There are a number of reasons why Donald Trump’s proposal to build a wall on the US-Mexican border is kind of dumb, primarily being that nobody wants to fund such a crazy expensive operation. However, scientists have presented another reason why the border wall plan would be terrible, and it’s not just for the people who may or may not have to pay for it if Trump gets elected.

According to ecologists, a wall would cut through the ecosystem in the southwestern United States, denying species access to their environment and destroying habitats.

“The southwestern US and northwestern Mexico share their weather, rivers and wildlife,” Sergio Avila-Villegas, a conservation scientist from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, told Nature. “The infrastructure on the border cuts through all that and divides a shared landscape in two.”

The area is home to a wide diversity of species, including some that are endangered and need access to both nations to survive. Movement is important for the continued survival of many species and a large wall could hamper that movement.

These hypotheses are based on the kind of wall proposed by Trump (granted, there isn’t a plan that goes into a lot of detail), which’ll be at least 50 feet high and made out of precast concrete. The height of the wall alone could impact the movement of birds that either don’t fly, such as roadrunners, or who fly low, such as pygmy owls. Other species like bighorn sheep—that travel in small groups and rely on cross-border connections to survive—would be cut off from their neighbors.

Most animals migrate to some degree, whether it’s to travel to breeding grounds at certain times of the year, or to find better living conditions in the event of catastrophes. Migration specifically allows for more varied genetic diversity in certain populations that connect with species in other countries to mate. A concrete barrier that spans thousands of miles would cut off access for those animals.

Clinton Epps, a wildlife biologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, was one of the authors on a 2009 study published in Conservation Biology that suggested that a barrier would have a negative effect on the pygmy owls and bighorn sheep. He also highlighted to Nature the problems black bears, jaguars, and ocelots will have in the event of a border wall. Black bears in the US are particularly in danger if they can’t connect with Mexican bears.

A border wall that was haphazardly placed could also cut off access to food and water sources. Mother Nature Network spoke with conservation photographer Krista Schlyer in 2011 and found that it already has in some cases, such as when she and a scientist spotted a broken-down barbed-wire fence near the border.

“When we got to the ground, we visited the ranches on either side of the border to learn what we could about the bison’s movements and habits. The rancher on the Mexican side of the border said the bison visited a pond on his land almost every day because it was the only year-round water source anywhere nearby. The rancher on the American side said they came to a certain pasture on his land, where there was a special kind of native grass.”

According to a study published by the University of Texas at Austin in 2011 highlighted at least 27 species that were at risk due to a border wall. Researchers studied an area along coastal California where barriers block as much as 75 percent of species’ ranges. Most at risk are smaller populations in specialized habitats.

Experts have already noticed the toll that the existing barrier has taken on species—the one authorized by President George W. Bush in 2006 and that spans around 1,100 kilometers (or around 683 miles). Mountain lions have been spotted trying to climb over the bars, for example. However, efforts to actively study the impact of border policies on wildlife has been hampered by the danger that patrols present in the area and the unwelcoming nature for many scientists, including Sergio Avila-Villegas, who is Hispanic.

“Every time I — a Hispanic male with dark skin and long hair — am in the field, I get patrols, helicopters, and ATVs coming to check on what I’m doing,” Avila-Villegas told Nature.

Of course, if you don’t care about the conservation of wildlife, this all seems like a nonissue. Maybe we can get the mountain lions to pay for the wall, since it’s going to be on their land too.

[Nature]

On Wednesday, The Huffington Post offered a telling anecdote about the relationship between Donald Trump and recently demoted campaign chairman Paul Manafort, revisiting the story of Trump’s notorious taco bowl tweet from the perspective of those inside the campaign.

http://gawker.com/donald-trump-o…

“Manafort was in the office with other aides when a member of the family suggested they tweet a picture of Trump enjoying his ‘Mexican’ lunch,” The Huffington Post reports. “Manafort politely suggested that this might be seen as condescending and cautioned against it. The tweet went out.”

Unfortunately, the story fails to identify the specific Trump family member who recommended the tweet, but we have a couple good guesses.

In an interview conducted shortly after his appearance on CNN Wednesday night, Donald Trump’s special counsel Michael Cohen explained his apparent distrust of all the polls, citing anecdotal evidence that challenged the candidate’s surveyed unfavorability among black voters.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-tr…

“When they say that Donald Trump has a 1 percent favorability amongst the African-American community, I know from my own interactions that that number is absolutely and unequivocally inaccurate,” Cohen told Yahoo News. “I speak on a weekly basis to more than 100 African-American Evangelical preachers who are all committed to ensuring Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States.”

