February 10-16, 2017: Trump Gets Japanese History Wrong - Also, Presidential History

 

2/10/17: Angry in the face of sustained mockery on Saturday Night Live, Trump tweets: “I hosted SNL when it was a good show, but it’s not a good show anymore.” The show is “unwatchable.” “Sad!” 

SNL scores its highest ratings in 20 years.

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2/11/17: Trump meets with the Japanese Prime Minister but does not repeat campaign complaints about the Japanese stealing American jobs or mooching off us for defense. He does not suggest, as he did last March, that Japan could use some atomic bombs of its own. Since Trump remembers nothing from history, he may not realize Japan is the only country ever targeted for nuclear destruction.   

The Japanese are opposed to nuclear weapons.

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2/12/17: A federal appeals court unanimously strikes down the first travel ban. It seems none of the three judges can grasp what a “bad high school” student could (see: 2/8/18). They can’t even see how “beautifully” the ban is written. 

Instead, they rule the ban is inherently discriminatory and therefore …um …um … unconstitutional.

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2/13/17: Reporters credit Trump for avoiding “bombastic pronouncements on Twitter” for an entire day! 

At the White House on this Monday, he greets Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and makes it through an entire meeting without insulting anyone. He’s acting “presidential” at last.

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2/14/17: General Michael J. Flynn, Trump’s National Security Adviser, resigns after it is made clear (by the free press) that he lied to Vice President Pence about meeting with Russian agents. 

Oddly enough, the president learned that Flynn had lied two weeks ago. He didn’t fire him till reporters started digging.

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2/15/17: Anthony Puzder, Trump’s choice for Secretary of Labor, withdraws from consideration. 

Mr. Puzder’s problems include employing an undocumented immigrant for years to work as a maid in his home.

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2/16/17: The president touts his November victory at a press conference and complains how unfair CNN, The New York Times and other media outlets have been. “I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan,” he says. The media might not be happy he won. “But a lot of people are happy about it.”  

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“I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan.” 

President Trump on his win; he’s wrong, of course.

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A reporter points out that his claim is not true. You could, for example, go all the way back to 2012, when Obama won more electoral votes. 

Mr. Trump says you can’t blame him for getting his facts wrong because that’s what he was  told.

 

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WE COULD KICK the president when he’s already down, but, come on – does this guy know anything about U.S. history? He “piled up” 304 electoral votes. Obama had 332 in 2012. Trump was wrong five times: Obama had 365 in 2008. Bill Clinton had 370 in 1992 and 379 in 1996. 

And George H.W. Bush had 426 in 1988.

George H. W. Bush did it too.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (July 6, 2020): Trump’s final vote is raised to 306, when the U.S. Supreme Court rules that two votes from “faithless electors” who had refused to sign his name to their ballots had to be added to his win. 

The decision of the high court was unanimous. Electors must cast their votes for the person they have sworn to voters that they will.

July 12, 2019: It's Only Free Speech if Donald Trump Likes It

 

7/12/19: It turns out that Carla Provost, who President Trump appointed to head the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in 2018, was a member of a secret Facebook group (recently revealed by ProPublica.). 

When the secret group – and it’s often vulgar, racist, sexist posts – was first revealed, Provost responded forcefully. “These posts are completely inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see – and expect – from our agents day in and day out. Any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable.”

It turns out that top officials with the Border Patrol are members of the Facebook group. So is Provost. 

 

Seeing the humor in “floaters.” 

As The Intercept explains, 

ProPublica was first to report the existence of the secret Border Patrol group on July 1, revealing that members used the page to joke about migrant deaths and share sexually violent and threatening posts [emphasis added] about several Democratic lawmakers, including, in particular, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y. Politico followed up by reporting that senior officials in the Border Patrol, as well as CBP public affairs officials, had known about the group for years and used it as an “intelligence” stream to monitor the sentiment of the workforce.

 

The Intercept then reported that the public revelations sparked an internal purging of the Facebook group’s content, but not before we archived hundreds of posts shared over multiple weeks.

 

Agents in the group found humor in describing immigrants who died trying to cross the Rio Grande as “floaters,” joked about the violent rape of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, and touted their love for Donald J. Trump. One popular meme showed the president using a hand at the back of her head to force Ocasio-Cortez’s face into his crotch. 

