Another question is who will pay the growing legal fees for the president and administration officials caught up in the Russia inquiries. Some in Trump’s orbit are pushing the Republican National Committee to bear the costs, according to three people with knowledge of the situation, including one who euphemistically described the debate as a “robust discussion.”
Though the RNC does have a legal defense fund, it well predates the Russia investigation and is intended to be used for assisting with legal challenges facing the Republican Party, such as a potential election recount.
The RNC has not made a final decision, in part because the committee is still researching whether the funds could legally be used to help pay legal costs related to Russia. But many within the organization are resisting the effort, believing it would be more appropriate to create a separate legal defense fund for the case. Stay tuned.
2. National Radio Host Mark Levin. Levin has come out with an awesome new proof that man-made climate change does not exist.
On his August 30th broadcast, first he gravely listed scientists from history: “Aristotle, Archimedes, Galileo, Tesla, Faraday, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein and Edison,” while managing to mispronounce “Archimedes” as if his first name were “Archie Meedeez,” which is pretty funny in itself.
Then Levin popped his serious question: “What do they all have in common?”
If that sounds more like the wind up to a joke (nine scientists walk into a bar, and the bartender says...), well, yeah. Because here’s Levin’s actual answer:
“Not a single one of them ever wrote about man-made climate change.” Levin repeats this several times, as if he’s fathoming a major revelation. He went on to explain: ”. . . because ladies and gentlemen, man-made climate change is not about science. It’s not about evidence. It’s not about knowledge. It’s not about facts. It’s about an ideology, imported in the United States from Europe, like Marxism itself.”
As if he couldn’t stand the inanity of his own argument for long, Levin bailed out in less than three minutes with this:
”Do we believe the fifth-sixth level weather people--or Aristotle, Archimedes, Faraday, Galileo, Tesla, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein and Edison? It’s so obvious, ladies and gentlemen, it’s man-made climate change, not one of these men ever mentioned it!”
So, according to Levin’s logic, if these nine scientists did not mention it, it does not exist. That really could come in handy in a lot of situations. “Hey, Archie Meedeez never wrote about TV, so I don’t have to pay my cable bill.” Yea, that’ll work!
3. Kellyanne Conway. Conway, adviser to the man who cannot even address an ongoing federal disaster like Hurricane Harvey without making it all about himself, actually went on a Christian news network and straight up had the nerve to tell Pat Robertson that Donald Trump’s best characteristic is humility, to which
expert phony Robertson nodded with a smile.
People, you cannot make this up. Humility? Trump? How about hubris?
What would Jesus say?
4. EPA Chief Scott Pruitt. We cannot become inured to the sheer terribleness of what passes for standard conservative politics these days. Trump or no Trump, individuals like Scott Pruitt, now the head of our Environmental Protection Agency despite—no, because of—a history of slavish devotion to industries he now regulates, have long displayed a contempt for the public and a reliance on propaganda as a tool of governance.
“To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced,” Mr. Pruitt said ahead of Hurricane Irma, echoing similar sentiments he made when Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas two weeks earlier. “To use time and effort to address it at this point is very, very insensitive to this people in Florida,” he added.
But of course he said the same thing both before Harvey hit and after, and before either of them hit Pruitt was already of the opinion that government and the press and the scientific community shouldn't talk about climate change at all until he, Scott Pruitt, was able to put together a team of fellow cranks and lobbyists to publicly argue once again with the scientists in some sort of final battle royale to see which side's quips and knowing smirks would decide the fate of the planet for once and for all. His own public opinion has been that it doesn't matter whether decades of science have firmly established both a pattern of climate change and the specific human activities that have caused it; he simply doesn't believe the world's scientists, period.
Talking about climate change while experiencing that climate change firsthand is, of course, important. The effect of shifting winds and warmer ocean water may indeed be to make major hurricanes of the caliber of Harvey and Irma—larger, warmer, and wetter—more commonplace. Are we all right with that? Should towns like Houston or Tampa be doing something—anything—to defend against it? Imagine an Irma-caliber storm hitting Florida in a future decade when local sea levels are just six inches higher. Think about it!
5. President Trump. Is Donald Trump as stupid as he seems, or does he just lower his intelligence level to appeal to his moronic base? The president’s comments on the Puerto Rico disaster just add to the mystery. About the devastated Puerto Rico, the president said:
“We’ve gotten A-pluses on Texas and Florida, and we will also on Puerto Rico,” Trump pledged. “But the difference is this is an island sitting in the middle of an ocean. It’s a big ocean; it’s a very big ocean. And we’re doing a really god job.”
Odds are high that neither Trump or most of his base knew that Puerto Ricans are US citizens. Worse yet, Trump’s comments, and the indifferent response of his administration and base to the human tragedy, underscore once again their utter contempt for brown and black people. Or, rather than ignorance, perhaps the Trump et. al. response was simply white nationalism once again rearing its ugly head.. After all, them Puerto Ricans are fereigners, ain’t they?
____________
And the winner is:
Being a climate change denier heading the EPA is bad enough, but Scott Pruitt's cavalier attitude about what might be causing recurring mega-storms is ignominious in the extreme. So I am awarding this month's IGGY to the moronic Pruitt.
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