The Ledes

Thursday, September 26, 2024

The New York Times:' live updates of Hurricane Helene developments today are here. “Hurricane Helene was barreling through the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday en route to Florida, where residents were bracing for extreme rain, destructive winds and deadly storm surge ahead of the storm’s expected landfall. The storm could intensify to a Category 4, if not higher, before making landfall late Thursday, and forecasters warned Helene’s anticipated large size could make its impacts felt across an extensive area. Areas as distant as Atlanta and the Appalachians are at risk for heavy rains.... Many forecast models show the storm making landfall late Thursday near Florida’s Big Bend Coast, a sparsely populated stretch....” ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post has forecasts for some cites in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina & Tennessee that are in or near the probable path of Helene. ~~~

     ~~~ This morning, an MSNBC weatherperson said Tallahassee (which is inland) would experience wind gusts of up to 120 m.p.h. and that the National Weather Service said expected 20-foot storm surges near the coast would be “unsurvivable.”

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
The Ledes

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

The New York Times is live-updating developments in the progress of Hurricane Helene. “Helene continued to power north in the Caribbean Sea, strengthening into a hurricane Wednesday morning, on a path that forecasters expect will bring heavy amounts of rain to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and western Cuba before it begins to move toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.” ~~~

~~~ CNN: “Helene rapidly intensified into a hurricane Wednesday as it plows toward a Florida landfall as the strongest hurricane to hit the United States in over a year. The storm will also grow into a massive, sprawling monster as it continues to intensify, one that won’t just slam Florida, but also much of the Southeast.... Thousands of Florida residents have already been forced to evacuate and nearly the entire state is under alerts as the storm threatens to unleash flooding rainfall, damaging winds and life-threatening storm surge.... The hurricane unleashed its fury on parts of Mexico’s Yucátan Peninsula and Cuba Wednesday.“

Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Page Links
Sunday
Jun032018

The Commentariat -- June 4, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Painting by Patrick Shea.... Trump Declares Himself King. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Trump declared Monday that the appointment of the special counsel in the Russia investigation is 'totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!' and asserted that he has the power to pardon himself, raising the prospect that he might take extraordinary action to immunize himself from the ongoing probe. In a pair of early-morning tweets, Mr. Trump suggested that he would not have to pardon himself because he had 'done nothing wrong.' But he insisted that 'numerous legal scholars' have concluded that he has the absolute right to do so, a claim that vastly overstates the legal thinking on the issue. In fact, many constitutional experts dispute Mr. Trump's position on his pardon power, an issue for which there has been no definitive ruling.... Mr. Trump did not elaborate in the tweets about the legal basis for his claim that the appointment of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia case, was unconstitutional. In that tweet, he insisted that 'we play the game because I, unlike the Democrats, have done nothing wrong!'... The president also tweeted Monday morning about trade, asserting that Canada has 'all sorts of trade barriers' on American agricultural products. 'Not acceptable,' he said. He also bragged about his accomplishments at the 500-day mark in office. Shortly after, the White House ... [sent] an email to reporters titled: 'President Donald J. Trump's 500 Days of American Greatness.'" ...

... Allan Smith of Business Insider: Rudy interprets Donald. Mrs. McC: Something to bear in mind when pundits rely on opinions from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel: these are opinions, & courts disagree with the DOJ's opinions all the time. OLC opinions do not set precedent in the way court decisions do. So Smith reports, "Giuliani repeatedly cited a 2000 memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel following President Bill Clinton's scandal, saying that while the Constitution does not give the president immunity from prosecution, the president cannot be indicted." That was the opinion of probably-career DOJ lawyers; it's up to the courts -- in this case, most likely the Supremes, to decide whether the opinion is "correct." ...

... Charles Pierce: "The president* ... has at his easy disposal everything a dictator could possibly want.... He is succeeding in his campaign to delegitimize any criminal investigation of his various schemes.... Hostile press, he can easily ignore. He is consolidating power based on deceit at an alarming rate, and, worst of all, he is becoming more popular for doing so among the only voters that matter to him... [T]he president*'s approval rating among Republicans is the highest of any Republican president since World War II at this point in his administration* with the exception of where George W. Bush was at immediately after the attacks of 9/11. He stands at 87 percent approval among Republicans.... It is entirely possible that the momentum now is unstoppable. The country is hurtling toward the destruction of its most basic ideas about itself.... Not that anyone actually is doing anything about it." -safari ...

... Jack Holmes of Esquire: "The authoritarian movement that this president began during his campaign is approaching its natural conclusion.... The signs are that his supporters will back him no matter what: He enjoys the support of 87 percent of Republicans.... That support is similarly reflected in a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a20961787/trump-rally-animals-crowd-chant/" target="_blank">the ethno-nationalist fervor of his rallies.... If the president believes he can do as he wishes because he has unlimited authority, and a section of the nation backs him simply because he is the authority, you are dealing with an authoritarian movement that could support a tyrant. The alarm bells should be ringing." --safari ...

... Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "... Trump's tweets reinforce an underrecognized point: The likelihood that the fate of the Trump administration will eventually be decided by the Supreme Court is greater than most people realize. Consider three issues that seem increasingly likely to end up before the court. [1] Trump pardoning himself.... [2] Trump rejecting the authority of the special counsel.... [3] Trump rejecting a subpoena from the special counsel."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court sided with a Colorado baker on Monday in a closely watched case pitting gay rights against claims of religious freedom. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 7-2 decision, relied on narrow grounds, saying a state commission had violated the Constitution's protection of religious freedom in ruling against the baker, Jack Phillips, who had refused to create a custom wedding cake for a gay couple.... The Supreme Court’s decision, which turned on the commission's asserted hostility to religion, strongly reaffirmed protections for gay rights and left open the possibility that other cases raising similar issues could be decided differently.... Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Elena Kagan and Neil M. Gorsuch joined the majority opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas voted with the majority but would have adopted broader reasons. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented.... Though the case was mostly litigated on free speech grounds, Justice Kennedy's opinion barely discussed the issue. Instead, he focused on what he said were flaws in the proceedings before the Colorado Civi Rights Commission. Members of the commission, he wrote, had acted with 'clear and impermissible hostility' to sincerely held religious beliefs." ...

... Mark Stern of Slate analyzes the decision, which doesn't actually decide much.

Adam Liptak: "The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a request from the Justice Department to discipline lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union for assisting an undocumented teenager to obtain an abortion. In an unsigned opinion with no noted dissents, the court vacated an appeals court ruling that had allowed the teenager to obtain the procedure, saying the dispute was moot. That wiped out the appeals court's ruling as precedent. The case attracted wide attention after the Justice Department, in an unusual Supreme Court filing in November, accused the A.C.L.U. of serious professional misconduct in the case of the teenager, who was known as Jane Doe. She obtained an abortion in October over the government's objection after an appeals court allowed it."

WTF? Nicole Lafond of TPM: "Among a slew of odd and unprofessional personal requests that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt asked his top aide Millan Hupp to undertake for him.... Pruitt asked Hupp to secure a 'used mattress' from the Trump International Hotel for him.... Hupp said she didn't know why Pruitt wanted the mattress other than he mentioned it 'around the same time that he was moving.' She said she never 'actually connected' with someone at the Trump Hotel about the secondhand bedding." --safari ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Now that's a firing offense! Hilarious. Here's more on the old mattress from Lisa Friedman & Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "Federal ethics standards prohibit such personal assistance by a subordinate, even if the employee is working outside of office hours. One provision bans the use of government time to handle personal matters. A second provision prohibits bosses from asking employees to handle personal matters for them outside of the office.... According to a partial transcript released by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, [Millan] Hupp ..., who serves as Mr. Pruitt's scheduling director..., worked with real estate agents and visited at least 10 apartments over more than a month to find Mr. Pruitt new lodging. She also did other personal errands for the administrator including booking his personal travel to the Rose Bowl college football game." Ms. Hupp could not recall if Mr. Pruitt requested a urine-stained mattress.

Jeremy Diamond & Kevin Liptak of CNN: "in his role as deputy chief of staff, [Joe] Hagin is being counted on to pull off a high-stakes presidential trip of a different nature, President Donald Trump's summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.... Deployed to Singapore last week to negotiate logistical details with a delegation of North Koreans, Hagin has assumed an outsized role in the preparations for the off-again, on-again meeting...Two officials said Hagin has kept sensitive logistical details from Trump -- including during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Mar-a-Lago last year -- for fear that the President might tweet about them and upend the plans."

Trump Goon Calls Cops on U.S. Senator. James Hohmann of the Washington Post: "As the sun set Sunday night, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) went to a shuttered Walmart in Brownsville, Texas, that has been converted into a detention center for immigrant children who have been separated from their parents. He asked for a tour. Instead, the government contractor that runs the converted store called the cops. An officer filled out a police report, and the senator was asked to leave. The half-hour incident at a strip mall near the southern border with Mexico underscores the lack of transparency from President Trumps administration about its intensifying efforts to break up undocumented families caught crossing the border, the centerpiece of a 'zero tolerance' policy announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month to deter illegal immigration."

