Three items on the menu today — do them all or pick your favorite(s)!
SCOTT PRUITT: With robot-loving, minimum-wage hating, allegedly wife-abusing fast food magnate Andy Puzder taking himself out of the running for labor secretary, the focus now turns to Scott Pruitt, the litigious EPA-botherer who now wants to run the agency. His confirmation vote is set for Friday, and it’s not a sure thing. Republican Susan Collins and Independent Angus King say they’ll be voting against him.
So call your senators! For more on what a disaster Pruitt could be as the head of the EPA see this MIT Technology Review piece; 5calls also has a quick summary of Pruitt’s flaws and a script for calling.
TRUMP’S TAXES: So it turns out there’s an old law that could compel Trump to hand his tax returns over to the House Ways and Means committee. Unfortunately, in a vote earlier this week, Republicans on that committee voted against using it to pry Trump’s tax returns loose.
If you’d like to give any of the 23 “no” voters a call, you can find their names and numbers here. Or call your rep and get on their case about making another request. If your rep is Bill Pascrell, send him a thank you for digging up the law and trying to put it to use.
RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA: This is the thing that could bring Trump down. Call your senators. Call your representative. Demand an immediate and INDEPENDENT investigation. 5calls has more info and a brief script.
Hell, make this your daily call on any day you’re not calling about something else. Use any new news on Trump and Russia your excuse to call. Right now, obviously, that’s the Flynn resignation. But there’s new stuff happening with regard to Trump/Russia pretty much every day.
See my posts here and here for more advice on how to call/write your congress members. And here’s some advice on calling politicians if you have social anxiety. If you can’t call, writing a personalized email is also effective.
Oh, and if you need some encouragement, here’s the cover of the latest Time magazine.
I don’t think Trump is going to be bragging about this one.
I’ve been calling my congresscritters about Russia. I specifically cited Flynn’s resignation as a cause for concern, that the administration would try to scapegoat him and pretend the whole thing is already resolved. The staffers sounded very understanding of this point, leading me to believe that it’s already a factor in how the Dems are approaching things.
Soooo much wrong with all of this.
So many secrets being really obviously withheld.
What is going on in there?
And when are the rest of the Republican party going to realise that it’s better to fold now than be caught (effectively) supporting whatever it is that’s so awful later?
Or will they? Is it all some enormous weird ruse to confound the opposition while they do something else?
Is Russia even involved? Are Deutsche Bank lying about there being no links between Russia and Trump’s money to protect themselves during the investigation of them by Trump that owes them $300m and is President and wow how complicated can this plot possibly get?
I feel like a ‘last week on’ would take an entire week. There is no summary.
@ lith,
Don’t know if you’ve seen it, but this site offers a pretty good day-by-day breakdown:
http://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/
Granted, you could probably spend an hour or two on each day if you follow all the links.
A wealthy person who does not pay their taxes should never have been eligible for presidency.
Releasing your taxes should be a requirement for running in the first place.
I know this might seem like a minor thing to get hung up on, but it’s still so egregious to me that a significant portion of the U.S. sees a man who scams his way out of paying his taxes and thinks he is qualified to run the country.
Why. Just… why?? Why this? How could it possibly be politically beneficial to roll over for this historically unpopular President?
@MilleniumCrow:
I’ve been using a similar site, I could more do with one that tells me what he’s going to do next week. As I don’t think even he knows, that seems unlikely.
@PreuxFox:
He’s really obviously personally benefiting financially. Just like so many predicted he’ll do whatever makes the most money for him and screw everyone else.
@Viscaria:
No. Bleeding. Idea.
But I can’t see how this can keep up for 4 years, something’s got to give.
Maybe they’re aware that this is their best chance to get all the outrageous shit through and then they’ll hang him out to dry?
EDIT: Also, maybe they know that when the shit hits the fan it’s not just Trump that’ll be out but pretty much everyone in line for the presidency. Speculation I know but it certainly seems like something huge is being hidden (badly).
…put it this way. I can hear the Jaws music and I’m waiting for the shark.
@Viscaria maybe they’re afraid he’ll find a way to toss them out and replace them with whoever he digs out of the trash next?
I don’t understand why so many are behind him either, especially since some of these accusations, if true, could land him in jail for treason. I would have thought the “T” word would do it, at least for elected officials.
@ lith,
Unfortunately I don’t know of anything like that (and if I did I’m not sure I want to see it). I think it’s easy to predict how he’ll respond to certain stimuli (such as media criticism) but not easy to predict exactly what he’ll do. That being said, maybe you’ll find a few of these links reassuring.
