This time, it’s Ryan Zinke, the Trump-crook who insisted that minions ascend to the top of the Interior Department when he graced that building with his presence and fly his personal standard, as if he were Queen Elizabeth II without the class, hereditary title and corgi herd. Via The Post:
Ryan Zinke to resign as interior secretary, Trump says; Zinke had faced allegations of misconduct involving a land development deal
The president said in a tweet Saturday that Zinke would leave the administration at the end of the year.
Zinke’s personal conduct and management decisions have spurred at least 15 investigations, several of which have been closed.
The most serious one, which the Interior Department’s acting inspector general referred to the Justice Department, focuses on whether the secretary used his office for personal gain in connection with a land deal he forged in Whitefish, Mont., with Halliburton Chairman David Lesar and other investors.
How many Trump-crooks have been bounced from this administration so far? I’m sure the exit of sleazy flunkies would be a bigger scandal if Trump himself weren’t an astoundingly corrupt and incompetent asset of a hostile foreign power.
OzarkHillbilly
The movie will be titled “The Deep State Strikes Back”.
Jerzy Russian
Christ what an asshole! Any chance of him being sent up the river to the big house?
schrodingers_cat
Betsy Devos will be the next.
Platonailedit
Dems must investigate every one of these crooked corrupt thugs even if they have left or are fired. Drown the mofos in hearings for the next 2 years.
dmsilev
Off-hand, I think about half of the Cabinet/upper level posts has turned over. Remember Rex Tillerson? It seems so long ago.
Corner Stone
Offhand, I can’t think of a single person who has left the admin that’s not been mired in scandal or will not be shortly.
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat:
Pray that the great orecchiettes of our beloved FSM hear this plaintive dialogue.
Platonailedit
Not a good day for putin’s god botherers either.
Elizabelle
Thank Dog.
I would like to see a lot of these crooks be prosecuted for misdealings in office and get prison terms.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: I read somewhere that Ds are going to open 4 investigations, that would involve her.
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: I think Tillerson, of all of them, had relatively clean hands. Sure, he was incompetent, but I don’t think he was crooked – he had enough money already.
cmorenc
Hopefully, Zinke / Trump Interior Dept won’t have been able to permanently trash the lands within the original boundaries of Bear Ears and Escalante National Monuments with prolific active oil & gas leases before both are forced from office for endless corruption.
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
May your words reach the FSM’s orecchiettes.
Gin & Tonic
@Platonailedit: To split hairs, it’s not a “new” national church. There already exist two independent Ukrainian Orthodox churches. What this does is to take the remainder (actually the majority) away from the Moscow Patriarchate.
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
That’s no big surprise. It’s hard to find many people who are still in the administration who aren’t involved in one scandal or another, so being involved in one after is just keeping up with the trend.
PsiFighter37
Good. More time McConnell has to waste on confirmation hearings and less on more damaging stuff (namely packing the courts). Schumer had better have a plan to slow-walk every single thing that comes out of the Senate the next couple of years.
geg6
@Gin & Tonic:
Which is why Drumpf bounced him.
WereBear
Apparently this is how you drain the swamp. First you hire them so the scandal will be higher profile and something actually gets done!
And he’s bringing down the entire Republican party!
Well done, sir.
Platonailedit
The whole buffet of corruption deeds to choose from.
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t have any proof to back it up, but I highly suspect Sexy Rexy only took the job on the premise that sanctions would be lifted, a drilling deal with RU would be reached, and he would somehow profit immensely. Since it didn’t happen during his tenure he may never be looked into for it but I still contend he was dirty.
rikyrah
@Platonailedit:
Amen….investigate ALL of them??
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: Wilbur Ross will hold that honor, but I hope she soon follows.
rikyrah
@Corner Stone:
He was always just the Secretary of Exxon.
Holding on until he got his tax cut.
But, yeah, he was supposed to get rid of the sanctions….that much is quite obvious??
rikyrah
I miss the Maddow Board of Departures.
I hope that she brings it back.
Ajabu
As someone whose spouse has spent her entire career in education, I want Betsy DeVos to go down more than anybody!
As a matter of fact, I’d be delighted if somebody could open up an investigation into the long running pyramid scheme called “AMWAY”.
GregB
I think we may have witnessed peak Putin/Trump. It seems the grift scam they ran is coming unwound.
