He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue

As much as I hate the trope...imagine if Obama had made love to Kim like Trump has.  What song would Tucker be singing?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Also Tucker Carlson...

Joe's apparently not capable of getting himself out of the hole he's in

Nice, Joe.

As noted in his treatment of women and self-defense on the topic, then in the debate about race and busing, Joe just doesn't get it.  And he's in a bubble of ignorance.

These incidents are often referred to as gaffes when it comes to Biden.  I think we're seeing something more elemental.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Breaking in the new press secretary

After shaking hands with Kim in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas and walking with him over the border, Trump said: “Stepping across that line is a great honour. Great progress has been made, great friendships have been made and this has been, in particular, a great friendship.”

[...]

Earlier, in the South Korean capital, Seoul, Trump said he was “looking forward to [the meeting] very much … He understands me and I think I maybe understand him.”

  Guardian

Yes, we know: you fell in love.

Trump later said he agreed with Kim to restart talks after nuclear negotiations stalled earlier this year and had invited him to the US “when the time is right”.

After Trump establishes his dictatorship.

He said sanctions would remain in place, but suggested Washington might be willing to offer concessions in return for piecemeal North Korean moves towards denuclearisation – an approach it had previously rejected. “At some point during the negotiation things can happen,” he said.

They certainly can. Just like last time when the Koreans walked out.

[South Korea's leader] Moon later told a joint press conference he was “overwhelmed” with emotion about the meeting at the border village of Panmunjom. He described Trump and Kim as “so brave”, adding: “I hope President Trump will go down in history as the president who achieves peace on the Korean peninsula.”

What's he getting paid? And is he going to be the one to submit Trump's name to the Nobel Prize committee?

Trump is the first sitting US president to step across the border, and the gesture represents a public relations coup for Kim, who has held summits with Trump, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in the past year.

The despot's club officials.

Trump claimed before he crossed the border that both North and South Korea had benefited from his attempts to engage Kim since he became president.

[...]

“North Korea and South Korea are both in much better places than they were two and a half years ago,” he said. “It’s day and night.”The main source of tension appeared to be between US reporters and North Korean security guards.

[...]

The jostling seen outside when Kim and Trump met worsened when North Korean guards tried to physically prevent reporters with the US press pool from entering a room inside the Freedom House on the southern side of the DMZ where the two leaders were about to start their meeting. Reports said the Secret Service had to intervene.

Those roughed up in the scuffle included the new White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, who ended up with bruises.

Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs shared a picture of Grisham's scuffle with North Korean security, adding that the scuffle resulted in "body blows."

CNN's Allie Malloy added that Grisham was seen on camera shouting "Go! Go!" as she opened a path for U.S. reporters to cover the meeting.

  The Hill

Was she trying to get them shot?

She shoved aside what apepars to be a Korean man in a suit. Then you can't see her, but you can hear her say breathlessly, "Let go of me....Need help here."  Anyway, it wouldn't have happened to Sarah Sanders.  That she-bull would have knocked him out.

Kamala wounded Joe in that debate

And he wasn't able to protect himself.

Former Vice President Joe Biden lost one of his top fundraisers after controversial comments regarding his work with past segregationists and his flip-flop on repealing the Hyde Amendment, CNBC has learned.

Tom McInerney, a veteran San Francisco based lawyer, informed Biden’s team on June 20 that he can no longer help him raise campaign cash to compete in the 2020 presidential election.

[...]

Biden’s work with segregationists became a sore point for him in Thursday’s debate in Miami. Sen. Kamala Harris used his comments to question the former vice president’s record on busing and race relations.

When Biden was in the Senate in the 1970s, he sought support from segregationists in his fight against busing.

[...]

“I had actually let the campaign known I’d pulled back my support of Biden for now,” McInerney told CNBC. “I don’t think he did well last night,” he added, reflecting on Biden’s debate performance on Thursday night.

[...]

“I would imagine I’m not alone,” said McInerney, who was a lead bundler for President Barack Obama in his first run for president.

  The Hill

Blocked

Trump's big beautiful wall on the border has met another legal wall.

A federal judge on Friday issued a ruling blocking the Trump administration from tapping billions of dollars in military funds to construct a wall on the United States's southern border.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam issued the permanent injunction in a California federal court after initially ruling last month to temporarily halt the administration’s use of military funds for the border wall.

