Zorro
Zorro's JournalIn Stunning New Deal with Democrats, Trump Agrees to Be Impeached
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In his most stunning deal yet with Democratic leaders, Donald Trump agreed on Friday to be impeached by the end of 2017.
Emerging from an Oval Office meeting with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a beaming Trump touted the deal for his imminent removal from office.
“Chuck and Nancy and I got a deal done on impeachment,” Trump said. “It was a good deal and it was a fast deal.”
Trump said that the Democrats had convinced him that agreeing to be impeached would make him soar in popularity. “People are going to love me for doing this,” Trump said. “They’re going to love it on all the channels.”
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/in-stunning-new-deal-with-democrats-trump-agrees-to-be-impeached
Cassini Sends Final Images as It Plunges Toward Saturn
Source: New York Times
The last picture show from Saturn has begun.
The final photographs taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft are streaming back to Earth. Early Friday morning, the last of the last will arrive. They include some of the favorite subjects over Cassini’s 13-year stay in orbit: the rings, the moons Enceladus and Titan, and Saturn itself.
One image yet to arrive will be the spot where Cassini will disintegrate on Friday, by deliberate design. The spacecraft is accelerating to its end as it dips a bit deeper into Saturn’s atmosphere.
High above the cloud tops, the atmosphere is still thin, nearly a vacuum. “The analog of that on Earth might be where the International Space Station is,” Earl Maize, Cassini’s project manager, said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/science/cassini-grand-finale-saturn.html
Amazon defends deleting one-star reviews of Hillary Clinton's new book
Source: Bradenton Herald
Amazon is getting flak for policing the reviews posted on its page for Hillary Clinton’s new book, which went on sale this week.
The internet quickly realized Wednesday that some of the reviews of “What Happened” — notably 1-star reviews — were being removed. But the company defended its move, saying it had the right to make sure that reviewers were actually commenting on the product at hand, not just expressing dislike of the former Democratic presidential candidate (of which there is plenty, nine months after the election).
“In the case of a memoir, the subject of the book is the author and their views,” an Amazon spokesperson told Fortune. “It’s not our role to decide what a customer would view as helpful or unhelpful in making their decision. We do however have mechanisms in place to ensure that the voices of many do not drown out the voices of a few and we remove customer reviews that violate our community guidelines.”
As of Wednesday night, Clinton’s book had 4.9 out of 5 stars from 503 reviews. Amazon prioritizes “verified purchase” reviews, cases where the company knows the reviewer actually bought the book. Ninety-six percent of reviews were 5 stars, while only 2 percent were 1 star.
Read more: http://www.bradenton.com/news/nation-world/national/article173227276.html
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin requested government jet for European honeymoon
Source: ABC News
Secretary Steven Mnuchin requested use of a government jet to take him and his wife on their honeymoon in Scotland, France and Italy earlier this summer, sparking an “inquiry” by The Treasury Department's Office of Inspector General, sources tell ABC News.
Officials familiar with the matter say the highly unusual ask for a U.S. Air Force jet, which according to an Air Force spokesman could cost roughly $25,000 per hour to operate, was put in writing by the secretary's office but eventually deemed unnecessary after further consideration of by Treasury Department officials.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in an interview with ABC News that Mnuchin's request for a government jet on his honeymoon defies common sense.
"You don't need a giant rulebook of government requirements to just say yourself, 'This is common sense, it's wrong,'" Wyden said. "That's just slap your forehead stuff."
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/treasury-secretary-mnuchin-requested-government-jet-european-honeymoon/story?id=49777076
Well, at least he asked first.
Harvey, Irma could cost billions in federal aid, but GOP could balk
Repairing the damage from Hurricanes Irma and Harvey could cost hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when Republicans in Congress are reluctant to spend much on anything, particularly without a way to pay for it.
It could make passing disaster relief funding in the future a politically toxic exercise, even in the era of unified GOP government.
As authorities assess the damage in Harvey-ravaged Texas and Louisiana, and Irma continues to batter the southeast cost from Florida on up, it’s hard to tell how much money Congress will ultimately be asked to greenlight.
Joel Myers, president of AccuWeather, predicted on Monday the cost of Irma and Harvey combined could reach a total of $290 billion. However, that includes costs for which the federal government is not responsible, such as lost personal valuables or destruction of homes that ought to be protected by insurance.
http://www.bradenton.com/news/politics-government/article172712986.html
'Unified" GOP government? You just know they're going to screw this up.
