TRUMP PRAISES PUTIN, TRASHES US ALLIES...AGAIN

Of course the meeting with Putin will be easier for you, Donnie. You'll kiss his ass, he'll pat you on the back and the authoritarian love affair will continue as up to now. Our Western allies will actually insist that you do something for the unity of democratic nations against the advance of tyranny, but when anybody mentions freedom and democracy to you, you glaze over.


When will people wise up and realize that, whether by omission or commission, this president is engaged in treason against everything the US used to stand for?

From THE WASHINGTON POST Trump hits combative notes as he undermines May, praises Putin ahead of NATO summit

LIAR, LIAR...AGAIN

After US District Court Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle tossed out a DNC case against the Trump campaign for the Russian hacking this week, The Don bloviated:

This Dave Lebow painting is apropos

“Just won lawsuit filed by the DNC and a bunch of Democrat crazies trying to claim the Trump Campaign (and others), colluded with Russia. They haven’t figured out that this was an excuse for them losing the election!”

But that's not what the judge said. In her 45-page opinion she specifically said her dismissing the case on a technicality made no judgment regarding collusion with Russia. Here's a quote from the judge's decision:

“It bears emphasizing that this Court’s ruling is not based on a finding that there was no collusion between defendants and Russia during the 2016 presidential election...This is the wrong forum for plaintiffs’ lawsuit. The Court takes no position on the merits of plaintiffs’ claims.”

'nough said...

THE RISE AND FALL OF SCOTT PRUITT

The resignation this week of Scott Pruitt as EPA “administrator” (more like liquidator) was immediately and resoundingly hailed by virtually all environmental protection groups, wildlife conservationists, scientists and friends of the earth in general. But his successor promises to be little if any better—if, hopefully, less flamboyant and corrupt.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was one of the first to weigh in. He observed that, “instead of protecting our environment and combating climate change, he (Pruitt) has worked to protect the interests of the fossil fuel industry and polluters all over the country.” Senator Sanders opined that, “his resignation is a positive step forward for our country. I will do everything possible to see that the next EPA administrator actually believes in environmental protection.”

Scott Pruitt...out

All I can say is, good luck with that, Bernie. The man who, as deputy director, will likely replace Pruitt permanently is none other than Andrew Wheeler. Until now in the Pruitt EPA, Wheeler has been in charge of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. His qualifications for the job? He is a former executive from the American Chemistry Council—a grouping of major chemicals manufacturers—and a former lobbyist for the coal industry. That makes him likely to act as an advocate for the interests of some of the very industrial activities that the EPA was formed to monitor. Oh, and, by the way, he is understood to have made a three hundred thousand dollar contribution to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Wheeler is the Trump administration’s fallback, after it permitted Pruitt to be its fall guy. Whenever the swampy water starts reaching the gunwales of this US president’s lifeboat, somebody gets thrown overboard, and this time it was Pruitt’s turn. But replacements are seldom if ever any great improvement, because, in the end, what is flawed is Trumpian policy and the dysfunctional administration as a whole. That’s because, to survive for a while in the Trump administration, all you have to be willing to do is his bidding—no matter what that might be. Anyone carrying a knapsack full of ethics with them need not apply. Pruitt, then, was a shoo in...until he wasn’t.

Lately, Pruitt’s personal antics have been giving the administration headaches, as the news media has tracked down his multiple indiscretions in running his shop as if he were a moneyed prince rather than an environmental agency administrator. The chain of scandals had gotten so bad—from the use of taxpayer money to purchase luxury furniture and contract high-end travel to secretly scheduled meetings and close relations with industry lobbyists, and from firing anyone in the EPA who questioned his most controversial maneuvers to using his post to garner business opportunities and jobs for his immediate family—that White House aides are reported to have been strongly urging the president to cut him loose.

Someone, then, evidently made Pruitt see the writing on the wall. But at least he didn’t miss the White House Fourth of July picnic and fireworks!

Andrew Wheeler...in

If I were to try and second-guess Trump, I would say that he didn’t fire Pruitt sooner because the former EPA director’s serial delinquencies served as smoke and mirrors to take attention off of the serious business of rollbacks that he was seeking to institute on the president’s behalf—rollbacks that have literally attempted to take environmental protection back half a century, to when American industries trashed the air, water and land of the US and the world with utter impunity.