President Trump declared a national emergency earlier this year in order to divert roughly $6 billion in Defense Department funds toward border wall construction. Friday's ruling blocks the administration from using $2.5 billion in military funds for a border wall.

The injunction halts border wall construction at different sites in New Mexico, California, Arizona and Texas, expanding Gilliam's previous ruling.

[...]

The judge also found that the groups suing to block use of military funds for the wall would suffer "irreparable harm" over border wall construction because it "will harm their ability to recreate in and otherwise enjoy public land along the border."

Gilliam wrote that while he does not "minimize" the administration's interest in border security, he determined that "the balance of hardships and public interest favors" is in favor of the groups opposing the wall. Still, the judge declined to rule on whether the Trump administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act.

[...]

Gilliam also issued a ruling in a separate case stopping the Trump administration from moving forward with border wall construction in New Mexico and California while that legal challenge plays out.

[...]

The judge on Friday partially ruled in the states' favor but determined that they did not reach the bar needed for him to issue a permanent injunction in that case.

[...]

The Democratic-controlled House has also sought to prevent Trump from using military funds for a border wall. It argues that only Congress has the authority to appropriate funds and that the president's move is therefore unlawful — a legal argument echoed in both of the California lawsuits.

However, a judge in D.C. ruled that the House did not have the power to sue the administration in federal court and later dismissed the lawsuit at the House's request. The lawmakers are now appealing their case.

  The Hill

Nothing stands in their way now

The cabal of despots is out in the open.

The Guardian headlines this morning...

Wait a minute...Ivanka went to North Korea, too???

Okay, that's just beyond the pale. She sat with world leaders at the G20 ostensibly because she was a speaker - sleazy, but arguable. This is pure crap.

“Surreal,” came the reply from Ivanka Trump after a journalist asked: “How was North Korea?” as she emerged from talks between her father and the North Korean leader inside the Korean peninsula’s demilitarised zone (DMZ) on Sunday.

Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who are both official advisers to the president, had joined him for a conversation inside a building straddling the line between the two Korean states.

She had earlier said she would cross the border into North Korea, if invited.

  Guardian

Of course she would! That's what they were hoping for.

The president’s daughter, who had travelled with him after being by his side during the G20 summit in Japan, was also in the spotlight after the release of footage showing her awkwardly attempting to join in a conversation between Theresa May, Emmanuel Macron and Christine Lagarde.

The video, released by Macron’s office on Instagram, prompted ridicule from political opponents and others, with many picking up on the look on Lagarde’s face when Trump tried to enter the conversation.

SHE doesn't look awkward. She obviously believes she belongs in that conversation. The smug, entitled act isn't an act for Ivanka and Jared.

Some commentators remarked on the extent of the role played by Ivanka Trump at the G20, where she spoke to the media after her father’s meetings with the Indian and Japanese leaders and also appeared prominently in official leaders’ photographs.

You know where they're going with this: Ivanka 2024.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Before the US presidential party left South Korea, Ivanka Trump was once again in the spotlight, pictured addressing US troops at a military base. As her father called her up to the stage with the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, he quipped that they were “beauty and the beast” and that Ivanka would “steal the show”.

“What a beautiful couple,” Trump said.

  Guardian

Good news for the environment

To hit the international goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius this century, reducing emissions and using renewable energies probably won't be enough. That's why people are becoming increasingly interested in negative emissions technologies, which suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it underground or convert it into carbon-neutral fuel. These processes have been too costly to implement on a large scale, however.

But that might change soon: Carbon Engineering Ltd, a Canada-based company that's been running a pilot carbon-capture program since 2015, just raised enough money to build its first commercial-scale negative-emissions facility. The company says its systems can now remove CO2 from the atmosphere at a rate of under $100 per tonne — what's long been considered the benchmark for negative-emissions technology to be cost-effective.

[...]

The ability to profit from carbon capture and conversion would surely help make these processes more cost-effective, and also help increase the amounts of carbon we pull from the atmosphere: Currently, we remove only 1 percent of total carbon emissions.

  Big Think

I don't expect individual capitalists to do something without making a profit (even if it does affect their descendants), but why are governments not contributing to the cost of this?  Cost effectiveness versus planetary destruction. Hmmmmmm...let me think about it.

Ivanka 2024

Impeach.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Speaking of Mississippi

Because they can't win if they don't cheat.