Julian Assange is their collective Portrait of Dorian Gray. Terminal decline has commenced.
It is also why I fear there will be some dramatic effort to reset the game in their favor.
clay
@Gin & Tonic: I think Rick Perry, of all people, is cleanest. Sure he’s massively incompetent and has no business running a bake sale, much less our nuclear weaponry, but he doesn’t seem like a grifter.
(And admit it… most of y’all forgot he was there!)
SFAW
Far too few.
Plus, what @Corner Stone: said.
A question for the class: How many Shitgibbon appointees are corrupt, incompetent, evil, or some combination of all three?
debbie
I hope this doesn’t mean there won’t be investigations on Zinke’s abuses of power?
MomSense
@GregB:
It’s not an unfounded worry. The more desperate these despots get, the more likely it is they will do something desperate. These are perilous times.
Corner Stone
Thank goodness. Looks like AMJoy is going to directly look at whether a sitting president can be indicted. The segment may not end with a clear cut answer but at least someone is asking about it instead of just blithely repeating as fact that he can not be.
NeenerNeener
@SFAW: All of them, Katie.
tobie
@PsiFighter37:
Such a good idea!
Re Zinke: Wasn’t a company from Whitefish given the contract to restore the electric grid in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria? IIRC there was no competitive bidding, and the fees the company charged were lavish and outrageous and nothing got done. Just your average Republican business.
schrodingers_cat
Rs demand more from asylum seekers at the border than their own officeholders including the President.
MomSense
@Corner Stone:
That fucking OLC MEMO should not override the motherfucking US constitution. If it does, there are no laws in this country.
Another Scott
FTFNYT has a running list of minions who have left.
So much “winning!!11ONE”.
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
@Ajabu: The next time one of your friends tries to lure you to a purchasing party send them a link to The Dream, a podcast on Stitcher that I listened to last week — all 11 episodes — on multilevel marketing companies. Amway was challenged but beat the rap and now there are dozens of companies just like it. The most unbelievable story comes from the episode with listener feedback, where a man conveys how he sought advice from his father in law about saving his marriage and the guy berated him for being a lousy provider and told him his only hope of marital happiness was joining FIL’s Amway team. Yeah, no longer married.
Ken
@Platonailedit: There’s certainly ample precedent for House committees investigating former cabinet secretaries and calling them for lengthy questioning.
Dorothy A. Winsor
All of these crooks could have gone on grifting in the private sector with no one paying attention because it’s white collar crime. But no, that wasn’t enough for them. The greed that drives them to grift in the first place means they always want more.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
All of them, Katie.
Another Scott
@clay: Maybe not a grifter, but Perry is horrible as well. He just doesn’t get much press in comparison. GovExec from June:
None of Trump’s administration – nor his appointees – is normal. We can’t forget that. They’re doing real damage even if they’re not in the news.
Cheers,
Scott.
danielx
Wonder who will replace him? I hear Cliven Bundy is available…
meander
Since the beginning of this monstrous administration, Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has been keeping track of the departures. I forget what he called it — perhaps the “Dead List”. Perhaps he’ll update it over the weekend or on Monday. It’s quite long.
Sec. of Transportation Elaine Chao has had a relatively quiet tenure. She has a long government resume and seems competent. However, her husband is Sen. McConnell, and her family owns a huge shipping company based in Asia (Foremost Maritime Corporation), and that mostly explains how a Senator from Kentucky has such huge net worth. DOT has some jurisdiction over shipping and McConnell has oversight over all legislation leaving the Congress, so has any self-dealing been going on?
As for the point above that Tillerson was too rich to grift, I don’t think that net worth is a good definer of whether someone will grift / steal / be corrupt. The issue I see with many of them is that they think that rules are only for little people. Conflict of interests are only for little people. This principle, that some rich people think that rules don’t apply to them says a lot about the Trump family’s operations, IMHO.
lee
So all these that have resigned can still be prosecuted, correct?
I know in the past, it typically doesn’t happen. But…this is far from typical.
Those IG’s that resigned early in this administration were begin very short-sighted. They should have stayed on to gather as much evidence as possible.
Mandalay
@Corner Stone:
Maybe Tillerson and McMaster?
I was going to add Spicer and Priebus, but I think they might be in real trouble once the House Dems start digging.