Scott Pruitt’s job—what Trump has defined as “a very good job”—has been to deny science and to deny the need for the measures that have been instituted progressively since the late 1960s to mitigate, alleviate and repair gross environmental damage inflicted on us all by low former industry standards that completely ignored the human cost and lasting consequences of unaccountable production and corporate irresponsibility. In short, his job was to make things easy for Trump and Trump’s industry friends (and Super PAC backers) in their industrial operations.

There can be no doubt that Pruitt was serving the interests of Donald Trump, not those of the United States. In his resignation letter, he proudly (if unwittingly and a little insanely) alluded to this fact, seeming to have considered Trump’s rise to power and, by reflection, his own, as acts of God. And I quote:  "My desire in service to you has always been to bless you as you make important decision for the American people. I believe you are serving as President today because of God’s providence. I believe that same providence brought me into your service. I pray as I have served you that I have blessed you and enable(d) you to effectively lead the American people..." He might have added to this last...over the brink of environmental disaster.

Among other “achievements” that Scott Pruitt engendered in his service to God and King were the following, as compiled by the environmental news site, EcoWatch and the Environmental Integrity Project, and with comments of my own added:

• Convinced Trump to pull the US out of the historic Paris climate accord.
• Effectively blocked an expected ban on a pesticide so toxic it causes brain damage in children.

• Rolled back the Obama era Clean Power Plan at the behest of the tottering coal industry. The plan would have helped, among other things, to dramatically reduce asthma attacks in parts of the US, especially among children.

• Tore entire sections about climate change out of the EPA website because they directly contradicted (based on scientific facts) his own ridiculous and dangerous theories on the subject—basically, that it doesn’t exist.

• Delayed action to regulate a highly toxic paint-stripping chemical that kills people on contact.

• Cut EPA staff by 50 percent—mostly the scientists and researchers—and boasted publicly about it.
• Rolled back the EPA Clean Water Rule that was designed to protect US streams and wetlands from environmental devastation that eventually affects navigable waterways and the drinking water of an estimated one in three Americans.
• Indefinitely halted compliance deadlines on the 2015 Effluent Limitations Guideline, a federal regulation instituted to limit toxic water pollution from coal-fired power plants. 
• Announced “reconsideration” of the EPA Coal Ash Disposal Rule, the first federal rule governing disposal of coal ash, the by-product created from burning coal. Coal ash contains toxic pollutants including arsenic, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium (if you don’t remember what this last one is, see a re-run of the movie Erin Brockovich) that, without proper disposal controls, can leach into groundwater, surface water, or air and threaten health and the environment.
• Announced a “review” of the Greenhouse Gas Rule, saying that, “if appropriate”, the EPA would initiate proceedings to suspend, revise, or rescind the rule. Greenhouses gases are the number one proven cause of climate change, which Pruitt—evidently quoting his gut and his boss, but not proven scientific fact—has denied.

And the list goes on, all part of the septuagenarian president’s “to-hell-with-the-environment-I’ll-be-dead-soon” attitude toward effective stewardship of the world that current and future generations will inherit from him and other world leaders.

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said Scott Pruitt would “go down in history as a disgrace to the office of EPA administrator. He will forever be associated with extraordinary ethical corruption and the abuse of power for petty personal enrichments. Sadly, the ideological fervor with which Pruitt pursued the destruction of environmental regulations and the agency itself live on in the Trump administration.”

A 2018 study in the American Journal of Public Health said that already in the first six months of Pruitt's tenure as EPA head, the agency moved to a pro-business stance unlike that of any previous administration. So marked was the change, according to the study, that “the Pruitt-led EPA has moved away from the public interest and explicitly favored the interests of the regulated industries.”

The only bright spot in Pruitt’s tenure as EPA administrator is that his policies were so faultily enacted that most are being legally challenged and promise to get mired down in litigation for a long time to come. Legal experts are quoted as saying that the legal and scientific bases of Pruitt’s measures are so fragile that it makes them easy to challenge.

Still, there is virtually no hope of advances in environmental protection as long as Donald Trump remains in office. And the machinations of the village idiots that he is placing in charge of perhaps the most sensitive area of government—because of its far-reaching effects on humankind and nature—could have disastrous consequences for the future.

A GRADUAL PROCESS

Thought for the day...

CRIMINALIZING RESCUE IN THE MED

The MV Aquarius used to be a German Coast Guard and fisheries protection vessel that, back then (1977) was christened the Meerkatze. It was re-christened the Aquarius in 2016, when it was acquired by the NGOs SOS Méditerranée and Doctors Without Borders as a life-saving rescue vessel used to save would-be refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Italy from war-torn and poverty-stricken areas of Africa in unseaworthy vessels that often sink or capsize killing thousands in recent years.

