1. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Graham is suddenly very concerned about due process and how suspects are taken into custody by law enforcement. That’s why he’s now demanding answers from the FBI about the arrest of former Trump political adviser Roger Stone. The South Carolina senator is leading a one-man pity party for Stone, insisting the agency address why it was necessary to have so many agents arrest Stone at his home in the early morning hours on Friday, Jan. 25.
In a letter to FBI director Christopher Wray dated Jan. 30, Graham asks (among other things) why Stone was simply not permitted to surrender himself voluntarily. He also asks if anyone at the FBI, Department of Justice, or the special counsel’s office alerted the media, specifically CNN. This is all because Stone’s arrest was caught on video and the incredible image of FBI agents knocking on the door of an adviser to the American president won’t soon be forgotten.
Republicans are trying their best to make this some kind of conspiracy where Stone is the victim of an out-of-control investigation by Democrats who just want to oust Trump. But facts are facts: No one made Roger Stone get involved in criminal activity on behalf of a corrupt and unfit president. He’s being charged with seven federal counts, which range from witness tampering to obstruction of justice. This is serious business, and none of us should feel bad for the way his arrest went down.
He got treated just like the millions of regular people across the country when they get arrested and don’t have money, power, and political influence. In a nation where inequality increases daily and money allows people to do whatever they want, consequences be damned, there is something a little bit democratic about the way Stone got nailed by an FBI SWAT team while he was still in his pajamas.
Where’s Graham’s outrage for the many people who are arrested or killed without due process? What about Walter Scott, Graham’s fellow South Carolinian, who was gunned down in 2015 by a North Charleston police officer, shot in the back as he was running away after a traffic stop? What about all the unarmed black and brown people who don’t receive just treatment by police? Did Graham demand answers from the Cleveland Police when they shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice within two seconds of arriving to a park because he was playing with a toy gun? It seems as if Graham’s passion for justice only emerges when rich friends of his president are in big legal trouble.
Just a reminder: Even though the charges against him are serious, Roger Stone was released on bail the very same day he was arrested. He was not allowed to surrender himself to the FBI because investigators were concerned that he would tamper with evidence. But he was still released on a $250,000 bond (that’s it!) and made the conservative media rounds later that day to proclaim his innocence. Even though Graham and Republicans want us to believe that the FBI was needlessly inappropriate and harsh with Stone, his arrest and release point out one thing quite clearly: If you have to get arrested at all, it’s you better be a rich, old, white dude.
2. White House Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Now that we've wrapped our brains around the news that Donald Trump has been spending the majority of his working White house hours in something called "executive time"—as opposed to briefings, meetings, or every other scheduled presidential task—can we take another moment to admire Sanders' absolute devotion to bullshitting the American public? Because her response to the revelation that Donald watches television and phones friends each morning, almost never managing to even get down to the Oval Office before 11 AM, is quite the bold entry into the genre.
"While he spends much of his average day in scheduled meetings, events, and calls, there is time to allow for a more creative environment that has helped make him the most productive President in modern history."
The declaration that Trump is the most productive anything in modern history takes some guts, unless that anything is "liar" or "net source of methane." Trump's list of accomplishments consists of approximately nothing, on the legislative front. Trump is far behind every other president on even staffing the government. Keeping the doors of government open at all has been Trump's latest challenge, and latest failure.
But setting that aside, calling Donald Trump's mornings of angry tweeting whatever he's just seen on Fox & Friends a "creative environment" is a daring move. A "creative environment" is what kindergarten teachers strive for in their classrooms. It involves crayons, paste, and glitter. Calling up Sean Hannity on your still-unsecured smartphone so you can commiserate about how mean the press has been to you both is not creative time. Tweeting out the latest Lou Dobbs pronouncement with the same glee a superfan might greet the introduction of a new Spice Girl is, on balance, worth slightly less than a child's finger-painting. And the finger-painting is less likely to result in international scandal.
If spending five hours a day watching television, calling allies, and tweeting out condemnations of whoever or whatever has most irked you about the day's papers is creativity, what would a Trump White House in stagnation look like?
3. Donald Trump, Jr. Trump Jr. warmed up the crowd for Individual 1 in El Paso this month and, after spotting some young people in the crowd, gave them a Trumpian pep talk:
“Keep up that fight. Bring it to your schools. You don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth” . . . “These people are absolutely poison. Toxic to their core.”
Pretty rich statement for someone who’s had everything handed to him from birth, even the very platform he used to trash teachers.
Anyway, we can take some comfort in the fact that everything Donald Trump Jr. has touched in the last 10 years is under investigation: the Trump campaign, the Trump Organization, the Trump Foundation, and on and on and on. Donald Trump Jr. stands poised to be the one to learn some hard lessons in the not-too-distant future. What a despicable "human" being.
4. Trump’s Treasury Department. Tax refunds are down by 8.7 percent from this time one year ago, and people are not happy. No wonder—a lot of people count on their refund. Don’t worry, says the Trump Treasury Department.
