Trump Gets Royal Treatment in England

Globe put him below the fold though: 

"Trump insults London mayor as ‘loser’ as he pays tribute to the Queen" by Mark Landler and Maggie Haberman New York Times, June 3, 2019

LONDON — The juxtaposition of high pageantry and low name-calling showcased the deep ambivalence President Trump’s visit has elicited. The British public mostly rejects Trump and his policies, but the governing elite recognizes the need to reinforce the alliance with the United States as it negotiates Britain’s exit from the European Union.

Soon after entering the residence of the US ambassador, Robert Wood Johnson IV, the president expressed his unhappiness with CNN’s coverage of his arrival over Twitter. “After watching it for a short while, I turned it off,” the president wrote.

Also see: Trump, in tussle with CNN, suggests boycott of parent AT&T

He switched the channel over to Fox:

"Trump is known to be an avid viewer of one network in particular: Fox News. The president regularly tweets about news he has seen on the right-leaning network, and he is an active participant on the network. According to data compiled by The Washington Post earlier this year, roughly one-third of all interview time that Trump has given to members of the media since taking office were granted to Fox News or its sister network, Fox Business Network. Why can’t the American president watch a ‘‘Fox News International’’ in Britain, as he could with CNN? The problem appears to be relatively simple: British viewers have rejected it. Just two years ago, it was possible to watch Fox News in Britain. However, in August 2017, the network was abruptly pulled off the air. A statement released by its parent company at the time pinned the blame on low ratings. ‘‘It averages only a few thousand viewers across the day,’’ 21st Century Fox said in a statement provided to CNN. The company noted that this was largely because the network’s programming was aimed at American audiences."

It's the only place he can get a fair shake, and the Web Globe left the TV on:

"The channel aired in Britain for more than a decade and was offered by Sky Limited, a British media conglomerate that at the time was partially owned by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox. Although figures released by the Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board (BARB) suggested that Fox News’ average daily viewers in Britain were almost 60,000, a company source told the BBC that they were in fact closer to 2,000. The decision to pull out of Britain came amid scrutiny of Fox News from Britain’s telecommunications regulator, the Office of Communications. The regulator, widely known as Ofcom, had criticized the television network for a number of breaches, including airing pro-Brexit views on the day of the June 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union and allowing a commentator to suggest that Britain’s second-largest city was ‘‘totally Muslim.’’ Months after the channel was taken off the air in Britain, Ofcom said in a statement that the channel had broken broadcasting rules about impartiality by being largely pro-Trump and not offering alternative viewpoints."

That's when they shut it off.

Trump’s spirits appeared to have lifted by noon, when he arrived at Buckingham Palace, a 3-mile journey he made by helicopter. In May 2011, President Obama made the same trip by motorcade, driving past cheering crowds. By using a helicopter, Trump avoided any possibility of encountering protesters.

Following a private lunch, Queen Elizabeth II showed Donald Trump a collection of gifts that appeared carefully curated to reflect his interests. They included a map of New York from 1775, a natural history of the Carolinas, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, and a table devoted to the Scottish links, with golf-related pictures, letters, and a bolt of tartan-patterned Harris tweed. Trump owns a golf club in Scotland.

Then he was off to lay the wreath and tour Westminster Abbey. The president stopped at a slab of marble honoring Lord Byron and inquired about the stones used to make the flooring.

At the banquet, where Trump’s children were seated between princes and captains of industry, Trump and the queen exchanged toasts before a pair of gilded thrones.

In his toast, Trump spoke of the shared legacy of the D-Day invasion 75 years ago, which both leaders will commemorate this week. He hailed a young female mechanic who repaired military truck engines during World War II, and who was to become “the future queen — a great, great woman.”

In her toast, the queen pointedly took note of the multilateral institutions that Britain and the United States helped to create after World War II to prevent another war — institutions, like NATO, that Trump has denigrated. “While the world has changed,” she said, “we are forever mindful of the original purpose of these structures.”

Oh, is that why they were created?

Then why are they halfway around the world fighting in Afghanistan and why did they join in Libya regime change operation?

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What, no flowers for the Queen?

Also see:

Trump’s love affair with the royal family dates back to his mother

Well, Hitler loved his mother so.....

Related: Trump's Latest Gambit

Globe took a nostalgic look back at the British Empire today:

"Canadian inquiry calls killings of indigenous women genocide" by Ian Austen and Dan Bilefsky New York Times, June 3, 2019

GATINEAU, Quebec — The widespread killings and disappearances of indigenous women and girls in Canada are a “genocide” for which Canada itself is responsible, a national inquiry concluded in its final report Monday.

