Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

As a European I have a hard time understanding Americans obsession with firearms.

And I am no expert in American history, but I have tried to look a little into it and the context of the second amendment
But as far as I have understood, the new nation in 1787 had no standing army and the propertied gentlemen - who wrote the Bill of Rights - feared the uprisings of citizens, such as had occurred in the Shays’ Rebellion the previous year, and wished to give the states power to mobilize citizens to crush them.
George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention, was particularly alarmed at Shays’ Rebellion and immediately after its suppression wrote that if the government “shrinks, or is unable to enforce its laws…anarchy and confusion must prevail.”
Washington and the Framers were also concerned that domestic turmoil could tempt a return of the British and obviously also wanted to be able to mobilize armed citizens against slave uprisings and frontier conflicts with Native Americans.

That’s why the amendment reads: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Under his presidency in 1794 Washington used the combined militia of several states to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania.

As you see the Second Amendment was hardly enacted to guarantee the right to rebel against the government. .
If my understanding is correct it’s exactly the opposite!

The concerns that motivated the Framers have long ago disappeared and never in their wildest imaginations did they think the Second Amendment would be the basis for promoting a firearms industry and private arsenals of anti-government fanatics.

The proliferation of assault weapons and high capacity magazines is the direct result of active promotion by reckless profiteers and right-wing extremists.

This has nothing in common with owning hunting rifles or legitimate concerns about protecting one’s home or person from street crime, which are the only things that deserve protection under the law.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

President Donald Trump’s decision to punt the issue of whether Jared Kushner can keep his access to sensitive government secrets without a full security clearance to his chief of staff, John Kelly, has put him in a tricky position, stuck between the rules on one side and the president’s family on the other.

Trump's ad hoc decision not to intervene in the clearance process on behalf of his son-in-law and senior adviser in effect left both Kelly and Kushner in limbo, prolonging an uncomfortable situation that White House aides say is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

Kelly does not plan to recommend to the president that he grant Kushner a waiver, but he is unlikely to resign if Trump ultimately decides to do so, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Invaluable reporting on Assad’s use of banned chemicals against civilians (any use is a war crime). Enabled by Russia. Anyone listening in DC? [Trump Tomahawk Strike Fucking Joke]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Trump’s lawyer asks Mueller if Trump can answer investigation questions using teleprompter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/02/26/trumps-lawyer-asks-mueller-if-trump-can-answer-investigation-questions-using-teleprompter/?utm_term=.f91581ded2f6

Citing the Constitution’s Article XII, Trump’s legal team has requested that it be allowed to type and display President Trump’s answers to investigator Robert S. Mueller III’s questions onto a teleprompter for him to read.

Article XII of the Constitution is an addition to the document by Trump, stating that “Special consideration is due to President Trump, because if left to his own devices, he is likely to make up things, such as this Article.” Citing this authority and all the rights granted to the president by its implications, his legal advisers are insisting that Trump should not be expected to answer truthfully if unassisted, because he will make up so many things that lying is almost inevitable.

Instead, drawing on the experience that the media has said he sounds almost presidential when reading from a teleprompter things that others wrote, answering in this way could make him appear almost honest. “It’s not enough that we coach him ahead of time,” members of his team asserted in legal briefs they wore to match the briefs Trump wears when watching television and tweeting, “because he won’t pay attention to us, won’t remember what we said, and will make up things contrary to our counsel. This is unfair to him.”

They also asked Mueller whether he could ask his questions of Trump on stage at a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, where the crowd could vet the questions through jeering and catcalls. The commotion would both demonstrate which Mueller questions were “out of line” (all of them) and would give the lawyers time to type up some legalese sufficiently cagey as to protect Trump from incriminating himself over and over again.

The lawyers further asked whether the veracity of the answers could be “scored” by crowd reaction, both to the questions and the answers. Such scoring would be legally binding in courts at all levels, and ratified by means of military parade.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The Supreme Court has turned down the administration's request to speed up the legal fight over President Donald Trump’s decision to end a program protecting undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

The Justice Department had asked the justices to bypass the usual appeals court process and conduct an expedited review of a district court judge’s ruling requiring the administration to resume renewals for participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The Supreme Court declined the request Monday. No justices dissented. The high court could still weigh in later, but the move suggests the justices want to allow one or more appeals courts to take up the question before considering it.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The Supreme Court has turned down the administration's request to speed up the legal fight over President Donald Trump’s decision to end a program protecting undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

The Justice Department had asked the justices to bypass the usual appeals court process and conduct an expedited review of a district court judge’s ruling requiring the administration to resume renewals for participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The Supreme Court declined the request Monday. No justices dissented. The high court could still weigh in later, but the move suggests the justices want to allow one or more appeals courts to take up the question before considering it.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

A federal appeals court on Monday ruled that a 1964 civil rights law bans anti-gay workplace discrimination. The decision rebukes the Trump administration — which had argued against a gay worker in the case — and hands progressives a win in their strategy to protect LGBT employees with a drumbeat of lawsuits.

