October 19, 2018: The President Doesn't Mind if People Beat Up Reporters

 

10/19/18: Reporters want to know if Trump has any regrets after seeming to encourage attacks on journalists at the Montana rally. 

Isn’t this a mistake, in light of the fact the Saudis now admit they murdered Jamal Khashoggi? 

“No, no, no, not at all,” Trump replies. “No, that was a different league, a different world.” 

He doesn’t see any problem with his laughing support for Rep. Greg Gianforte who slammed a reporter to the ground after being asked an inconvenient question (see: 10/18/18). 

“That was a tremendous success last night in Montana,” Trump says of the rally, “and Greg is a great person, he’s a tough cookie, and I’ll stay with that.” 

Rep. Greg Gianforte.

____________________ 

When the free press dies, it dies for everyone.

____________________ 

 

Condemnation is swift. Prime Minister Theresa May is not amused by the president’s comments about assaulting a reporter working for a British paper. Her spokesperson issues a statement: Trump “obviously made comments at a political rally and those are for him but more generally we would always say that violence or intimidation against a journalist [emphasis added] is completely unacceptable.”  

Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, for whom the victim was working, puts it succinctly: 

At a time when reporters around the world are being harassed, arrested and even murdered these are incredibly irresponsible comments, which fly in the face of press freedom and send a dangerous message to autocrats and dictators around the world.

 

The world’s press would welcome a clear statement from the US government that it remains committed to the rights of journalists everywhere to do their work without fear of violence or repression.

 

PEN America, a writer’s organization, warns that Trump’s “explicit praise” for an attacker 

marks a startling new low in terms of the White House’s open hostility toward the press…Trump’s remarks are a chilling reminder that US global leadership on press freedom has collapsed utterly under the president’s watch. In its place is an attitude of contempt, excusing and now even applauding violence toward the press.

 

See, Trump fans, how easy this is to grasp? You either believe in a free press, or you don’t. 

If you don’t you are paving the way to a day when Tucker Carlson gets body-slammed when a Democratic version of Donald J. Trump takes over. 

When the free press dies it dies for everyone, conservative, liberal, and everyone in between.

 

* 

DID SOMEONE MENTION Montana? Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke remains under a cloud. There are reports that the Inspector General at Interior opened up several investigations into whether or not Zinke had agency regulations changed so he could fly his wife around on taxpayer dollars. 

The Trump administration suddenly hinted that they would like to appoint Assistant HUD Secretary Susanne Tufts to be the new IG at Interior, despite her complete lack of qualifications for such a job. 

Politico, for example, described Tufts as “a GOP operative with no experience investigating allegations of unethical behavior.” This was kind of a poor look to anyone who had functioning eyeballs. In any case, Ms. Tufts suddenly handed in her resignation at HUD and left the stage. 

The White House denied ever dreaming of making her IG at Interior.

February 15, 2020: The Most Powerful Nitwit in the World

 

2/15/20: Remember back in 2012 when Citizen Trump said new energy-efficient light bulbs caused cancer? Of course, you don’t because Trump was just a nitwit with a Twitter account in those days. 

Now he’s the most powerful nitwit in the world – with a Twitter account – and 64 million followers. 

So, here’s a taste from October 2, 2012: “Big cancer risk from new ‘environmental light bulbs’ – a big price to pay!” 

A few days later, he insisted that the people who came up with these bulbs knew about the cancer risk, but “don’t care.” 

These were only two simplistic tweets, but might have served as a template for thousands of tweets to come. In just two sentences, Donald J. Trump managed to: 

1.     Exaggerate the danger out of all proportion, appealing to emotion, not logic. The new light bulbs weren’t going to send you or your loved ones to intensive care. 

2.     Trash environmentalists – and by implication President Obama – insisting they didn’t “care” about the health of the American people. 

3.     Undercut those who believed it was time to address a growing climate change threat.

 

Sadly, the same gentleman is now in charge of the United States of America. And it’s like tasking a first grader to come up with a rational approach to handle the issue of climate change. 

Unfortunately, climate records continue to fall with increasing frequency. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared January 2020 the hottest January in 141 years of record-keeping. 

 

An iceberg the size of Seattle. 

In related news, the European Space Agency released video this week of an iceberg the size of Seattle breaking off the Antarctic ice sheet. Up close, one scientist said it looked like a giant wall of ice, 500 meters in thickness. For “fun,” scientists combined images of other icebergs forming as new bergs “calved” from the Pine Island Glacier. Several bergs in recent years were even more massive.

Even Sen. James "Snowball Jim" Inhofe should be getting worried.

 

* 

“The worst Interior secretary ever.” 

EVEN TRUMP’S CULT FOLLOWERS in Congress are growing worried, though they dare not admit it. It they admit it they would have to admit they have been deluding supporters for years. 

The president did say in his State of the Union Address, however, that the U.S. would join the One Trillion Trees global initiative. He did not mention that this initiative is part of a growing realization, around the world, that we’re all screwed if we don’t address climate change. 

