A Summer of Lowlights from the Oval
by Patricia Rovainen, W2D Board Member
Well, here we go again.
I wish I had better news for you, but the bad news is that Donald Trump is still President despite his own best efforts to be retired early. The good news is that we are still alive and well, but a lot has happened over the summer.
Donald Trump still goes to work at 11am a few days a week. His “Executive Time” usually begins around 8am ending at 11am when he walks into the Oval Office. Executive Time, by the way, according to an Axios news article means Donald Trump is watching TV, tweeting and, I assume, calling John Hannity.
Of course, Executive Time is not allocated to just 3 hours in the morning, he is apparently so efficient at his job that he also turns on the set often though out the day.
I’m not complaining, however, the less time he spends working offers us some hope that we will survive his Presidency.
The July 26th court deadline for reunification of all immigrant children separated from their parents has come and gone and according to recent court filings, 416 children remain separated from their parents.
Now the 416 was correct until the New York Times came out with an article indicating that the number of unaccompanied immigrant children coming into the country has exploded. 12,800 as of yesterday.
This “we’ll take your children away from you at the border if you try to seek asylum in this country” is not really working so well for the administration and Justice Department.
This is a bit of old news, but instead of uniting these families, the Trump administration wants to change the rules and withdraw from the Flores Settlement Agreement from 1997 which decreed that migrant children and their parents could only be held for 20 days.
The proposal would alter 20 days to indefinitely, but, and I quote “that all juveniles in the government’s custody are treated with dignity, respect, and special concern for their particular vulnerability as minors”. Based on the previous actions of the administration and their growing number, one might expect the children to be sent to forced labor camps or coal mines rather than treated with dignity and respect.
And just when you think things could not possibly be worse. it now appears that Donald Trump’s “Deep State” is not at the Justice Department nor the FBI but has set up an office in the West Wing and they are trying to protect the Country from Donald Trump.
This resistance was expressed in an Op-Ed published by the New York Times and written by “anonymous”. The group apparently wants to be called the “Steady State”. According to Anonymous, this resistance group is watching over us to diligently “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations”.
I don’t know whether to feel good or terrified that the Steady State is saving us from Donald Trump’s “half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions”.
Speaking of reckless decisions, let’s consider Brett Kavanaugh – Donald Trump’s supreme court nominee. According to emails released during his confirmation, Judge Kavanaugh doesn’t consider Roe V Wade settled law. It seems impossible to believe that Roe could be overturned, but with Kavanaugh on the bench the chances become greater.
The hearings also brought up that Kavanaugh had dissented from a decision upholding a District of Columbia ordinance banning semiautomatic weapons. He claimed that the assault weapons ban was unconstitutional because the weapons were in common use.
If by common use he means by lots of people, then in theory at least half the people in this room should own assault weapons. And by the way I’m not one of them.
Kavanaugh has also written in the past that Presidents, while in office, should not be distracted by civil lawsuits, criminal investigations or even questions from a prosecutor or defense attorney while in office. And during his confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh would not clarify his current opinion to the committee.
Maybe he was daydreaming about his next squirrel hunting trip with his semi-automatic rifle.
Since Kavanaugh led the inquiry into the death of White House counsel, Vincent Foster, during President Clinton’s term, it begs one to wonder if that inquiry did precipitate a change of opinion or perhaps Kavanaugh’s view is now colored more by party: It’s okay to investigate Democratic Presidents, but certainly not Republican Presidents.
And, of course, we can’t ignore Kavanaugh’s lies in previous under oath testimony before the Senate but lying isn’t really a problem these days for Donald Trump and perhaps for the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.
Unfortunately, this man sounds like the perfect Donald Trump candidate. I don’t mean to be disrespectful of a sitting Judge, but really under what rock does Donald Trump find all these “great people”, some of whom are already indicted and heading to jail.
And now we have Bob Woodward’s book “Fear: Trump in the White House” just released on 9/11. You know the world has turned upside down when CNN reports that according to Woodward’s book, that Gary Cohn, former chief economic adviser to Donald Trump, and Rob Porter former staff secretary – who’s previous TWO wives accused him of domestic abuse – are heroes in the White House saving the world from Donald Trump.