In the same interview, Cohen bragged about “unraveling” anchor Brianna Keilar and claimed he “controlled the interview.”

“I was shocked at the length of the silence as she stumbled to think of an answer,” said Cohen. “And when she did come up with an answer, it was so generic it could have applied to anything.”

Asked for comment, Keilar requested Yahoo News “just embed the video.”

http://gawker.com/top-trump-atto…

The death toll in Louisiana has risen to 13, ABC News reports. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson will visit the state on Thursday to review the federal government’s response to what Governor John Bel Edwards called “unprecedented” flooding.

Some 70,000 people have registered for individual assistance, and more than 9,000 have filed flood insurance claims. The flood waters have begun to recede, and thousands of people are returning to their homes; many more remain homeless, however—more than 5,000 people across south Louisiana. From The Advocate:

For those without family to turn to and with homes swept away or ruined by feet of water, life offers little certainty for the coming weeks and months. Ricks said some of those who left shelters are coming back after finding no power and a fetid stench from mud coating their homes.

Not even the governor knows yet what to do with those left homeless by the floods, saying it’s too early to speak about temporary housing beyond shelters as rescue missions continue and state officials work to tally up just how many lost all.

“We have to take into consideration this particular group of storm victims and what their needs are going to be,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said Tuesday.

Of those killed in the flooding, The Advocate reports, seven drowned in or near their vehicles. At least one was not a local, but just passing through. Others were killed after declining to evacuate their homes.

There is nothing wrong with planning for the future. If you are a cab driver, or a truck driver, or an Uber driver, now is the time to plan for what you will do when your job disappears. And for what we should do for you.

Today, Volvo and Uber announced that they are formally teaming up to develop self-driving cars. No big surprise; Uber already has a well-established and well-funded internal self-driving car program, with “The goal: to replace Uber’s more than 1 million human drivers with robot drivers—as quickly as possible.” The company says it will make self-driving cars available to the public in Pittsburgh this month.

Google has a self-driving car in development. Teslas can already drive themselves fairly well. Ford says that it plans to be selling a self-driving car with no steering wheel by 2021. In addition to the market for self-driving cars, efforts are already well underway around the world to perfect self-driving trucks, which will inevitably put most or all long-haul truckers out of work.

The replacement of human drivers with robots is a development, like climate change, that we know is coming, even as many close their eyes and plug up their ears and pretend it is not. It is coming soon. Within the next five years or so, significant numbers of humans will be put out of work. As the technology improves, and gets cheaper, the number of human drivers put out of work will increase, until the idea of paying someone to drive you around is little more than a charming anachronism. We still have horse and carriage drivers, yes, but it’s not a burgeoning career field.

There are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the US, and more than 200,000 taxi drivers, and close to another 200,000 (at least part time) Uber drivers. This is something close to four million people who could find themselves deprived of at least a significant part of their earnings in the near future. The driving industry is the next major test case for the effects of automation on our real economy.

Where will these people go? When all the good manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas or automated away, those workers went into the service industry. When the driving jobs go away, will all of those workers go into the service industry, too? The service industry, by the way, is also at risk of significant job loss due to automation. You can be sure that we will see people lose a job as a taxi driver, start driving for Uber, lose that job to a robot, get a job at a fast food restaurant, and lose that job to a computer kiosk.

Universal basic income is going to look like an increasingly attractive idea as the number of angry, unemployed automation victims goes up.

McDonald’s will no longer be shipping fitness trackers with its Happy Meals. The fast-food giant is discontinuing the cheap step-counters it was set to include in kid’s meals because the plastic bands are giving children rashes.

McDonald’s announced the decision in a statement:

“We are voluntarily removing the Step It! Activity Band Happy Meal toys in our restaurants in our United States and Canadian markets. It will no longer be offered as part of our Happy Meals. We have taken this swift and voluntary step after receiving limited reports of potential skin irritations that may be associated from wearing the band. Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our customers and we are fully investigating this issue. Our restaurants are now offering our youngest guests an alternative Happy Meal toy.”

The Happy Meal toy was announced earlier this week, and it was set to be available for four weeks during McDonald’s big marketing push for the Olympic Games. Now, the golden arches will go back to shilling greasy food to children with the help of cartoon characters and other big franchises.

