8/20/20: You
probably missed the story, but scientists announced
that the Greenland ice sheet lost 532 billion metric tons of ice in 2019. That
was more than twice as much as has been lost in an average year, since 2003,
when NASA satellites began taking precise. measurements.
Alex Gardner, a NASA ice scientist, called the
loss “huge” and “astounding.”
____________________
Tin
Pot Don and QAnon save the anchovies.
____________________
This is a warning to the world; but Donald Trump
isn’t listening. Or, he is, and doesn’t care.
His solution is to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for more drilling,
because in Trumpistan, the more coal, oil and gas we burn, the better Tin Pot
Don likes it. All respect to coal miners, worried about jobs. All respect to
drillers in Texas and fracking crews in Ohio. We all want a good wage or to profit
from a good business, be it opening up new oil fields, or building windmill
farms in Iowa.
But we all live on the same globe; and the globe
we live on must remain livable for future generations.
Another problem with dirty energy is oil spills
– which could ruin the environment in the ANWR.
Look no further than Mauritania, where a
Japanese ship has run aground, spilling oil into pristine waters.
*
IF IT SEEMS to you that paranoia has a foothold in the Oval Office, you are not in error. With Trump’s poll numbers looking dismal, and with sensible conservatives and longtime members of the GOP coming out against him, Trump is focused on holding his base. That includes a depressing swath of racist and nuts.
Wednesday, reporters asked the president about his growing support for people who believe in QAnon. If you’ve never heard of this movement because you’re not a crackpot, adherents believe the world is controlled by a “Deep State” cabal of satanic pedophiles. And go figure: They’re liberals! Members of this cabal are said to sexually torture children and harvest their adrenochrome. According to QAnon, this substance can have hallucinogenic effects at high doses. It’s also “a life-extending elixir.” Cannibalism is practiced and various forms of “mind control” are involved. Hollywood elites are behind the mind control portion of the scheme.
Jews, of course, play an outsize role, an idea your garden variety anti-Semite is happy to get behind. George Soros is supposedly the money man backing the child-molesting crew. Barack Obama was a leader of the nefarious ring, and Hillary Clinton too. In 2016 rumors circulated about a child sex slave ring, operating out of the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza joint. This lead one well-armed fool to barge in on people tossing dough and spreading sauce. He shot the lock off a freezer, and freed … zero children. Because there were none. All he rescued were a few anchovies – and for his troubles he got his dumb ass sent to prison.
The FBI has labeled QAnon a domestic terrorist threat.
Still, a growing number of people calling themselves Republicans and running for office believe in the mysterious “Q.” He or she, or they, is/are the anonymous, online voice/s out to reveal the truth. Thus “Q anonymous.” Trump has congratulated several of these men and women on election day wins. When Marjorie Taylor Greene triumphed in a congressional primary in Georgia, Trump tweeted congratulations to a “future Republican Star.” He called her “strong on everything,” which is kind of vague – but no doubt includes her stand against Hollywood mind control in all its permutations. He said Greene, an avid QAnon fan, was the type who “never gives up – a real WINNER!”
All this talk led reporters to inquire Wednesday, whether or not the president believed this bunkum. Was he helping save children – and the world – from Satanists, cannibals, and pedophiles?
Trump played coy. “I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand that they like me very much, which I appreciate,” he said. (Neo-Nazis and Klan members like him, too; but that’s a story for another day.)
“I’ve heard these are people that love our country.”
Then it was off to the races, with Tin Pot Don whipping the same nag he loves to ride. “I have heard that it [QAnon] is gaining in popularity, and from what I hear, these are people that when they watch the streets of Portland, when they watch what happened in New York City,” Trump explained, “these are people that don’t like seeing what’s going on.”
“I’ve heard these are people that love our country and they just don’t like seeing it.” The protests, he meant. “So I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me and they also would like to see problems in these areas, like especially the areas that we’re talking about, go away.”
A reporter spelled out some of the group’s beliefs and waited for the President of the United States to comment.
“I haven’t heard that,” he shrugged. “But is that supposed to
be a bad thing or good thing? If I can help save the world from problems, I’m
willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there.”
