Perhaps Senators Who Are Uncomfortable With Trump Turning The U.S. Into A Banana Republic, Should Stop Behaving Like Banana Republicans

Nancy Ohanian: Emperor With Fig Leaf

Yesterday, Bernie was at an AFL-CIO Labor Day breakfast in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he told the crowd that Señor Trumpanzee is a "pathological liar." What's the difference between a pathological liar and a congenital liar? Bernie also reminded the folks that Trump "works night and day on behalf of his fellow billionaires... And most reprehensible, we have a president who is not doing what almost every president in American history has done: When you make it into the Oval Office, you understand you’ve got a sacred responsibility to bring the American people together. Today we have a president who for cheap political reasons is trying to divide us up."

Trump spent the day pouting and tweeting his regular hateful bullshit. Like, for example, this:

I mean, what's wrong with this jackass (his middle name)? I'm not a Jeff Sessions fan, but compared to Trump he seems like a normal human being. Trump thinks the Attorney General and the Department of Justice are supposed to be weaponized to serve his whims and political agenda. He was bitching about Chris Collins (R-NY) and Duncan Hunter (R-CA), the first and second members of Congress to have endorsed him being indicted for serious crimes because they are "two very popular Republican Congressmen." He's complaining that "Two easy wins now in doubt." I'm sure he doesn't even know he's doing anything wrong. Because of course, to the 30-something percent of American voters who support him and to whom he caters, he isn't doing anything wrong. Only Jeff Sessions and the DOJ did something wrong. CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the tweet by itself "may be an impeachable offense. This is such a disgrace. This is so contrary to the traditions of the Department of Justice." And recall, about a week or so ago he was whining that he needed Sessions to indict someone "from the other side."

No concept of what justice is all about. Sam Nunberg, a former aide, reported that when he tried to read the Bill of Rights of the Constitution to Trump, and only got as far as the 4th Amendment before Trump started fiddling with his lip. He's eyes rolled back in his head and the session was over. Trump always lies and says he finished at the top of his class at Wharton but one of his professors, William T. Kelley has told people over and over that "Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had." More recently, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump is "a moron," which upset Trump so much that he challenged Tillerson to a IQ test battle and then fired him.

Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE), who is known to be driven crazy by this kind of crap from Trump-- but is too frightened to ever do anything about it but whine-- was whining yesterday that "The United States is not some banana republic with a two-tiered system of justice-- one for the majority party and one for the minority party. These two men have been charged with crimes because of evidence, not because of who the President was when the investigations began. Instead of commenting on ongoing investigations and prosecutions, the job of the President of the United States is to defend the Constitution and protect the impartial administration of justice."

Yesterday, Trump ordered up a motorcade, went outside to get in a car, seemed dazed and confused, turned around and went back into the White House. I can't understand why he doesn't have a minder.

Earlier in the day than his attack on Sessions, he got into a little shadow boxing-- it being Labor Day-- with Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO. He was angry that Trumka was on his own TV station telling the truth about the Regime's poisonous behavior towards workers.

Ian Kullgren, writing for Politico in the middle of Trump's studio tweet storm against Trumka, reported that though the illegitimate moron "president" came into office "pledging to cut regulations “massively,” he made a point of exempting regulations that protected workers’ health. But almost two years in, the Trump administration has done the opposite, rolling back worker safety protections affecting underground mine safety inspections, offshore oil rigs and line speeds in meat processing plants, among others. Trump's deregulatory moves on worker safety are at odds with his public stance as a champion of working class Americans, but consistent with his naming two management-side attorneys bent on rolling back economic protections for workers to the National Labor Relations Board, which regulates labor unions, and with his nominations of two reliably pro-management jurists to a now-Republican-majority Supreme Court that recently dealt a heavy financial blow to public-employee unions." That was one of the items that Trumka brought up on Fox.

Since Trump took office, OSHA also scrubbed a running list of worker deaths from its home page.

A notable exception to the administration’s resistance to worker-safety regulation was its decision to defend in court an Obama-era rule regulating crystalline silica-- a mineral dust long known to cause deadly lung ailments. After some initial delays, the rule took effect for most employers in June.

That action was more in tune with Trump's earlier rhetoric. "We need regulations for safety and environment and things,” President-elect Trump assured workers at an Indianapolis air-conditioner plant in December 2016. “We want to protect our workers,” President Trump repeated one year later in a speech touting the cancellation or delay of 1,500 regulatory actions.

At EPA, Trump officials are working on new rules to limit asbestos exposure as part of a congressionally mandated update to the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016. On its face, it would seem to be strengthening safety.

But advocates worry that the rules, intended by Congress to limit asbestos, could open the door to new products containing the toxin.

EPA’s significant new use rule, proposed in June, lists 14 uses of asbestos that would trigger scrutiny by EPA. All were used at one time but have been halted by industry voluntarily, said Betsy Southerland, former director of the EPA’s science and technology office.

But the rule doesn’t require every new use of asbestos to be approved by the EPA, though advocates believe Congress gave the agency authority to do so. That means a company conceivably could develop at new use for asbestos and not have to notify the agency, said Southerland, who resigned in 2017.

“You never know what industry is going to come up with,” Southerland said. “They could want to use it to create new chemicals in the future.”

In addition, the EPA’s proposal for evaluating asbestos risks doesn’t consider so-called legacy hazards-- for example, particles of asbestos insulation or asbestos tiles that could be inhaled by workers when removed. That means workers could be more highly exposed than the general public if and when the EPA approves new uses.

“What the Trump EPA has done is essentially cooked the books to undervalue the risks posed by asbestos,” said Scott Faber, a top lobbyist for the Environmental Working Group, which has opposed a variety of Trump policies. “You don’t need to be a toxicologist to understand that you can’t determine whether a chemical is safe or not if you don’t understand the whole picture.”

In industry and industry, the regime is just telling owners and management to regulate themselves, something that has always cost workers' lives, a risk Trump-- though not Trumka-- funds acceptable.