** David Taylor of the Guardian: "The emboldened religious right has unleashed a wave of legislation across the United States since Donald Trump became president, as part of an organised bid to impose hardline Christian values across American society. A playbook known as Project Blitz, developed by a collection of Christian groups, has provided state politicians with a set of off-the-shelf pro-Christian 'model bills.'... Some legislation uses verbatim language from the 'model bills' created by a group called the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF), set up by a former Republican congressman which has a stated aim to 'protect religious freedom, preserve America's Judeo-Christian heritage and promote prayer'. At least 75 bills have been brought forward in more than 20 states during 2017 and 2018 which appear ... to have similar objectives to the playbook." --safari

Kelsey Mo & Anne Ryman of the Arizona Republic: "Police say a man suspected of murdering a prominent forensic psychiatrist, a psychologist and two paralegals at their offices in Phoenix and Scottsdale is dead... of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.... The series of murders that began Thursday evening have rattled the legal community. Police said evidence connects all four homicides. First killed was Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist who consulted on a number of high-profile cases including the Baseline Killer case and the JonBenét Ramsey murder investigation.... Less than 24 hours later, 48-year-old Veleria Sharp and 49-year-old Laura Anderson were shot in the downtown Scottsdale law offices of Burt, Feldman and Grenier.... Psychologist and counselor Marshall Levine was found dead of an apparent gunshot wound early Saturday inside an office building...."

Matt Stevens of the New York Times: "A rookie police officer in Georgia was swiftly fired over the weekend after body camera video showed him striking a man with his patrol car during a pursuit. An internal investigation by the Athens-Clarke County Police Department determined that the officer, Taylor Saulters, used excessive force when he struck the man, Timmy Patmon, with his vehicle on Friday. Chief Scott Freeman fired Officer Saulters on Saturday after initially placing him on administrative leave, said Eppi Rodriguez, a police spokesman. The Georgia State Patrol is investigating the crash and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is conducting a criminal investigation, Mr. Rodriguez added. Mr. Patmon suffered scrapes and bruises and was taken to a hospital for evaluation, a police statement said." Saulters is white; Patmon is black.

*****

The Absolute Power of King Donald, Ctd. Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "The assertion by President Trump's lawyers that he cannot obstruct justice because he has absolute authority over all federal investigations is legally problematic, analysts say, because it would essentially mean the nation's commander in chief is above the law. But the president';s powers are expansive, and many questions remain about how Trump's office could protect him from the special counsel investigation examining whether his campaign coordinated with Russia to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.... Legal analysts said that as the head of the executive branch, Trump could issue pardons, fire senior officials or order them to shut down investigations. But if his motives were corrupt, such actions could constitute obstruction. The principle laid out in [a] letter [by Trump's attorneys Jay Sekulow & John Dowd (who has since resigned)] is 'a ludicrous legal theory,' said Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general who now works in private practice at Hogan Lovells. 'The idea that a president can't obstruct justice died with King George III, with a brief attempt at revival by Richard Nixon.'" ...

... Ashley Parker & Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post: "... Rudolph W. Giuliani publicly pressed Trump's expansive view of executive power this weekend, arguing on two Sunday TV shows that the president probably has the sweeping constitutional authority to pardon even himself. 'He probably does,' Giuliani said, when asked on ABC's 'This Week' if Trump has the ability to pardon himself. 'He has no intention of pardoning himself, but he probably -- not to say he can't.'... On NBC's 'Meet the Press...,' Giuliani framed the pardon question as purely hypothetical and politically implausible. 'It's not going to happen. It's a hypothetical point,' he told host Chuck Todd. He went on to describe such a move as 'unthinkable,' and said it would probably lead immediately to impeachment." ...

... S.V. Date of the Huffington Post: "Candidate Donald Trump bragged that he could shoot someone on New York's Fifth Avenue and not lose any support, and now President Donald Trump's lawyer says Trump could shoot the FBI director in the Oval Office and still not be prosecuted for it. 'In no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted,' Rudy Giuliani told HuffPost Sunday, claiming a president's constitutional powers are that broad. 'I don't know how you can indict while he's in office. No matter what it is.... If he shot James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day,' Giuliani said. 'Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.' Norm Eisen, the White House ethics lawyer under President Barack Obama and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the silliness of Giuliani's claim illustrates how mistaken Trump's lawyers are about presidential power." ...

... Matt Yglesias of Vox: "In a 20-page memo written by Trump's legal team and delivered to Robert Mueller..., they make an unusually frank case for a tyrannical interpretation of presidential power.... Consider that if the memo is correct, there would be nothing wrong with Trump setting up a booth somewhere in Washington, DC where wealthy individuals could hand checks to Trump, and in exchange Trump would make whatever federal legal trouble they are in go it away.... Since Washington DC isn't a state all criminal law here is federal criminal law, so the president could have his staff murder opposition party senators or inconvenient judges and then block any investigation into what's happening.... Trump has started using the power abusively and capriciously early in his tenure in office in a disturbing way, but has not yet tried to pardon his way out of the Russia investigation in part because there is one important limit on the pardon power -- you have to do it in public." Mrs. McC: Of course Rudy argued that egregious acts such as murder were within the president's power. ...