The Aquarius operated by SOS Méditeranée and Doctors

Wthout Borders

These desperate voyagers form part of a major flow of mostly African diaspora feeding the current refugee crisis in Europe. It is clear that this sort of mass migration has posed a humanitarian dilemma for numerous countries in Europe and that some, like Germany and France, have stepped up to help handle the influx, while others have sought to deflect the problem. Mass migration was, for instance, one of the main considerations behind the Brexit referendum, which is in the process of ending Britain’s membership in the European Union. Britain has, like the United States, chosen to see migration as a national security rather than a humanitarian issue.

Until now, because of its relative proximity to Libya, Italy has been a main port of entry for Africans seeking asylum. But as of earlier this month, Italy’s new Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, a law professor who has never held political office before, has implemented a new rightwing populist government that is taking a harsh stance on immigration, while stirring anti-European Union sentiments among his base. His Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has now begun to turn away rescued asylum-seekers arriving by sea from African and Arab countries, as well as from places like Bangladesh.

The Lifeline, operated by Mission Lifeline

As a result, the Aquarius was not permitted to dock in Italy earlier this month with several hundred rescued migrants on board. It was, instead, escorted to Spanish waters after the government of Spain offered to permit debarkation of refugees in Valencia, some 850 nautical miles away. The island nation of Malta south of Italy is also refusing rescued refugees and another ship, the Lifeline, operated under a Dutch flag by the German NGO Mission Lifeline, had to negotiate with the Maltese government to put into port there after the ship ran into trouble and had to dock for repairs.

In the case of both ships, Italy’s new government has a new take and is toying with the idea of charging them with human trafficking. The idea is that if those being rescued knew that there would be no rescue ships to pick them up, they would no longer put out to sea in inadequate small craft.  

This last is an oversimplification of the situation. The reality is that the drama of desperate refugees setting sail in death-trap vessels operated by the real human smugglers, who have built a nearly 200-million-dollar a year business based of human misery, predates the rescue effort, which is a humanitarian response to, rather than a cause of the current refugee crisis. Criminalizing such efforts by equating them with trafficking promises to tie the hands of the NGO’s operating them.

Furthermore, the message hidden behind the flimsy justification which supposes that if there’s no rescue there will be no migrant issue is a policy that seeks to curtail help and let the problem sort itself out. In other words, simply provide no lifeline and let the would-be refugees drown.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said it best: “We are facing a migration situation that no one can fix alone. If we look at the reality of things, we cannot just speak of a 'migration crisis.' It is a European political crisis.” This is certainly true in neighboring Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal humanitarian immigration policy could well cost her a no-confidence vote led by neo-nationalists following her 13 years as the head of state.

But Macron is right that it is a burgeoning problem that no one can fix alone, but also one that no one can ignore. It is, moreover, a problem created over the course of decades to a large extent by many of the Western nations, including the United States and Britain, that are most adamant about doing nothing to mitigate the consequences.

If every country in the West were to do its duty and its share, it would be a problem that could indeed find a solution. But the new far-right is taking the world in a direction that we thought had ended with World War II and the later fall of the Berlin Wall. Namely, a return to nationalism, isolationism and an autistic view of the world, just when what the world needs most is compassion, empathy and cooperation to solve its pressing humanitarian and environmental crises.

SARAH AND THE LITTLE RED HEN

Little Red Hen found a grain of wheat. “Who will plant this?” she asked. “Not I,” said the cat. “Not I,” said the goose. “Not I,” said the rat. “Then I will,” said Little Red Hen...

The owner of a Lexington, Virginia, family restaurant may have planted the seed of a trend this past week, when she made national headlines by politely and privately asking Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her party to leave the premises. The owner of the Red Hen Restaurant, Stephanie Wilkinson, has described herself as “not a huge fan of confrontation.”

Red Hen Restaurant

“I have a business, and I want the business to thrive,” she explained after the incident. But somehow, she just didn’t feel she could countenance Sarah Sanders’ presence on her property. It wasn’t a snap decision. Nor was it a command decision. She briefly talked it over with her employees, who, she indicates, expressed their disgust with the Trump administration’s stance against transgender people who want to serve in the country’s armed forces, and, more particularly, with Trump’s family separation policy regarding undocumented immigrants.

Based on her own convictions and those of her employees, Wilkinson asked the White House press secretary to step into the patio, and privately explained to Sanders that her business had “certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation,” and that she felt Sarah Huckabee Sanders clearly didn’t meet those standards. Therefore, she was asking Sanders to leave.

