Trump 19: Please Cry for Us Montenegro (and We Are so Sorry!)

[apple1]

17 hours ago, VixenToast said:

I agree. However, I think we need to remember, "When they go low, we go high." That to me seems like the best path.

As much as I find Donnie Dumbfuck repugnant and volatile and entirely loathsome, I don't approve of anything that might incite violence or assasination attempts. I don't care that they did it with Obama. We are better than that. What we need is impeachment, and hopefully it will be in the next year. Preferably because of the Russia scandal. I only hope that key Republicans are complicit in the scandal and brought down. And right in time for midterm elections. 

Also, they sure as hell don't need a martyr for their cause. 

Yes. THAT.

It's not an either/or, nor is it a "Yeah, but..."

[GreyhoundFan]

I haven't seen anything posted about this situation -- a heavily armed man was arrested at the grifter-in-chief's hotel a couple of blocks from the WH. The man, big surprise, is an Agent Orange supporter: "Man found with military-style rifle at Trump Hotel wanted to ‘bring down big pharmacy’ and meet president"

Spoiler

A Pennsylvania man arrested at the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington after a military-style rifle was found in his vehicle wanted to meet with President Trump to bring down “big pharmacy and big business medicine,” according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday.

Bryan Moles, 43, a licensed physician and former Navy corpsman, drove to the District from a small town near Lake Erie in a black 2017 BMW loaded with ammunition, batteries, multiple cellphones and survival supplies, the court document states. Prosecutors said he invoked the memories of domestic bombers Timothy Mc­Veigh in Oklahoma City and Eric Rudolph in Centennial Park in Atlanta.

While authorities on Wednesday alluded to threats made by Moles, they said then that they did not have enough evidence to charge him with threats. Still, D.C. police Chief Peter Newsham said Wednesday that police and a tipster had brought a “potential tragic situation to a peaceful end.”

Court documents unsealed Thursday show that even without a specific threat there appeared cause for concern. The documents paint a chilling portrait of a man who apparently supported Trump and told police he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder but refused his medication, owned more than 20 guns at his home near Edinboro, Pa., and had experience with explosives and pipe bombs.

According to the criminal complaint, Moles told detectives that before his road trip he had withdrawn $10,000 “in order to live the life he always wanted before it was too late.” He said he left $4.19 in his checking account because the digits were significant to him and that he had once written a term paper on Mc­Veigh, who killed 168 people in an April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Moles on late Thursday afternoon was making his initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court. He is charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, a federal offense, and unlawful transport of a firearm, a District offense.

Moles appeared before Magistrate Judge Joseph E. Beshouri wearing a gray T-shirt and sweatpants, his ankles and wrists shackled. The judge was considering whether to detain Moles as of early Thursday evening.

The prosecutor said the alleged crimes were “committed under concerning circumstances.” But Moles’s attorney, Eugene Ohm of the D. C. Public Defender Service argued his client committed no crime other than not knowing the District’s strict gun laws.

“Dr. Moles is a father of two, a 14-year veteran of the Navy, and eight year reservist who has multiple marksmanship ribbon awards,” Ohm said, arguing his client was not a danger to the community or a flight risk and should be released. He said visitors come to the District not knowing the gun laws “about three or four times a week.”

Ohm argued Moles “believed he was acting lawfully” when he told the Trump Hotel valet he had the weapons in his car.

But prosecutor Michael Friedman argued Moles was a danger. “He said he wanted to meet with President Trump and would not leave 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue until he saw him,” Friedman said, adding that Moles called himself a “refugee” and that he came to Washington to “bring down big medicine business and big pharmacy.”

Moles was arrested early Wednesday morning at the Trump Hotel after he had parked his car and went to his room. Police were already searching for him based on a tip from an acquaintance who had listened to a voice mail recording from Moles and relayed information to Pennsylvania State Police.

Police learned Moles had valet-parked his BMW and told the valet to keep the vehicle secure because weapons were inside. Officers said that about 1:50 a.m. they saw a rifle case in the car in plain view and opened the door using a keyless entry system the valet had been given. Inside, police found a Bushmaster AR-15, two 30-round high capacity magazines, a loaded Glock 23 inside the unlocked glove box and survival supplies.

D.C. police and Secret Service agents went to Moles’s room and said he opened the door and agreed to speak to them, the court document shows. He told investigators, according to the complaint, that he brought the AR-15 to the District to have a friend customize it for his son’s use back home.

The complaint says he told police he was a recovering alcoholic who has been sober since 2013 and that he suffered from PTSD and medicated with marijuana instead of prescription drugs because the medications made him suicidal.

Moles enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1992 and served until August 1996 as a hospital corpsman at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Navy records show. Moles served in the reserves until 1996 as part of a surgical battalion. He also is licensed as a physician in Pennsylvania through Oct. 31, 2018, state records show, and had apparently worked at a hospital until 2013.

Moles repeatedly talked about Mc­Veigh and Rudolph, an antiabortion and anti-gay activist who committed a string of bombings, including one at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, which killed one person and injured more than 100.

The complaint says Moles quipped on his voice-mail message that he had stockpiled his car with so much survival gear that it “looked like Timothy Mc­Veigh or Eric Rudolph was going on a camping trip.”