As we previously reported, the step-counter was kind of a bad idea anyway. A cheeseburger Happy Meal is loaded with 840 calories, meaning it would take the average kid about 4 hours of exercise to burn off. If the average person takes 2,000 steps per mile, and walks about 3 miles per hour, then they’d have to take 24,000 steps before all of the cheeseburger calories burned off. Gross.

We’re just glad this experiment is finally over. First of all, the fitness tracker was of dubious actual utility. But more importantly, it’s a real distraction from the very real problems with fast food. If you want your kid to live a healthier life—stop buying them McDonald’s. It has almost no nutritional value and can lead to long-term problems like diabetes and obesity.

[Ad Age]

Amid Donald Trump’s spasmodic summer, one member of his campaign (and family) has received a growing amount of positive—or at least not explicitly negative—press: Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Today, however, Esquire has published a long and excellent profile with lots of good dirt, all about who is this smiling fellow who through his narrow greed and ambition has sold out his faith for a suicide ride on the Trump train.

Here’s the best goss in the piece:

Jared’s ex-con father is secretly still running the family business.

In August 2004, Charles Kushner (Jared’s father) pleaded guilty to 18 felony counts of tax fraud, election violations, and witness tampering: He’d set his sister’s husband up with a sex worker and filmed their interactions in an effort to blackmail him out of cooperating with a federal investigation.

After Charles went away, Jared took over the family business, supposedly displaying a preternatural talent for negotiating the cut-throat and heavily-capitalized New York City real estate industry. According to Esquire, however, Charles was running things behind the scenes.

Under Jared’s leadership, the Kushner Companies has embarked on an impressive streak of acquisitions in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. This summer the firm participated in a $340 million deal for the former headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, one of the most coveted parcels of waterfront real estate in Brooklyn. But no one at the Tuesday meeting, and no one who deals with the company from the outside, is allowed to forget who built the firm. When I called one of the Kushners’ underwriters to ask about Jared’s business prowess, he seemed startled. “None of it’s been him,” he said. “It’s been his dad.”

Incidentally, Jared visited his father every weekend when he was in prison.

Jared and his brother see themselves as young Kennedys.

Flattering profiles love to compare Jared to a young John F. Kennedy—a comparison Jared has apparently embraced.

And yet for all that Jared has helped Trump, there is a sense among Jared’s friends and business associates that he sees the gold-plated vision of a Trump White House as the ultimate step in a carefully plotted ascent to redemption, one that began when his father’s scandal tarnished the family name. In this respect, it seems more than usually significant that both Kushner brothers have photographs of John F. Kennedy prominently displayed in their offices. Just as Kennedy’s father was forced to yield his ambitions to his sons’ generation after uttering controversial remarks during World War II, so too did the scandal that sent Charles Kushner to prison open the door for his sons—and especially for Jared—to launch their charm offensive on society at a very early age.

Jared’s family didn’t want him to marry Ivanka, even after she converted to Judaism.

The Kushners are practicing Modern Orthodox Jews; the Trumps are...whatever.

Ivanka passed the tests, and by 2009 Charles was ready to formally accept her into the Kushner family. At the couple’s wedding, which was held at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, he stood up and, according to multiple sources, gave a toast that drew tears from the assembled guests. A person who attended the wedding recalls the central sentiments of the speech: “Look, everyone thinks she’s great, but being Jewish is just unbelievably important to us, and she’s not Jewish. It’s a problem for me, a genuine problem. Then I watched and got to see she’s in love with my son and it wasn’t what I thought in the beginning. I feel right about it.”

Trump stood up to speak after Charles, and he floundered miserably. According to one guest, he “gave the most pathetic, lame, embarrassing speech I’ve heard in a long time.”

It must have been so hard for daddy to give his little girl away.

Jared doesn’t know his American political history.

Lately Jared’s liking of the Donald has morphed into something more substantial. Over the last year, Jared seems to have settled into a sort of hero worship, as though he wanted to become his father-in-law. His peers in the real estate industry talk about the stash of red “Make America Great Again” baseball caps that Jared keeps in his office, on the fifteenth floor of 666 Fifth Avenue. As he hands out the hats, he says of Trump’s slogan, “It came right out of his head!”

The slogan was first used by Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Jared knows about Real America.

Charles Kushner got Jared into Harvard by making a huge donation and hitting up his pals in the Senate to put int recommendations. Jared graduated in 2003 and then got a joint J.D./M.B.A. from New York University.