Cruelty, thy name is GOP

With the Trump administration considering a multipronged attack on federal poverty programs, Democrats staged a preemptive action. They defended a provision that allows states to provide food-stamp benefits to recipients who are above federal guidelines. And they blasted attempts by Republicans to disparage current program guidelines. At a hearing last week, Republicans pointed to a retired Minnesota man in the audience who received food stamps despite being a millionaire.

“So why do we take the money if we know it’s wrong,” Rob Undersander wrote in a 2016 St. Cloud Times opinion piece. “To make a point and raise public awareness. . . . If I say I’m a millionaire receiving food stamps, I have their attention.”

Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-Ohio), chairman of a House agriculture subcommittee, accused Undersander of defrauding the government with a “ridiculous millionaire stunt.” Rep. Dusty Johnson (S.D.), the ranking Republican on the panel, defended Undersander, saying he “didn’t lie on his forms, he exposed the flaws of a failed system.”

  WaPo

Shades of the "welfare queen" ploy.

"We" don't take food stamps if they're millionaires. Undersander, who scammed the program so Republicans could make a claim to kick more people off it, must be using the royal "we".

State officials can include households with incomes up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Republicans in Congress previously were unable to limit SNAP benefits to households with incomes of 130 percent of the poverty level.

[...]

Members of Congress expect the Agriculture Department to propose regulations that would eliminate or reduce the ability of states to allow food stamps for people earning more than 130 percent of poverty guidelines, which is $33,475 for a family of four. Democrats pointed out that the benefit amounts to $1.40 per person per meal.

But that's $1.40 Undersander and his kind could otherwise have.

Although this proposal is expected soon, President Trump has called for a 10-year, $220 billion reduction for SNAP in his budget plan for fiscal 2020.

In addition, some SNAP and other anti-poverty program recipients would be cut by the administration’s plan to change the consumer inflation measure used to determine eligibility for the programs.

[...]

Even with gross income at 200 percent of the federal poverty level, SNAP recipients are still poor. Their net income must not exceed 100 percent of the poverty level after deducting certain expenses such as housing, child care and health care.

Citing Congressional Budget Office figures, Fudge said eliminating the 200 percent provision would result in 400,000 households losing food stamps and 265,000 children not eating free school meals.

[...]

Forty states, the District, Guam and the Virgin Islands use the more generous guidelines.

Mississippi is not one of them. It restricted food-stamp eligibility because of “cost savings and efficiencies to ensure we are responsive to those seeking our services but, more importantly, to the taxpayers of Mississippi,” said John Davis, executive director of the state’s Department of Human Services. He didn’t say how many fewer people receive food stamps because of that decision.

I bet he also didn't say how much federal aid (welfare) Mississippi gets from taxes from states like California and New York.

Eliminating states’ flexibility would have serious ramifications, particularly for working families with children, said Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

“It is important to be assertive in reducing food insecurity for all types of families because it presents health risks at every stage” of life, she said. “We particularly worry about food-insecure households with kids and adolescents. Food-insecure children have higher rates of fair and poor health, have higher rates of hospitalization, increased risk of asthma, and delays in cognitive development.”

And if you're expecting today's GOP to care about children, take a look at the border.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What a maroon

Long planned.  Like since yesterday when he tweeted:

*UPDATE:  6/30 - This morning on NPR I heard a clip of him speaking after the (Nobel Prize winning) meeting with Kim saying the idea just came to him while he was in Japan, and of Kim saying he was surprised by Trump's tweet asking to meet.  Apparently Trump suggested they step over into North Korea, which they did, making him the first US president to set foot on North Korean soil.  So you know what that means - a boasting tweet:

Also...we heard this tale about a Chinese trade agreement before, and it wasn't true then.  There was nothing in their agreement at that time about buying more agriculture products from us.  Do you suppose Xi just said, sure, sure, like Trump told Putin to not meddle in our elections or is Trump just making this up from whole cloth - again? China already purchases large amounts from our "great Farmers", remember?






Not the first time he's done that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

About that border crisis bill

While the Democratic Party's presidential candidates were teeing it up here, the Democratic Party in Congress was falling apart. This has caused, in no particular order, splits between the Senate Democrats and the House Democrats, between progressive Democrats and Blue Dog Democrats, between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the progressive members of her caucus, and between Pelosi and members of her own leadership team. The immediate casus belli was a bill designed to deal with the humanitarian crisis at the southern border and its victims, some of whom are very young. The House passed a bill. The Senate passed its own bill. The differences in the bills respective priorities can be fairly summed up by the phrase, "Goddamn Mitch McConnell."