Trump’s #1 pick to replace Flynn, VADM (ret) Robert Harward, appears to be hesitating. If he takes the job, I expect he’ll purge the NSC staff and get some competent people in there:
https://amp.businessinsider.com/trump-robert-harward-national-security-adviser-flynn-2017-2
Gen. Raymond Thomas, the commander of US Special Operations Command hangs a lampshade on the chaos we’re seeing from the administration. Hopefully he doesn’t get fired for it:
http://www.businessinsider.com/socom-commander-government-unbelievable-turmoil-2017-2
This one speaks for itself I think:
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/he-will-die-in-jail-intelligence-community-ready-to-go-nuclear-on-trump-senior-source-says/amp/
My point to all this being, I think that the flood of leaks that we’ve seen up until now is about to become a veritable tsunami. Smart/responsible people in the U.S. national security community are going to become more and more outspoken until eventually congressional Republicans will be unable to ignore them without suffering political damage.
I don’t know that it’s the whole “he’ll sign our dream legislation” thing. Wouldn’t Pence do the same thing?
Or hell, maybe it is. He signs anything anybody puts in front of him. Without even reading it first.
But he hasn’t lost a majority of support among Trump voters. Maybe the Rs in Congress are afraid of the base? Lord knows my family’s been trying to vote out Mitch McConnell practically all my life and he hasn’t gone anywhere. So the Ds in KY wouldn’t bother him that much.
I’m calling it: They’re covering for Trump because they’re all in on the scandal and have been from the beginning. All of them, the entire party. From Pence and Ryan to Sessions and DeVos.
Because “Party before country” doesn’t explain this anymore, but “Desperate self-preservation” does.
And when the shit finally hits the proverbial fan, they’ll all claim they didn’t know anything.
@SFHC
The current incarnation of the GOP was in a civil war between the rational actors and the true believers. The former are selfish snakes but the latter sincerely believe with every bone in their body the entirety of the GOP propoganda machine. Trump tapped into the voter and politicians’ base by exploiting this long plan in the making.
So when does James Comey have to report for sizing his ill-fitting orange overalls?
GOP wants to kill the Endangered Species Act:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/02/15/the-endangered-species-act-may-be-heading-for-the-threatened-list-this-hearing-confirmed-it/?utm_term=.7dce26bec442#comments
Trump and the GOP literally want the Bald Eagle and countless other plants and animals to die out.
Let’s just terminate the Environmental Protection Agency while we’re at it:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/861/text
Because everything that exists must be monetized for the profit of, like, eight whole humans, and if it can’t be monetized it doesn’t matter.
The Republicans have been trying to repeal the Endangered Species Act for decades and haven’t managed to do it yet. On the other hand, maybe they will finally succeed this time.
I don’t know how they could end the EPA without also repealing all the laws they enforce, like the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. How would that work?
On the bright side, my husband works for a water utility company. Not having a Safe Drinking Water Act would sure make his job easier. He could just pump water straight from the lake to people’s houses without bothering with all that pesky water-treatment to remove bacteria and parasites and stuff. They’d save so much money without those burdensome federal regulations!
Sure, people would have to boil water before they drank it, but what about personal responsibility? Why is it the nanny state’s job to ensure you can drink water straight out of the tap?
@Juniper, they could end the EPA very quickly without repealing those laws. Those laws would still be on the books – there would just be no organization to enforce them. That’s how they’ve been doing things for the past decade or two by de-funding and cutting budgets, but killing the EPA itself would be the final nail in the coffin. It’d mean that environmental laws would rely on the honour system. ‘Cause that works…
Going to my second protest tomorrow! I’m feeling a little more confident after the lack of counter-protestors at the last one, so this time I’m bringing a sign. Although I’m still wary of becoming an alt-right meme, so I tried to write something fairly clinical (“Prevent conflicts of interest! Make Trump release his tax returns!”) rather than something too flashy (i.e… a picture of an uterus with the words “Don’t tread on me!” superimposed over it). But that, as David points out here, is another thing that needs to be agitated for.
There’s a Safe Drinking Water Act? How did that help the people of Flint, MI?
Hey David, did you see that that Sargon asshole has started stalking/harassing young women when he has his children with him https://lilythelostgirl.com/2017/02/15/a-shirt-that-says-feminism/
Fucked on multiple levels.
@Magnesium, that’s disgusting. I’m glad so many people have rallied around her.
I wouldn’t be surprised but also I would because it’s like a fucking pulp novel.
It seems this presidency is something they’ve been scrambling for, with the repeal of the Voting Right’s Act and all the gerrymandering since ’12. They got a patsy like Dump in office who will sign shit without reading so they can do whatever they want to get whatever their little black hearts desire and possibly even push all the blame on Dump instead of them, the puppet masters.
They get all the legislation they want from Dump, Dump gets impeached, Pence takes over to save face as long as no one investigates into the Russia Incident.
Although, honestly, I really hope I’m just being a conspiracy theorist right now because I really don’t want there to be widespread corruption. At all. But it looks like there is.
I mean, I can understand racist/sexist/transphobic/whatever people getting in office to do racist/sexist/whatever things but this shit seems like they’ve organized and are on the attack now??
This may have been a plan decades in motion for all we know. There’s literal nazis and evangelicals in office, we’ve got KKK members in the police force–what is their plan? What is their purpose? What do they want? Are they connected at all? I don’t like this at all. I don’t like feeling like I’m one step away from saying “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.” I’m anxious and paranoid as it is without government interference thanks.