Lovely, just lovely.

[JMarie]

33 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I haven't seen anything posted about this situation -- a heavily armed man was arrested at the grifter-in-chief's hotel a couple of blocks from the WH. The man, big surprise, is an Agent Orange supporter: "Man found with military-style rifle at Trump Hotel wanted to ‘bring down big pharmacy’ and meet president"

  Hide contents

A Pennsylvania man arrested at the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington after a military-style rifle was found in his vehicle wanted to meet with President Trump to bring down “big pharmacy and big business medicine,” according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday.

Bryan Moles, 43, a licensed physician and former Navy corpsman, drove to the District from a small town near Lake Erie in a black 2017 BMW loaded with ammunition, batteries, multiple cellphones and survival supplies, the court document states. Prosecutors said he invoked the memories of domestic bombers Timothy Mc­Veigh in Oklahoma City and Eric Rudolph in Centennial Park in Atlanta.

While authorities on Wednesday alluded to threats made by Moles, they said then that they did not have enough evidence to charge him with threats. Still, D.C. police Chief Peter Newsham said Wednesday that police and a tipster had brought a “potential tragic situation to a peaceful end.”

Court documents unsealed Thursday show that even without a specific threat there appeared cause for concern. The documents paint a chilling portrait of a man who apparently supported Trump and told police he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder but refused his medication, owned more than 20 guns at his home near Edinboro, Pa., and had experience with explosives and pipe bombs.

According to the criminal complaint, Moles told detectives that before his road trip he had withdrawn $10,000 “in order to live the life he always wanted before it was too late.” He said he left $4.19 in his checking account because the digits were significant to him and that he had once written a term paper on Mc­Veigh, who killed 168 people in an April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Moles on late Thursday afternoon was making his initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court. He is charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, a federal offense, and unlawful transport of a firearm, a District offense.

Moles appeared before Magistrate Judge Joseph E. Beshouri wearing a gray T-shirt and sweatpants, his ankles and wrists shackled. The judge was considering whether to detain Moles as of early Thursday evening.

The prosecutor said the alleged crimes were “committed under concerning circumstances.” But Moles’s attorney, Eugene Ohm of the D. C. Public Defender Service argued his client committed no crime other than not knowing the District’s strict gun laws.

“Dr. Moles is a father of two, a 14-year veteran of the Navy, and eight year reservist who has multiple marksmanship ribbon awards,” Ohm said, arguing his client was not a danger to the community or a flight risk and should be released. He said visitors come to the District not knowing the gun laws “about three or four times a week.”

Ohm argued Moles “believed he was acting lawfully” when he told the Trump Hotel valet he had the weapons in his car.

But prosecutor Michael Friedman argued Moles was a danger. “He said he wanted to meet with President Trump and would not leave 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue until he saw him,” Friedman said, adding that Moles called himself a “refugee” and that he came to Washington to “bring down big medicine business and big pharmacy.”

Moles was arrested early Wednesday morning at the Trump Hotel after he had parked his car and went to his room. Police were already searching for him based on a tip from an acquaintance who had listened to a voice mail recording from Moles and relayed information to Pennsylvania State Police.

Police learned Moles had valet-parked his BMW and told the valet to keep the vehicle secure because weapons were inside. Officers said that about 1:50 a.m. they saw a rifle case in the car in plain view and opened the door using a keyless entry system the valet had been given. Inside, police found a Bushmaster AR-15, two 30-round high capacity magazines, a loaded Glock 23 inside the unlocked glove box and survival supplies.

D.C. police and Secret Service agents went to Moles’s room and said he opened the door and agreed to speak to them, the court document shows. He told investigators, according to the complaint, that he brought the AR-15 to the District to have a friend customize it for his son’s use back home.

The complaint says he told police he was a recovering alcoholic who has been sober since 2013 and that he suffered from PTSD and medicated with marijuana instead of prescription drugs because the medications made him suicidal.

Moles enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1992 and served until August 1996 as a hospital corpsman at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Navy records show. Moles served in the reserves until 1996 as part of a surgical battalion. He also is licensed as a physician in Pennsylvania through Oct. 31, 2018, state records show, and had apparently worked at a hospital until 2013.

Moles repeatedly talked about Mc­Veigh and Rudolph, an antiabortion and anti-gay activist who committed a string of bombings, including one at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, which killed one person and injured more than 100.

The complaint says Moles quipped on his voice-mail message that he had stockpiled his car with so much survival gear that it “looked like Timothy Mc­Veigh or Eric Rudolph was going on a camping trip.”

Lovely, just lovely.

Just wait and see.  Trump will use this as an example how the VA system is failing, while quietly cutting VA funding (that means camera crews won't will be around as witnesses, and he won't hold up the signed document).

[Imagine20]

This country has already been changed, whether it's irreversible is perhaps debatable. I personally think our place in the world has now been so altered that we're never going to be leader again. (MAGA, my ass.) Frankly, we can't be trusted so long as this administration is in charge, even if Trump (and Pence and Ryan) would resign or be removed. 