Rep. Elijah Cummings, chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee, failed to see the humor. He called for an investigation. Cummings also called on Facebook to “preserve all documents, communications, and other data related to the ‘I’m 10-15’ group” including “log files and metadata.” 

This demand pisses off the president – whereas depictions of rape – hey, no big deal. (See: 7/27/19.)

This blogger is not seeing the humor.

 

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ON THIS FINE DAY in July, Putin’s favorite presidential puppet lashes out at former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryan has been critical of Trump in a soon-to-be-released book, American Carnage by Tim Alberta. 

Trump deals with the situation in a patented Twitter tantrum. For the sake of brevity, we will sum up. According to the president, Ryan’s record of achievement “was atrocious (except during my first two years as President).” He “quit Congress because he didn’t know how to Win.” 

Politico highlights some of the most damning assessments in the Ryan book: 

“I told myself I gotta have a relationship with this guy [Trump] to help him get his mind right,” Ryan told Alberta in another excerpt released by The Washington Post. “Because, I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government [emphasis added]. ... I wanted to scold him all the time.”

 

Ryan also said he saw his retirement from the House in 2018 as an escape hatch after working with the president for two years.

 

“We’ve gotten so numbed by it all,” Ryan said. “Not in government, but where we live our lives, we have a responsibility to try and rebuild. Don’t call a woman a ‘horse face.’ Don’t cheat on your wife. Don’t cheat on anything. Be a good person. Set a good example.”

 

Too bad Speaker Ryan lacked the courage to say all of this (and more) before he left the building.

 

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IRONICALLY, on this same day, President Trump speaks to a gathering of like-minded conservatives, met for a Social Media Summit. Dictator Don railed against Facebook, Google, and Twitter, for “discriminating against conservatives.” 

Then he tried to redefine the “free speech” portion of the First Amendment. As Politico notes: 

Rather than defining free speech in positive terms, Trump explained what free speech isn’t. “To me free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposefully write bad,” Trump said. “To me that’s very dangerous speech and you become angry at it. But that’s not free speech.”

 

Fox News, praising Trump? 

Free speech. 

Saturday Night Live performing skits mocking the president? That makes Donald J. Trump angry. 

Not free speech.

This SNL skit is from later in the year.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: The U.S. Coast Guard releases dramatic footage of crewman leaping aboard a narco-submarine, busting open the hatch, and intercepting a shipment of 17,000 pounds of cocaine. The cargo has an estimated street value of $232 million. This brings to 14 the number of drug-smuggling subs stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard along the coasts of Mexico, Central America, and South America, from May to July of this year, carrying a combined 39,000 pounds of cocaine.

 

Clearly, the drug cartels are not going to be daunted by the Great Wall of Trump. (See: 7/10/19.)

June 22: Record Heat - And a Few Fascist Ideas

 

6/22/21: Large swaths of the United States are currently frying under blistering June heat and every day makes a growing megadrought worse. We have said repeatedly on this blog, that specific weather events, a week of unusual highs, or record lows, or a particularly bad June do not prove or disprove climate change.

 

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“It’s just a little bit warmer than it would have been last year. And if we have this next year, it’ll be just a little bit warmer again.” 

Alison Bridger, professor of Meteorology and Climate Science

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The cumulative effect, however, is at this point impossible to ignore. Unless you are Donald J. Trump. 

Or a QAnon supporter. Or some other kind of fool. 

A “heat dome” has settled over large stretches of the American West, a weather event usually not seen till later in the summer. “It’s not only unusual for June, but it is pretty extreme even in absolute terms,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability tells NPR. “It would be a pretty extreme event for August.”

 

Record high daily temperatures are being set in hundreds of places – record highs for any day, not just in June, including in places where records go back 150 years. “That’s a pretty big deal,” the climate scientist added. 

Palm Springs, California hit 123° last week, tying its all-time single day record. Las Vegas set a daily record of 114° on June 17. Phoenix hit 118°, breaking the daily record by four degrees. The city had never hit such a high temperature in late spring. Sacramento, California saw the mercury touch 109°, also a daily record. Denver topped 100° for three days in a row, something that had never occurred this early in the year. A meteorologist noted that all the three-day-plus-100° streaks in Denver have occurred in the last thirty years. The Great Plains states were also baking in the heat, with Omaha, Neb. seeing a record high of 105. 