Corner Stone
@MomSense: I agree completely. I am sick to death of seeing TV pundit after pundit start every discussion on this with, “Well, we know that a sitting president can not be indicted…”
Bullshit. If video tapes emerged of him strangling an intern to death, but R’s refused to bring impeachment proceedings then we just wouldn’t do shit about it? I guess we could send NYT reporters to a few diners to see if Trump’s supporters believe he should be indicted.
Platonailedit
@danielx:
Didn’t bundy recently flip the bird against the totus thug?
Platonailedit
@Ken:
Yup, benghazi the mofos out of their miserable lifes.
Barbara
@lee: Lots of executive officials have been prosecuted, typically after leaving office – Scooter Libby, Casper Weinberger (basically took the fall for GHWB in Iran Contra and was pardoned by him). Also, Henry Cisneros and Webb Hubbell. That is just me sitting here thinking, so I am sure there are others. It is not at all unusual.
Aleta
Make sure he doesn’t steal the horse he rode in on.
(Belongs to the NPS.)
Crook.
Thief.
Home wrecker.
danielx
@Platonailedit:
That was Ammon Bundy, of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge fame. Cliven is the daddy, also famous as a deadbeat cattle rancher who refused to pay grazing fees for raising cattle on federal land.
Corner Stone
@Mandalay: McMaster would probably be my safest bet of the bunch. He seems to have disappeared so maybe he’s keeping a low profile for some reason we’re not aware of as yet. But maybe he’s just relieved to be sleeping every night.
The Dangerman
Dear Ryan Zinke,
Grab a rake, motherfucker. Then DIAF.
Warm Regards,
California
MomSense
@Corner Stone:
Also too the whole premise that it would be too disruptive and prevent the executive from conducting important affairs of state is absolute bullshit with this president. They can call binge watching fox while shoving his face full of cheeseburgers and then rage tweeting from the toilet executive time – but we all know the truth.
Bill Arnold
@tobie:
There were two things in Whitefish (besides Zinke):
The Puerto Rico contract: Here’s What’s In That $300 Million Whitefish Contract
Moves to create a private US inteligence agency (Amyntor Group):
The Trump Administration Is Mulling A Pitch For A Private “Rendition” And Spy Network
Platonailedit
@danielx:
Gotcha. Is daddy still a dickhead? The son seems to have seen the light.
Immanentize
I wonder if Zinke’s weird outburst about Grivalia was the nail in the coffin? Or just a symptom that the nails had already been hammered in place.
MomSense
@Corner Stone:
And one more thing about Fucking TV pundits. They don’t know what the fuck they are talking about. They just repeat what they have heard other pundits in their pundit circles say. They are gossips. Nothing more.
Mandalay
@Corner Stone:
Heh. A pundit on CNN yesterday said “Well, we know that the Democrats’ base is itching to indict the president…“, and as I recall her first three words really were “Well, we know…“.
Gelfling 545
@clay: True. I did forget. He keeps a low profile. I’d worry if I thought he was smart enough to do his dirty deeds without drawing attention to himself but I’m pretty sure all he is trying to conceal is incompetence.
noncarborundum
@danielx: Apparently Daddy is also on board [ETA with Ammon’s criticism of Trump’s immigration policy]: The Guardian
MomSense
BTW I think we need a thread about how our personal autocorrect function has changed during the trump crisis. My phone capitalizes Fucking now.
Platonailedit
Any news on Ben Carson, the useful idiot? Wasn’t he also in the middle of some scandal?
Gelfling 545
@PsiFighter37: Well, bearing in mind that Democrats do not control that chamber. Sometimes it will be possible; sometimes not so much.
opiejeanne
@tobie: Yes, Whitefish, Montana. For a place with only 6700 people the name seems to appear often in relation to bad things/people. Don’t forget Richard Spencer, the Nazi who lived there and at whose behest the town’s Jewish citizens were harassed and threatened.
Mandalay
The Orange County Register wins headline of the day:
Quinerly
@rikyrah: “Gonna need a bigger board.”
Aleta
There’ll be paintings, lamp shades and fountain pens missing when they have all been ridden out of town. We’ll be lucky if the drapes and copper pipes are left. But lock them up for what counts, the crimes against humanity at the border.