The white nationalists are embracing the word "fascism," they're owning it. And that movement seems to be growing, at least in how outspoken they now are. 

I don't even know anymore. We're through the looking glass and 40% of people don't seem to notice. 

The government is now keeping tabs on reporters trying to catch whoever is leading the Russian stories. They don't want to investigate them because they know the stories are true, so they're trying to attack the free press. (They've even arrested one reporter, I think.)

Who knew Star Wars would be prophetic, with a minor change: So, this is how [the republic] dies. With thunderous applause. 

[AnywhereButHere]

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/trump-paris-climate-agreement-juncker-2017-5

Quote

It would take three to four years after the agreement came into force in November 2016 to leave the agreement," Juncker said. "So this notion, 'I am Trump, I am American, America First and I'm going to get out of it' - that won't happen. We tried to explain that to Mr. Trump in Taormina in clear German sentences. It seems our attempt failed, but the law is the law and it must be obeyed."

https://www.google.com/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/paris-agreement-trump-macron-no-plan-b-latest-news-updates-response-a7768306.html%3Famp

Quote

Calling the President’s decision “a mistake” for the US and the planet, Mr Macron urged climate change scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs to go to France to continue their work. 

“They will find in France a second homeland,” Mr Macron said in a video message from the Élysée Palace in Paris.

World leaders are certainly not pulling their punches. Too bad Caligula only listens to the echo chamber in his head. Republicans who like to get all jazzed about "American Exceptionalism" are going to get a rude awakening when they turn this country into the newest third world nation. 

Personal opinion - someone should've done some pulling out years ago. Fred Trump, I'm looking at you.  Oh, sorry. Did I say that out loud...

[JMarie]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/01/politics/trump-paris-climate-decision/index.html

Quote

Trump, who has governed with an "American First" policy, said Thursday he was carrying out the will of the voters who propelled him to the White House.

"I was elected by the citizens of Pittsburgh," Trump said, "not Paris."

Liar, liar, pants on fire.  Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, went to Hillary 56.4%.  But I'm betting nobody will challenge him on it.

http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/pennsylvania/

[GreyhoundFan]

@JMarie -- the WaPo had a good analysis piece about Drumpf and Pittsburgh: "Donald Trump valiantly rises to the defense of the Pittsburgh of 1975"

Spoiler

I know for a fact that Donald Trump has been to Pittsburgh in the past 40 years. Look, here’s a photo of him in the city from less than a year ago.

...

According to the National Journal, Trump visited the city in April, June and September of last year. That photo above, from the Shale Insight conference, was taken during daylight hours on a sunny day. Meaning that if he looked out of the windows of his limousine as he traveled from the airport to downtown, he could have looked outside and noticed that the city no longer looks like this.

...

That was the 1940s, mind you, but you get my point.

Once upon a time, the city of Pittsburgh was a robustly blue-collar anchor to the American steel industry. Once upon a time, the air was thick with smog and soot from industry lining the city’s rivers. Once upon a time, decades ago, the collapse of the steel industry and American manufacturing put the city itself at risk.

That’s the Pittsburgh that Trump was referring to in his speech about the Paris climate agreement  Thursday.

“We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they won’t be. They won’t be,” Trump said. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

The irony to that statement is that the climate agreement signed by President Barack Obama in 2015 would in one critical sense do as much good for the residents of Pittsburgh as it would for those in Paris, by establishing a concrete international benchmark for the reduction of greenhouse gases — and with it, a reduction of the worst effects of the warming climate across the planet. Cutting global warming is a global good, so  in that sense, the Paris agreement does Pittsburghers as much good as it does Parisians.

“It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, along with many, many other locations within our great country, before Paris, France,” he said at the end of his remarks. By rejecting the global effort to cut greenhouse gases, Trump’s not exactly doing Pittsburgh any favors.

But he mentions Pittsburgh, Detroit and Youngstown not because they are prototypical American cities, but because they embody his decades-out-of-date sense of the nature of the Midwest. (To establish my cred: My family lives in Pittsburgh, my mother lived for years outside of Detroit and I went to high school outside of Youngstown.) Trump’s envisioning a Pittsburgh in which unemployed steelworkers and coal miners wander the streets under smoggy skies, begging for deliverance from the vagaries of the international economy. While there are certainly people in the city who meet that description — and while there were certainly far more people meeting that description in the 1970s and 1980s — it’s not really what Pittsburgh looks like today.

People on social media were quick to point out that Pittsburghers vastly preferred Trump’s opponent in the 2016 election. The city stands out a bit on this precinct-level map of election results from southwestern Pennsylvania compiled by Decision Desk HQ.

...

The city voted against him because cities are increasingly Democratic and Pittsburgh is more than a third nonwhite. In 2008, Allegheny County (where Pittsburgh is located) backed Barack Obama by 15.4 points. In 2012, that figure dropped to 14.5 percent. In 2016? Voters in the county backed Hillary Clinton over Trump by 16.4 points. Clinton did better there than Obama.

The city’s mayor made clear the city’s politics on Twitter after Trump’s comments.

...

