The memo, which was summarized to POLITICO by a senior administration official, was sent from McMaster to Secretary of Defense James Mattis. It says that Trump wants Mattis to brief him on “concepts of operation for this event.”
Incidentally, this came on February 23rd, which in Russia is observed as the Defender of the Fatherland Day, sort of a Valentine's day for everyone who served in the armed forces, which means most male citizens.
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
I cannot believe they are going to go through with this farce and waste of money. We, as a country, are involved in 4 different conflicts and have troops all over the world, we do not have large groups of troops twiddling their thumbs on hand to 'parade'. Our weaponry (tanks, missiles) are not made for show. The military will have to bring troops home from all over the world.. for a parade. This is why parades often occur after a victory. Please spend this money on military personnel and veterans and their families. Please.
Ugh.
Wow. Whenever I think Trump's government has reached a new low, they just keep on digging! And as the friend that posted this reminded everyone, this is a government that thinks a fertilized egg has the same rights as an adult or child, yet they are denying basic rights to refugees and asylum seekers.
IMMIGRATION
Right-Wing Supreme Court Majority Decrees Refugee Asylum Seekers Can Be Jailed Indefinitely Without Bail Hearing
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
FYI: There's a lot of highly inaccurate news coverage about today's SCOTUS ruling in Jennings v. Rodriguez. The case is about whether ICE may detain immigrants indefinitely and without bond, which is their current practice. The court did not rule (contrary to what some incautious media have written) that ICE may do so; it's a much more specific ruling that a particular argument the 9th Circuit used to resolve this quickly in Rodriguez's (the prisoner's) favor is complete nonsense, and that the 9C should deal with the core Constitutional issue directly and send it up to them for that if they need to.
So ICE's practice of indefinite detention continues, but it hasn't just gotten a SCOTUS imprimatur.
Full text of the decision linked, for those who enjoy such things.
What Zunger seems to be missing is that the SCOTUS conservative majority explicitly refused to address the constitutional issue and instead left the practice in place. It is not unusual for some of the more fiery justices like Ginsberg on the left and the late Scalia on the right to read their dissents from the bench, but it is almost unheard of for the more mild Steven Breyer to do so, but he chose to read out his dissent (all 30+ pages!) in this case because he felt the majority refusal to address the constitutional question was so outrageous, and I fully agree. As Breyer states in his conclusion:
We need only recall the words of the Declaration of Independence, in particular its insistence that all men and women have “certain unalienable Rights,” and that among them is the right to “Liberty.” We need merely remember that the Constitution’s Due Process Clause protects each person’s liberty from arbitrary deprivation. And we need just keep in mind the fact that, since Blackstone’s time and long before, liberty has included the right of a confined person to seek release on bail. It is neither technical nor unusually difficult to read the words of these statutes as consistent with this basic right. I would find it far more difficult, indeed, I would find it alarming, to believe that Congress wrote these statutory words in order to put thousands of individuals at risk of lengthy confinement all within the United States but all without hope of bail. I would read the statutory words as consistent with, indeed as requiring protection of, the basic right to seek bail.
Because the majority does not do so, with respect, I dissent.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
For now I would say that it should stay here, although I agree that the timing is pretty suspicious.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
Hope Hicks is/was in an abusive relationship with the Trump family. It was her job to sugarcoat bad news and deliver it with a soft shoe, cooing and pacifying all the while. Making things nice so the dictator wouldn't blow. A nanny to an overgrown tangerine toddler. A pawn who will be tossed to wolves if it suits their purpose.
Does the president want to get rid of his attorney general? Sarah Sanders says, "Not that I know of."
In Sanderese, that means yes.
Sessions issued a counterpunch and got himself a bit of insurance.. or issued a not-so-subtle threat. I suppose it depends on how you look at it. Show of Solidarity
Last edited by Sunsilver on Sat Mar 03, 2018 8:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
This ST meme sums up my feelings most mornings on reading the news from south of the border:
Attachments
Damage report.jpg (35.8 KiB) Viewed 6714 times
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
It is frustrating and worrying, to say the least. To know that the President is up at 4:30 in the morning obsessing about Alec Baldwin's portrayal of him on Saturday Night Live and what actor should replace him instead of concerning himself with the threat Putin issued earlier in the day is unnerving. I agree with NYTimes writer Michelle Goldberg, "..showrunners for this season of America have jumped the shark."
When he was first elected, I was a little frustrated, because I can figure out what a standard Republican or Democrat might do (wrong) but he was outside the mold. I had no grounds on which to anticipate his actions.
It is still true that he doesn't act like a Republican, and he doesn't act like a Democrat. But it finally clicked when I remembered that he used to be a Democrat.
He acts the way a Democrat thinks a Republican acts. That's why he does all the things he does, he thinks that is the way he is supposed to act since he is now a Republican. Every stereotype about Republicans that Democrats have, he's trying to live up to them.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