Kelly
I got a letter from Rep Kurt Schrader’s office regarding his opposition to Pelosi. I called twice to vehemently object to his project. He’s still against her and the leadership team. It begins with we elected a bunch of younger people, leadership is old and closes with he will work across the aisle. As if there’s been anyone across the aisle that
will work with him on anything significant since he was first elected in 2008.
Pretty much the opposite of what I told the folks at his office. At least if he’s sending out letters he must have got a bit of constituent pushback.
Another Scott
Speaking (earlier) about Sinclair… MikeElk:
It’s all inter-connected. Companies with too much power over the media have too much power over our essential rights and health and economic security.
No right, norm, or privilege is safe. We have to fight them every single day.
(via LOLGOP)
Cheers,
Scott.
sdhays
@Another Scott: They thing you have to remember about Perry is that he “famously” proposed eliminating the Department of Energy, only to discover what it actually does after being appointed its Secretary. Also, he wanted to be the Secretary of Energy because he thought that’s where he could control the oil. Seriously. I expect that he’ll be lobbying to make a lateral move to Interior now, if he can find the phone and figure out how to dial the White House.
If he’s not grifting, it’s not because he’s clean, it’s because he can’t find his way out of a paper bag, and he didn’t know that thing his staff suggested he put on his head is a paper bag.
tobie
@Bill Arnold: @opiejeanne: Thanks for the links and the information. I wasn’t aware that the private army/rendition force idea came from a company headquartered in Whitefish. So what is it about this town? Is it sitting on uranimum reserves? There must be some reason why Halliburton wants a land deal. Or is it just that this all-white town is every neonazi’s and especially Richard Spencer’s wet dream?
Immanentize
@Corner Stone: @MomSense: @Mandalay:
Can we also ban pundits on TV and radio from using the word, “Look.”. It drives me crazy. Little preachy shits. Scolds. I think Cokey started it — now everyone does it.
Look, they are all Gossips and Scolds.
swiffox
Being an NPS workerbee, I would not be surprised if the current NPS director gets a call to be pushed up to head DOI. He’s the one who placated Dan Snyder when Snyder cut down trees on NPS land to have a nice view of the Potomac. Since the position usually goes to a westerner, look for some western state governor or senator who just got voted out and would like a nice office door.
Spanky
@Mandalay: The article in yesterday’s WaPo about Priebus joining the Navy had a peculiar smell about it. I doubt very much that he’s clean.
opiejeanne
@Immanentize: I think you mean Congressman Grijalva. Grivalia is a Greek bank/investment company being acquired by EuroBank.
tobie
@Mandalay: TPM had an article on Papadopoulos’ congressional ambitions yesterday. This follows on the heels of the Post article that George and Simona are currently being filmed for a reality show about their lives after the Mueller investigation.
sdhays
@opiejeanne: Richard Spencer is from Whitefish?? Wow. Maybe it really is a hellmouth…
opiejeanne
@Aleta: Has The Resident defaced Hillary’s portrait yet? I wouldn’t put it past him to do something like that before this is over.
sdhays
@Spanky: Priebus was Chair of the RNC while Russia was infiltrating every level, and THEN became President Treason’s CoS. He’s definitely guilty.
Spanky
@sdhays: Well, now he’s wrapping himself in the flag. Almost literally.
Another Scott
@Immanentize: Oooh! That’s what we need – a “verbal tick” thread!!
One of my favorites is “the point is is that”
And what’s caused things like “impor-ant” to be so common is spoken language these days?!??
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
Only ten grifting days until Christmas. Zinke beating the last minute rush.
opiejeanne
@sdhays: Whitefish is a tiny resort town at the edge of Glacier National Park. I can’t understand why it’s the center of so many scandals and so much evil.
Corner Stone
@Aleta:
It’ll be like the Richard Pryor movie “Moving” where he accepts a promotion to Idaho. Among all the craziness that happens, the house he buys to move into is gutted by the previous owner. He rips out like 90% of the interior features and claims it was all in the contract they signed.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
Look, they are all gossips and scolds should be a rotating tag line. I keep thinking back to Chuck Todd before the 2016 election talking about how both sides had gotten so [insert scolding word of the day] and I want to scream. What the pundits fail to acknowledge is that the extent of the corruption we are witnessing now is proof of their failure to vet trump before the election. So much of what they breathlessly report now could have been reported before the election or even before the primaries with open source intelligence.