Pittsburgh is not a Rust Belt city any more. It’s home to Carnegie Mellon University, Pitt and Duquesne. It’s already embraced — and rejected — self-driving cars. There were more than 13,000 people in Pittsburgh who worked in renewable energy and energy efficiency in 2016, pillars of the economic transformations sought under the Paris agreement. By contrast, only about 5,300 people work in iron and steel manufacturing. There are, according to the Energy Information Administration, only two coal mines in Allegheny County. The shale industry in the region — sponsors of that event at which Trump was speaking — has actually helped change the American economy by adding to the glut of natural gas that’s helped electricity producers transition away from dirtier coal-burning.

This is not the Pittsburgh of 1975.

So why does Trump present it that way? Because for Trump and many other Americans, “steelworker” and “coal miner” are stand-ins for the broader idea of “the great American worker of a bygone era.” It’s not about coal miners, as such: It’s about continuing to hammer home that America has changed dramatically over the past few decades, and that Trump promises to return the country to the era before all that change. An era when real men went to work in steel mills along the Monongahela River, not this new era when people head to service-sector jobs at local hospitals. (The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center employed 62,000 people in 2014; only 20,000 more people worked in manufacturing.)

Trump’s promise to make America great again has always been an unattainable pledge to wind back the hands of time. By invoking a nonexistent Pittsburgh that loves him for supporting the coal industry, he’s simply modifying his campaign pledge.

...

Yeah, the TT doesn't pay attention to anything, does he?

[candygirl200413]

I stopped going high when I learned that many of his supporters didn't care about my needs as a POC, only themselves. I personally feel that we need need to go harder in our resistance. Don't win over those that don't want to be won over (his supporters). Focusing on things like voter suppression I think is a better path (as well as calling your congress people, etc).

I'm also trying to find this video of Vox, with how Climate Change wasn't a partisan issue until recently.

[prayawaythefundie]

Quote

It would take three to four years after the agreement came into force in November 2016 to leave the agreement," Juncker said. "So this notion, 'I am Trump, I am American, America First and I'm going to get out of it' - that won't happen. We tried to explain that to Mr. Trump in Taormina in clear German sentences. It seems our attempt failed, but the law is the law and it must be obeyed."

If that's the problem with Trump understanding climate change, I volunteer to translate for him: If planet earth goes down, America will go down with it and that great American economy (which won't even be that great anymore after all that isolationism kicks in) will too!

Maybe we're all wrong. He's isn't THAT stupid, he just didn't know the language.

[47of74]

36 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

I stopped going high when I learned that many of his supporters didn't care about my needs as a POC, only themselves. I personally feel that we need need to go harder in our resistance. Don't win over those that don't want to be won over (his supporters). Focusing on things like voter suppression I think is a better path (as well as calling your congress people, etc).

I'm also trying to find this video of Vox, with how Climate Change wasn't a partisan issue until recently.

I hear ya.  I am reminded of the Gene Hackman line in Mississippi Burning, "These people crawled out of the sewers, Mr. Ward!  Maybe the gutter is the place we have to be!" I think we're at that point where we have to stop being so goddamn nice to the Branch Trumpvidians.  I'm not advocating sinking to the level of the Branch Trumpvidians, but this going high (as in the stratosphere) stuff that all the Democratic "experts" are trying to force us to do ain't gonna mean jack shit if we don't have a planet left to live on. 

[fraurosena]

 

Bloody fucking idiot. Yeah. Even after night's sleep, I'm still angry.

[fraurosena]

Keith Olbermann: There are only two parties, Republicans and Americans.

 

[VixenToast]

3 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

I stopped going high when I learned that many of his supporters didn't care about my needs as a POC, only themselves. I personally feel that we need need to go harder in our resistance. Don't win over those that don't want to be won over (his supporters). Focusing on things like voter suppression I think is a better path (as well as calling your congress people, etc).

This is an example of how we go high.

Hell, his supporters don't care about my needs as a single mom with two jobs. They don't care about the intellectually disabled. They don't care about innocent children in Syria. They don't care about the needs of the world. They hate the LGBT. And they don't care about the needs of anyone but themselves. I am ashamed that some of my fellow citizens treat POC like you as dirt. You are not dirt, nor is anyone else. We have a new girl at work I am training. She is from Ethiopia, so it's been disheartening to see how differently some of the customers treat her compared to me. Older people have a hard time composing their face, and won't look at her. Body language in others tells me they are conscious of her skin tone and are uncomfortable in some way, not necessarily in a hostile way. I'm certain she notices, but I secretly hope she's doesn't.

There is nothing wrong with peaceful protests, demanding political accountability, etc either, but stooping to violence and obstinacy will only close out the people who want in. We need to fight, but not be so black and white about the whole thing, there IS grey area, and we need more common ground so that more right-centrists join and and left-centrists more likely to stay.

We aren't giving up the fight, nor should we. But we shouldn't fight dirty like the nut jobs that are infiltrating our society.

[formergothardite]

I'm so fucking depressed right now. Is there any good news to make me feel like the world isn't going to end? I am beginning to feel like we might not be able to recover from this. The world we are living in today is a world I couldn't image as being possible last year. How did we get here and how to we get out?

[fraurosena]

Well, he's nothing if not persistent in his idiocy.