... "President Trump Thinks He Is a King." Harry Litman, in a New York Times op-ed: "The president believes he is above the law.... The central claim of the legal memorandum[, which Trump's attorneys sent to Robert Mueller,] is that it is impossible for the president to illegally obstruct any aspect of the investigation into Russia's election meddling. That's because, as president, Mr. Trump has the constitutional power to terminate the inquiry or pardon his way out of it. Therefore -- and this is the key and indefensible point -- he cannot obstruct justice by exercising this authority 'no matter his motivation.'... No tenable account of executive power holds that a president's purposes in exercising powers accorded under Article II, 'to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,' have no import.... The second pillar of the letter ... is that he is too busy running the country to sit for an interview. Relatedly, they argue, forcing him to testify 'demeans the office of the president before the world.' Here Mr. Trump's position run completely afoul of another presidential precedent: that of Bill Clinton." ...

... Martin Longman of the Booman Tribune: "The assertions of executive power made by Trump's former lawyers are outrageous, but not because they're strictly untrue. While some of their brief contains flawed legal analysis, in its broad outlines it is simply a maximalist approach that concedes absolutely nothing in advance. His lawyers reserved the right to make the broadest possible claims of executive power, and I don't see this as all that unusual. I don't think they would win most of these points in court using these arguments, but part of their argument is that they don't need to comply with the courts in any meaningful sense. If they don't like being compelled to provide testimony, they can just shut the whole investigation down.... Impeachment is prescribed for high crimes and misdemeanors, which basically carves out an area for allowable low crimes. And even within that definition, weak as it is, the determination of what is serious enough to merit removal and what is not has no binding or strictly correct definition." ...

... Jamelle Blouie of Slate: "[T]his week's pardon of Dinesh D'Souza ... [is] a show of solidarity with a figure who built his career on the same prejudice and conspiracy theorizing that fueled Trump's rise through the Republican Party. In a healthier political system, D'Souza would be a fringe figure.... Instead, he is a conservative in good standing with strong ties to the Republican Party elite.... [H]is presence in the rarefied spaces of Republican politics is a reminder that Trump merely embodies the dysfunctions and pathologies that already existed within the conservative movement.... Everything D'Souza has stood for over the course of his [30 year] career -- racism, malicious trolling, and conspiracy theorizing -- now exists at the center of conservative politics, emanating from the West Wing. He didn't place it there, but he helped give it shape and form. His story shows the thin wall between the Republican mainstream and the fringe, and how, after decades of pressure from many figures like D'Souza, it has finally collapsed, eliminating any distinctions that matter." --safari ...

... Andy Borowitz (satire): "... Donald J. Trump made Vice-President Mike Pence watch him issue pardons for several hours to see how it is done, a White House source confirmed. According to the source, Trump pardoned a number of disgraced political figures and former reality-show cronies for the sole purpose of training Pence in the art of issuing pardons. After signing pardon after pardon while Pence looked on intently, Trump commanded the Vice-President to sign a 'practice pardon' to prove that he 'wouldn't mess anything up,' the source said." ...

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "President Trump will host a dinner in the coming week in honor of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, restoring a White House tradition that he had abandoned during his first year in office, a West Wing official said on Saturday. The dinner is expected to be held on Wednesday. The guest list was not made available." Mrs. McC: I'm thinking there will be more Middle East princes than political refugees.

House of Cards, Season 2 Finale, "Melanie Goes Missing." Meredith McGraw of ABC News: "... Melania Trump will not be joining ... Donald Trump on his upcoming trips to the G7 summit in Quebec and the highly anticipated summit between the United States and North Korea in Singapore, her spokeswoman told ABC News. The 48-year-old first lady has not been seen in public since May 10, when she and the president welcomed home three American detainees from North Korea.... Last week, as questions swirled about the state of her health and the hashtag #whereisMelania trended online, she tweeted that she was 'feeling great' and 'working hard on behalf of children and the American people.'... Last year, Melania Trump joined the president for his first G7 trip to Taormina, Italy, where she participated in public appearances...." Mrs. McC: Spoiler alert: in the final cliffhanger scene, a woman suspected to be Melanie Trump arrives at the port city of Koper, Slovenia, seeking asylum under the alias Melania Knauss. Production note: reports that the show's star Donald Drumpf is a corrupt criminal serial sex abuser have put production of Season 3 in jeopardy. ...

     ... Update. Kate Bennett of CNN: "First lady Melania Trump is expected to attend a White House event on Monday evening to honor Gold Star families, her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, confirms to CNN." Mrs. McC: Yeah, probably a body double. The White House can get away with that because "Monday's reception is closed to the press." Bet the Gold Star families have to leave their cell phones & cameras at the door. No photos for side-by-side comparisons. Just kidding.