[...]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, said shortly before the vote that her colleagues were giving up their fight for now over changes to the measure, which had already passed the Senate. “At the end of the day, we have to make sure that the resources needed to protect the children are available,” she said in a statement. “In order to get resources to the children fastest, we will reluctantly pass the Senate bill.” The House vote was 305 to 102, with 71 out of 235 House Democrats voting against the Senate bill.

[...]

The uproar was loud and immediate. A lot of the animosity probably was anger at McConnell's apparent willingness to use sick and hungry children sleeping in their own filth as political hostages in service of the president* whose policies created this situation in the first place. In point of fact, the Senate Democrats under Minority Leader Chuck Schumer cut the legs out from under their House colleagues and thereby made McConnell's revolting threat a reality for people voting in the lower House. And while it's true that the Blue Dogs, as well as the remarkably constituent-free members of the Problem Solvers caucus, threatened to tank the bill if it included the proposed cuts to ICE that were in the original House bill, the progressive rage at Pelosi is more properly aimed at Schumer, whose failure as a Senate Minority Leader is now complete. It's time for him to go.

  Charles P Pierce

I'm willing to let Chuck and Nancy share the blame equally, and it's time for her to go, too.

Ivanka speaks at the G20 women's empowerment event

Ivanka Trump in pictures with world leaders at the G20.

The "G20 presidency".

If Trump does leave office in 2020 - and I know that's a big "if", they're going to run Ivanka in 2024, aren't they?  Even if he doesn't leave.












...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jeet has a point

Marianne, perhaps you could do that for your own president?

In case you missed it, Marianne Williamson is an author (and perhaps spiritualist) who is running for president on the Democratic ticket in 2020.  She actually had enough support to get into the first round of debates.

Close the Camps

Ding Dong held a press conference at the G20

Aaron Rupar has the clips.

Trump claims he's going to create a "smart person's waiver" so that excellent foreign students can stay in the United States.

He thinks it's unfair.  He's always whining about things being unfair.

Trump wants people to believe he was actually serious when he told Putin, clearly in jest, to not meddle in the 2020 election.

Trump wants you to believe the Saudi regime is taking a murder they're responsible for (Khashoggi) very seriously: "More than 13 people are being prosecuted and I hear the number is going to be going up."

He thinks Kamala Harris was given too much credit and she hit Biden too hard.  He's afraid of Kamala.

Trump says Palestinians "don't have to be" part of an Israeli/Palestinian peace plan, adds that they "want to be a little bit cute, but that's ok."

Yikes.  He has no idea what's happening in Venezuela now, does he?  He's so incompetent.

Pressed on why he won't say MBS was responsible for Khashoggi's murder even though his intelligence community has, Trump says "I cannot comment on intelligence" and goes on to commend Saudi Arabia for doing "a great job from the standpoint of women."

Get involved how?  He doesn't like liberal cities.  What is he prepared to do to them? 

But listen to this clip.  Jesus.

Start impeachment proceedings now.

Because his supporters either don't know better or don't care that he lies all the time

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Offering us a separate reality

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Curious

Does he not know?



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:





UPDATE:

I think he knows.  He just can't speak clearly about anything.  And as Rupar suggests, he doesn't understand the controversy.

I wonder if this is the same problem with him continuing to say you can't see the F-35.  But has he never come across anyone making fun of him for it, and thus correcting the impression?

That stupid wall

A federal judge on Friday expanded the areas where the Trump administration is barred from building a southern border wall using Defense Department funds.

Judge Haywood Gilliam, of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, expanded a previous order from May blocking Trump from building the wall in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The court added four more sections of the wall along the southern border in Arizona and California to the no-build list, and made permanent the previous order.

[...]

"Another activist Obama appointed judge has just ruled against us on a section of the Southern Wall that is already under construction," Trump tweeted after Gilliam's earlier order. "This is a ruling against Border Security and in favor of crime, drugs and human trafficking. We are asking for an expedited appeal!"

Gilliam noted in his decision that using defense funding for the wall eschews Congress' intent in denying Trump's desired funding, and that the administration's policy priorities cannot justify bypassing Congress' authority.

  Politico

Let us hope that wall never gets built.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

You must be joking

International diplomatic relations by Twitter.  Like teenage girls.

Fucking nuts.

Impeach.






...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



Disgusting.