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to revive travel ban

Spoiler

President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive his plan to temporarily ban travelers from six Muslim-majority nations after it was blocked by lower courts that found it was discriminatory.

In deciding whether to allow the ban to go into effect, the nine justices are set to weigh whether Trump's harsh election campaign rhetoric can be used as evidence that the order was intended to discriminate against Muslims.

The administration filed emergency applications with the nine high court justices seeking to block two different lower court rulings that went against Trump's March 6 order barring entry for people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the U.S. government implements stricter visa screening.

The move comes after the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 25 upheld a Maryland judge's ruling blocking the order.

The administration also filed a separate appeal in that case.

"We have asked the Supreme Court to hear this important case and are confident that President Trump’s executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism," Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the legal groups challenging the ban, tweeted in response: "We've beat this hateful ban and are ready to do it again."

At least five votes are needed on the nine-justice court in order to grant a stay. The court has a 5-4 conservative majority, with Justice Anthony Kennedy - a conservative who sometimes sides with the court's four liberals - the frequent swing vote. Another of the court's conservatives, Neil Gorsuch, was appointed by Trump this year.

If the government's emergency requests are granted, the ban would go into effect immediately.

The court first has to act on whether to grant the emergency applications, which could happen within a fortnight. Then, the justices will decide whether to hear the government’s full appeal. The Supreme Court is not required to hear the case but is likely to due to its importance and the fact that the request is being made by the U.S. government.

The Justice Department has asked the court to expedite the case so that the justices could hear it at the beginning of their next term, which starts in October. That means, if the court allows the ban to go into effect, the final decision would be issued long after the 90 days has elapsed.

In the court filings, Acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall highlighted the unprecedented nature of courts second-guessing the president on national security and immigration.

"This order has been the subject of passionate political debate. But whatever one’s views, the precedent set by this case for the judiciary’s proper role in reviewing the president’s national-security and immigration authority will transcend this debate, this Order, and this constitutional moment," he wrote.

In its 10-3 ruling, the appeals court in Virginia said the challengers, including refugee groups and others represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, were likely to succeed on their claim that the order violated the U.S. Constitution's bar against favoring or disfavoring a particular religion.

The government had argued that the court should not take into account Trump's comments during the 2016 U.S. presidential race since he made them before he took office on Jan. 20. But the appeals court rejected that view, saying they shed light on the motivations behind Trump's order.

During the campaign, Trump campaign called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

His administration has argued that the travel ban is needed to prevent terrorism in the United States.

Federal courts in both Maryland and Hawaii issued rulings suspending key parts of the ban. The appeals court in Virginia upheld the Maryland ruling. A San Francisco-based appeals court is currently considering the Hawaii case.

The administration is asking the Supreme Court to throw out the injunction imposed in both cases.

The March ban was Trump's second effort to implement travel restrictions on people from several Muslim-majority countries through an executive order. The first, issued on Jan. 27, led to chaos and protests at airports and in major U.S. cities before it was blocked by courts.

The second order was intended to overcome the legal issues posed by the original ban, but it was blocked by judges before it could go into effect on March 16.

As to the underlined statement: There is something called "trias politica" wherein there is a separation of powers in the governance of a state. It seems that this presiduncy is actively trying to throw that principle out of the window.

No checks and balances, please. No doubting of Der Trumpenführer. Don't you dare contradict his wishes, no second-guessing allowed! Just listen and obey. Blindly and without question. 

[Gobsmacked]

Shades of early 1930s Politics happening now in America. 

Sadly no one listened, because the things Hitler set in motion had never been seen before.  The world has to listen now. The pattern is slowly repeating its self. News stifling has already begun. Body slamming reporters in front of a room full of people? Then still getting elected? Huge red flag there.

I want to say more but am so cross that my words are getting tangled. 

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, formergothardite said:

I'm so fucking depressed right now. Is there any good news to make me feel like the world isn't going to end? 

On the subject of climate change, I felt better after reading this last night:

Spoiler

Representatives of American cities, states and companies are preparing to submit a plan to the United Nations pledging to meet the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions targets under the Paris climate accord, despite President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement.

The unnamed group — which, so far, includes 30 mayors, three governors, more than 80 university presidents and more than 100 businesses — is negotiating with the United Nations to have its submission accepted alongside contributions to the Paris climate deal by other nations.

“We’re going to do everything America would have done if it had stayed committed,” Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is coordinating the effort, said in an interview.

By redoubling their climate efforts, he said, cities, states and corporations could achieve, or even surpass, the pledge of the administration of former President Barack Obama to reduce America’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent by 2025, from their levels in 2005.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/american-cities-climate-standards.html

 

[VixenToast]

SCROTUS is having a retweet blitz. Fox, Family, Followers, you name it, he is retweeting them all just to pat himself on the back for pulling out of the Full-Name-Paris-Thing.  Also, damn me for subjecting myself to being notified of his tweets, even if it is to snark.

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

On the subject of climate change, I felt better after reading this last night:

  Hide contents

Representatives of American cities, states and companies are preparing to submit a plan to the United Nations pledging to meet the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions targets under the Paris climate accord, despite President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement.