G6 +1. AP: "The United States was singled out by some of its closest allies Saturday over the imposition of tariffs that they warn will undermine open trade and weaken confidence in the global economy. The dispute over U.S. President Donald Trump's new levies on steel and aluminum imports is driving a wedge in the G7 group of industrial nations.... Ministers urged the U.S. to abandon the tariffs ahead of the leaders' summit [next week] before the move causes deeper divisions within the G7.... Bruno Le Maire, France's finance and economy minister, was blunt in his assessment of the ... meeting [in Whistler, B.C., Canada], where ministers confronted [Steve] Mnuchin. 'It has been a tense and tough G7 -- I would say it's been far more a G6 plus one than a G7,'" --safari

Rick Noack of the Washington Post: The U.S., new ambassador to Germany, Richard "Grenell is being criticized over an interview with hard-right news site Breitbart in which he said he wants to 'empower' conservatives in Europe.... The comments were criticized both in the United States and in Europe for politicizing diplomacy with a core U.S. ally and as a further blow to transatlantic relations. The German foreign ministry said on Monday it was seeking 'clarification on whether the statements were actually made in the form they were given.' While Chancellor Angela Merkel is from the conservative Christian Democrats, that does not seem to be what the ambassador has in mind.... Grenell has called himself a 'big Merkel fan' in past interviews and credited her economic performance, but in regards to perhaps the most important criterion he listed to Breitbart -- migration -- Merkel stands for the exact opposite.... '... [Grenell] personally assured me that once he became ambassador he would stay out of politics. This interview is awful -- ambassadors aren't supposed to "empower" any political party overseas,' Democrat U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy wrote on Twitter. A U.S. ambassador who applauds the leader of a neighboring country [-- far-right Sebastian Kurz of Austria --] while indirectly appearing to criticize the leader of his host nation likely also wasn't what German officials had in mind when they urged Washington to name a new top diplomat earlier this year." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: In the first place, no U.S. ambassador should be giving interviews to Breitbart. This is particular true of the ambassador to Germany, since Breitbart has a pro-neo-Nazi bias. A decent president would recall Grenell immediately & apologize to Angela Merkel, but we don't have a decent president.

New York Times Editors: The "chief reason" for the inadequate, slow response to Hurricane Maria's devastation of Puerto Rico "has been the perception in Washington, and especially in the White House, of Puerto Rico as a second-class United States territory where poverty, hardship and shoddy government are accepted as the norm. That was memorably underscored by President Trump in the aftermath of the hurricane, first in his callous tweets assailing the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz -- 'they want everything to be done for them' -- and then on his visit to the island, where he said Puerto Ricans should be 'very proud' that only 16 people had died, unlike the toll in a 'real catastrophe' like Katrina, which took 1,833 lives." A recent Harvard study "estimated 4,645 additional deaths through the end of the year -- a third of them people who died for lack of medical care.... When confronted with the Harvard study..., the White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, responded with more self-congratulation, claiming that the government had responded to Maria with the largest Federal Emergency Management Agency effort ever."

Pay and Play. Kiley Kroh of ThinkProgress: "[Scott] Pruitt saw coal executive Joe Craft at least seven times in his first 14 months as administrator, plus two additional scheduled appearances -- more meetings than Pruitt has had with any environmental group.... Pruitt and his son even enjoyed one of the biggest University of Kentucky basketball games of the season from Craft's plum seats last December. The EPA says Pruitt paid cash for the tickets, but he was accompanied by his own security detail as well as Kentucky state police.... Craft and his wife, Kelly Craft, donated more than $2 million to Trump's campaign and inauguration. Trump appointed Kelly Craft ambassador to Canada last October." --safari

Ali Watkins of the New York Times: As they inspect the nation's gun stores, federal investigators regularly find violations of the law, ranging from minor record-keeping errors to illegal sales of firearms. In the most serious cases, like a sale of a gun to a prohibited buyer, inspectors often recommend that gun dealers lose their licenses. But that rarely happens. Senior officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regularly overrule their own inspectors, allowing gun dealers who fail inspections to keep their licenses even after they were previously warned to follow the rules, according to interviews with more than half a dozen current and former law enforcement officials and a review of more than 100 inspection reports.... Of about 11,000 inspections of licensed firearm dealers in the year starting in October 2016, more than half were cited for violations. Less than 1 percent of all inspections resulted in the loss of a license.... The bureau has sidestepped the potential legal appeals and political fallout of revoking licenses by trying to work with gun dealers rather than close their stores.... The A.T.F. declined repeated requests for comment."

Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "Last week, Republicans responded with outrage after a Vice story noted that a Google algorithm listed 'Nazism' under the California state GOP's ideologies in its search results. On Sunday, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee [David 'dingleberry' Nunes] threatened to retaliate against the company with congressional hearings and called for the creation of a conservative Internet search engine to take Google's place." --safari

Congressional Race. Dan Helmer, a candidate for a Virginia Congressional seat, faces off against Fox "News"' Pete Hegseth, whom Trump considered for Secretary of the Veterans Administration until veterans' groups rose up in horror:

Peter Maas of The Intercept: "This is a tale of two defendants and two systems of justice.... Arrested a year ago today, on June 3, 2017, [Reality] Winner was accused of leaking an NSA document that showed how Russians tried to hack American voting systems in 2016. The alleged leak -- Winner has pleaded not guilty -- came at a time when there was far greater doubt than now about Russian attempts to tip the presidential election. Her case is related to [Paul] Manafort's in this sense: While Manafort is suspected of aiding the Russian effort, Winner is accused of warning Americans about it.... Even though she has been indicted on just one count of leaking classified information and faces far less prison time than Manafort, the judge in her case decided she was a flight risk and denied her bail.... Manafort avoided jail by posting $10 million in bond, though he was confined to his luxury condo in Alexandria, Virginia.... [For a party, a judge allowed] Manafort [to go to] his Christmas getaway in the Hamptons." --safari

Julie Steenhuysen of Reuters: "Some 70 percent of women with early-stage breast cancer and an intermediate risk of cancer recurrence can safely skip chemotherapy after their tumors have been removed, U.S. researchers said on Sunday." --safari

Gabriel Dance, et al., of the New York Times: "As Facebook sought to become the world's dominant social media service, it struck agreements allowing phone and other device makers access to vast amounts of its users' personal information. Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers -- including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung -- over the last decade.... The deals, most of which remain in effect, allowed Facebook to expand its reach and let device makers offer customers popular features of the social network, such as messaging, 'like' buttons and address books. But the partnerships, whose scope has not previously been reported, raise concerns about the company's privacy protections and compliance with a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users' friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders." ...

... Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times: "While [Facebook] has introduced several measures to improve the transparency of political ads on its platform, some groups and individuals appear to be finding ways to flout the new restrictions -- and Facebook has not been able to catch them." Frenkel cites the example of a California Congressional race in which Facebook allowed a targeted fake "news" story to run for a month without labeling it a political ad or disclosing who paid for it. "In total, [the political advertiser] Sierra Nevada Revolution ran 29 Facebook ads in May aimed at swaying people's votes in California's primary, according to Facebook's ad archive," without identifying the ads' sponsors.

Reuters: "Some 80 pieces of plastic rubbish weighing eight kg (17 lb) were found in the stomach of a whale that died in Thailand after a five-day effort to save it, a marine official said on Sunday.... Globally, eight million tonnes of plastic - bottles, packaging and other waste - are dumped into the ocean every year." --safari

"Capitalism is Awesome" Ctd. Julia Lurie of Mother Jones: "The medication was called Subsys, and its key ingredient, fentanyl, is a synthetic opioid 100 times stronger than morphine.... To boost [sales], the manager allegedly advised [the sales representatives] to 'behave more sexually toward pain-management physicians, to stroke their hands while literally begging for prescriptions,' and to ask for the prescriptions as a 'favor.'.... [The] pharmaceutical company Insys, is one of a handful of potent, highly regulated prescription fentanyl brands ... approv[ed] from the Food and Drug Administration in early 2012, Insys' growth has been meteoric. In the spring of 2013, the company went public; by the end of the year, it was the nation's best-performing IPO. By 2015, revenue from Subsys was approaching $500 million.... All the while, a handful of Insys employees were quietly filing whistleblower lawsuits ... alleging that the addictive drug was marketed to patients who suffered from all kinds of pain -- not just cancer patients with breakthrough pain -- and detailing dubious sales tactics.... [T]he DOJ's criminal investigation of Insys and its top executives is ... underway." --safari

Beyond the Beltway

Tom Boggioni of Raw Story: "Four years after protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri ... the attorney germinal [sic.] for the state has issued a report that shows that African-Americans are 85 percent likely to be pulled over than whites by a cop, reports Atlanta Black Star.... According to the report, white motorists were less likely to be searched ... but more likely to be busted with contraband such as weapons and drugs." --safari

Thomas Novelly of the Louisville Courier-Journal: "Bell County high school student and valedictorian Ben Bowling wanted to share some words of wisdom with his graduating class.... 'This is the part of my speech where I share some inspirational quotes I found on Google,' Bowling said in his speech. "'Don't just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table." - Donald J. Trump.' The crowd burst into applause. 'Just kidding,' Bowling said. 'That was Barack Obama.' The 18-year-old valedictorian said the crowd quickly went silent. Bell County, which is located in the southeastern part of the Commonwealth near the Tennessee border, overwhelmingly supported Trump in ... 2016...."