“Most people are seeing the benefits of the tax cut in larger paychecks throughout the year, instead of tax refunds that are the result of people overpaying the government.” It’s a good thing! “Smaller refunds mean that people are withholding appropriately based on their tax liability, which is positive news for taxpayers.”
Taxpayers don’t seem to agree.
And one reason taxpayers don’t agree is because those "larger" paychecks throughout the year were consistently oversold by Republicans. Remember the school secretary whose paycheck bump amounted to about the cost of a Costco membership, which then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan saw as something to brag about?
The wealthiest people, on the other hand, have lots to celebrate.
5. Utah Legislators. In November, the people of Utah voted to provide health insurance for about 150,000 state residents who lacked it. Last week, Utah’s legislators overruled their own constituents and took away insurance from about 60,000 of those 150,000 people.
The legislators claimed they were trying to save money, but that’s not a credible rationale: The federal government would have covered the bulk of the cost. The true reason — which the legislators weren’t willing to admit publicly — was a philosophical objection to government-provided health insurance.
Utah’s turnabout is the latest worrisome example of a rising disturbing trend of politicians rejecting the will of voters. Since the November election, state legislatures in several states, including in Idaho, Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin, have overruled their own voters. In Missouri, some legislators have pushed to subvert a ballot initiative that would reduce gerrymandering, and in Utah the legislature has also partly overturned a new law on medical marijuana. In Florida, Republicans are trying to diminish a passed November initiative which restores voting privileges for non-violent felons.
The offending politicians have been mostly Republican determined to put partisan interests above democratic principles. Is this what the Republican Party wants to be? The anti-democracy party? It sure looks that way.
6. Pat Robertson. The Evangelical wingnut is incensed over an appellate court in Philadelphia considering the issue of whether to renew a Catholic adoption agency’s contract with the City of Philadelphia. The agency doesn’t want to place foster children in LGBT homes, which is a violation of Philadelphia’s non-discrimination policy, and so the Catholic agency might lose its contract. That hits Robertson right where he lives, because he’s been hoping like hell that he can make his, and Mike Pence’s, “religious liberty” BS. the law of the land. So, Robertson went on an epic television rant:
“The incredible thing about the homosexuals is they are willing to destroy lives and destroy the whole fabric of society so long as they and their weird way of doing sex is legitimized,” he said. “That’s what they want and they will take away everything; they will destroy marriage, they will destroy families, they will destroy, in this case, the foster children. They are willing to tear down the entire edifice in order to have the majority of people recognize the way they do sex.”
“I think if Christians begin to speak out and insist that if some politician goes along with the gay agenda, that they’re going to be voted out of office,” Robertson added. “Once they get that message, they’ll start saying, ‘We want to listen to the majority of the people in our society.’ Until they do, that small minority is going to be dominating everything we do and every aspect of our lives.”
Robertson and his cronies are serious as a heart attack about stacking the courts with anti-gay judges and electing anti-gay politicians. In his rant on television Monday about the Philadelphia case, he made the point that the gay population is only two percent of the country. Robertson proposes a simple numbers game: since they’re such a small percentage of the populace, wipe them out. He didn’t phrase it that way. His words were, “They’re one or two percent but they’re so vocal and so authoritative, and they apparently dominate these legislative bodies.”
The only one talking domination is Robertson, and his dog whistle was clear. They’re only a few people — but rather than do the moral thing and let them be, because they are only a few, he wants to eradicate them, or drive them so far back into the closet that they might as well be eradicated. He hates the gays, so does Mike Pence. Even Trump admitted that about Pence, saying Pence, ”wants to hang them all.”
Unfortunately, in the Trump administration, America seems to be backsliding on gay rights. Trump has eliminated LGBTQ protections for federal contractors and transgender accommodation guidelines for public schools, reinstated a ban on transgender military service, and urged federal courts to exclude sexual orientation from the Civil Rights Act’s sex protections.
Robertson’s got 28 Million people listening to his wingnut 700 Club broadcast. Who do you think voted for Donald Trump? Why do you think we’re stick with Brett Kavanaugh for decades to come? There is nothing so dangerous as a monster who thinks he’s got God on his side, and the effect of religious wingnuts on this country, in this administration, is pernicious and constant. Robertson’s outburst today is just one more log on the fire.
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And the February winner is:
Since his ghastly homophobic comment is par for the Pat Robertson course, and thus to be expected, I've decided to give this month's IGGY to Donald Trump, Jr. Isn't it about time?
I remain stunned by the absolute ignorance,and bigotry of those in our White House. Have the American people gone mad? I don’t believe so. They are being led by a lying, demented autocrat and those that surround him like the wonderful Sarah Huckabee Saunders, who can’t even spend the time required by every president, except Bush jr. to prepare himself to lead this country by READING briefs and not watching tv!!
ReplyDeleteWe are living in the twilight zone.
Paul Gottlieb