The unnamed group — which, so far, includes 30 mayors, three governors, more than 80 university presidents and more than 100 businesses — is negotiating with the United Nations to have its submission accepted alongside contributions to the Paris climate deal by other nations.

“We’re going to do everything America would have done if it had stayed committed,” Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is coordinating the effort, said in an interview.

By redoubling their climate efforts, he said, cities, states and corporations could achieve, or even surpass, the pledge of the administration of former President Barack Obama to reduce America’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent by 2025, from their levels in 2005.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/american-cities-climate-standards.html

 

You know what I find most encouraging about this? That the people are by-passing the presidunce. By their actions, they're isolating him. Good. Keep him isolated until he's finally impeached.

[GreyhoundFan]

4 hours ago, formergothardite said:

I'm so fucking depressed right now. Is there any good news to make me feel like the world isn't going to end? I am beginning to feel like we might not be able to recover from this. The world we are living in today is a world I couldn't image as being possible last year. How did we get here and how to we get out?

I'm with you. I alternate between furious and depressed. @Cartmann99 posted about cities ignoring the presidunce. This is a nice visual:

[JenniferJuniper]

Some pundit put the Paris withdrawal nicely in perspective last night.

Trump did it, simply because he could.   

Being the dimwitted, uneducated orangutan that he is, he really believed he would be an old school king.  He had no idea that Congress and courts could actually modify or completely reject his edicts. But this was something he could do all on his own.  "I, Donald J Trump, King of America, hereby withdraw from this agreement.  So it has been said, so it shall be done."   And there isn't a thing anyone can do to stop him.  

Not to mention the fact that he doesn't have too much in his "win" column right now and he thinks he can use this as proof that he's saving jobs for Americans.  It will do no such thing of course, but that's completely irrelevant to this bunch of money laundering Russian agents and his base is stupid as shit.

[GreyhoundFan]

Obama had some sharp words about the TT's decision. It's annotated, so I can't quote much, but this is the best line:

Quote

...

But even in the absence of American leadership; even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future; I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got.

...

As is pointed out in the notes, this is the most direct and pointed critique Obama has made publicly about the creature inhabiting the Oval Office.

 

Going along with that -- "The Energy 202: Trump's Paris speech needs a serious fact check"

Spoiler

Donald Trump spent 131 days contemplating what life would be like if the United States left the Paris climate agreement. Ultimately, he seemed to like what he saw, and followed his gut.

On Thursday, the president made official his long-rumored decision to withdraw the United States from the 195-nation accord. 

Speaking outside the White House, Trump fulfilled a campaign promise to remove the United States from the landmark deal aimed at curbing climate-altering emissions and keeping global warming below a threshold -- two degrees Celsius above the global temperature before humans began burning fossil fuels -- at which the worst consequences of climate change are believed by the scientific community to take hold. (The Post's Philip Rucker and Jenna Johnson have the main story here.)

A wide swath of heads of state, top scientists and business leaders immediately condemned the decision. But in a Rose Garden speech, Trump said withdrawal was necessary for U.S. economic security.

"I am fighting every day for the great people of this country," he said. "Therefore, in order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord."

For roughly 25 minutes, Trump laid out his rationale for withdrawal. Some of this made sense -- some coal jobs, for example, will indeed be saved by eliminating the Clean Power Plan, one of President Obama's main efforts at meeting the Paris commitment.

But many of the other reasons Trump gave for withdrawing seemed at their best strained and at their worst unfounded.

Below we break down some of the claims we found especially difficult to understand:

CLAIM #1: For weeks, as the tug-of-war between the pro- and anti-Paris camps in the White House played out, Trump seemed to grope for a way to claim a middle ground on the Paris decision. The bone he chose to throw Paris supporters is the possibility that the United States can somehow "reenter" the agreement in the future.

In his speech, Trump promised to "begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or really an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States."

"We will see if we can make a deal that's fair," he continued." And if we can, that's great. And if we can't, that's fine."

THE PROBLEM: From the start, the Paris agreement was designed to have the plasticity Trump seemed to be seeking by talking about some kind of renegotiation. The breakthrough Obama and others made in the lead-up to Paris was allowing nations to choose the amount of greenhouse-gas emissions they were willing to cut.

"Paris already gives countries tremendous flexibility, and no penalties," said Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental law at Columbia and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. "Trump obviously didn't read the Paris agreement, and his statement was written by people who willfully misrepresented its contents -- his staff or their lobbyist friends."

Unlike its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris accord did not legally bind nations to emissions targets. The only thing keeping a nation in check was pressure from its international peers. Under the agreement, the United States could miss an emissions goal and face no penalty. It could reset that goal, too, with no formal consequence. It's unclear what other concessions the United States could gain from a renegotiation.

Also, a new Paris deal may not be practical.

Right after Trump announced his decision, three large European nations indicated they have no interest in a do-over. Italy, Germany and France issued a statement barely an hour after Trump's speech, saying that the Paris accord "cannot be renegotiated since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies," according to Reuters.

Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt -- who lobbied heavily for leaving the deal -- argued on CNN after the Rose Garden announcement that Paris was a "failing agreement to begin with." He added that Trump has repeatedly said he is "committed to continuing" climate-change discussions, but with "America at the forefront of those discussions."

...

CLAIM #2: While Trump as president has taken a decidedly softer stance toward China than he did while running for office, he used the Paris announcement to take a swing at one of his favorite punching bags to illustrate the raw deal he believes the United States got under the agreement.

"China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants" Trump proclaimed. "So, we can't build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement."

And again, Trump said: "Under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years, 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. Not us."

THE PROBLEM: Not so. Again, the agreement does not bind any nation to any emissions target. What China did choose to do under the agreement is have its carbon emissions "peak" by 2030 before then declining. The world accepted that longer leash for China and other developing nations to let them use fossil-fuel energy to promote greater economic growth.

But to meet that goal, China cannot "do whatever they want" until then, as Trump said, at least if China wants to meet that voluntary 2030 target. It needs to begin acting now to control emissions -- and in fact, is signaling to the world it is already doing so by announcing in January the cancellation of plans to build more than 100 coal-fired power plants.

The Paris deal "is more fair to the U.S. than previous agreements because it includes all the major economies of the world, not just the rich countries, so both developed countries and developing countries have skin in the game," Jody Freeman, a Harvard Law School professor and director of the school's Environmental Law and Policy Program, said. Trump's "portrayal is at odds with reality," she added.

CLAIM #3: In a baby step for a politician who once dubbed the idea of climate change a hoax, Trump suggested in his speech that human activity can warm the planet -- albeit backhandedly, and to make the point that the climate accord is futile. Here's what Trump tweeted in 2013:

...

"Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree – think of that, this much – Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100," Trump said during the speech, holding up his hand with thumb and index finger only millimeters apart.

THE PROBLEM: While it's true that current commitments are not enough to meet the two-degree goal, Trump's figures are off. As my Post colleague Chris Mooney writes, reporting on an analysis from an MIT researcher: "The current country level pledges under the Paris agreement would reduce the planet’s warming by the year 2100 down from 4.2 degrees Celsius (7.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to 3.3 degrees Celsius (5.9 degrees Fahrenheit), or nearly a full degree Celsius."

CLAIM #4: Trump also singled out for criticism a United Nations initiative that actually predates the Paris deal called the Green Climate Fund. It's a pool of money that finances climate mitigation and adaptation efforts in poor nations, but Trump is concerned U.S. contributions are hurting the United States.

"Beyond the severe energy restrictions inflicted by the Paris accord," Trump said, "it includes yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund -- nice name -- which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America's existing and massive foreign aid payments."

And that money the United States pays is "raided out of America's budget for the war against terrorism," he said. "That's where they came."

THE PROBLEM: There are a few, according to the nonprofit Friends of the Earth.

The Green Climate Fund contains $10.3 billion not $100 billion. And the U.S. share comes from the Treasury, not any pool or money set aside for anti-terrorism purposes.

"I’d never heard anything like this before," Karen Orenstein, deputy director of economic policy at Friends of the Earth, said of the terrorism claim. "It’s totally ridiculous."

CLAIM #5: During his Rose Garden speech, Trump attempted to rev his coal-country base by saying: "I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris."

THE PROBLEM: This line is confusing. It was delegates of the nearly 200 nations of the world, not the approximately two million people of Paris, who negotiated the climate accord. Paris was simply the city that hosted the talks after which, in the long tradition of diplomatic nomenclature, the agreement was named. Nonetheless, the line is likely to resonate with Trump voters who feel they have been left out of the economic recovery and who do not relate to international diplomats who they don't believe are working in their best interest.

One other note: Hillary Clinton actually won Allegheny County, Pa.,  where Pittsburgh is located, by 16 points. Or as the mayor of Pittsburgh, Democrat Bill Peduto, tweeted:

...

An The Post's Philip Bump reminds readers what Pittsburgh used to look like: "Once upon a time, the city of Pittsburgh was a robustly blue-collar anchor to the American steel industry. Once upon a time, the air was thick with smog and soot from industry lining the city’s rivers. Once upon a time, decades ago, the collapse of the steel industry and American manufacturing put the city itself at risk."

He really has no comprehension of any important matters, does he?

[CTRLZero]

4 hours ago, formergothardite said:

Is there any good news to make me feel like the world isn't going to end?

It does seem dismal right now.  I took a trip to get away from the insane political news for a few days (but still read my daily dose of snark, thank you FJ!).  Unfortunately, my hotel balcony faced a Trump hotel.  Just my luck, I sighed.  Then I noticed that most of the room lights were always off, and the hotel entrance wasn't busy like all others in the area.  This, coupled with an article I read about one of his golf courses experiencing declining revenue made me wonder if people are avoiding his brand. 

That's all I got...

[GreyhoundFan]

ARGH -- this is making me ragey: "White House orders agencies to ignore Democrats’ oversight requests"

Spoiler

The White House is telling federal agencies to blow off Democratic lawmakers' oversight requests, as Republicans fear the information could be weaponized against President Donald Trump.