The dispute hinges on whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex, also bans workplace discrimination due to sexual orientation.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday, “We now hold that sexual orientation discrimination constitutes a form of discrimination ‘because of . . . sex,’ in violation of Title VII.” In doing so, the court overruled a lower court — and a precedent from a previous court case — and remanded the case to be litigated in light of their reading of Title VII.

The decision holds national implications due to its high tier in the judicial system, and because it’s seen as a litmus test of the Trump administration’s ability — or inability — to curb LGBT rights through court activism. The Justice Department had injected itself into the case even though it wasn’t a party to the lawsuit and doesn’t normally involve itself in private employment disputes.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors who have already indicted President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort on charges of money laundering, bank fraud and covertly lobbying for pro-Russian interests may have additional leverage arising from a loan he received while engaged in the bankruptcies of properties in California, several former law enforcement officials say.

Reuters has found new information about Manafort’s handling of the loan and its potential link to the bankruptcies as Special Counsel Robert Mueller seeks to pressure Manafort to cooperate with his investigation into Trump’s campaign team and possible collusion with Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.

At issue is whether the failure to disclose a loan from a lender that was also the main creditor in the California bankruptcy cases represented an illegal concealment of material information.

Reuters has also learned that over the past several months Mueller has begun focusing on Jeffrey Yohai, Manafort’s former son-in-law and his partner in four California property deals that failed and were placed in bankruptcy, as a potentially valuable witness in his probe.

 

[Ultimatepip]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Reading Marc Fisher and Sari Horwitz’s extraordinary https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mueller-and-trump-born-to-wealth-raised-to-lead-then-sharply-different-choices/2018/02/22/ad50b7bc-0a99-11e8-8b0d-891602206fb7_story.html?utm_term=.94cd95c1cf3d%255C (article) comparing the lives of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and President Trump made me realize that the war between the two men is not just a struggle over the fate of this presidency. It is a battle for the soul of America, because each of them represents a recognizable American archetype.

Mueller was born to wealth and attended elite institutions — St. Paul’s School, Princeton University, the University of Virginia School of Law — but felt compelled to serve his country. During the Vietnam War, when most of his classmates were avoiding the draft, he volunteered for the Marine Corps and earned numerous decorations leading a rifle platoon in fierce combat. Returning home, he became a prosecutor and eventually ran the Justice Department’s criminal division. In the 1990s Mueller went into private practice. It was lucrative, but he hated it. Watching the spike of drug-driven murders in the District of Columbia, he volunteered to become a line prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office. It was as if a retired general had volunteered to serve as a private in wartime.

Later, as FBI director under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Mueller became the embodiment of the old-school G-man who only wore a white shirt with a red or blue tie — never a blue shirt, because that would signal dangerous frivolity. He “avoided the limelight” and “frustrated his speechwriters by crossing out every ‘I’ in speeches they wrote for him. It wasn’t about him, he told them: ‘It’s about the organization.’ ”

...

Trump is Mueller’s opposite in every meaningful respect save that he was also born to privilege. He has much in common with the land promoters who bamboozled English immigrants into coming to the New World in the 17th century with fanciful tales of riches — what Trump would describe as “truthful hyperbole.” He is the kind of charming con man who peddled patent medicines in the 19th century and then, in the 20th century, penny stocks and time-shares. These scofflaws and scammers were the inspiration for the phony duke and dauphin in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jay Gatsby and the Wizard of Oz.

Trump combines the hedonism of the 1970s with the bigotry and sexism of the 1950s: the worst of both worlds. His consciousness was not raised in the 1960s, but his libido was. He did not take part in the civil rights or antiwar movements and won https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/questions-linger-about-trumps-draft-deferments-during-vietnam-war/2015/07/21/257677bc-2fdd-11e5-8353-1215475949f4_story.html?utm_term=.3af21c6fdbf7 (five draft deferments) — including one for “bone spurs” — so that he could devote his life to the pursuit of women and wealth. He later said that fear of catching a sexually transmitted disease was “my personal Vietnam.”

Trump is the embodiment of what https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393307387/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thewaspos09-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0393307387&linkId=006e962bbdd51d124ffe7b4ac293097b (Christopher Lasch in 1979) called the “new narcissist” who “praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself”; whose “emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace”; and whose “cravings have no limits,” because he “demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire.” A product of the “me decade,” Trump is a “me first”— not “America first” — president whose speeches are full of exaggerated or falsified self-praise.

Mueller is the best of America; Trump the worst. All you need to know about the diseased state of today’s Republican Party is that it reviles Mueller and reveres Trump.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]