Alison Bridger, a professor in the Meteorology and Climate Science department at San Jose State University, explained that this heat dome, “fits with climate change ideas, global warming, meaning that it’s just a little bit warmer than it would have been last year. And if we have this next year, it’ll be just a little bit warmer again.” The heat dome is also blocking any precipitation, and drying out entire states. 

Swain is equally convinced of the danger. “There’s a crystal clear human fingerprint on extreme heat and extreme heat events ... climate change is making these sorts of things worse,” he warns.

 

You can find plenty of evidence to support Swain’s and Bridger’s concerns. Kathleen Johnson, an associate professor of Earth system science at the University of California, tells The Guardian, a British newspaper, “This current drought is potentially on track to become the worst that we’ve seen in at least 1,200 years. And the reason is linked directly to human-caused climate change.” 

Water levels at Lake Oroville, California’s second largest reservoir have fallen so low, that hydroelectric power, generated by the dam there, may soon fail, and leave 800,000 homes without electricity. 

On June 18, an estimated 40 million Americans saw temperatures where they live top 100°. Salt Lake City hit 107°, a record for any day, going back to the heyday of Brigham Young and Church of the Latter Day Saints polygamy. “The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the summer of 2020 was one of the hottest ever seen in the US,” the Guardian adds, “with August, in particular, being especially ‘dry and destructive.’” Now the summer of 2021 looks like it will be worse. 

Maybe, much worse.

 

Tucson, Arizona suffered through eight straight days of temperatures above 110°, making last week the hottest on record. 

Phoenix had six straight days of 115°, another record, and one you would not expect to be set in June. Overnight lows were in the 90s, almost assuring that the next day highs would top 115 again. 

On June 15, Billings, Montana saw the mercury rise to 108, tying the hottest temperature ever recorded in the city. 

Sheridan, Wyoming hit 107, also the hottest ever recorded. 

Hot dry weather has led to multiple outbreaks of fire in California, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. Ground fuels, in many areas, are already at record dry levels. Experts now say there is no “fire season” in the West. 

It’s always fire season.

 

Michael A. Crimmins, a professor in the department of environmental science at the University of Arizona, warns that this may be the future for the entire Southwest. This heat wave, “may look similar to other heat waves on a weather map, but the magnitude, intensity and duration of the event is larger because of climate change.” 

In other words: climate change is not “a hoax,” as Donald J. Trump always – cluelessly – liked to say.

FUN F**K-THE-ENVIRONMENT FACT: If you think human activity can’t mess up the environment, you might be happy in your ignorance to learn that crayfish are less depressed than ever. 

That’s because antidepressants are washing into the nation’s rivers and lakes, by way of human urine. (Speaking of urine, 1 in every 8 Americans is taking some kind of mood-enhancing medicine.) 

Experiments show that serotonin, found in many medications to fight depression, made the crayfish bolder. 

And, we hope, more cheerful in their relations with others.

 

FUN LEGAL FACT: Innocent till proven guilty we always say. Still, it’s interesting to know Rejected-President Trump’s former bodyguard, Matt Calamari, and his son, have been advised to lawyer up, as part of the investigation into possible tax shenanigans at the Trump Organization. 

So sayeth the Wall Street Journal. At issue: did father and son fudge, taking free cars and free housing from their employer, but not claiming said benefits for tax purposes, as would be required by law? 

Would an organization run by and for Trump break the law???? History leaves almost zero doubt.

 

DICTATOR-WANNABE FACT: Two sources inform the Daily Beast that in 2018, President Trump began asking if the Department of Justice could clamp down on Saturday Night Live and various late night shows. He was angry because comics were mocking him mercilessly. When an aide told Don that DOJ didn’t handle such matters, the president inquired, “Can something else be done about it?” 

The source responded with some version of “I’ll look into it.” Then this source said he/she figured Donald would eventually forget all about it. I mean, the guy was busy tweeting 55,000 times as president. 

He had the same attention span as a fruit fly.

 

FUN FAN-OF-DICTATOR-WANNABES FACT: One America News’ Pearson Sharp offered up a stunning argument in a segment that aired tonight. As Mr. Sharp sees it, “hundreds of thousands” of Americans were involved in a “coup” against former President Donald Trump.

 

“What happens to all these people who are responsible for overthrowing the election?” he asked viewers. Well, “in the past, America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors: Execution.”

 

Yeah! Execution for “hundreds of thousands” of Americans. Go right-wing fascist news commentator!