical and forensic sciences, tweeted, “Science division out. Mic drop.” 

She included the picture below, before leaving for the last time.  

No truth to the rumor that Trump hopes to create a White House Office of Tweeting and Putting.

August 27, 2019: Guess Where Trump Wants to Hold Next G-7!

 

8/27/19: Americans learn this week that the United States will be responsible for holding the G-7 summit in 2020. Well, then, where, oh where, would the best place to hold that meeting be? 

If you said: “Trump National Doral Miami,” you win the prize. 

According to the owner of said property, Doral would be perfect for such a gathering. Let’s have the Commander-in-Chief explain the joys that would await leaders of the G-7 (or the G-8, if he can invite Putin): 

Everybody’s that’s coming, all of these people with all of their big entourages come. It’s set up so — and by the way, my people looked at 12 sites. All good, but some were two hours from an airport, some were four hours from, I mean they were so far away. Some didn’t allow this, they didn’t allow that.

 

Yeah, imagine. Trump’s people looked at a dozen sites. And they realized, hey, Doral is the best!!! 

With the world watching with amaze, and the G-7 in France wrapping up, Trump continued with his sales pitch. 

With Doral, we have a series of magnificent buildings, we call them bungalows. They each hold from 50 to 70 very luxurious rooms, with magnificent views. We have incredible conference rooms, incredible restaurants. It’s like, it’s like such a natural. ... And what we have also is Miami, and we have many hundreds of acres so that in terms of parking, in terms of all of the things that you need, the ballrooms are among the biggest in Florida, and the best. It’s brand new. 

 

Plus, if hurricanes threaten – we have the nukes. (See: 8/25/19.)

Trump at G-7, and of course he wants to lean into the picture.

 

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SPEAKING OF THREATS to the safety of millions of Americans, a judge in Oklahoma penalizes Johnson & Johnson $572 million for its role in marketing opioids and claiming they were perfectly safe. That judgment won’t bring back the tens of thousands who have died, of course. 

News of that judgment spooks other pushers. Purdue Pharma, which marketed opioids most aggressively, and claimed they were the safest, has offered to settle in federal court and pay $10-12 billion in damages. 

The victims of greed still won’t rise from the dead.

 

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PRESIDENT OBAMA may be gone. The imaginary “War on Coal” he supposedly launched, continues to be fought. 

U.S. coal demand fell in 2018 to the lowest level since 1979 and is expected to drop further this year. 

Must be Obama’s fault!

 

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“They picked winners, and they picked losers.” 

WE MIGHT NOT be getting hurt in the tariff war, according to President Trump; but lobster fishermen would choose to disagree. In the first six months of 2018, the Chinese bought 12 million pounds worth of the crustaceans from the U.S. And then Trump raised tariffs. 

China retaliated as anyone could predict. 

In the first six months of this year, U.S. sales of lobster to China fell 80 percent, to 2.2 million pounds.

 

Stephanie Nadeau, owner of The Lobster Company in Arundel, Maine, explains how tariff wars turn bloody in the real world. “They picked winners, and they picked losers,” she says of Trump and his economic advisers, “and they picked me a loser. There is no market that’s going to replace China.”  

Loss of market forced Nadeau to lay off seven of the fourteen people she once had working in wholesale. 

Nadeau is hardly alone in her pain. One trade group estimates that Trump’s tariffs cost U.S. businesses $3.4 billion in June.

October 17, 2019: An Expensive Night at Trump National Doral

 

10/17/19: If the Kurds were getting massacred by the Turks, that was fine with Mr. Trump because he still had good news. The U.S. government had determined that the best spot in all the fifty states to hold next year’s G-7 summit would be Trump National Doral golf club, just outside of Miami. 

What a surprise! 

In a boffo performance before an audience of admiring reporters, Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney explained how Doral wasn’t the “only place” the meeting could have been held, “just the best place.” He promised the president wouldn’t profit during the G-7 summit. Trump would never do such a thing. 

According to ProPublica, however, when government officials stay at Mar-a-Lago they can be charged as much as $546 per night for a single room. In one case, members of Team Trump sent taxpayers a bill for 54 drinks in a Trump-owned resort bar, at a total cost, with tip, of $1,076. 

That’s $18.62 per.

All this for only $546 per night. Drinks extra.

  

POSTSCRIPT: Speaking at a white tie dinner that evening, Gen. Mattis introduced himself as a man who had “achieved greatness.” “I mean, I’m not just an overrated general, I am the greatest, the world’s most overrated general,” he laughed. He said he was “honored to be so considered by Donald Trump, because the president also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress. So I guess I’m the Meryl Streep of generals.” (See: 10/10-14/19.) 

Did it bother him to be insulted by the president, Mattis said he had been asked? He made it clear it did not. “I earned my spurs on the battlefield. Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor.”

October 19, 2019: No G-7 to Be Held at Trump National Doral - But God Smote Elijah Cummings

 

10/19/19: After a tough week at the Oval Office, President Trump took Saturday off and spent the day relaxing at the White House. There were no public events on his schedule. 

He did have time to send out 59 tweets and retweets. Really, at this point, it’s just what he does. 

Then, late Saturday evening, we heard stunning news. The president was punting on the idea of holding the next G-7 summit at his private golf club, Trump National Doral. 

And whose fault was it? 

According to Trump, the goddam Democrats, and the goddam media had spiked his great plan. 

(The media promptly and accurately reported that Trump caved in the face of Republican condemnation.)

Trump wanted G-7 leaders to pay him to hold a conference at his place.

He also wanted to invite...Vladimir Putin.

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CLEARLY, it no longer pays to criticize Donald J. Trump. According to conspiracy-theorist Chris McDonald  we now have proof. During a radio interview with Pastor Stacy Shiflett,  McDonald offers his thoughts on the death of Rep. Elijah Cummings. Cummings didn’t die of a lingering illness. 

His problem wasn’t medical. 

“We know the Bible,” McDonald told Pastor Shiflett. “You’ve got a leader that has been in office for over 30 years, that opened the door on unfettered abortion in this country. His civil rights icon status was a joke because he did nothing to bring rights to his people; all he did was divide, all he did was play the race card.” 

Cummings, McDonald claimed, had been waging “a cooked, deceptive, demonic attempt” to take down President Trump. “Everything that he’s done has been nothing but try to take this president out,” he hypothesized. “I believe that God had had enough, and God moved.”