When his Jewish friends ask him—and they do—whether, given the history of the persecution of his own religion, Jared really endorses Trump’s anti-Muslim sentiments, he does not miss a beat justifying his father-in-law. “You don’t understand what America is,” he says, “or what American people think.”

Read the whole thing here.

I’ve seen a lot of disgusting things in my years on the internet, but this video takes the cake.

A popular Youtuber named Louis Cole, whose channel has nearly 2 million subscriptions, ended his trip to North Korea by creating a music video called “Sufin In The DPRK.” This isn’t some biting political commentary that touches on the atrocities carried out by the North Korean dictatorship, but rather a fun, lighthearted video about “bringing our wold together.”

Cole has already been hit with criticism for the lighthearted and intellectually dishonest “adventure videos” he’s posted on YouTube while on his state-organized tour of North Korea. In one video description, Cole writes “I’m trying to focus on positive things in the country and combat the purely negative image we see in the Media.”

In case you needed a reminder, North Korea is a country run by a dictatorship that strikes fear into its citizens by demanding compliance. North Korean citizens are ravaged by poverty and hunger, and if you were to escape North Korea, your family and friends would be sent to a hard labor camp for decades. These are just a few of the daily crimes against humanity that are carried out by the North Korean dictatorship. It feels weird to repeat this, because everyone already knows about the intense pain and suffering of the North Korean people and the atrocities regularly carried out by the North Korean government, but Cole doesn’t seem to get it.

For whatever reason, Cole doesn’t seem to realize that his tour of North Korea, just like all other tours of the country, is staged and set up to appear as if the country is thriving and prosperous. Cole seems to think that by not mentioning these atrocities, or the hunger ravaging the country, and by making a cheery video hanging out with his new North Korean friends, that he’ll be able to help bridge some global divide. That, of course, is delusional—but we hope Cole enjoys the YouTube ad revenue!

Twitter says it has suspended 235,000 accounts for promoting terrorism since February. That brings the total accounts suspended since June 2015 to 360,000.

“Our response time for suspending reported accounts, the amount of time these accounts are on Twitter, and the number of followers they accumulate have all decreased dramatically,” Twitter said in a blog post. “We have also made progress in disrupting the ability of those suspended to immediately return to the platform.”

Twitter has long struggled with removing terrorist content on its platform, receiving criticism from US lawmakers and Twitter users.

According to The Washington Post, Twitter says it has beefed up its efforts to catch terrorist accounts. This includes increasing the teams that review reports, and adding new tools to detect accounts promoting terrorism. Twitter also says it is sharing information with other social media companies in order to identify terrorist content.

After nearly fourteen years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week. The decision to close Gawker comes days after Univision successfully bid $135 million for Gawker Media’s six other websites, and four months after the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel revealed his clandestine legal campaign against the company.

Nick Denton, the company’s outgoing CEO, informed current staffers of the site’s fate on Thursday afternoon, just hours before a bankruptcy court in Manhattan will decide whether to approve Univision’s bid for Gawker Media’s other assets. Staffers will soon be assigned to other editorial roles, either at one of the other six sites or elsewhere within Univision. Near-term plans for Gawker.com’s coverage, as well as the site’s archives, have not yet been finalized.

Have you heard? As of next week, beloved cuck advocacy website Gawker.com will officially be shutting down thanks to the machinations of a megalomaniacal seasteading vampire. It happens! And though it’s incredibly unfortunate, there is something you can do to make us feel just a little bit better: Send us Donald Trump’s tax returns.

As you know, Donald Trump has refused to release his tax returns, presumably because he is being perpetually audited. The auditing part is true, but the part where that fact has anything to do with his ability to release the returns is not. As Warren Buffett previously said, “There are no rules against showing your tax returns and just let[ting] people ask questions about the items that are on there.”

And not only would those tax returns answer some highly relevant questions the American people have about Donald Trump’s funds (or lack thereof), they would also ease the devastating pain of watching our dreams crumble right before our very eyes.

Someone out there has to have Donald Trump’s tax returns. Is it you? Do you want to do us a solid? If so, please send whatever you’ve got over to ashley@gawker.com. C’mon. It’s the least you could do.

It appears that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, typically a fan the huge and dissolute, has been minimizing public perception of his debt.

A New York Times investigation published on Saturday reveals that U.S.-based real estate companies owned by Trump are at least $650 million in debt. Only half this amount was disclosed in the public F.E.C. filings Trump completed in order to run for president.

http://gawker.com/the-only-thing…

The Times qualified that Trump’s lack of transparency in his filings may be due in part to the complexity of his finances, and the simplicity of the forms he and other candidates were required to fill out:

“That Mr. Trump seems to have so much less debt on his disclosure form than what The Times found is not his fault, but rather a function of what the form asks candidates to list and how.

