US Politics, December 2019: Profound procedural deficiencies

lol, we independently pulled the same quote

WASHINGTON — About 90 minutes after President Trump held a controversial telephone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in July, the White House budget office ordered the Pentagon to suspend all military aid that Congress had allocated to Ukraine, according to emails released by the Pentagon late Friday.

A budget official, Michael Duffey, also told the Pentagon to keep quiet about the aid freeze because of the “sensitive nature of the request,” according to a message dated July 25.

wow, what an enormous coincidence! OH WELL, gotta hold out for solid proof of wrongdoing!!!

oh great there's a new wave of liberal McCain love in my FB feed today

not even death can kill it

unfollowing is the only way

what did McCain do now?

he reached across the aisle to work out a bipartisan compromise with heaven

get it? because he's in hell. that's where he went after he died because he was bad.

haven't checked Morbs' FB feed but he prominently features (over swelling "important stuff" music?) at the end of The Report.

I think it's just that he posthumously supports impeachment

“I never understood wind. I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right?”

“So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air.”

“A windmill will kill many bald eagles. After a certain number, they make you turn the windmill off, that is true. By the way, they make you turn it off. And yet, if you killed one, they put you in jail. That is OK. But why is it OK for windmills to destroy the bird population?”

https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-attacks-windmills-in-speech-to-conservative-group-i-never-understood-wind/

I see this was posted in the general Trump thread

I assume he started calling Melania “Dulcinea” after this?

Pretty coherent speech for a Turning Point event.

I tangented at the Mediaite link to laughing at the Vogue editors' humble brag, product placement Xmas destinations and the Twitter responses to same. Well done, thread.

"You know we have a world, right?" for January thread title

On Instagram, we learn President Trump welcomed Eddie Gallagher, who posed for photographs with a prisoner's corpse, to Mar-a-Lago last night. pic.twitter.com/AVFVmQJ8VL

— David Gura (@davidgura) December 22, 2019

this is the dude whose own unit had to tamper with his scope because he loved shooting civilians so much

The best people

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/a-conversation-with-rudy-giuliani-over-bloody-marys.html?fbclid=IwAR2vfBZg84xlJQzc8Oa7YwEe2TK2AuuKR2ZQJssqTuahRAx9goj3aaIBuL8

seriously, this is a darkly hilarious piece that seems like it couldn't possibly be true

The whole thing is a pull quote

The brain worms are contagious.

fbclid=IwAR2vfBZg84xlJQzc8Oa7YwEe2TK2AuuKR2ZQJssqTuahRAx9goj3aaIBuL8

^^January Title

Guiliani piece is wild and great. Where are these anarchist District Attorneys supposedly installed?

we meet in my basement on thursday evenings, revolution tentatively scheduled for third week of feb 2020

I could see how a conservative idiot would consider it anarchy that Chesa Boudin doesn't want to jail the homeless for their lack of bathroom access.

I just got off the phone with Rudy Giuliani, who decided to call me to yell at me after he read “five paragraphs” of my story. He told me, “it’s useless to talk to you. You’re a lost cause.” He then talked to me for another six minutes and said he’d go read the rest of the story. https://t.co/Kbyh5HFuaJ

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) December 23, 2019

hahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

There's a sick part of me that wants to ask around for his number, just to see what I could get him to admit via a couple coyly worded texts. But that just doesn't seem fair

do it and be a legend

he reached across the aisle to work out a bipartisan compromise with heaven

― peloton for the painfully alone (m bison)

solid irl LOL, thanking u sir

re: the latest dumb trump thing he said about there being wind turbines and how he has studied them very much and there being a world and fumes, I found myself surprised that he didn’t bring up birds, which is usually the central point of bird lovers who are against renewable energy. Turns out that he did cover this important issue:

“A windmill will kill many bald eagles,” Trump said. “After a certain number, they make you turn the windmill off, that is true. By the way, they make you turn it off. And yet, if you killed one, they put you in jail. That is OK. But why is it OK for windmills to destroy the bird population?”

looking forward to him advocating tearing down buildings, which kill more birds than wind turbines.

more likely: a long screed complaining about nyc's proposed requirements for bird-dissuading glass on new buildings

buildings are fine, because they are held up by walls

And cats kill more birds than windows and windmills combined! Announcing the War On Cats!

brb, i gotta go turn the windmill off

careful, you will stop the wind if you do that

Getting images of windmills stalking and hunting bald eagles until their power cable gets yanked out of the socket.
Do wonder if t sees the same world as the people he supposedly governs.

On the other hand nice to see Zaucer of Zilk returning to 2000Ad wonder if that's more what the Pres sees things like. Though maybe too much colour involved.

Just every now and then I stop and take in just how numbingly fucking stupid the guy is. One of those blowhard dickheads who blunders into a conversation and monologues to himself while everyone waits for him to leave.

nyt jumps in with a timely article:

A Trump Policy ‘Clarification’ All but Ends Punishment for Bird Deaths

WASHINGTON — As the state of Virginia prepared for a major bridge and tunnel expansion in the tidewaters of the Chesapeake Bay last year, engineers understood that the nesting grounds of 25,000 gulls, black skimmers, royal terns and other seabirds were about to be plowed under.

To compensate, they considered developing an artificial island as a safe haven. Then in June 2018, the Trump administration stepped in. While the federal government “appreciates” the state’s efforts, new rules in Washington had eliminated criminal penalties for “incidental” migratory bird deaths that came in the course of normal business, administration officials advised. Such conservation measures were now “purely voluntary.”

The state ended its island planning.

The island is one of dozens of bird-preservation efforts that have fallen away in the wake of the policy change in 2017 that was billed merely as a technical clarification to a century-old law protecting migratory birds. Across the country birds have been killed and nests destroyed by oil spills, construction crews and chemical contamination, all with no response from the federal government, according to emails, memos and other documents viewed by The New York Times. Not only has the administration stopped investigating most bird deaths, the documents show, it has discouraged local governments and businesses from taking precautionary measures to protect birds.

In one instance, a Wyoming-based oil company wanted to clarify that it no longer had to report bird deaths to the Fish and Wildlife Service. “You are correct,” the agency replied.

whoops, messed up the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/24/climate/trump-bird-deaths.html

if everyone can please keep their posts on this thread limited to the topic of birds for the rest of the year, i'd appreciate it

and not the big bottom, newsie wewsie type

this administration, it's for the birds. and by that i mean, viciously against the birds.

frankly surprised this hasn't been media-blasted as a major triumph. old white guys with opinions hate the protection of birds passionately, as a symbol of the bleeding-heart, business-crushing red tape that so afflicted american during the era when it ceased to be great. trump should open his rallies by strangling some obscure, endangered species of owl with his bare hands, they'd eat it up.

Ah, the old Ozzie Osborne Gambit!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7_OWYrLVOU

not too late for the DNC to take "For the Birds" as a slogan

naw bernie owns birds, they'd never touch it

Democrats the party of pajaros anyway

Who really killed Caroll Spinney