Category Archives: Fail!

Exclusive: U.S. open to lifting sanctions off aluminum giant Rusal… AKA: Vlad says let my people go – so #TraitorTrump obliges!

The U.S. Treasury is open to removing Russian aluminum producer Rusal from a U.S. sanctions list, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday, adding the objective was “not to put Rusal out of business.”

Source: Exclusive: U.S. open to lifting sanctions off aluminum giant Rusal…

A Dow alum nominated to USDA. Again. | Pesticide Action Network

Source: A Dow alum nominated to USDA. Again. | Pesticide Action Network

Earlier this week, a new appointment for chief scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was announced, and it’s a 30-year veteran of Dow Agrosciences. Really?

Administration officials are touting the fact that Scott Hutchins is actually a scientist — unlike their last pick. The nomination of Sam Clovis, an openly racist radio talk-show host and Trump campaign team alum, was withdrawn last November, after it generated outrage across the political spectrum.

Any old scientist?

So yes, Hutchins is a scientist. Does that qualify him to guide USDA’s $2.9 billion research budget? Um, no.

Opinion | What Was Maria Butina Doing at the National Prayer Breakfast? – The New York Times

On Oct. 5, 2016, with one National Prayer Breakfast under her belt, Ms. Butina direct messaged a Russian official on Twitter: “We made our bet. I am following our game. I will be connecting the people from the prayer breakfast to this group.”

After the election, Ms. Butina informed someone the complaint called “U.S. person number one” that she would be bringing along some “VERY influential” Russians to the breakfast. After the event — which President Trump attended, just as previous presidents have — Ms. Butina emailed one of its organizers to thank him for “the gift” of his “precious time during the National Prayer Breakfast week — and for the very private meeting that followed. A new relationship between two countries always begins better when it begins in faith.”

Opinion | I Know What Incarceration Does to Families. It Happened to Mine.

 

When the family first heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 on the radio, they dismissed it as the work of a few fanatics. But that evening, several F.B.I. men came to their house and took my grandfather away. He and dozens of other Japanese-American businessmen and community leaders in the Bay Area had been deemed “enemy aliens,” and he was sent to an army internment camp in Montana.

In the following weeks and months, the fear-mongering grew, and officials increasingly took to using racist epithets. “A Jap is a Jap,” said Lt. Gen. John DeWitt, the commander of the Western Command and the Fourth Army, in February of 1942. “The Japanese race is an enemy race,” he wrote, “and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of American citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted.” Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy shrugged off questions about the legality of the situation, writing “the Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me.”

After President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, which authorized the forced removal of residents of Japanese descent from the Pacific Coast, an 8 p.m. curfew was imposed on Japanese residents there and they were ordered to turn over all “contraband,” including firearms, cameras, radios and binoculars. My mother handed over her Brownie camera to the local police. In April, they were designated Family Number 13453, and given 10 days to pack up and vacate the house where they had lived for a decade and a half.

They were allowed to take only what they could carry. Everything else had to be sold, thrown out, given to friends, or put in storage — including the piano and the rest of the furniture, books, records, paintings, rugs, linens, plates and glasses, silverware, boxes of family letters, photographs and old Valentine and Christmas cards, and all the knickknacks and bits of yarn and fabric that my grandmother, a devout hoarder, had saved during her more than 25 years in America. The three of them (my grandfather was still in the internment camp in Montana) practiced trying to walk with the two suitcases they were each allowed to take. They had to give away their collie, Laddie, who, my mother later learned, died weeks after they left him.

The 6-Year-Old Heard on Border Facility Audiotape Is Still Separated From Her Mother, Who Must Parent From 1,000 Miles Away — ProPublica

Jimena Madrid riveted people around the world when her voice was captured on an audiotape after she was separated from her mother inside a Border Patrol detention facility. Three weeks later, reunification remains uncertain. “She says over and over, ‘Mommy, I want to be with you.’”

Source: The 6-Year-Old Heard on Border Facility Audiotape Is Still Separated From Her Mother, Who Must Parent From 1,000 Miles Away — ProPublica