Zorro
Zorro's JournalEPA Administrator Proves Carbon Emissions Not Harmful By Inhaling Directly From Truck's Tailpipe
WASHINGTON—During a press conference held in a D.C. parking lot, Environmental Protection Agency head Andrew Wheeler went out of his way Friday to show carbon emissions were safe by putting his mouth over the exhaust pipe of an idling Jeep Grand Cherokee and taking several deep breaths.
“Despite all the fear-mongering on behalf of politically motivated scientists, carbon emissions are not harmful in any way, as you can see,” said a coughing, unsteady Wheeler, moments before he was seen vomiting, losing his balance, and collapsing onto the pavement.
“They pose no threat at all to the American public, and any hysterical claims to the contrary have no basis in reality. Sure, it does burn the lungs a little, but it doesn’t cause any serious harm to internal organs—look, I’ll even take another puff. Oh, God. Oh, God. Someone help me.”
At press time, local authorities had confirmed Wheeler’s death.
https://politics.theonion.com/epa-administrator-proves-carbon-emissions-not-harmful-b-1836912751
Radical Baptist church preaches LGBTQ hate just miles from California's Capitol
Pastor Roger Jimenez implored his congregation at Verity Baptist Church to separate themselves from the ways of a modern, wicked world.
Burn your Harry Potter books. Trash your rock ‘n’ roll CDs. Don’t vaccinate your babies. Stay away from gay people.
“The United States of America is on a rainbow-colored boat, and we’ve gotta shake that boat up,” Jimenez said.
Speaking to some 400 people in an overflow crowd that included dozens of young children staring intently at Bibles and giggling when pastors yelled, Jimenez was met with shouts of “Amen!” and “Let ‘er rip!”
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-01/radical-baptist-pastor-lgbtq-hate
He's quite the disciple of Christ, isn't he?
The Nuns Who Bought and Sold Human Beings
Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, one of the oldest Roman Catholic girls’ schools in the nation, has long celebrated the vision and generosity of its founders: a determined band of Catholic nuns who championed free education for the poor in the early 1800s.
The sisters, who established an elite academy in Washington, D.C., also ran “a Saturday school, free to any young girl who wished to learn — including slaves, at a time when public schools were almost nonexistent and teaching slaves to read was illegal,” according to an official history posted for several years on the school’s website.
But when a newly hired school archivist and historian started digging in the convent’s records a few years ago, she found no evidence that the nuns had taught enslaved children to read or write. Instead, she found records that documented a darker side of the order’s history.
The Georgetown Visitation sisters owned at least 107 enslaved men, women and children, the records show. And they sold dozens of those people to pay debts and to help finance the expansion of their school and the construction of a new chapel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/opinion/sunday/nuns-slavery.html
After Trump cites Amazon concerns, Pentagon reexamines $10 billion JEDI cloud contract process
Source: Washington Post
The White House has instructed newly installed Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper to reexamine the awarding of the military’s massive cloud-computing contract because of concerns that the deal would go to Amazon, officials close to the decision-making process said.
The 11th-hour Oval Office intervention comes just weeks before the winning bid was expected to be announced and has now left a major military priority up in the air, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door process freely. As recently as Sunday, the Defense Department defended its plans to move ahead with a single company for what is known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, a $10 billion contract that would be one of the government’s most expensive information technology procurements ever.
No decision has yet been made, the officials said. But some officials said the move to award the contract to more than one company is a possibility.
The president’s directive represents a departure from what is usually a scripted bureaucratic process. Trump on several occasions has spoken out against Amazon and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos. And he has attacked the Bezos-owned Washington Post for its coverage of him by conflating it with Amazon’s interests. The president has called the news organization the “Amazon Washington Post,” while accusing it of publishing “fake news” and being a “lobbyist newspaper” for the company.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/01/after-trump-cites-amazon-concerns-pentagon-re-examines-billion-jedi-cloud-contract-process/
This is fucked up.
Ashley Moody, the NRA's attorney general
It was just another day in the United States of America. Another mass shooting. Another politician taking up for the gun lobby.
Monday brought news of yet another mass shooting committed with an assault weapon. This time three people died, two of them children. Twelve others were injured, including the mother and grandmother of the slain six-year-old boy.
A few hours later, Florida learned that its new attorney general, Ashley Moody, is shilling for the people who make and purchase such weapons of mass destruction.
Moody opposes a petition initiative to ban new assault weapons in Florida. Late Friday, she referred the issue to the Florida Supreme Court and requested that it bar the proposal from the 2020 ballot.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/editorials/fl-op-edit-ashley-moody-nra-20190731-jdgoycg7kvamnezxy55p6p3jw4-story.html
Three NRA board members resign in latest sign of upheaval at gun rights group
Source: Washington Post
Three National Rifle Association board members who have raised concerns about reports of reckless spending and mismanagement by the group’s leadership resigned Thursday, another sign of mounting dissent within the nation’s most powerful gun-rights group.
The three board members — Esther Schneider of Texas, Sean Maloney of Ohio and Timothy Knight of Tennessee — said they were stripped of their committee assignments after they asked questions about allegations of lavish spending by NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and other financial excesses.
