Before I begin I would like to wish all the Dads out there a very happy Father’s Day.
The Sh*t Show returns after a week off for other news…..as usual the idiocy around DC these days is thick and disgusting.
We begin with yesterday’s ego trip…..
Millions of people across are expected to attend over 1,800 “No King’s Day” protests across the United States this weekend to counter President Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington D.C. on Saturday.
The protests are planned in cities across all 50 states and Puerto Rico as well as several countries abroad, including Colombia, Germany, Italy, Malawi, Portugal and the United Kingdom, according to organizers. The demonstrations are expected to be the largest demonstrations against the Trump administration since his took office in January.
Organizers said the protests will aim to counter Trump’s 250th anniversary U.S. Army parade scheduled to take place in the nation’s capital on Saturday in tandem with his 79th birthday. Hundreds of military tanks and aircraft are expected to roll through the streets of Washington, D.C., for the event, which officials project will cost between $25-$45 million while leaving upward of $16 million in damages to the city streets.
(themirror.com)
DOD’s Hogsbreath remarked that the military will be used wherever they are needed…..On US soil or not…..
Hegseth’s remarks came amid growing concerns that the Trump administration’s aggressive response to ongoing protests in Los Angeles is just the start of a broader deployment of U.S. troops to crush dissent wherever it arises. The troop deployments to Los Angeles, authorized for at least 60 days, are expected to cost roughly $134 million, a top Pentagon official told lawmakers on Tuesday.
The language of the memorandum Trump signed on Saturday gives Hegseth broad latitude to “employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/hegseth-national-guard
Next the demand for letters of loyalty….
The 1939 Hatch Act prohibits government employees from using their position to engage in partisan activity, and prohibits their membership in any organization that advocates the overthrow of the United States. At the dawn of the Cold War, President Harry Truman used the latter provision to authorize investigations of government employees concerning their loyalty to their country and to authorize the administration of oaths declaring such loyalty.
The Truman loyalty program, which spread to the states and to private organizations, led to the firing of many people who were either innocent of disloyalty or who had previously belonged to Communist or Communist-affiliated organizations (as had many intellectuals during the Great Depression) but who refused to endanger others by naming them to the authorities. The program was a catastrophe for civil liberties. Still, the stated goal, however ghastly its application, was defensible: Federal employees were expected to be loyal to the United States and not to its Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union.
Now loyalty oaths are back; the Trump White House is imposing them on already-beleaguered civil servants. Only this time, Trump is violating the Hatch Act by demanding that they be partisan and by requiring that employees be loyal not to the United States but to Donald Trump. The forty-seventh president has achieved the impossible. He’s making Truman’s loyalty program look good.
https://newrepublic.com/article/196220/trump-civil-service-loyalty-oaths
Pathetic!
The attack on our national monuments….
A US president’s power to create and undo national monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act is among the White House’s “most sweeping unilateral powers,” the Justice Department said in a slip opinion.
The opinion forms the Justice Department’s rationale for abolishing national monuments, many of which have been declared by presidents to protect large swaths of public land from development.
President Donald Trump has been largely hostile to large national monuments and has taken steps to consider allowing mining companies to access minerals within them.
Then there is the pay to enter scheme of the Donny’s…..
Those interested in President Trump’s long-hyped “gold card,” which will provide foreigners with a chance to attain US citizenship if they pay the $5 million fee, can now get on a waitlist—though for what, exactly, isn’t crystal clear. USA Today notes the administration has yet to specify what that path to citizenship would look like. “Thousands have been calling and asking how they can sign up to ride a beautiful road in gaining access to the Greatest Country and Market anywhere in the World,” Trump wrote Wednesday evening on Truth Social about the offering, which he also calls the “Trump card.”
In case you didn’t know what that country was, Trump added: “It’s called THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!” The waitlist is now open at trumpcard.gov for the card, which Trump has previously said would effectively replace the EB-5 visa giving permanent residency to foreign investors who pony up between $800,000 and $1.05 million. “Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card,” Trump said earlier this year, per USA Today. “They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money, and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people.”
He added: “It’s a road to citizenship for … essentially people of wealth or people of great talent where people of wealth pay for those people of talent to get in.” Trump has said he doesn’t need Congress’ OK for this, since the government isn’t simply handing over citizenship to those who pay the $5 million price tag—it’s expediting the process, per Forbes. The outlet adds that details on the card are “thin,” including on when exactly the Trump card will officially be available, but the dedicated website asks interested parties to plug in all their info so they can “be notified the moment access opens.
Only the wealthy need apply.
Let’s talk about that ‘gift’ or should it be graft of the plane to be used as Air Force One….
The Air Force estimates it will cost less than $400 million to modify a luxury aircraft gifted from the Qatari government into President Donald Trump’s flying command center, according to the service’s top civilian official.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Thursday in a House Armed Services Committee hearing that the assumptions some are making about the modification costs include things like training and buying spare parts — expenses the service has already accounted for through its broader VC-25B presidential aircraft program. While the Air Force may now need to procure those things earlier, it won’t be paying for them twice.
“There’s been a number thrown around on the order of a billion dollars,” Meink said, adding later, “It’s probably less than $400 million to retrofit that aircraft.”
The White House announced last month it would accept Qatar’s offer to gift the president a modified Boeing 747-8, worth roughly $400 million. The plan is to use the gifted plane throughout the rest of Trump’s term and then donate it to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation after Trump leaves office.
(militarytimes.com)
Then there is the SEc of Army who tells us that we have a soldier on the Moon….
U.S. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll appeared on Fox News. Driscoll spoke about the Army’s recruitment tactics and promoted the upcoming military parade in Washington, D.C. which will be held on Saturday, June 14, on Trump’s 79th birthday.
Driscoll said: “As young Americans across the country get to see all of the amazing things that the army has done, whether it’s helping with floods in North Carolina or wildfires in California, or, we talked to an astronaut yesterday who’s on the moon who’s a soldier.”
Hegseth’s Army Chief Says There’s an American Soldier on the Moon
There is no review of Donny’s Nuremberg moment for I had important stuff….watching flies mate.
That was the week that was at the Sh*t Show.
I hope all the Dads out there have a great day…..and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”