These two men were (quote) “literally stealing or hiding documents from Trump’s desk, they sought to stall and delay decisions or distract Trump from orders they thought would endanger national security.” (unquote)
So, Cohn and Porter are both gone, and now it is apparently left to the remaining Deep Steady State resistance to make sure Donald Trump’s half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions are walked back.
Where’s Congress in all this? Nowhere. That is the problem.
by Patricia Rovainen, W2D Board Member
Well, here we go again.
I wish I had better news for you, but the bad news is that Donald Trump is still President despite his own best efforts to be retired early. The good news is that we are still alive and well, but a lot has happened over the summer.
Donald Trump still goes to work at 11am a few days a week. His “Executive Time” usually begins around 8am ending at 11am when he walks into the Oval Office. Executive Time, by the way, according to an Axios news article means Donald Trump is watching TV, tweeting and, I assume, calling John Hannity.
Of course, Executive Time is not allocated to just 3 hours in the morning, he is apparently so efficient at his job that he also turns on the set often though out the day.
I’m not complaining, however, the less time he spends working offers us some hope that we will survive his Presidency.
The July 26th court deadline for reunification of all immigrant children separated from their parents has come and gone and according to recent court filings, 416 children remain separated from their parents.
Now the 416 was correct until the New York Times came out with an article indicating that the number of unaccompanied immigrant children coming into the country has exploded. 12,800 as of yesterday.
This “we’ll take your children away from you at the border if you try to seek asylum in this country” is not really working so well for the administration and Justice Department.
This is a bit of old news, but instead of uniting these families, the Trump administration wants to change the rules and withdraw from the Flores Settlement Agreement from 1997 which decreed that migrant children and their parents could only be held for 20 days.
The proposal would alter 20 days to indefinitely, but, and I quote “that all juveniles in the government’s custody are treated with dignity, respect, and special concern for their particular vulnerability as minors”. Based on the previous actions of the administration and their growing number, one might expect the children to be sent to forced labor camps or coal mines rather than treated with dignity and respect.
And just when you think things could not possibly be worse. it now appears that Donald Trump’s “Deep State” is not at the Justice Department nor the FBI but has set up an office in the West Wing and they are trying to protect the Country from Donald Trump.
This resistance was expressed in an Op-Ed published by the New York Times and written by “anonymous”. The group apparently wants to be called the “Steady State”. According to Anonymous, this resistance group is watching over us to diligently “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations”.
I don’t know whether to feel good or terrified that the Steady State is saving us from Donald Trump’s “half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions”.
Speaking of reckless decisions, let’s consider Brett Kavanaugh – Donald Trump’s supreme court nominee. According to emails released during his confirmation, Judge Kavanaugh doesn’t consider Roe V Wade settled law. It seems impossible to believe that Roe could be overturned, but with Kavanaugh on the bench the chances become greater.
The hearings also brought up that Kavanaugh had dissented from a decision upholding a District of Columbia ordinance banning semiautomatic weapons. He claimed that the assault weapons ban was unconstitutional because the weapons were in common use.
If by common use he means by lots of people, then in theory at least half the people in this room should own assault weapons. And by the way I’m not one of them.
Kavanaugh has also written in the past that Presidents, while in office, should not be distracted by civil lawsuits, criminal investigations or even questions from a prosecutor or defense attorney while in office. And during his confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh would not clarify his current opinion to the committee.
Maybe he was daydreaming about his next squirrel hunting trip with his semi-automatic rifle.
Since Kavanaugh led the inquiry into the death of White House counsel, Vincent Foster, during President Clinton’s term, it begs one to wonder if that inquiry did precipitate a change of opinion or perhaps Kavanaugh’s view is now colored more by party: It’s okay to investigate Democratic Presidents, but certainly not Republican Presidents.
And, of course, we can’t ignore Kavanaugh’s lies in previous under oath testimony before the Senate but lying isn’t really a problem these days for Donald Trump and perhaps for the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.