Of course, you know he doesn't really like any of these people.  Although he may envy their absolute power, he really doesn't give a shit about any of them.  He just wants to make sure he can slap his name on a Trump building in their countries so the Trump name will be plastered all over the globe.

If you rush them, they will fall in line

Mitch McConnell knows his compatriots.





My guess: there's some of each.



America is failing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Activist judges

The GOP has a stranglehold on our democracy.

For most of this decade, North Carolina Democrats have complained that the Republican-led legislature has aggressively altered the state’s voting rules and redrawn electoral maps to secure an overwhelming partisan advantage.

On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court said it couldn’t do anything about it.

[...]

The decision by the justices not to intervene in even the most blatant partisan gerrymanders was a letdown to many liberals in this evenly divided purple state.

[...]

Thursday’s 5-4 ruling means that North Carolina’s current Republican-drawn map delineating its 13 Congressional districts — a map that critics have said is among the country’s most egregious examples of hyper-partisanship — will stand. The decision could also embolden lawmakers around the country to continue to push the envelope and craft seats for their respective parties with the aid of increasingly sophisticated computer mapping tools.


The high court’s decision does not preclude state lawmakers, or Congress, from taking action to reduce partisan gerrymandering.
  NYT

It's up to the states, because Mitch McConnell precludes Congress from taking action.

In last year’s midterm elections, Democrats won 48.3 percent of the total vote in House races, and Republican candidates won 50.4 percent. But Democrats won only three of the 13 Congressional seats.

[...]

[A] state-level lawsuit in North Carolina, expected to be heard later this summer, challenges Republican-drawn state legislative districts.

[...]

[S]tates like Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Utah [...] have set up independent redistricting commissions led by citizens in an effort to take map-drawing powers out of the hands of legislators altogether.

[...]

The redrawing did not end with Congressional districts: The Republican legislature has also changed or created the district lines for state House members, county commissioners and city council members. The legislature ordered a change to the Asheville City Council last year, converting an at-large system to one with five geographic districts, even though voters had rejected the idea three-to-one in an earlier referendum.

[...]

“I think that what happens is the electorate becomes disengaged,” [Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer] said. “They feel like the whole structure of the system is broken and doesn’t work for them, and they don’t trust in it.”

Just the way the GOP likes it, because they can't win if they don't cheat.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Speaking of Jair Bolsonaro at the G20...

NPR reports police arrested Sgt. Manoel Silva Rodrigues in Seville, Spain, Tuesday after the Brazilian Air Force plane made a stop on its way to the summit.

Bolsonaro was on a separate plane following behind but changed its route following the arrest.

Rodrigues was reportedly carrying 86 pounds of cocaine that was split up into 37 different blocks. He told local authorities that it was cheese and not drugs.

The Brazilian Defense Ministry put out a statement confirming the arrest and noted that it is investigating the incident.

Bolsonaro in a tweet Wednesday stressed that the arrest was not related to his team, calling the incident “unacceptable.”

"We will not tolerate such disrespect to our country!” he wrote.

  The Hill

Is that the proper response?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

He's not joking

As they sat for photographs at the start of their first formal meeting in nearly a year, the US president lightheartedly sought common ground with Putin at the expense of the journalists around them in Osaka.

“Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia but we do,” Trump said.

To which Putin responded, in English: “We also have. It’s the same.”

Twenty-six journalists have been murdered in Russia since Putin first became president, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), many of them investigative reporters scrutinising governmental abuses.

[...]

It is a year to the day since five Capital Gazette employees were killed in their newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland. The shooting led to the organisation Reporters Without Borders adding the US to its list of the five deadliest countries for journalism.

  Guardian

As you can tell, however, he IS joking when he says, "Don't meddle in the election."

When journalists asked Trump just before he left for Japan what he would like to talk to Putin about, he told them it was “none of your business”. As they sat alongside each other, a reporter asked whether he was going to tell Putin not to meddle in the 2020 election.

Trump said: “Yes, of course I will,” drawing a laugh from Putin. Then, without looking at Putin, Trump said briskly: “Don’t meddle in the election, please,” and then repeated the phrase with a mock finger wag as Putin and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, smiled broadly.

It's just so quaint, the idea of fair elections.

Trump later held talks with Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. “He is a special man, doing very well, very much loved by the people of Brazil,” Trump said, smiling broadly. For his part, Bolsonaro told the US president: “I have been a great admirer of you for quite some time, even before your election. I support Trump, I support the United States, I support your re-election.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: