Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Yet Another Astonishing Summary of the Week

HARPER'S WEEKLY REVIEW
PUBLISHED BY HARPER’S MAGAZINE (EST. 1850)
September 5, 2017
By Joe Kloc     
   
North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un conducted a hydrogen bomb test; his ambassador called the test a "gift package" and said that "the U.S. will receive more gift packages" if it continues making "futile" threats of sanctions; and U.S. president Donald Trump, who once said he wanted to be "unpredictable" when dealing with nuclear weapons, tweeted that he was considering "stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea," including China, which accounts for 90 percent of North Korea's trade and which manufactures Trump-branded eyeglasses, shirts, ties, suits, mirrors, ceramic vases, wall decorations, kitchen items, and light fixtures, as well as dice for Trump: The Game. Russian president Vladimir Putin said that Trump was not his "bride," that "not all American presidents have reached the end of their term," and that it was "difficult to have a dialogue" with U.S. politicians who "confuse Austria and Australia." Trump nominated as his chief USDA scientist his former Iowa campaign manager, who is not a scientist; and a scientist reported that a government-approved pesticide had damaged 3.1 million acres of soybeans across the Midwest. Trump nominated as his head of NASA an Oklahoma congressman who does not believe in the findings of climate scientists; and a Category 5 hurricane approached the coast of Florida, less than a thousand miles from where a Category 4 hurricane made landfall in Texas a week earlier. Trump's nominee for drug czar was reported to have attempted, while serving as a U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania, to get expunged his friend's conviction for dealing cocaine; and trafficking of powder and crack cocaine was reported to be rising in western Pennsylvania. Trump's attorney general said that there was "nothing compassionate" about allowing immigrants who were brought to the United States as young children to remain in the country, and one of those immigrants was found to have drowned while trying to rescue victims of a flood in Texas. Trump was reported to be "crushed" after receiving the resignation of his director of Oval Office operations, who once punched a Latino man for calling Trump a racist; and the head of a Philadelphia police union referred to Black Lives Matter protesters as "rabid animals" and voiced his support for an officer who has shot two black men in the back on two separate occasions. A law professor found that, according to 37 of the 40 known dictionaries written between 1604 and 1806, the profits Trump receives from foreign leaders' visits to his hotels are a violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause, which a lawyer for Trump has said was written before such profits would be considered emoluments; another personal lawyer for Trump admitted to sending a letter during Trump's presidential campaign to the Kremlin asking for help building a Trump Tower in Moscow; and it was reported that Trump, who has referred to women's vaginas as "landmines" and who during his presidential campaign chastised his opponent for accepting money from Saudi Arabia because the country's citizens "treat women horribly," accepted from the government of Saudi Arabia a robe lined with cheetah fur, a robe lined with rabbit fur, a robe lined with white tiger fur, leather ammo belts and holsters, swords, daggers, boxes of gold-plated coins, a baseball cap, a painting of himself, and a painting of Saudi women.

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