Immanentize
@opiejeanne: yes, of course I did. Or I meant the coffee delivery company….
meander
Here’s a list on Twitter of gone and remaining Cabinet-level picks from @StevenTDennis.
10 of the original picks are gone or will be gone by the end of the year. 11 remain.
opiejeanne
@Another Scott: Yes! Swallowing the “t” has become A Thing. I have no problem with some Brits doing it because it’s part of their dialect, but why do I hear young women in the US doing it? It’s got to be an affectation for them, they didn’t grow up hearing that as part of the language of people around them but why is it only women in the US?
Aleta
opiejeanne
@Immanentize: There’s a coffee delivery company? I don’t drink coffee, never learned to drink it, so I’m only vaguely aware of coffee companies.
Curtis Adams
@Mandalay:
As a democrat, I’m horrified that such a person has a good chance of getting a major party nomination for Congress. As a Democrat, I’d be delighted to have such a punching bag for opposition.
Corner Stone
In other news about the greatest deals from the best negotiator:
Bloomberg link
$1 Billion a Month: The Cost of Trump’s Tariffs on Technology
“U.S. companies paid $1 billion more in tariffs on technology products imported from China in October than a year earlier, as new duties imposed by the Trump administration took effect.”
Amir Khalid
@Another Scott:
I think you mean a verbal tic thread.
opiejeanne
@Curtis Adams: He thinks Orange County is a safe place for a Republican to run, and what? He’s mistaken infamy for fame, I think. .
NotMax
@Another Scott
Perhaps it is just the rarefied (hah!) circles in which I move, but use of the ear-grating verbal fry seems to have waned.
MomSense
Oh dear god, they are writing numbers on the arms of children in sharpie at the child prisons on the border.
Curtis Adams
@opiejeanne:
“T” to glottal stop is an ongoing shift in many dialects of English. I’ve been hearing glottalized “T”s in the South since I was a little kid.
Immanentize
@opiejeanne: Yes, Gevalia. It is terrible dry bean coffee.
Joey Maloney
Anyone else seeing the blog layout completey gefuxxored?
Javascript isn’t loading, all the sidebar stuff is instead below the end of the comments, and post numbers are weirdly doubled (once in a normal font then slightly offset in bold, blue italics).
Apologies if I’m the fiftieth person to mention this.
Curtis Adams
@Amir Khalid:
Right, a verbal “tick”, i.e. verbal bloodsucker, would refer to a Republican official. Oh wait, that’s on topic! Never mind, carry on.
Another Scott
@Curtis Adams: Hehe.
“Thank you for your service!!11”
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
@Joey Maloney: I just installed a Java update today. All is looking OK for me.
Bill Arnold
@tobie:
No clue. Aleta linked another one above, too. So that’s 5 counting Zinke and Spencer.
Is there any hope for a direct DJTrump connection to Whitefish, so we can start doing Whitefish to Whitewater analogies? Perhaps the moves seeking a private intelligence agency contractually and ideologically loyal to D.J. Trump would be a start.
Adam Silverman, we need pushpins and specially colored yarn for Whitefish. :-)
Ella in New Mexico
@Another Scott:
Which is why every time a notorious Cabinet Secretary like Zinke or Pruitt is forced out, we need to remember that they are the just famous faces of policy change that’s being driven by outside monied interests, and implemented by a cadre of toady 20-something underlings, all ready and willing to keep the lights on regardless of who’s at the top of the helm.
We’ll never be safe until those people are out of power and laws are change to keep them out of power.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Maybe Nikki Haley, although her sudden departure right around the time of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder is a bit curious.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: IMO, Haley is going to get sucked into inquiries about what our official communications were with MBS and Saudi et al re: Kashoggi. I think Jared gave them the green light and Haley knew it.
tobie
@MomSense: I gasped when I heard this. I’m the daughter of Holocaust survivors and probably the only reason I’m here is that in 1948 the US passed a law allowing children who survived the Holocaust to come to the US as refugees. The internment camps, the numbers on the arms, the closing of the border and asylum application posts, the abuse of the stateless–all this recalls the 1930s. I need to figure out what I can do.
Bill Arnold
@Steeplejack:
At least she had the courtesy to not get caught.
I still give her 20-40 percent odds of having been involved in the NYTimes anonymous OpEd episode. Along with Pence and Ayers. :-)
(Are there better theories (is there any evidence) on that yet?)
