clair070

Trump is toast. Not because he's an asshole, though he is; not because he's a Republican, which (in fact) he isn't; he's toast because he's one of the biggest traitors in the history of the U.S. and Mueller has *at least* three key witnesses *already* who can testify to that. Trump knows he's toast, which is why he's preparing for two wars: a war on the rule of law here at home, and a senseless war abroad, in either North Korea or Iran. All of it is to save himself—he thinks—by delaying what at this point is inevitable: his fall from power. Trump effectively has no lawyers: (1) McGahn is a witness against him. (2) He no longer trusts Cobb and discusses firing him. (3) Dowd resigned. (4) DiGenova and Toensing chose not to join the team. (5) Sekulow is more activist than lawyer. (6) Cohen is mired in scandal. Meanwhile, Trump is firing all his intelligent advisors —Tillerson, McMaster, perhaps soon Kelly (NB: even Hope Hicks, while young, may on occasio...

A total crackpot and FoxNews hack pundit, Bolton was a major Iraq warhawk and has long insisted that the Iraq war was a good thing. Bolton has also long advocated for war with and/or bombing Iran. Bolton has also called for attacking North Korea, which would be a complete catastrophe for the world, since nuclear missiles would almost certainly be launched and Seoul largely destroyed, along with hundreds of thousands to millions of people killed. Bolton is really about the last person in the country who should be advising Trump on national security. Right now, there are no moderating voices in the White House. Sec. of Defense Mattis may be all that is stopping us from launching huge and costly wars. There are critical midterm elections this Fall, that should allow Democrats to take back Congress. Look out for an October surprise before the elections then, as an increasingly unpopular and desperate president looks to change the national conversation and start a huge new war.

Well shit. Seventy-nine thousand tons of plastic debris, in the form of 1.8 trillion pieces, now occupy an area three times the size of France in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, a scientific team reported on Thursday. The amount of plastic found in this area, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is “increasing exponentially,” according to the surveyors, who used two planes and 18 boats to assess the ocean pollution. “We wanted to have a clear, precise picture of what the patch looked like,” said Laurent Lebreton, the lead oceanographer for the Ocean Cleanup Foundation and the lead author of the study. The Garbage Patch has been described before. But this new survey estimates that the mass of plastic contained there is four to 16 times larger than previously supposed, and it is continuing to accumulate because of ocean currents and careless humans both onshore and offshore. Greed and stupidity is going to kill us yet.

CIA officer John Kiriakou was jailed for exposing the torture program. Now Trump wants to promote CIA officer Gina Haspell, who was a leader in the program after 9/11 and helped cover it up. Putting Haspel in charge of the CIA would undo attempts by the agency — and the nation — to repudiate torture. The message this sends to the CIA workforce is simple: Engage in war crimes, in crimes against humanity, and you’ll get promoted. Don’t worry about the law. Don’t worry about ethics. Don’t worry about morality or the fact that torture doesn’t even work. Go ahead and do it anyway. We’ll cover for you. And you can destroy the evidence, too. Described in the media as a “seasoned intelligence veteran,” Haspel has been at the CIA for 33 years , both at headquarters and in senior positions overseas. Now the deputy director, she has tried hard to stay out of the public eye. Mike Pompeo, the outgoing CIA director and secretary of state designee, has lauded her “uncanny ability to get things done a...

After terrorists struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a New York ferry captain who later became a city firefighter helped evacuate hundreds of people from Lower Manhattan. He was Thomas Phelan, 45, one of the many heroes who came to the city's rescue after the attack. Phelan died on Friday, authorities said, one of the thousands of victims of cancer linked to the 9/11 attack. Phelan worked for Circle Line Statue of Liberty ferry cruises when the twin towers were hit and helped ferry people from Lower Manhattan, FDNY spokesman Jim Long confirmed. In 2003, Phelan joined the fire department as a firefighter and eventually was promoted to marine pilot, Long said. So he was only 45, very young, and didn't apparently work at Ground Zero. But I suppose he must have taken in a lot of WTC dust as he ferried people. God knows what exactly he was exposed to, presumably toxic chemicals but radiation as well seems likely. It would be nice to have a full accounting of just ho...

Fifty years ago, on March 16, 1968, U.S. soldiers attacked the Vietnamese village of My Lai. Even though the soldiers met no resistance, they slaughtered more than 500 Vietnamese women, children and old men over the next four hours, in what became known as the My Lai massacre. After the massacre, the U.S. military attempted to cover up what happened. But in 1969 a young reporter named Seymour Hersh would reveal a 26-year-old soldier named William Calley was being investigated for killing 109 Vietnamese civilians. Today, memorials have been held in My Lai to mark the 50th anniversary of this horrific attack. Good for Democracy Now on covering this story. Worth watching their report for sure. And Anonymous Physicist's piece on Hugh Thompson and how he stopped the massacre is still a good read.

Trump ousts Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, will replace him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo (speaking of intelligence officials being in charge)

From Charlie Pierce: The noisy guy who went bananas on national television on Saturday night is just brimming with new ideas these days, each one of them worse than the last. You may not have noticed, but the way we conduct our elections in this country is crazier than the president* the last one produced. (snip) President Trump would be able to dispatch Secret Service agents to polling places nationwide during a federal election, a vast expansion of executive authority, if a provision in a Homeland Security reauthorization bill remains intact. The rider has prompted outrage from more than a dozen top elections officials around the country, including Secretary of State William F. Galvin of Massachusetts, a Democrat, who says he is worried that it could be used to intimidate voters and said, “This is worthy of a Third World country,” said Galvin in an interview. “I’m not going to tolerate people showing up to our polling places. I would not want to have federal agents showing up in larg...

and... Republican-led House committee on intelligence finds no complicity of the Republican president with Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Just can't make this stuff up!  A bombshell new report suggests Donald Trump consummated a deal to hold his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow while hobnobbing with Russian oligarchs at a Las Vegas nightclub later shut down over lewd performances involving women and urine. The future president invited himself to dinner June 15, 2013, with Aras and Emin Agalarov and British publicist Rob Goldstone while presiding over the Miss USA contest his company owned at the time, reported Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The elder Agalarov is a real estate developer and businessman, like Trump, and Goldstone is the publicist for the Russian’s pop star son, and all three figure in the controversial June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. They were planning a dinner at CUT, a restaurant at the Palazzo hotel and casino, when Trump’s longtime security chief Keith Schiller called and asked if the pageant owner and reality TV star could join their party. A group of about 20, including T...