Way Beyond

Reuters: "North Korea's top three military officials have been removed from their posts, a senior U.S. official said on Sunday, as ... Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un prepare to meet on June 12 in Singapore. The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was commenting on a report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency that all three of the North's top military officials were believed to have been replaced.... U.S. officials believe there was some dissension in the military about Kim's approaches to South Korea and the United States.... South Korea's unification and defense ministries declined to confirm the report...."

News Lede

New York Times: "A volcano erupted near Guatemala's capital on Sunday, killing at least 25 people and leaving many more missing, officials and the local news media reported. Volcán de Fuego exploded on Sunday morning, and volcanic ash was later seen billowing in the area[.]"

Comments Off

Reader Comments (10)

So, any day now we should expect to hear the Foxy Friends railing against the Imperial Presidency, just like they did when President Obama took action to get around the obstructionist R legislative branch. Any day now...

June 3, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterNiskyGuy

Jeet Heer skewers Maureen Dowd for blaming Obama for the election of Trump (she just can't "quit Barry) along with Mathew Continetti, whose column in the Free Bacon, described Obama as "an aloof, smug, vainglorious chief executive totally divorced from political reality ( euphemisms for "uppity"). It's almost amusing––almost, I say––that we are still struggling to understand how in hell we ever got this loony terminator for a president.
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/148678/maureen-dowd-echoes-conservatives-blaming-obama-trump

Yesterday Akhilleus wrote this:

"I'm reminded of all those summers gone by when we could swallow life whole." Those words moved me––much like "Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendour in the grass, glory in the flower..."

And yesterday spent some time with my grandson who at 15 is definitely swallowing life whole and I wonder if his future will be as splendid as I hope it will be. He is deeply concerned about our planet and this summer will go down to Kentucky and join the group that helps build houses for the poor. Our young children have been bombarded with a political system that is run amuck–-and I wonder if that makes them more determined to make it better or will it have a negative impact.

June 4, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

@P.D. Pepe: I read Dowd yesterday, but purposely didn't link her column. I agree with Heer completely, but I'd go a step further: I think Dowd is a racist. I recall a column of hers from about 5 years ago when she criticized Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice & Condoleezza Rice. She didn't mention they were black, just that each was awful for some reason or the other. I called her out for singling out successful black female politicians. Several outlets like Daily Kos cited my criticism, & the writers agreed with me. There are millions of people like Dowd -- you know, they even "have black friends" -- but somehow their black friends will always seem to them more black than friends.

June 4, 2018 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Leonard Pitts, June 1st. Miami Herald
Re; Robert Kennedy
" Fifty years later, as immigrant children are taken from their parents at the U.S. border, as the rich get richer as the poor work full-time jobs for part-time pay, AS HATRED FLOWS FROM THE TOP OF OUR GOVERNMENT, hope feels like a bygone relic of an outmoded age. like blood from a wound that never healed."
The caps are mine.

June 4, 2018 | Unregistered Commentercarlyle

The Lives of the Kings: Smackdown Edition

Charles V of France-14th Century
Trumpy I of the United States-21st Century

Christine de Pizan, a prolific writer of the late Middle Ages, was an intimate at the court of Charles V (her father was the king's astrologer) and she wrote a book on the daily doings of kingly types. Below are some of the daily doings of a well known medieval king.

Let us, as Sister Marie Peter used to instruct us in the seventh grade, compare and contrast, shall we?

Early morning:

Charles V: Up and at 'em around 6:00 am. Morning prayers then chat and joke with the servants.

Trumpy I: Up at 9:00 am. Lay in bed watching Fox and Friends. Nasty tweets, scream at the servants, fire some. Back to bed, more nasty tweets.

Off to work:

Charles V: about 8:00 am, after Mass
Trumpy I about 11:00 am, after egg-zecutive time (aka Jerk Off Time)

Workday begins:

Charles V: Out into the courtyard to meet a crowd of commoners who could petition the king for a variety of problems. "He very kindly would pause and listen to their supplications, responding charitably to those that were reasonable or piteous."

Trumpy I: Commoners? Trumpy don't do commoners. No petitions heard except those of Confederate machers and trolls who want pardons, and if there is any reason commoners are piteous, Trumpy heaps on some more. Also, forget charity. Trumpy don't do charity either.

Meetings:

Charles V: Meet with Royal Council for updates on business before the king.

Trumpy I: Meet with Kim Kardashian. Plenty of photo-ops. No business, all PR.

Lunch:

Charles V: light, quick meal. Back to work.

Trumpy I: Three Big Macs, super-sized fries, two Quarter Pounders, one Filet-o-fish, two large Diet Cokes. Nap. Sometimes standing up.

Afternoon meetings:

Charles V: Long list of meetings with foreign ambassadors, noblemen, knights, reviews of news from around the kingdom and the world, updates on battles and wars.

Trumpy I: No ambassadors except from foreign dictatorships. Updates on good places to start wars.