Indigenous people from across Canada cheered, and raised fists and eagle feathers, as the leader of the inquiry announced the report’s findings at an emotional ceremony in Gatineau, Quebec, that was attended by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Most in the audience were in traditional indigenous dress and held red flowers in remembrance of the women.

Some in the crowd were relatives of the disappeared and dead, and were so overcome by emotion that they had to be led away in tears by health care workers, but despite Trudeau’s assurances in his remarks that his government would take action on the report’s 231 recommendations — including changes to police practices and the criminal justice system — some indigenous people expressed skepticism that the report would make much of a difference.

The report comes after a nearly three-year inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women and girls, during which more than 1,500 families of victims and survivors testified at hearings across the country.

After receiving the multivolume report, wrapped in a ceremonial blanket tied with a traditional Métis sash, Trudeau said, “This is an uncomfortable day for Canada, but it is an essential day.”

He added, “To the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls of Canada, to their families and to survivors — we have failed you.”

Trudeau promised to “conduct a thorough review of this report,” including a “National Action Plan” to address the violence, “with indigenous partners to determine next steps.”

The report said the violence against women and girls amounted “to a race-based genocide of Indigenous peoples, including First Nations, Inuit and Métis.”

“This genocide has been empowered by colonial structures,” the report added.

Maybe they just can't govern themselves, 'eh?

It cited, among other events, Canada’s onetime practice of forcibly sending thousands of indigenous children to government-sponsored residential schools, where they were abused over decades. In 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called that practice a “cultural genocide.”

The report said police and the criminal justice system have historically failed indigenous women by ignoring their concerns and viewing them “through a lens of pervasive racist and sexist stereotypes.”

That, in turn, has created mistrust of authorities among indigenous women and girls, the report said.

Police “apathy often takes the form of stereotyping and victim-blaming, such as when police describe missing loved ones as ‘drunks,’ ‘runaways out partying’ or ‘prostitutes unworthy of follow-up,’” the report said.

Survivors and their families told the inquiry they often found the “court process inadequate, unjust and retraumatizing.”

Probably because such things are for the purposes of cover up and public relations. 

That's what happens when government investigates itself.

To help improve law enforcement and prevent violence against women, the report called for expanding indigenous women’s shelters and improving policing in indigenous communities, in particular in remote areas; increasing the number of indigenous people on police forces; and empowering more indigenous women to serve on civilian boards that oversee police.

It also called for changing the criminal code to classify some killings of indigenous women by spouses with a history of violent abuse as first-degree murder, whether they were premeditated or not.

Saying that cultural discrimination has marginalized indigenous people, it also called for the federal and provincial governments to give indigenous languages the same status as Canada’s official languages, English and French.

The report offered a damning indictment not just of the killers but of a country that has too often allowed them to act with impunity.

They mean the government, right?

My sense is that the Canadian people are a fine.

“Yes, genocide is exactly what’s happening, and Canada is still in denial about this,” said Lorelei Williams, a leading indigenous advocate in Vancouver whose aunt went missing four decades ago and whose cousin was murdered by the serial killer Robert Pickton.

Indigenous women and girls make up about 4 percent of Canada’s females but 16 percent of the females killed, according to government statistics.

Some 1,181 indigenous women were killed or disappeared across the country from 1980 to 2012, according to a 2014 report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Indigenous advocates, and the report, say the number is probably far higher since so many deaths have gone unreported.

The commission’s use of the word genocide has attracted some criticism, particularly in Quebec, as an excessive and improper use of the term, but Marion Buller, the chief commissioner of the inquiry and a retired indigenous judge, repeatedly stood by the inquiry’s finding.....

I thought it was at first given the "limited" amount of deaths (hey, each life is precious), but when you consider the aggregate experience of the native population of the hemisphere after contact with colonizers, it actually surpasses the Holocau$t™ in its numbers, speed, and virulence.

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"A South African farmer whose vineyard in the Stellenbosch wine region had been occupied by shack dwellers since last year has been shot and killed in his home, heightening tensions amid a contentious national debate over the ownership of land. Four men entered the house of the farmer, Stefan Smit, on Sunday evening before killing him, said Lieutenant Colonel Andre Traut, a police spokesman. Smit’s home is about 30 miles east of Cape Town, in South Africa’s most famous wine region. Smit’s wife and a family friend were both present during the attack and survived, Traut said, adding that the suspects fled with personal belongings, but it was too soon to say whether the killing was related to the dispute over land or was a random criminal act. The killing of Smit, 62, a prominent white farmer whose family has grown grapes for generations, immediately drew strong reactions from groups representing white farmers and white-minority rights. A quarter of a century after the end of apartheid, white South Africans, who make up about 8% of the population, still dominate the economy and own the country’s most productive land. Smit’s was the second farm killing in the Western Cape province in less than a month, said Jeanne Boshoff, a spokeswoman for a farming association, Agri Wes-Cape. In a statement addressed to President Cyril Ramaphosa, the group asked why farmers should remain in South Africa if their safety, as well as that of their workers, could not be guaranteed....."