Unfortunately, this man sounds like the perfect Donald Trump candidate. I don’t mean to be disrespectful of a sitting Judge, but really under what rock does Donald Trump find all these “great people”, some of whom are already indicted and heading to jail.
And now we have Bob Woodward’s book “Fear: Trump in the White House” just released on 9/11. You know the world has turned upside down when CNN reports that according to Woodward’s book, that Gary Cohn, former chief economic adviser to Donald Trump, and Rob Porter former staff secretary – who’s previous TWO wives accused him of domestic abuse – are heroes in the White House saving the world from Donald Trump.
These two men were (quote) “literally stealing or hiding documents from Trump’s desk, they sought to stall and delay decisions or distract Trump from orders they thought would endanger national security.” (unquote)
So, Cohn and Porter are both gone, and now it is apparently left to the remaining Deep Steady State resistance to make sure Donald Trump’s half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions are walked back.
Where’s Congress in all this? Nowhere. That is the problem.
Mitch McConnell–Washington’s Own Master Evil Doer
by Patricia Rovainen, W2D Board Member
Donald Trump is responsible for many horrific policies against the environment, against asylum seekers, and against voters. His tweets and actions since he took office, including starting a tariff war, the slowing/ending of a tariff war, stopping single handedly the proliferation of Korea’s nuclear program, but then maybe not, and, of course, his daily barrage of threats on Twitter that are retracted minutes, hours and days later or just ignored completely.
These actions in a President of the United States are an aberration of the worse kind for our lifetime, but at a dinner table with all the family gathered, he fits the profile of the crazy and bitter uncle everyone tries to unsuccessfully to ignore.
The leaders of Congress are another problem entirely.
You might remember John Boehner’s comments regarding President Obama’s agenda, “We’re going to do everything – and I mean everything we can do – to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”
John Boehner is out of office now, and perhaps feeling the pain of his actions. According to an article in USA Today printed in May 2018, Boehner is quoted as saying, “There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party. The Republican Party is taking kind of a nap somewhere.”
Who put them to sleep? Troops follow their leaders. Have McConnell, Ryan and Boehner been handing out sleeping pills? Or is this evil afoot in Washington planned?
Paul Ryan has done his part: Passed the boondoggle for the rich in his tax cut, which also eliminated the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act, allowed committee chairmen to spend time and money on wild conspiracy theories about Donald Trump’s punching bags, the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton. The title of a LA Times editorial from April sums up Paul Ryan: “Paul Ryan came in as a ‘young gun’ with big ideas. He’ll leave as a pushover.”
He’ll be joining Boehner in retiring from Congress in November now that he has done as much damage to the country as his stomach can take. It’s time to make money. I’m sure there are plenty of the 1% richer people in the country who want to pay him back for all his work.
Mitch McConnell, unfortunately, is up for election in 2020 and should he win, he will again take the following oath of office:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Mitch McConnell’s other oath in October of 2010 was that “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
McConnell couldn’t fulfill that promise, but it was not because he didn’t try.
According to an article by Joshua Green in The Atlantic January/February 2011 edition, the filibuster became an essential tool of McConnell’s obstruction to slow Washington and the country to a crawl. Republicans filibustered controversial as well as non-controversial judicial nominees (some of whom were later unanimously confirmed). Even Republican senator judicial nominees were filibustered, just to slow the process. The shortage of justices threatened the courts ability to function.
Now, of course, they can’t move fast enough.
Also, according to The Atlantic article, in February of 2010 McConnell aimed at another target: the closure of Guantanamo Bay detention camp. McConnell would take just a few minutes every day (25 speeches) talking down the idea of closing Guantanamo Bay. McConnell told the author of The Atlantic article that “Winning on Guantanomo sent a message to all of us that Obama was not bulletproof.”
The Gantonamo Bay effort was so successful that McConnell deployed the same daily barrage against financial reform (16 floor speeches) and health care (105 floor speeches).
I guess McConnell has never realized that in the Senate oath “allegiance to same” – means to the United State of America, not the Republican party or to himself.
I won’t even go into McConnell’s unprecedented refusal to consider Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia.