Rest period:

Charles V: Spends time with "...most intimate companions in pleasant diversions, perhaps looking at his jewels or other treasures." Then the king spends time with the queen and his children. Expensive gifts are presented to the king from various places.

Trumpy I: Spends time with Fox. Brags about how rich he is. Queen hates him. Kids are off making money by using their positions in the White House. Youngest son he calls a "retard". Bribes, er, gifts are presented from various places in hopes of influencing national policy decisions in their favor.

Evening:

Charles V: readings of fine stories from scriptures, the Deeds of the Romans, or Wise Sayings of Philosophers.

Trumpy I: viewings on Fox of fabricated right-wing bullshit, attention paid to Wise Ass Sayings of Crooks and Connivers.

A comparison of the days of each king leaves one with the indelible impression that a 14th century ruler was far more engaged, competent, hard working, moderate, and educated than Trumpy I, almost 700 years later.

June 4, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

With everybody up in arms over Donny's claims of being above the law and pardoning himself, friends, family, and whoever the fuck he wants to, does anybody actually believe that the GOP would move against their anointed tyrant? Paul Ryan is dickless. His n°2 Kevin McCarthy has probably taken over the pant steaming services after Hope Hicks headed out, and Mitch McConnell has openly admitted that the GOP has had one of its best years ever, under the Tyrant's thumb.

Trump still has the support of 87% of Republican voters, and a huge number of average Americans have likely tuned out or turned off after the weekly shitstorms of scandals and lies. I'm getting less and less convinced the "Blue Wave" will be big enough to overcome the structural disadvantages already built into the system through gerrymandering and voter suppression.

Despite all of this, I do have a dream, that there could be a silver lining in this American horror story: if Trump carries out the end of his term (likely), and even somehow gets reelected (significant possibility, depending on economy & Democratic opponent), we could theoretically witness (one of) the last Republican President(s).

There are tons of hucksters among the GOP ranks, but the current leader is unique in his ability to warp minds. Yet I'm convinced that the repulsion he provokes among "average" Americans, especially younger, more diverse generations, coupled with the GOP's voting base slowly dying off, will pull the "low-info., fence-sitters", back to the Democratic party. The GOP is all-in on xenophobic, nationalist Trumpism; the two cannot be separated now. It's a Frankenstein fusion of American ugliness. Now that it's on full display, I'm not convinced that anyone else besides Donny Drumpf can carry that party's platform to the Presidency. Of course by then, Conservatives will be infesting all levels of government, destroying circuit boards and sabotaging good governance, but at least the pinnacle of political power might soon be out of their reach.

If so, Democrats could take bold moves with some of Trump's new precedents and overcome GOP obstructionism, setting our country back on track after years of self-induced wounds.

June 4, 2018 | Unregistered Commentersafari

“Supreme Court Sides with Trump!”

Get ready. This will be the default headline as we leave the concept of a nation of laws in the dirt and toboggan downhill to an authoritarian state with a king-like despot for whom no laws are applicable.

Oh, and decisions not directly affecting the dictator Trump will go to support the move to a far, far right-wing theocracy.

June 4, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Akhilleus,

Sun's back out so prefer to on the brighter side.

If you're referring to the SCOTUS punt on the young immigrant's abortion approved by a lower court, maybe; but the decision was unanimous; it vacated the lower court's decision, reasoning that because the abortion was already performed, the issue was moot (a major leg of the punt); it let proceedings on the same issue now in lower courts proceed (another leg); and it chose not to discipline the ACLU lawyers as the JD had requested.

In short, they neatly avoided the central issue: to what extent do immigrants share American citizens rights?

And, as usual, the headline hardly told the whole story

June 4, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

Ken,

I was referring more to the cakes for Jesus guy.

There will plenty of cases before the court that will be decided by the wingers and Trump’s personal choice to keep him out of prison, Gorsuch. I’m just getting very bad vibes about the overall direction of jurisprudence in this country.

June 4, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Me too, AK. When I look at the impotent Dems in the congress doing nothing except opining on teevee in very cultured tones (yeah, looking at you, Sheldon...just now on Chris Hayes--)about how it seems the Rs don't respect the rule of law... What is it going to take to get these people to burn down the White House? Figuratively, of course, although I would sacrifice the WH if it meant removal of the evil inside... There is no honor in remaining studied and calm in the face of the lies and fascism of the other party, led by their f*cking king. I am sick of it all. The people we elected to fix this can't fix their own ties, I swear. We got fat pig in ruffles Sarah lying with ease every single minute of every day, and lies that are easily proven thrown in our faces like refuse in a tornado, and no one DOES anything. Mueller is not going to save us, that's obvious. Copenhagen is looking good...

June 4, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterJeanne
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.