[0] Daily Mail, just for fun. UN ambassador Nikki Haley ‘is as ambitious as Lucifer’ and ‘much smarter than Trump’ say rival aides who fear she is becoming his heir apparent (5 January 2018)
MomSense
@tobie:
I know. My stepdad lost his whole family. If he had been in Hungary with them, he would have been killed, too.
I don’t know what to do, either. I want them all tried at The Hague. I want everyone who is part of this, including the workers, to be hunted down like the war criminals they are.
Elizabelle
@opiejeanne: Wealth resides there, along with evil.
Let’s keep up a Whitefish Watch. Might be this century’s Teapot Dome.
scav
I just want it tattoed on their foreheads and permanent records that all this churn is their conception of not only American Greatness (Trademarked!) but also the sheer unique native genius of American Business Prowess! (also Trademarked!).
Mandalay
@opiejeanne:
I was listening to Sullivan the other day. He speaks with a bizarre affected accent, but said “par-ly” instead of “partly” at 1:13) in an interview with Chuck Todd.
But then again, he also said “majoridy” instead of “majority”, and “fordy” instead of “forty”. Perhaps Sullivan thinks “par-ly” makes him sound American, but the irony is that in Britain it’s only the lower class who drop the ‘t’. Upper class twats are actually far more likely to stress it, as in a stacatto “par-T-ly”.
Another Scott
@NotMax: RawStory seems to like headlines with “destroys” and “obliterates” and “explodes” and so forth, but they (fortunately) seem to be toning that over-the-top clickbait stuff down a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@debbie:
Same here. Pruitt seems* to have skated away from his ghoulish kleptocracy stint with no consequences. Zinke is every bit as much a crook and his damage just as real.
*Unless there’s something we don’t know about.
sukabi
Does Zinke know he submitted his ‘resignation letter’? It would be out of character for drumpf to not do the ‘surprise! twitter termination’
kindness
I read that Zinke wasn’t stepping down till the end of the year. He can still do an enormous amount of damage in that time.
Another Scott
@Elizabelle: I keep hearing Pee Wee Charles and Terry Clements’ “the haunting guitar and steel riffs” with every mention of “Whitefish” in this thread.
Cheers,
Scott.
eclare
@Corner Stone: I agree with you, Jared approved it
tobie
@MomSense: Here’s a link to HIAS’s ‘take action’ page. It may be a drop in the bucket, but it’s at least one place to start protesting the administration’s abhorrent treatment of immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees.
trollhattan
@kindness:
Yup.
Close to home he’s trying to fast-track raising Shasta Dam and Lake–the state’s largest reservoir at the behest of Westlands Water District, the crookedest crop of Republican “farmers” you’ll encounter anywhere.
Elizabelle
@Spanky: I know. Was wondering “what, he prefers a brig?”
Bill Arnold
@tobie:
These articles seem to be saying that it’s being done on the Mexican side, by “Grupos Beta, the humanitarian branch of Mexico’s federal immigration agency, whose mission is to offer assistance and protection to migrants.”
ID system for asylum seekers in Mexico recalls Holocaust tattoos (December 3, 2018)
Take a number: Migrants, blocked at the border, wait their turn to apply for asylum (November 30, 2018)
Not sure what to make of it other than to note it. Maybe the people involved simply have no clue about numbers on arms are/symbolism.
germy
Associated Press:
Corner Stone
@trollhattan: I get that it will benefit somebody crooked, but who would the action damage/hurt if it went through? Is it basically a water steal from people downstream?
tobie
@Bill Arnold: I only learned about this group and the ID numbers on Joy Reid’s show this morning. What she said is that “Grupos Beta” made a deal with Homeland Security to keep/detain asylum seekers are they’re waiting to apply. (Only 60 applications are processed a day, which is a pittance.) Is the group doing the best it can in an impossible situation, or was this yet another compromise the Pena Nieto administration struck with the Trump admin? I dunno.
susanna
@tobie: Believe it was a company of 3 people, who were madly reading what to do once all the lightbulbs were screwed in. Zinke was blatantly incompetent and crooked.
MomSense
@opiejeanne:
Turning ing into nna is my pet peeve. I’m gonna go to the store.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
My phone had to relearn to check my spelling of all the better (swear) words after I got a new provider and we had to reset the thing back to the stone age to get it to function. Works better than ever now though. Only took 3 guys at the store several hours and me spending the better part of 2 days.