The form, released by the Federal Election Commission, asks that candidates list assets and debts not in precise numbers, but in ranges that top out at $50 million — appropriate for most candidates, but not for Mr. Trump. Through its examination, The Times was able to discern the amount of debt taken out on each property, and its ownership structure.”

Wouldn’t it be crazy if presidential candidates honestly publicized their finances without being forced to? Or if a government form contained an “other amount” option?

Furthermore, according to the Times’ report, Trump has woven a shady web of financial backers to support his real estate assets. Trump has launched attacks against some of these backers on the campaign trail. For instance, the Bank of China, among the largest banks in a country Trump has repeatedly antagonized on economic grounds, lends money to a building in Manhattan that Trump partially owns.

But many of Trump’s financial ties remain partially or completely mysterious, due to the labyrinthine structuring of his real estate projects.

It’s well worth reading the report in full for all the gritty details.

Where is she sleeping?

Joe Arpaio, who says he is the “toughest sheriff” in the land, could face criminal charges.

On Friday, federal Judge G. Murray Snow ordered that the US Attorney’s Office determine whether the Maricopa County Sheriff and Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan should be charged with criminal contempt of court for ignoring court orders to stop racial profiling of Latinos, according to the New York Times.

http://gawker.com/joe-arpaios-pr…

The federal prosector does not have to pursue the case and press criminal charges against the two law men. If the prosecutor passes on the case, the judge could appoint a special prosecutor.

Per the New York Times, Snow wrote in his order that Arpaio and Sheridan, “have a history of obfuscation and subversion of this court’s orders that is as old as this case.” Snow also noted that, “there is also probably cause to believe that many if not all of the statements were made in an attempt to obstruct any inquiry into further wrongdoing or negligence.”

The case in question stretches back to 2007 when a lawsuit was filed on behalf of Latino drivers alleging they’d been systematically targeted in traffic stops and immigration patrols by sheriff’s deputies. Judge Snow ruled in the drivers’ favor and ordered changes to police training and procedures.

In May, Snow found Arpaio and three of his deputies in contempt of court, saying they’d “demonstrated a persistent disregard for the orders of the court.”

Otherwise, Arpaio is a delight. He is a proud birther, at least as recently a 2015 CNN interview, and he once put inmates in an Arizona jail on a diet of bread and water for desecrating American flags. Any prison would be lucky to have him.

The extensive price hike for a vital, life-saving drug for many with allergies is causing concern among doctors, patients, and politicians—along with a guy responsible for an extensive price hike himself.

Mylan pharmaceutical, the maker of the EpiPen—a portable epinephrine injector that can potentially save someone having a life-threatening allergic reaction—is being accused of raising the price of the product from around $100 in 2008 to $500 today. In all, that’s an increase of over 400 percent.

This is especially worrying because Mylan has a near monopoly in the business, especially after one of its competitors issued a recall last year. Doctors have likened its brand dominance in schools to that of Kleenex. Many schools have emergency epinephrine in stock and there are states pushing for legislation to make that mandatory.

The increase is so high that Pharma Bro and person that hates Gawker Martin Shkreli, who for months was the most hated person on the internet after his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, acquired a 62-year-old anti-parasitic drug and jacked the price from $13.50 a pill to $750, spoke out against the move.

“These guys are really vultures. What drives this company’s moral compass?” he told NBC News.

He even remarked on the issue on Twitter, but in typical Shkreli fashion, it’s hard to tell if he’s being serious or not:

In an earlier emailed statement, Mylan said its prices have “changed over time to better reflect important product features and the value the product provides,” and that “we’ve made a significant investment to support the device over the past years.”

According to a financial report released last week, Mylan’s sales have gone up, thanks in part to the EpiPen.

With good insurance, and with the help of coupons, it’s possible to pay very little for an EpiPen. However, those without adequate insurance in the United States are left without many alternatives, especially in pharmacies.

So, it’s caused a number of officials to speak out, including former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

He expanded his sentiment in a statement sent to NBC News.

“The drug industry’s greed knows no bounds,” Sanders said. “The only explanation for Mylan raising the price by six times since 2009 is that the company values profits more than the lives of millions of Americans.”

NBC stated that while there isn’t a House committee investigation in the works, there is a lawsuit on the way.

