btw, it looks like 2 things came to an end yesterday and today. 1) The federal government, in the person of Trump, has decided that some federal laws (in this case, the Hatch Act) will be blatantly ignored. This follows Trump deciding that it's OK to accept assistance from foreign governments (Russia, maybe others like North Korea, Saudi Arabia?) to get reelected, another violation of norms and laws (his reelection campaign promptly announced that they would follow his lead and make decisions on a "case by case" basis.https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... se-by-case)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... aw/591628/
Quote: The Office of Special Counsel says that Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, repeatedly violated the Hatch Act and should be fired....OSC, not to be confused with the office of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, is the federal agency that polices the federal civil service.
OSC’s recommendation is important not because it is likely to result in Conway’s firing, but because it is almost certain not to. There’s no question of Conway’s guilt here: OSC doesn’t waffle about whether she broke the law, and there’s no Mueller-style legalistic parsing. The report’s conclusion is clear, as is the recommended punishment. And yet the only person who can punish Conway is the president—the very man on whose electoral behalf she broke the law, and who has made clear, as recently as Thursday, his willingness to break the law in order to win elections.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... violations
Quote: Trump says he will not fire Kellyanne Conway for Hatch Act violations
2) Our Minister of Propaganda has resigned. I find myself wondering whether she finally found a lie that she couldn't promote. Or maybe she's just another rat leaving a sinking ship. The following is a fitting tribute to Sarah Sanders:
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainme ... ns/591706/
Quote: The White House press secretary—the office, if not the person—is an outgrowth of the idea that, in a democracy, information matters, and facts matter, and while politicians and the press may tangle and tussle, they are ultimately on the same team. Sanders, who ascended to the press-secretary role in July of 2017, after the brief and peevish tenure of Sean Spicer, publicly rejected that idea. To watch a Sanders press conference, or to watch her representing the White House on cable news, was to be confronted with a vision of America that is guided by political Darwinism—an environment in which everything is a competition, with the winner determined by who can shout the loudest, who can distract the most effectively, who can get in the best insult before the time for questioning is over.
Here is some of the misinformation Sanders has spread on behalf of the White House...
Trump has been off the chain for a while now, from promising Kim Jong Un that he wouldn't let the CIA spy on North Korea to telling White House staff they must lie for him and deny that any polls suggest people would vote for Biden over him. I assume he's also the one who gave Pompeo the OK/ instructions to go out and say we know Iran is responsible for the attacks on Japanese tankers in the Middle East, without presenting any evidence to anyone, and while everyone else is still saying "we don't know who did it." (suspicious timing, the latest attacks, when Japan's prime minister Abe is in Iran trying to defuse tensions. It looks very much like someone wants a war and I doubt Iran is that stupid.)
Regarding Iran, if anyone wants to read the real report from the US Central Command and NOT the Pompeo/ Trump version, here it is:
https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/STATEMENT ... /hootsuite
Among other things, here's their statement on that mine the Iranians removed. It doesn't look like there's any evidence they're the ones who planted it; they just took it off after the crew of one ship found it. And it was not something done covertly at night.
The rest of it sounds like they received a distress call from 40 miles away and, when they arrived, 2 hours later they found Iranian ships among those responding. I'm not sure how you translate that to "Iran was responsible."
Quote: At 11:05 a.m. local time USS Bainbridge approaches the Dutch tug Coastal Ace, which had rescued the crew of twenty-one sailors from the M/T Kokuka Courageous who had abandoned their ship after discovering a probable unexploded limpet mine on their hull following an initial explosion.
...At 4:10 p.m. local time an IRGC Gashti Class patrol boat approached the M/T Kokuka Courageous and was observed and recorded removing the unexploded limpet mine from the M/T Kokuka Courageous.
And yet here's our moron president:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ointing-to
Iran's statement:
Quote: “Well Iran did do it, and you know they did it because you saw the boat,” Trump said Friday morning on “Fox & Friends.” “It’s got, essentially, Iran written all over it.” ...
Trump pointed to a video the military released Thursday night that it says shows Iran's Revolutionary Guard removing a mine from a targeted oil tanker.
And our devious Secretary of State:
Quote: Iran pushed back on the administration’s claims that it was responsible for the Thursday attacks, calling the accusations “alarming.” “We are responsible for ensuring the security of the strait and we have rescued the crew of those attacked tankers in the shortest possible time,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said on Friday.
I don't know whether Iran was responsible, though I have my doubts. But, at this stage, Trump and Pompeo are just putting out bullshit and propaganda as "facts." Trump isn't even using any common sense, which is pretty alarming when he has the ability to start a war.
Quote: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who first declared Iran responsible for the attacks, said the government’s conclusion was “based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication.”