*
The crooks were already here.
ONE FORMER TRUMP AIDE may not have a chance to help him with the saving or the winning of a second term.
It was announced this morning that Steve Bannon, once a valued campaign advisor, White House aide, and proud member of Trump’s National Security Council, has been indicted for fraud.
Bannon and several co-defendants allegedly funneled at least a million dollars from a fund called “Build the Wall” into their own pockets.
The irony, of course, is thick. Bannon was a leading voice in the “law and order” movement, a key to the Trump 2016 run for the White House. People who donated to the fund thought their dollars would go to help build Trump’s big, beautiful border wall, to keep out all the rapists and murderers and MS-13 gang members, crossing from Mexico. Now, it seems, the crooks were already here, using people’s contributions to pay for their own lavish lifestyles.
Asked about Bannon’s arrest, the
president called it “a sad day.”
*
Can Vlad come out and play?
IT WAS A SAD DAY, too, for Alexei Navalny. U.S. News & World Report reports: “Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was rushed to a hospital and was in a coma…due to what his spokeswoman said was a deliberate poisoning.”
Fingers immediately pointed at Putin, who has long history of bumping off any persistent critic.
Unfortunately, Trump cares as much about poisoned critics as he does the Greenland ice sheet. (See: 8/27/20.) He’s hoping to invite Putin to the next G-7 meeting, scheduled to be held in this country, but currently postponed due to the pandemic. The G-7 used to be the G-8 until the Russians invaded Crimea and started shooting up Ukraine.
Trump doesn’t care about Ukraine, or corruption in Ukraine either, no matter what he says.
At least four of the other six members of the G-7, all close
allies of the United States, oppose an invite to the murderous autocrat. Those
four: France, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Donald still ♥’s Vlad.
*
LAST BUT NOT LEAST, White House Press Secretary “Birther” McEnany is asked if her boss is prepared to accept the results of the coming election.
“The president has always said he’ll see what happens,” she explains, “and make a determination in the aftermath. It’s the same thing he said last November [last election, she means]. He wants a free election, a fair election, and he wants confidence in the results of the election.”
In other words, he will be confident in the results if he wins. And you know, if he could pull a Putin, he would.
POSTSCRIPT: The president might believe that QAnon types love America, if not quite all the people who inhabit America, such as Jews, Muslims, immigrants, and people of dark skin. Several Republican voices, however, are raised in protest.
“Real leaders call conspiracy theories conspiracy theories.”
Rep. Liz Cheney describes the QAnon movement as a “dangerous lunacy that should have no place in American politics.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger sums up the secretive musings of “Q” this way, tweeting: “Could be Russian propaganda or a basement dweller. Regardless, no place in Congress for these conspiracies.”
Sen. Ben Sasse slams Trump, without naming the fool. “QAnon is nuts,” he tweets, “and real leaders call conspiracy theories conspiracy theories.”
Gov. Jeb Bush tweets, derisively,
“Why in the world would the President not kick Q’anon supporters’ butts? Nut
jobs, rascists [sic], haters have no place in either Party.”
Vice President Pence, the most loyal ass-kisser ever to hold the second highest office in the land, is put on the spot Friday and asked, does he believe in a secret cabal of cannibals and pedophiles, who happen to be Democrats, working against his boss and hoping to destroy America?
Pence does his very best to change the subject before finally admitting, “I dismiss it out of hand.”
Even Sen. Lindsey Graham weighs in.
“Well,” he tells an interviewer, “QAnon is batshit crazy. Crazy
stuff. Inspiring people to violence. I think it is a platform that plays off
people’s fears, that compels them to do things they normally wouldn’t do. And
it’s very much a threat.”
BLOGGER’S NOTE: Navalny survives the poisoning attempt, barely.
He does, however, keep a sense of humor.
He pokes fun at Putin again, noting that in
Russian history: “There was Alexander the Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise. Now
we have Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants.”
Sadly, this is still Putin we’re talking about.
In February 2021 Navalny is sent to a Russian penal
camp in Siberia.
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Trump wants to invite Putin to come to the G-7 meeting. |