So: Rep. Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican, has introduced the One Trillion Tree Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. As part of the initiative, to plant a trillion trees by 2050, and slow warming, the U.S. would commit to do it’s share by planting 3.3 billion trees annually. 

Impressive as that might sound, especially coming from a party dedicated to climate-change denial, it’s worth noting that 2.5 billion trees are already planted in the United States yearly. What might sound like four steps forward is one, and one step per year won’t get us where we need to be by 2050.

 

Plus, we have people in charge of – for example – the Department of the Interior, whose wet dream involves opening up millions more acres of public land to drilling, mining, and logging. The Wilderness Society, for example, labeled Ryan Zinke, Trump’s first choice to head the department, “the worst Interior secretary ever.” And that was after only a year on the job. He got worse, and then got axed, in the face of multiple investigations into shady dealings. 

Just a taste of Zinke’s misdeeds and missteps: He wanted to spend $139,000 on new doors for his office. He took $53,000 worth of unnecessary helicopter rides at taxpayer expense, including a flight to a stable so he could ride horses with Vice President Pence. And he was a big fan of expanding offshore drilling all along the U.S. coastline – although that changed when someone realized…. 

What about…Mar-a-Lago? An exception was quickly included in the plans being pushed by the Interior Department. 

One step forward, and ten steps backward, led by Trump and his enabling crew, will only hasten the catastrophe that our descendants will  face, unless we get our act together. (See: 2/17/20.)

Trump won't visit Mt. Rushmore, unless they carve his face on it.

Teddy Roosevelt knew a century ago we had to protect the environment.

February 17, 2022: Not All Politicians Are Alike

2/17/22: No, dummkopfs! Not all politicians are alike. Voting makes a difference, whether or not you get everything you want from the people you help elect. For example, the Biden administration is:

 

ü Allocating $5 billion to help states build more electric charging stations for cars and trucks.

 

ü Reversing a Trump administration policy which stripped the power of  California and other states to set stricter tailpipe emission standards.

 

ü Taking climate change seriously, with Biden not being an ignoramus, like Trump, who called it a “hoax.”

Was there anyone in Trump's cabinet who wasn't a crook
or didn't quit and call the president a moron?

 

ü Pushing a bill to cap the monthly costs for insulin (needed by 1.6 million type-1 diabetics in this country if they want to live) at $35 per month –because drug companies have been gouging patients for years.

 

ü Forgiving student loans for 1,800 individuals, for a total of $71.7 million – those students having been bilked by rapacious agents of the for-profit DeVry University.

 

ü Which reminds me of Trump University, which got socked for a $25 million penalty for screwing students.

 

ü Not choosing a former executive of DeVry University to help run the Department of Education, as did Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, of the ill-fated Trump administration.

 

ü Not having cabinet members get ousted for ethics violations, as opposed to Team Trump, which featured E.P.A. administrator Scott Pruitt paying top aides who didn’t show up for work.

 

ü Not getting “F” marks from 170 major environmental groups for failing to protect the environment – thanks, Scott Pruitt, et. al.

 

ü Not having Biden labeled “the worst president for the environment in history,” as the Sierra Club labeled Trump.

 

ü And not having Tom Price, Trump’s first head of Health and Human Services, stick taxpayers for the cost of more than a million dollars in unauthorized flights.

 

ü And not having Alex Acosta, who became Trump’s Secretary of Labor, being the guy who gave Jeffrey Epstein a sweet deal which kept him from spending significant time in jail, allowing him another decade during which he was able to prey upon young girls.

 

ü And, as we just found out just this week, Trump’s Secretary of Interior, Ryan Zinke, who was negotiating a deal with land developers in Montana, by which he hoped to profit, while also “serving” as the man in charge of all federally-owned lands. Which caused Zinke to lie to the Inspector General with responsibility for upholding ethics in the Department of Interior.

 

ü And, as a bonus, Zinke asked members of his staff – paid for by “We the People” through taxes, to help him make the deal happen. Sort of the double-whammy of bad ethics.

 

ü But at least his staffers were showing up, unlike staffers for Pruitt, so you could call that a plus.

 

ü Not just vowing, as did Republicans, if they take control of Congress in 2022, to “secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump.” (And getting Mexico to pay for it?)

 

ü Not making life harder for transgender individuals, by announcing as Republican just did, this principle: “Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies. We believe in science.” 

 

ü And not being hypocritical about believing science. Republicans don’t believe in climate change and don’t believe in vaccines.

 

ü They do believe in QAnon’s hocus pocus. 

 

FUN FACT: Normally, this would be embarrassing for everyone involved, but Donald J. Trump has endorsed Rep. Mark Finchem to be the next Arizona Secretary of State. It turns out, Finchem is kind of nuts. He has called the vaccines – which Trump loves to brag about getting developed at warp speed – a “crime against humanity.” Finchem has also made it clear he didn’t get vaccinated because he was worried about “potentially deadly gene therapy.” 

Doesn’t that mean, Rep. Finchem should be warning that Loser Donald is trying to kill people?