On second thought, I guess I will. McConnell deserves the credit for this egregious action against the country. When President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, McConnell insisted that it was too close to an election just one year away so the next President should have the responsibility to name Scalia’s successor. And now, while the election is only five months in the future it is too far away to hold up a nomination. McConnell may not have morals, but he has balls.
And fast forward to the Russia investigation. Yes, the CIA and the Obama administration did know early on about the attempt of Russia to influence the 2016 election. How to handle the information was much discussed and analyzed.
According to a Washington Post article dated June 2017, some covert plans were set in place to punish Putin and Russia, but more needed to be done.
In August 2017 Jeh Johnson arranged a conference call with dozens of state officials. Sharing the CIA produced report, they hoped for state support to shore up cybersecurity to stop any Russian interference in our election.
The conference call went nowhere.
One Republican Secretary of State (apparently also with few morals and lots of balls) accused the administration of assaulting state rights indicating that he didn’t believe the report from the CIA.
The following is from the Post’s article when Jeh Johnson, James Comey and Lisa Monaco turned to Congress for their support:
In early September Jeh Johnson, James Comey and Lisa Monaco arrived on Capitol Hill in a caravan of black SUVs for a meeting with 12 key members of Congress, including the leadership of both parties.
The meeting devolved into a partisan squabble.
“The Dems were, ‘Hey, we have to tell the public,’” recalled one participant. But Republicans resisted, arguing that to warn the public that the election was under attack would further Russia’s aim of sapping confidence in the system.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) went further, officials said, voicing skepticism that the underlying intelligence truly supported the White House’s claims. Through a spokeswoman, McConnell declined to comment, citing the secrecy of that meeting.
Key Democrats were stunned by the GOP response and exasperated that the White House seemed willing to let Republican opposition block any pre-election move.
President Obama and his administration are not without blame in this scenario. They backed down and no large-scale alarms were raised to tell the public in September that the Russians were attacking the United States of America.
However, Mitch McConnell didn’t stop there in ignoring his oath to protect the American people. Once the election was finalized and Donald Trump named President, McConnell resisted authorizing a special commission (like the 911 Commission) to investigate the Russian intrusion and resisted authorizing an independent investigation into the firing of James Comey.
Had McConnell “acted to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” as he has promised to do several times since his first election to the Senate in 1984 (you’d think he would understand the oath by now), we might have kept the Russians in check and Donald Trump wouldn’t be under the microscope for collusion or conspiracy, or possibly even President of the United States.
What McConnell didn’t resist was the naming of his wife, Elain Chou, Secretary of Transportation.
Quid pro quo?
Or a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection. I think not!
by Patricia Rovainen, W2D Board Member
Donald Trump is responsible for many horrific policies against the environment, against asylum seekers, and against voters. His tweets and actions since he took office, including starting a tariff war, the slowing/ending of a tariff war, stopping single handedly the proliferation of Korea’s nuclear program, but then maybe not, and, of course, his daily barrage of threats on Twitter that are retracted minutes, hours and days later or just ignored completely.
These actions in a President of the United States are an aberration of the worse kind for our lifetime, but at a dinner table with all the family gathered, he fits the profile of the crazy and bitter uncle everyone tries to unsuccessfully to ignore.
The leaders of Congress are another problem entirely.
You might remember John Boehner’s comments regarding President Obama’s agenda, “We’re going to do everything – and I mean everything we can do – to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”
John Boehner is out of office now, and perhaps feeling the pain of his actions. According to an article in USA Today printed in May 2018, Boehner is quoted as saying, “There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party. The Republican Party is taking kind of a nap somewhere.”
Who put them to sleep? Troops follow their leaders. Have McConnell, Ryan and Boehner been handing out sleeping pills? Or is this evil afoot in Washington planned?
Paul Ryan has done his part: Passed the boondoggle for the rich in his tax cut, which also eliminated the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act, allowed committee chairmen to spend time and money on wild conspiracy theories about Donald Trump’s punching bags, the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton. The title of a LA Times editorial from April sums up Paul Ryan: “Paul Ryan came in as a ‘young gun’ with big ideas. He’ll leave as a pushover.”