“I’ve been looking at EpiPen for years,” said Ari Kresch, CEO of 1-800-LAW-FIRM. “It’s a very cheap drug but I haven’t been successful in getting any experts to tell me why the price has gone up as much as it has.”

It’s just worrying that through all of this, Shkreli is using the issue to be the voice of reason. When he calls out your company, you know you’ve screwed up.

We’ve reached out to Mylan for comment and will update if we hear back.

Update 4:39pm: Mylan has sent the following statement to Gizmodo:

“With changes in the healthcare insurance landscape, an increasing number of people and families are enrolled in high deductible health plans, and deductible amounts continue to rise. This shift, along with other insurance landscape changes, has presented new challenges for consumers, and they are bearing more of the cost. This change to the industry is not an easy challenge to address, but we recognize the need and are committed to working with customers and payers to find solutions to meet the needs of the patients and families we serve.”

It also stated that the company has a number of programs that’ll help supplement the cost of the EpiPen, including a savings card.

[NBC News]

At least 51 people were killed and dozens more wounded in a suicide bomb attack on a Kurdish wedding party in the southeastern Turkish city Gaziantep on Saturday night.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan told reporters on Sunday that, according to police sources, the bomber was between the ages of 12 and 14, state-run news agency Andadolu reports.

Erdogan said that so far 51 people have been killed in the attack, and 69 people have been taken to the hospital, of which 17 are in critical condition.

Erdogan asserted that the Islamic State was behind the attack, although no group has claimed responsibility for the bombing yet.

The attack was carried out nearly two months after 44 people died in explosions at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport. At the time, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told the press that ISIS was behind the attack, though it’s still not clear if this is the case.

Trump has been promoted this week from statue to puppet.

On ABC’s “This Week,” Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook deflected a totally reasonable question from Goerge Stephanopoulos on why the Clinton Foundation would stop taking corporate and foreign donations should she become president, when it hadn’t done so while she was Secretary of State. The question was prompted by Bill Clinton’s announcement on Thursday that the Foundation will no longer accept such donations should Hillary win.

Mook responded that the foundation simply does not want to be a distraction, and then did his own distraction, saying, “Donald Trump is refusing to disclose deep financial ties that potentially reach into the Kremlin, which could influence his foreign policy decisions.”

While Trump is villain unmoored from truth, decency, and several of his hair follicles, that doesn’t necessarily excuse Mook’s fear-mongering, conspiratorial tone (Trump and his associates do have some ties to Russia). Or that Clinton definitely has maintained such ties through her family’s foundation.

As the New York Times reported on Saturday:

“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia donated more than $10 million [to the Clinton Foundation]…. [S]o did the son-in-law of a former Ukrainian president whose government was widely criticized for corruption and the murder of journalists. A Lebanese-Nigerian developer with vast business interests contributed as much as $5 million.

For years the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation thrived largely on the generosity of foreign donors and individuals who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the global charity.”

Trump’s previous campaign manager Paul Manafort resigned from his position on Friday after the New York Times reported on August 14 that he’d received $12.7 million in undisclosed payments from former pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

http://gawker.com/trump-calls-fo…

Mook’s rhetorical diversion picked up on remarks he made earlier in the interview, when he questioned whether Trump might be a “puppet for the Kremlin.”

“The hand of the Kremlin is at the core of [Trump’s] campaign,” Mook said.

As an objective purveyor of the news I must cede this point to Mook. Trump does indeed resemble an old sock stretched over Putin’s bear-like fist.

The world is your oyster. By which I mean it’s under intense surveillance at all times even though that’s a giant waste of energy, money, and humanity.

According to the Associated Press, a portion of South of Carolina’s newly flush body camera budget will be distributed to officers who monitor oyster health and shellfish harvesting.

When you take into consideration that the $5.8 million budget was established in response to the fatal shooting of Walter Scott by Charleston police officer Michael Slager in April 2015, spending thousands of those dollars on oyster security looks like an offensive misuse of funds.

But not according to local council member Senator Greg Hembree, who told the AP that it only “seems funny” to put cameras on shellfish harvesters.

Haha.

“But if you go out and mess with somebody’s crab pots,” Hembree continued, “you might be surprised at the level of violence you can encounter.”

Vigilance is key, according to Hembree, “We have a long way to go. I’m ready, willing and eager to put more money in the budget.”

No word yet on whether this important footage of somebody’s crab pots will be a matter of public record.