PJ
@Curtis Adams: “Ma’ha’an” is common enough in New York.
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
The raised lake would inundate many pristine miles of tributary rivers and their important habitat. Probably some native sites too. Increased deliveries (down the Sacramento River to the Delta) means increased pumping and even more damage to the threatened Delta and its endangered species.
The crazy quilt of water rights and overlapping state and federal water projects is so vastly complicated no one person probably understands it all. Besides Jerry anyway. I’m not convinced the feds can do this all on their own, but we shall see.
I expect Secretary Nugent will keep the project going.
Ruckus
@sdhays:
OK that made me laugh.
The way you wrote it, not the subject matter. Nice.
Michael Cain
The graft doesn’t concern me nearly so much as the policy decisions. Pruitt’s grifting got him tossed from the EPA eventually, but his replacement (Wheeler) is every bit as bad on policy and a whole lot more knowledgeable about moving rules through the process. I expect the same will be true of Zinke’s replacement.
germy
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
Maybe pronouncing the “t” is seen as a Daffy Duck kind of thing. Not wanting to look like Daffy Duck they are now overcompensating.
Or, I have no idea.
Nettoyeur
@clay: Rick is smart enough to leave the nukular stuff to us engineers and scientists. Note also that TX Gov, he presided over biggest build up of alternate energy in US.
FelonyGovt
Decision to deport Vietnamese refugees not going over very well with what’s left of the CA Republican Party.
MomSense
@Ruckus:
I kept trying to text my niece about toys and it kept turning the word to trump. It took me forever to ask what her son would like for Christmas.
Corner Stone
@FelonyGovt:
Well, this at least lets me know I had correctly remembered historical voting patterns for the Vietnamese American group. Maybe this stupidity will Prop 187 them to the D’s.
Elizabelle
@sdhays:
Hellmouth is my new favorite word for the day. Thank you.
dmsilev
Cue the submicroscopic violin:
Mandalay
@sukabi:
He knows because someone on Kelly’s staff probably gave Zinke the letter, and told him to sign it:
I like to think the letter Zinke was asked to sign was actually a blank piece of paper, so that Trump could add whatever he wanted on it.
sukabi
@Mandalay: and there it is.
Corner Stone
@dmsilev:
Damn. Would never have guessed he’d slam the entire GOP on his way out the door.
waratah
@Nettoyeur: that buildup I think was with the money O’Bama gave to the states when the economy crashed. We saw windmills spreading in West Texas.
cmorenc
The reason a sitting president cannot be indicted is entirely practical:
1) The official US Justice Dept position issued 40 years ago is that a sitting US President cannot be federally indicted.
2) Changing this longstanding position is up to the US Justice Department, headed by a Trump-appointed (or at least nominated “sitting AG”). What are the chances of that?
3) Mueller’s position is that he is bound by the longstanding US Justice Department position. And so are US attorneys offices out in the districts.
So, assuming for argument that it is constitutional to federally indict a sitting US President, there are forbidding practical reasons against that happening before, say 2020 (when hopefully the issue will become moot because Trump will have been voted out of office). Or more particularly, in January 2021 when the new (democratic) President takes office, and Trump tries to slink away aboard his last ride on AF1 to either New York or Mar-a-Lago, Florida – I’m betting the latter.
Corner Stone
@cmorenc: As we saw with James Fucking Comey, a guideline is just that – a guideline. It does not have the weight of law. If Trump shot someone, and the DoJ refused to revisit their stupid Republican influenced bogus guideline, then what?
raven
Damn, I’ve had shingles and definitely don’t want them again but this second shot hoits!
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Or she knew, or found out after the fact, that the administration knew that Khashoggi was in danger and took no (legally required?) steps to warn or protect him.
Just checked: Khashoggi disappeared on October 2; Haley’s resignation was announced October 9. I thought there was less time in between the two events, but they’re still suspiciously close together. Maybe not in a “normal” administration, but definitely in this one.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Indeed! Where in the Constitution does it say that Presidency is a get out of jail free card? Also, whose DOJ came up with that rule? Nixon?