He’ll be joining Boehner in retiring from Congress in November now that he has done as much damage to the country as his stomach can take. It’s time to make money. I’m sure there are plenty of the 1% richer people in the country who want to pay him back for all his work.
Mitch McConnell, unfortunately, is up for election in 2020 and should he win, he will again take the following oath of office:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Mitch McConnell’s other oath in October of 2010 was that “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
McConnell couldn’t fulfill that promise, but it was not because he didn’t try.
According to an article by Joshua Green in The Atlantic January/February 2011 edition, the filibuster became an essential tool of McConnell’s obstruction to slow Washington and the country to a crawl. Republicans filibustered controversial as well as non-controversial judicial nominees (some of whom were later unanimously confirmed). Even Republican senator judicial nominees were filibustered, just to slow the process. The shortage of justices threatened the courts ability to function.
Now, of course, they can’t move fast enough.
Also, according to The Atlantic article, in February of 2010 McConnell aimed at another target: the closure of Guantanamo Bay detention camp. McConnell would take just a few minutes every day (25 speeches) talking down the idea of closing Guantanamo Bay. McConnell told the author of The Atlantic article that “Winning on Guantanomo sent a message to all of us that Obama was not bulletproof.”
The Gantonamo Bay effort was so successful that McConnell deployed the same daily barrage against financial reform (16 floor speeches) and health care (105 floor speeches).
I guess McConnell has never realized that in the Senate oath “allegiance to same” – means to the United State of America, not the Republican party or to himself.
I won’t even go into McConnell’s unprecedented refusal to consider Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia.
On second thought, I guess I will. McConnell deserves the credit for this egregious action against the country. When President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, McConnell insisted that it was too close to an election just one year away so the next President should have the responsibility to name Scalia’s successor. And now, while the election is only five months in the future it is too far away to hold up a nomination. McConnell may not have morals, but he has balls.
And fast forward to the Russia investigation. Yes, the CIA and the Obama administration did know early on about the attempt of Russia to influence the 2016 election. How to handle the information was much discussed and analyzed.
According to a Washington Post article dated June 2017, some covert plans were set in place to punish Putin and Russia, but more needed to be done.
In August 2017 Jeh Johnson arranged a conference call with dozens of state officials. Sharing the CIA produced report, they hoped for state support to shore up cybersecurity to stop any Russian interference in our election.
The conference call went nowhere.
One Republican Secretary of State (apparently also with few morals and lots of balls) accused the administration of assaulting state rights indicating that he didn’t believe the report from the CIA.
The following is from the Post’s article when Jeh Johnson, James Comey and Lisa Monaco turned to Congress for their support:
In early September Jeh Johnson, James Comey and Lisa Monaco arrived on Capitol Hill in a caravan of black SUVs for a meeting with 12 key members of Congress, including the leadership of both parties.
The meeting devolved into a partisan squabble.
“The Dems were, ‘Hey, we have to tell the public,’” recalled one participant. But Republicans resisted, arguing that to warn the public that the election was under attack would further Russia’s aim of sapping confidence in the system.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) went further, officials said, voicing skepticism that the underlying intelligence truly supported the White House’s claims. Through a spokeswoman, McConnell declined to comment, citing the secrecy of that meeting.
Key Democrats were stunned by the GOP response and exasperated that the White House seemed willing to let Republican opposition block any pre-election move.
President Obama and his administration are not without blame in this scenario. They backed down and no large-scale alarms were raised to tell the public in September that the Russians were attacking the United States of America.
However, Mitch McConnell didn’t stop there in ignoring his oath to protect the American people. Once the election was finalized and Donald Trump named President, McConnell resisted authorizing a special commission (like the 911 Commission) to investigate the Russian intrusion and resisted authorizing an independent investigation into the firing of James Comey.
Had McConnell “acted to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” as he has promised to do several times since his first election to the Senate in 1984 (you’d think he would understand the oath by now), we might have kept the Russians in check and Donald Trump wouldn’t be under the microscope for collusion or conspiracy, or possibly even President of the United States.
What McConnell didn’t resist was the naming of his wife, Elain Chou, Secretary of Transportation.
Quid pro quo?
Or a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection. I think not!