At meetings with top officials for various government departments this spring, Uttam Dhillon, a White House lawyer, told agencies not to cooperate with such requests from Democrats, according to Republican sources inside and outside the administration.

It appears to be a formalization of a practice that had already taken hold, as Democrats have complained that their oversight letters requesting information from agencies have gone unanswered since January, and the Trump administration has not yet explained the rationale.

The declaration amounts to a new level of partisanship in Washington, where the president and his administration already feels besieged by media reports and attacks from Democrats. The idea, Republicans said, is to choke off the Democratic congressional minorities from gaining new information that could be used to attack the president.

"You have Republicans leading the House, the Senate and the White House," a White House official said. "I don't think you'd have the Democrats responding to every minority member request if they were in the same position."

A White House spokeswoman said the policy of the administration is “to accommodate the requests of chairmen, regardless of their political party.” There are no Democratic chairmen, as Congress is controlled by Republicans.

The administration also responds to “all non-oversight inquiries, including the Senate’s inquiries for purposes of providing advice and consent on nominees, without regard to the political party of the requester,” the spokeswoman said. “ Multiple agencies have, in fact, responded to minority member requests. No agencies have been directed not to respond to minority requests.”

Republicans said that President Barack Obama’s administration was not always quick to respond to them and sometimes ignored them. However, the Obama White House never ordered agencies to stop cooperating with Republican oversight requests altogether, making the marching orders from Trump’s aides that much more unusual.

“What I do not remember is a blanket request from the Obama administration not to respond to Republicans,” said a former longtime senior Republican staffer.

There are some exceptions to the Trump administration order, particularly from national security agencies, Democrats and Republicans said. Agencies will also comply if a Republican committee chairman joins the Democratic requests, but ranking members’ oversight requests are spurned.

Congressional minorities frequently ask questions of the administration intended to embarrass the president or garner a quick headline. And Democrats have fired off requests they surely knew the administration would not answer, such as asking the White House in March to make visitor logs of Trump Tower and Mar-A-Lago publicly available.

But House and Senate lawmakers also routinely fire off much more obscure requests not intended to generate news coverage. And the Trump administration’s plans to stonewall Democrats is in many ways unprecedented and could lead to a worsening of the gridlock in Washington.

Austin Evers, a former Obama administration lawyer in the State Department who runs a watchdog group called American Oversight, said the Trump administration has instituted a “dramatic change” in policy from Reagan-era congressional standards in which the government provided more information to committee chairman but also consistently engaged in oversight with rank-and-file minority members.

“Instructing agencies not to communicate with members of the minority party will poison the well. It will damage relationships between career staffers at agencies and subject matter experts in Congress,” Evers said. “One of the reasons you respond to letters from the minority party is to explain yourself. It is to put on the record that even accusations that you find unreasonable are not accurate.”

One month ago, Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats sent a letter to the Office of Personnel Management asking for cybersecurity information after it was revealed that millions of people had their identities compromised. The letter asked questions about how cybersecurity officials were hired, and in Rice’s view, it “was not a political letter at all.”

"The answer we got back is, ‘We only speak to the chair people of committees.’ We said, ‘That's absurd, what are you talking about?’” Rice said in an interview. “I was dumbfounded at their response. I had never gotten anything like that … The administration has installed loyalists at every agency to keep tabs on what information people can get.”

At a House Appropriations hearing in May, Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) asked acting General Services Administrator Tim Horne about a briefing House Oversight Committee staffers had received from the GSA, in which they were informed that the “GSA has a new policy only to respond to Republican committee chairmen.”

“The administration has instituted a new policy that matters of oversight need to be requested by the committee chair,” Horne responded.

In February, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for information on changes to healthcare.gov from the Health and Human Services Department. They’re still waiting for an answer. In early May, Murray and six other senators asked the president about why Vivek Murthy was dismissed as surgeon general. There was no response, and her staff said those are just a couple of the requests that have gone unanswered.

“It’s no surprise that they would try to prevent Congress from getting the information we need to make sure government is working for the people we represent,” Murray said when asked about the lack of cooperation.

The Senate’s Homeland Security and Government Accountability Committee, the primary investigator in that chamber, has received some responses from the Trump administration but has seen several letters only signed by Democrats ignored. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) wrote Education Secretary Betsy DeVos asking for help addressing the challenges of rural schools and joined with Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) to question the security of Trump’s use of a personal cell phone as president. Neither was answered, an aide said.

A senior Democratic aide said that of the Senate Democrats’ 225 oversight letters sent to the Trump administration since January asking for information, the vast majority have received no response.

“When it comes to almost anything we’ve done at a federal agency, very close to 100 percent of those we haven’t heard anything back. And at the White House it’s definitely 100 percent,” said a second senior Democratic aide. “This is rampant all over committee land.”

This administration is just beyond crazy.

[ShepherdontheRock]

I'm with @candygirl200413. I don't give a shit about the feelings of these people. 

I interpret "they go low, we go high" to mean things like not speculating about Barron being on the autism spectrum or condemning the "Rape Melania" or "Rape Ivanka" or "Kellyanne Cuntway" things I've seen. 

But as far as actually caring about their feelings...I don't give a shit. They can go to hell for all I care.