Descending further into madness ...

This morning, Trump accused Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe, and Jeff Sessions of "illegal and treasonous activity".

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/illegal-and-treasonous-trump-says-rosenstein-was-part-of-a-coup-attempt/ar-BBTLElK?ocid=spartandhp

TIME magazine had him pegged a long time ago:

The $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis has already been mentioned on this thread. What I did not see mentioned was that Trump was awarded the Saudi governments highest honor, the King Abdulaziz al Saud Collar on his visit. The medal has also been bestowed on Theresa May, Barack Obama - and Vladimir Putin.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-latest-saudi-arabia-highest-civilian-honour-king-abdulaziz-al-saud-collar-gold-a7746566.html

MBS made the news again this morning because he is currently in Pakistan. Coincidentally, he was awarded Pakistan's highest civilian honor, the Nishan-e-Pakistan. Purely by coincidence, he received the award a day after signing a $20 billion investment deal between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/pakistan-honour-saudi-crown-prince-highest-civilian-award-190218075201687.html

Another part of the deal was that MBS agreed to release over 2000 Pakistanis from prison in Saudi Arabia. In March 2018, a Human Rights Watch investigation, based on interviews with 12 Pakistanis held in Saudi Arabia and family members of other defendants, showed "widespread due process violations by the Saudi criminal justice system and Saudi courts".

Although Jamal Khassogi has gotten most of the world's attention, Saudi Arabia still has dozens of journalists and activists behind bars. Although the country has repressed activists before, the situation has gotten worse under the reign of MBS.

https://www.vox.com/2018/10/26/18000880/jamal-khashoggi-saudi-arabia-mbs-dissidents-imprisoned

Although Saudi Arabia IS an important ally in the region, it also comes with plenty of warts, including the war in Yemen. What our country really needs are some skilled diplomats in the area to reduce the abuses by the Saudis. What we have instead is Donald Trump and Jared Kushner.

God help us (or should that be Allah help us?)

Former FOX "news" commentator Heather Nauert just withdrew her nomination to be the next U.N. ambassador because she had employed an immigrant nanny who wasn't legally allowed to work in the United States.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/heather-nauert-un-ambassador-nanny_us_5c68ba10e4b05c889d1fe334?section=politics&utm_medium=facebook&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013&utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&utm_source=politics_fb&fbclid=IwAR2O-9hN96EAPeR6ksyTu5E88d-Jzlp85MTaI6CS84GFdJ3ZU3nOzrjo5f4

The Trump organization recently fired a whole bunch of illegal immigrants who worked at Trump golf courses. In addition, Mar-A-Lago resort applied to import 70 foreign workers in November of 2016, the Trump International Hotel in D.C. currently employs a number of illegal immigrants AND Trump used roughly 170 illegal Polish immigrants to do demolition work on the site that eventually became Trump Tower.

Logically, shouldn't Trump resign due to his use of illegal immigrants? That list also would include Melania Trump, who wasn't a legal immigrant when she first started working in this country.

After announcing his candidacy, Mark Kelly raised over $1 million - IN ONE DAY. As a result, I don't think that he will have any trouble defeating Martha McSally for John McCain's senate seat, especially due to the fact that McSally is still tied to Trump. As you are aware, Mark Kelly and his wife Gabby Giffords founded Americans for Responsible Solutions in 2013 - and both of them are gun owners.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Responsible_Solutions

Once he gets elected, one possible outcome will be that congress will FINALLY pass a universal background check for ALL gun purchases, in part because the Mueller investigation is going to reel in the NRA because of its connections with, and money from, the Russians.

Sadly, though, even that will not be enough.

Gary Martin, the shooter at the Henry Pratt company in Aurora, Illinois was not even supposed to have a gun.

On March 11, 2014, he was issued a firearms identification card after going through an instant background check. He was then able to purchase a Smith $ Wesson from a local dealer.

Five days later, he applied for a concealed carry license, but the fingerprinting process turned up a 1995 felony conviction in Mississippi, at which point the firearm identification card permitting him to own the gun was revoked.

At the time of his death, Martin had six arrests on his record, including a domestic violence arrest in 2008, BEFORE he bought his gun. He also was arrested in 2017 for disorderly conduct and criminal damage to property.