The conversations that Wilkinson has had with the media since the incident seem to make it fairly clear that this wasn’t the sort of situation or action that she was particularly comfortable with. She could have let it pass, not said anything, served Huckabee Sanders and her group of seven diners and simply hoped, in her heart of hearts, that this major presidential spokesperson never came back again. But, in the end, the restaurant owner didn’t feel she could do that in good faith.

Stephanie Wilkinson

Said Wilkinson, “This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”

As a liberal democratic thinker, I have squirmed a little over my feelings about this incident. The devil inside me dances a jig to see almost any complicit Trumpian defender—but particularly Lying Sarah—getting a hard time. But the justice-seeker and rights-defender in me is leery of situations in which anything like discrimination gets a pass.

Right away, I start thinking of baseball great Jackie Robinson eating in the kitchen or sleeping on the bus while his white teammates ate in restaurants and slept on hotel sheets. I also recall the barber in Yellow Springs, Ohio, when I was a boy, who refused service to African Americans because he “didn’t know how to cut Negro hair.” I see drinking fountains with signs that say “colored”, tired African Americans riding in the back of the public transport bus, restrooms marked  Men, Women and Colored. I also see Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, two African American men who were arrested earlier this year in a Starbucks coffee shop for loitering, when they told the management they were waiting for friends. (That incident, at least, had a happy ending: Nelson and Robinson sued and settled for one dollar each and two hundred thousand dollars for the setting up of a program for young entrepreneurs: clearly, in their case, it was about the principle, not the money).

Sarah Huckabee Sanders

But then I ask myself, is this the same thing? And the answer is, I don’t think so. This is more of a political statement, I feel, a First Amendment kind of question. It’s about a restaurant owner reserving the right of entry to the premises of a private business on moral and political grounds. The message is, you are defending the indefensible. You are taking money to relate unconscionable lies to the American public. You are the chief broadcaster of nefarious, unethical and undemocratic policies that defy the spirit and letter of American tradition and law and, as such, we’re refusing you service. Not because you are white, a Republican, a woman, a conservative or a government employee, but because you are complicit with and a promoter of policies and actions that we find morally and politically repugnant.

Is it legal to refuse service? That depends on what state laws and local ordinances say. Although under federal law, the Civil Rights Act prohibits the withholding of service due to race—and President Trump knows this since he has had more than one complaint brought against his real estate business under federal law for skirting rental of his properties to blacks. And then too, we’ve heard of business owners on the right who have gotten away with turning away same sex couples who wanted to buy a wedding cake, and of Kentucky clerk of courts Kim Davis who defied a federal order to issue a marriage license to a gay couple because it would be offensive to her religious beliefs. (Kentucky had to pay a quarter-million-dollar settlement, but Davis subsequently kept her job and became a hero to many Evangelicals). There have also been cases of gun range owners who have refused service to Muslims—one, Jan Morgan of Arkansas, proudly declaring the indoor shooting range she owns “a Muslim-free zone”.

The truth is that while a rather large minority of Americans support President Trump and find his most controversial policies almost refreshingly authoritarian, the vast majority of people in the United States are shocked, upset, frustrated and fearful of the trend that the US is taking under Donald Trump—a far-right trend that challenges the Constitution, engenders racism and religious discrimination, openly targets Muslims (even achieving conservative Supreme Court backing for a clearly discriminatory travel ban) and generally eroding the two and a half century old democratic foundations of the country. And as Red Hen owner Stephanie Wilkinson indicates, those who see and feel the demise of democracy and the onset of autocracy in the US are past passive worry and are seeking innovative and decisive actions to show that they are standing up to be counted rather than being complicit through silence.

The question remains, will such definitive actions serve any purpose other than making those who implement them feel they are taking a stand? And won’t the reaction that is bound to come from the other side only worsen the divisions that are already threatening to tear the fabric of the United States in two?

I’m thinking, no, to the first, and, yes, to the second. But I’m also thinking that there is little that can be done to change the outcome. The reality is that the United States is on the brink of an ideological confrontation that could have previously unthinkable consequences as its people become more and more polarized along political, racial and religious lines. Perhaps the most polarized that they have been since the Civil War.

JIM CARREY NAILS IT

This is the real cover of Time Magazine on Trump's zero-tolerance immigration policy.

Below is how comedian and cartoonist Jim Carrey thinks it should have looked....

Jim nailed it!