Porn Industry Irrevocably Damaged by Association with Ted Cruz
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The pornography industry has likely suffered permanent damage as a result of its unfortunate association with the Texas senator Ted Cruz, industry sources said on Tuesday.
Porn, which takes in annual profits of fifteen billion dollars, could see those revenues decimated if, as some industry experts fear, users begin to have intrusive thoughts involving Senator Cruz.
“For porn producers, this is a crisis with no simple solution,” Harland Dorrinson, an industry insider, said. “If you warn viewers not to think about Ted Cruz, there’s a real danger that that’s all they’ll think about.”
In the hours since porn first became associated with the Texas senator, traffic to porn sites has plummeted in what industry sources are ruefully calling “the Cruz effect.”
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/porn-industry-irrevocably-damaged-by-association-with-ted-cruz
Friends discovery, Facebook post save 2 manatees on Sarasota Bay
Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune
A couple of friends who were curious what the outer bands of Hurricane Irma were stirring up outside their shelter looked at the unusual receding waters of Sarasota Bay and noticed two manatees stranded on land that was once covered by water.
Irma still more than 100 miles away from Sarasota has sucked water inward toward its eyewall causing hundreds of yards of shoreline to vanish quickly in the Bay and beaching the sea cows.
The five friends — Tony Faradini-Campos, Emily Reisinger, Steven Reisinger, Michael Sechler and Donovan Norton — walked out to the “blob” on Sarasota Bay and photographed the manatees hoping that by sharing the story on Facebook officials would come out to rescue the animals.
“We had to do something about it,” said Tony Faradini-Campos of Sarasota. “We couldn’t just let those manatees die out there. We shared the pictures on social media and it just blew up.
Read more: http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20170910/friends-discovery-facebook-post-save-2-manatees-on-sarasota-bay
Vast new intelligence haul fuels next phase of fight against Islamic State
U.S. intelligence analysts have gained valuable insights into Islamic State’s planning and personnel from a vast cache of digital data and other material recovered from bombed-out offices, abandoned laptops and the cellphones of dead fighters in recently liberated areas of Iraq and Syria.
In the most dramatic gain, U.S. officials over the last two months have added thousands of names of known or suspected Islamic State operatives to an international watch list used at airports and other border crossings. The Interpol database now contains about 19,000 names.
The intelligence haul — the largest since U.S. forces entered the war in mid-2014 — threatens to overwhelm already stretched counter-terrorism and law enforcement agencies in Europe, where Islamic State has claimed responsibility for attacks in Paris, London and Stockholm this year.
With the extremist group’s army and self-declared caliphate fast shrinking, U.S. officials are concerned that foreign-born militants who once flocked to Iraq and Syria will try to escape before the U.S.-led coalition or other military forces can kill them.
http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-isis-intel-20170908-story.html
Public dumps on Trump plan to reconsider automobile fuel economy standards
Source: LA Times
Hurricanes. Wildfires. Heat waves.
Asthma. Bronchitis. Emphysema. Lung cancer. War.
Those specters and more were raised Wednesday at a public hearing in Washington by opponents of a Trump administration plan to consider cutbacks in pollution and fuel economy standards for automobiles and light trucks.
Dozens of people — including environmentalists, academics and a former general in the U.S. Marines — blasted that plan, citing global warming, jobs, and consumer savings among the reasons.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-epa-cafe-hearing-20170906-story.html
Key Figure Behind Trump Dossier Stonewalled Senate Investigators
Glenn Simpson, the former journalist whose company was involved in the production of the now infamous “Trump Dossier,” invoked his First Amendment rights during testimony last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee and refused to reveal the sources for the document’s explosive claims, according to recently released court documents.
In August, former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson spent more than 10 hours testifying before the Senate panel about a document alleging extensive collusion between Donald Trump’s supporters and Kremlin operatives. But according to Peter Fritsch, a partner at Fusion GPS, the research firm founded by the two men, Simpson refused to answer Senate investigators on several key questions.
In a declaration filed as part of a defamation case being brought against the news outlet Buzzfeed for publishing the dossier, Fritsch said Simpson “invoked the First Amendment and attorney-client/attorney work product privileges” in response to questions seeking what he described as “privileged information.”
Simpson “did not reveal the identity of Fusion GPS’s clients or any of the sources for the Dossier or the December Memo,” Fritsch said.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/key-figure-behind-trump-dossier-181842758.html
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