Another scorcher outside this late-afternoon Saturday here in California’s Central Valley — it’s 103 degrees right now, with barely a breeze. Despite a couple of ‘coolish‘ days immediately ahead, more blasting heat is on our schedule well-past Labor Day.
It’s been a seemingly-quick, hot-ass summer, though, the entire clock/calendar, keeping-time apparatus feels like it’s on fast forward, we’re definitely barrelling toward some event/events somewhere down the short line.
News cycles are also rapid and thick with all kinds of shit. And I mean ‘all’ kinds of shit, especially shit about the T-Rump, sorry to say, either directly or indirectly, but still, a face and horror-movie countenance (this one nasty-ass nightmare pix) pasted to media stories on T-Rump shit about classified documents, corrupt financial shitstorms — even with his cheapskate, dumb-ass Truth Social is likely to defunct drown — and election meddling in Georgia, all of which would send a normal person, even an ex-president, to a prison cell. And corrupt, nasty shit reflected out in the obvious open, too.
Although I’ve read some speculation the Georgia legal shit could be the real stick-point where the T-Rump gets indicted and tried, and maybe, get that jail cell, one of the frightening aspects of the Mar-a-Lago episode and all those classified documents is the human damage as a result of T-Rump’s inhumane action:
“Last year, a top-secret memo sent to every C.I.A. station around the world, warned about troubling numbers of informants being captured or killed”
Trump Inquiry Fueled in Part by Concern Over Human Intelligence Sources in Documents Trump Improperly Took https://t.co/rDD2qOOMvN
— ??Paula Chertok??? (@PaulaChertok) August 27, 2022
You’ve probably already read about the loss of human intelligence sources overseas the last year, and tie that end with the T-Rump security documents, it’s a terrible national security story and T-Rump can kill all he touches. He would sell out this country to anyone with cash, or just maybe a kind word or two. This might be worse than nuclear secrets, or maybe not. Both are absolutely horrible, and shouldn’t even be part of the discourse, except T-Rump narcissistically claimed the papers were his, and his alone.
He has a history of being a nasty pig — this from The New York Times piece:
Mr. Trump has a long history of treating classified information with a sloppiness few other presidents have exhibited. And the former president’s cavalier treatment of the nation’s secrets was on display in the affidavit underlying the warrant for the Mar-a-Lago search. The affidavit, released in redacted form on Friday, described classified documents being found in multiple locations around the Florida residence, a private club where both members and their guests mingle with the former president and his coterie of aides.
Nothing in the documents released on Friday described the precise content of the classified documents or what risk their disclosure might carry for national security, but the court papers did outline the kinds of intelligence found in the secret material, including foreign surveillance collected under court orders, electronic eavesdropping on communications and information from human sources — spies.
Mr. Trump and his defenders have claimed he declassified the material he took to Mar-a-Lago. But documents retrieved from him in January included some marked “HCS,” for Human Intelligence Control System. Such documents have material that could possibly identify C.I.A. informants, meaning a general, sweeping declassification of them would have been, at best, misguided.
“HCS information is tightly controlled because disclosure could jeopardize the life of the human source,” said John B. Bellinger III, a former legal adviser to the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration. “It would be reckless to declassify an HCS document without checking with the agency that collected the information to ensure that there would be no damage if the information were disclosed.”
This story will play out a while. It’s alarming T-Rump hasn’t been called onto the carpet for this — he’s gotten away with near-literaly everything his whole life. Time to end that shit.
And this afternoon, I spied this horrible shit from Ted Cruz, one of the worst guys alive today, and another Republican asshole, hypocritical swat at Joe Biden’s college loan forgiveness measure — join the T-Rump, Ted:
Republicans revealing what they REALLY think about the working class https://t.co/D9uCDATox6
— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) August 26, 2022
Nutshell Cruz crap — via CommonDreams yesterday:
“If you are that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans, and can’t get a job, Joe Biden just gave you 20 grand,” Cruz said on his Verdict podcast.
“Maybe you weren’t gonna vote in November,” he added, “and suddenly you just got 20 grand, and if you can get off the bong for a minute and head down to the voting station, or just send in your mail-in ballot that the Democrats have helpfully sent you, it could drive up turnout, particularly among young people.”
And to play us out, that wonderful husband/wife duo, The Running Mates, and cover of “What’s Up” (original by 4 Non Blondes here):
Saturday night is alive and well approaching, here we are once again…
(Illustration out front is of a New York state high-school student exhibit: ‘The piece was displayed during student-driven art show at Shenendehowa High School. It consisted of at least 12 identical black-and-white pictures of Donald Trump. There was also a sign above the pictures that read, “Draw on Me.” Using markers from the art classroom, some students opted to scribble critical messages and profanities on the pictures‘ — and found here.)