“While our belief in the NRA’s mission remains as strong today as ever, our confidence in the NRA’s leadership has been shattered,” they wrote in a letter to NRA officials Thursday obtained by The Washington Post.
NRA President Carolyn D. Meadows said in a written statement that the organization accepts the resignations.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/three-nra-board-members-resign-in-latest-sign-of-upheaval-at-gun-rights-group/2019/08/01/aad49bc0-b49d-11e9-8f6c-7828e68cb15f_story.html
Judge overturns IRS rule that shielded political donors' identities
A federal judge in Montana overturned an Internal Revenue Service rule that allowed many political nonprofit groups to keep their donor lists private.
The ruling upends a change the IRS made last year that permitted so-called Section 501(c)4 groups, known as “social welfare” organizations, to keep their donor lists private. A federal judge said the IRS didn’t follow proper procedure in writing the rule and needs to let the public weigh in on the change before altering the tax code.
“Then, and only then, may the IRS act on a fully informed basis when making potentially significant changes to federal tax law,” U.S. District Judge Brian Morris said in the opinion Tuesday evening.
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who is also a Democratic presidential candidate, sued the IRS, saying the change to what groups must report to the IRS limited information states received about political donors. The IRS rule required the groups to disclose their donors only if an auditor requested to see it.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-07-31/judge-overturns-irs-rule-shielded-political-donors-identities
Of course Trump flips on GOP ideas. He never understood them in the first place.
On Tuesday, President Trump blithely tweeted out his support for voter ID legislation and also “Paper Ballots as backup (old fashioned but true!)” just a week after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) killed legislation that included — wait for it — funding for paper ballots. In one throw-away line, he simultaneously reminded us why the election security issue had Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank calling McConnell a “Russian asset” and exposed himself as a simpleton: “old fashioned but true” is a pretty good indicator that in his mind, it boils down to “new-fangled, bad; old-fangled, good.”
It’s just latest example in a career of not-even-half-baked utterances that show just how poorly briefed and shallow he is. He was cunning enough to effect a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, but when it comes to articulating anything close to traditional GOP beliefs, he’s as likely to sound like the lifelong Democrat he was until Republicans tell him what to think.
If you need more evidence, go back to last year, when Trump sat down with a group of congressional leaders and said he’d get behind Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) suggestion to pass a “clean DACA bill” until House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) cut him off mid-sentence and reeled him back to the GOP position. A few weeks later, in the course of a single meeting, Trump told members of Congress not to fear the NRA, floated the idea to “take the guns first, go through due process second” as a response to gun violence and momentarily signed on to an assault weapons ban, with Feinstein nearly jumping out of her chair in delight while Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) had to laugh just to keep from crying.
Still not convinced? There’s Trump’s protectionist trade policy: tariffs with a heaping helping of soybean farmer welfare. His take on the Constitution: “I have the right to do whatever I want.” (translation: “when you’re a star, they let you do it”) His approach to the Bible: many people are saying it’s a good book. And there’s his foreign policy: NATO, bad; Russia, good; North Korea, let’s be BFFs.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/31/course-trump-flips-gop-ideas-he-never-understood-them-first-place/
U.S. sanctions Iran's foreign minister amid escalating tensions
Source: Washington Post
The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday in a dramatic step bound to further escalate tensions with Tehran.
The move to punish Iran’s top diplomat had been anticipated after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last month that President Trump had directed him to do so. But the sanctions were delayed after State Department officials argued that would close the door to diplomacy.
Trump has frequently expressed a desire to talk with Iranian leaders, even as his administration deepens a maximum pressure campaign that has devastated the Iranian economy.
A Treasury Department statement said Zarif was sanctioned because he “acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly” Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who himself was sanctioned in late June. At that time, Mnuchin said measures would also be taken against Zarif, although action was subsequently postponed amid statements by Trump that he was willing to negotiate with Iran “without preconditions.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-sanctions-irans-foreign-minister-amid-escalating-tensions/2019/07/31/1d4f3780-7eaf-47cc-8c55-569f6ede7615_story.html
Trump and Epstein partied together. Then an oceanfront Palm Beach mansion came between them.
For the better part of two decades starting in the late 1980s, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump swam in the same social pool. They were neighbors in Florida. They jetted from LaGuardia to Palm Beach together. They partied at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and dined at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion.
And then, in 2004, they were suddenly rivals, each angling to snag a choice Palm Beach property, an oceanfront manse called Maison de l’Amitie — the House of Friendship — that was being sold out of bankruptcy.
Before the auction, Epstein and Trump each tried to work the ref; the trustee in the case, Joseph Luzinski, recalls being lobbied by both camps.
“It was something like, Donald saying, ‘You don’t want to do a deal with him, he doesn’t have the money,’ while Epstein was saying: ‘Donald is all talk. He doesn’t have the money,’ ” Luzinski said. “They both really wanted it.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-and-jeffrey-epstein-partied-together-then-an-oceanfront-palm-beach-mansion-came-between-them/2019/07/31/79f1d98c-aca0-11e9-a0c9-6d2d7818f3da_story.html
My my my....
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