The meeting he was in the day of the shooting was his termination meeting. One of the people killed was the plant manager, who was in the process of firing him, and a college intern, who was there on his FIRST day on the job.

The Aurora police chief said that investigators are trying to determine why Martin still had his gun.

Dave's Killer Bread is proof that many criminals deserve a second chance - but that should not necessarily include the right to own a gun.

The company was founded in 2005 by Dave Dahl. Prior to that time, he served 15 years in prison for a variety of offenses, including drug distribution, burglary, armed robbery and assault. By 2013, the company employed 300 people, 1/3 of whom were ex-cons. 2 years later , the company was sold to Flowers Foods for $275 million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave%27s_Killer_Bread

Florida also recently came to the realization that criminals need a second chance. As a result, voting rights were restored to more than 1,000,000 ex-cons.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/florida-votes-to-restore-ex-felons-voting-rights

Speaking of Flowers Foods, you may be interested to know that 5 years ago, the company was rated as the most Republican-leaning company in the country, since 99% of its contributions went to the Republican Party, 11% higher than the amount contributed to the party by the Koch brothers. One of the brands they own is Wonder Bread:

http://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2014/05/have-you-ever-wondered-about-wonder.html

Wwjd:

Possibly, but I think the main reason is the recent massive cuts in the newspaper industry

I posted a Steve Benson cartoon this morning on the thread for the border wall. In the process, I discovered that one of the most controversial cartoons that he ever produced was in 1977, when he drew a cartoon criticizing the death penalty. Although we have probably discussed the death penalty before on this site, I could not find a link this morning, so I thought that I would start a new one.

Although the natural reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing was to "kill the bastard", there are LOTS of reasons that we should not have the death penalty, and the link below explains why:

http://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/11/kill-em-all-and-let-god-sort-em-out.html

Many people in society feel that the way to solve crime problems is "to get tough on crime". Unfortunately, that is exactly the wrong approach in many cases. The link below goes into more detail:

http://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2017/06/why-being-tough-on-crime-does-not.html

Fortunately, even our congress has come to the realization that our criminal justice system is flawed, and a bi-partisan bill was passed by the senate in December:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/senat

e-passes-sweeping-criminal-justice-reform-bill-n949586

Obviously, there still ARE a lot of very scary people who need to be locked for the rest of their lives, and El Chapo is one of the. He will staying the rest of his life in the ADX maximum security prison in Colorado, which houses America's most dangerous criminals. No one has ever escaped from the prison since it opened in 1994:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mexico-el-chapo-supermax/el-chapo-likely-heading-for-colorado-prison-where-no-one-has-escaped-idUSKCN1Q12R8

ADX is a sharp contrast to the prisons in Norway, which are actually OPEN prisons. You'll never see that approach here, but it is an interesting concept.

http://www.businessinsider.com/norways-prisons-are-better-than-the-american-prisons-2018-6

One of my favorite political cartoonists is Pulitzer-Prize winning Steve Benson, who recently got fired by Gannett, the parent company of the Arizona Republic. Fortunately, his cartoons are still available on GoComics.

Today's cartoon perfectly sums about our "national emergency":

http://www.gocomics.com/stevebenson/2019/02/16

In 1997, a Benson cartoon used the image of a firefighter carrying a dead child to comment on the death sentence that had just been imposed on Oklahoma City bombing defendant Timothy McVeigh. Benson forcefully defended his work against some readers' contentions that the cartoon was insensitive.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/19/cartoon.firefighters/

Benson was awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, was a Pulitzer finalist in 1984, 1989, 1992, and 1994, and has received a variety of other awards. He has served as president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. His cartoons have been collected in a number of books.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Benson_(cartoonist)

wwjd:

It seems like a lot of what Trump does and says is a distraction from the myriads of scandals he is responsible for. In a lot of ways, his administration reminds me of the 1997 movie, Wag The Dog.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog

Dutcg:

You are correct. The Netherlands is the largest exporter of flowers, followed by Columbia and Ecuador. The big difference between the Netherlands and Kenya is that the per cap GDP in the Netherlands is roughly $54,000. As a result, they can afford to pay much higher wages.

https://tradingeconomics.com/netherlands/gdp-per-capita

The average salary in the Netherlands is between $25,000 and $30,000 a year.