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack:
Just IMO, but I think Haley knew all along and when she saw all the smoke being blown up peoples’ asses and how badly they were bungling every single aspect of the incident she realized it was time to hit the ex-fil plan.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Took me a couple of days before I could sleep on that side.
Corner Stone
Tough question time: If Ted Cruz, Zinke and Mick Mulvaney were all in a room. And you could only punch one of them in the face before Secret Service floored you – who is it?
sdhays
@Corner Stone: Can I line them up so that the back of one’s head hits another’s face, Three Stooges style?
Mike in NC
Come mid-January, no doubt a number of Trump’s henchmen (and henchwomen) will decide the time has come for them to spend more time with their families.
Corner Stone
@sdhays: I don’t know man. That’s like a pool trick shot or something. If you waited to get the right dynamic you may lose your shot at the one-on-one punchability opportunity. I’d suggest not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
ETA, Why I oughtta! Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk!
raven
@Gin & Tonic: Yea, we both got our second today, we figured it was a good time since we hit the road for xmas and the Sugar Bowl!
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: Ted Cruz, and it’s not even close.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Other than the localized soreness, my symptoms passed within 36 hours. Safe travels.
raven
What other symptoms do you have? She felt a little fevery last time but I didn’t really experience much.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: I commented on it here at some point. I ended up getting a really high fever, over 102. Could barely get out of bed the day after the shot. Similar after #1, but #2 was worse.
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: The problem with Cruz, which I instinctively go for first as well, is that I am afraid with his oleaginous face when you punched him he’d turn into the terminator in Terminator 2 and just absorb your fist into his face.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: That’s right and then some people said “that’s it, I’m not doing it”! If I could post what it was like ti have it on my head and in my eye I would.
StringOnAStick
@raven: Wow, you were able to even get the shot? I tried and was told there was a waiting list of 500 at my pharmacy.
sdhays
From TPM:
Can you imagine the screeching on Fox News if a Latinx-American Speaker did this for some Latin American country?
Also this:
Preznit Dollhands just appointed some 80 year old supporter to the position, so here’s hoping that poor Paul Ryan will never get his wish.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Yeah, it sucked, but then it was over.
raven
@StringOnAStick: Yea, I hit their site and used the search engine.
Raven
@Gin & Tonic: I just asked my bride and she said “yea, it was when you were in Rhode Island, I was sick and had a bad rash”!
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
First OLC memo was in 1973.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
No argument here.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
It sucked! I felt lousy the whole next day, achy all over and tired. But then it goes away.
SFAW
@NeenerNeener:
@Roger Moore:
You have done well, Grasshoppers.
ETA: And, as a two-fer: Your answer also works for Corner Stone’s question at #153
Raven
@zhena gogolia: 1st or 2nd? Any difference?
Bill Arnold
@Corner Stone:
Zinke. He has Navy Seal training, and would be the most fun/challenging. (Punching probably not optimal though.)
Corner Stone
@Bill Arnold: You’ve gotta at least jab him though and then follow up with an elbow or forearm.
TomatoQueen
In New Haven, that swallowed ‘t’ is accompanied by the unnecessary ‘r’ (as in “I sawr it” for “I saw it”) and the superfluous long ‘e’ (as in ‘bee-ug’ for ‘bag’), and has been since I were a lass in 1962. And it still grates on the ear.
J R in WV
@eclare:
If Jared discussed Jamal Kashoggi’s murder with MbS at any time, before or after the crime, he is guilty of murder as an accessory before or after the fact. A capital crime. anywhere.
J R in WV
@zhena gogolia:
You guys should be glad you had a reaction, it means the inoculation worked well~!!!~
And so much less of a pain than the actual shingles!
Bill Arnold
@Corner Stone:
Man like that, he’s always doing threat analysis. I’d wear a tight moves-like-a-nebbish mask, then spring forth fast at a momentary weak spot.
(Just kidding, Mr. Zinke. [Yoda voice] The question, asked it was. :-)
jl
Cracker claims Zinke never bothered to get his own personal corgi herd on the federal dime? Kind of hard to believe he’d let a perk like that go.
Maybe greyhounds, or afghans. Or snow leopards or something. Any reporter check it out?
sigyn
@Amir Khalid: LOL! That is so perfect! Well done.
sigyn
@Corner Stone: oh, yeah. She just got out while the gettin’ was theoretically good. Let’s hope it doesn’t work for her.