Stephan: Bill McKibben echoes what I have been saying since this election started. When you vote take climate change seriously. Your life, and the lives of your children, and their children depends on what you do in November.
The Eagle Creek wildfire burns in the Columbia River Gorge above Cascade Locks, Ore., in 2017. (Tristan Fortsch / KATU-TV via AP
To understand the planetary importance of this autumn’s presidential election, check the calendar. Voting ends on November 3—and by a fluke of timing, on the morning of November 4 the United States is scheduled to pull out of the Paris Agreement.
President Trump announced that we would abrogate our Paris commitments during a Rose Garden speech in 2017. But under the terms of the accords, it takes three years to formalize the withdrawal. So on Election Day it won’t be just Americans watching: The people of the world will see whether the country that has poured more carbon into the atmosphere than any other over the course of history will become the only country that refuses to cooperate in the one international effort to do something about the climate crisis.
Trump’s withdrawal benefited oil executives, who have donated millions of dollars to his reelection campaign, and the small, strange fringe of climate deniers who continue to insist that the planet […]
Stephan: In his three and a half years as President Trump, as this article describes, has trashed America's place in the world, and it may take years to repair this damage, if it can be repaired at all. International geopolitics have changed, and China is emerging as the world leader.
Trump and European leaders
London (CNN)It’s no secret that Donald Trump is no big fan of the European Union. Over the past four years, the US President has talked positively about Brexit and claimed that the bloc was created in order to “take advantage of the United States.”So it’s perhaps no great surprise that several of his ambassadors to several European nations have behaved in ways that are not exactly diplomatic, in the traditional sense.Earlier this week, it emerged that Pete Hoekstra, the US ambassador to the Netherlands, hosted an event at his embassy for Forum for Democracy (FvD), a far-right, anti-immigration and anti-EU party that is gaining popularity in the country. Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer, which first reported on the event, described it as a fundraiser for the party.A US state department spokesperson told CNN that this event was not a fundraiser, but a “town hall discussion and Q&A session” with FvD. They added that during his stint in the Netherlands, Hoekstra has hosted “15 town halls […]
Stephan: What is now documented makes it clear that Trump ought to be in prison for mammoth criminality and grifting, not President of the United States.
Felix Sater
In a new book, investigative reporter Tom Burgis details the shocking ways in which corrupt leaders used Russian “businessman” Felix Sater to conduct sketchy deals, including ones for President Donald Trump.
According to the Daily Beast, Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World reports the “terrifying” and true tale of overwhelming corruption, “clandestinely fusing their business interests, and forming alliances.”
“What they crave is legitimacy—for their money and their power,” the Beast described. “That means hijacking democracies, harnessing the rule of law to protect their own lawless fortunes and destroy their enemies.”
If people like Sater can funnel cash quietly through different channels, it can help untrusted regimes garner some form of trust from the global community by hiding their illicit activities. The person who does that is Sater, and his relationship with Trump is well-documented.
BRIAN KAREM, Senior White House Correspondent - The Bulwark
Stephan: I have always been amazed that there has been so little commentary on the fact that most days Trump plays golf or watches television most of the time. His actual work schedule is just a few hours. Don't you wish you had a job like that?
The Oval Office of the White House is seen after renovations including new wallpaper August 22, 2017 in Washington, DC. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty
It isn’t just that Donald Trump is crazy.
It isn’t just that he lies.
It’s not just that his administration is filled with chaos.
And it isn’t just that he is “Putin’s puppet.”
There’s another problem we tend to overlook as we react to the president’s bombast, wild claims, misogyny, racism, lies, greed, avarice, and abandonment of all the core principles of our country and his party. We overlook it because it is so common that it is no longer news.
It is this: Donald Trump rarely shows up in the West Wing, and when he does, he is too incompetent to effectively fulfill his oath of office.
The Marine guard posted outside of Trump’s office when he is in it almoste never appears before noon and is rarely seen in the afternoon. There have been days when Trump has held press briefings where the guard wasn’t outside of the door even as Trump entered the briefing room—indicating that Trump […]
Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: Today I am running this single story, which is quite lengthy, yet I hope you will click through and read all of it. I am sure you have already heard the story's highlights, but it is in the details that the full griftiness and dishonesty of Donald Trump comes into focus. This man should never have become President of the United States, and wouldn't have if the truth about him were known.
Forty-three percent of the people who could vote did not vote in 2016, and each of us must take it as a personal responsibility to strongly encourage everyone they know to vote in this election. Your future, the country's future, depend on voting Trump out of office, and flipping the Senate so that it is under Democratic control. It is going to take years to undo the damage this criminal psychopath and his orcs have wrought.
Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.
He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.
As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.
The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet […]