We were told Trump was out of line when he said this was a problem in South Africa, and where is the outrage?

You better hurry or you will be late for church (did you see the look in his eye?).

All part of the Great Game, right?

"Hope dwindles in Afghanistan for end of Ramadan cease-fire" by Siobhán O’Grady Washington Post, June 3, 2019

KABUL — A three-day holiday will begin here Tuesday without a cease-fire, after a wave of violence in recent days left at least 17 people dead and dozens injured.

An unprecedented cease-fire last year after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan saw an influx of Taliban fighters into urban areas, where they mingled with civilians, posed for selfies, and raised expectations for successful peace talks that would put an end to the country’s drawn-out war.

Despite the spike in violence during this Ramadan, many were optimistic that a similar arrangement would be made this year, but negotiations failed to result in a truce that would put even a temporary end to the fighting. Violence has surged during the holy month, which Muslims observe with fasting and prayer, leaving civilians on edge as it comes to a close, in what is supposed to be one of the most joyous occasions on the Muslim calendar.

Yup. U.S. will just never be able to leave because the Afghans apparently can't govern themselves.

On Monday afternoon, a bomb exploded on a bus carrying government employees in Kabul, leaving at least five dead and 10 wounded. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for two deadly attacks in recent days: One at a military academy Thursday and several bombings, including one on a university student bus, on Sunday. On Friday, the Taliban attacked a US convoy that injured four US troops and killed four Afghan bystanders.

Hopes were high for a cease-fire last week when a 14-member Taliban delegation and a number of high-profile figures from Afghanistan, including former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, held talks in Moscow, but no deal was reached after the three-day meeting.

‘‘We were arguing for a cease-fire for the Afghan people. That’s what the Afghan people want,’’ Karzai said in an interview at his home in Kabul on Monday. ‘‘[The Taliban] had different ideas. Some of those ideas were concerns that they had, which we understood. But to which our response was: ‘We want a cease-fire anyway.’ ’’

Yeah, the Taliban are keeping the war going, not the presence of foreign occupiers.

He said he was not surprised a cease-fire wasn’t agreed upon but still hopes ‘‘very much there will be at least, if not a formal cease-fire, a lot of reduction in violence.’’

Haroun Mir, an Afghan political analyst, said ‘‘people are very suspicious’’ about Karzai’s role in the peace talks.

‘‘He wants to save his legacy and be the person who is trying to bring peace in Afghanistan,’’ Mir said. ‘‘Is he trying to do something to develop the country, or does he want to regain some of his lost influence in the country as a major political leader?’’

Karzai insisted he was ‘‘trying to help the government’’ and his only ambition was to bring peace to Afghanistan.

‘‘I tried first as the president, and I’m [now] trying for it as a citizen,’’ he said, but after the talks in Moscow, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said only that they had ‘‘discussed the cease-fire, and we will continue this discussion,’’ leaving Karzai and other participants returning to Kabul largely empty-handed.

In Kabul, there is widespread disappointment that there will probably be no truce. For some, happy memories of last year’s peaceful festivities are a painful reminder of the lack of progress that Afghanistan has made this year in putting an end to the conflict.

‘‘Especially during Eid days, we should feel calm,’’ Shirzad said. ‘‘Their families, our families, should both have peace,’’ he said, referring to Taliban fighters and civilians.

Last year, Hasibullah Mohibi, 18, traveled outside of Kabul for Eid, missing the arrival of Taliban fighters into the city where he grew up. He hoped this year he would have his chance to greet them himself.

‘‘I was sad that I was not in Kabul to meet the Taliban for the first time when they did not intend to harm anyone, and no one intended to harm them,’’ he said.

For years, Mohibi has worked at a food stand near a busy park in Kabul, frying bolani, an Afghan stuffed flatbread, to sell to passersby from under an orange awning. Last month, he was there when Taliban fighters attacked the nearby compound of Virginia-based nonprofit Counterpart International, killing at least five people and wounding more than 20 others, including at least one foreigner.

Turns out that Counterpart International is nothing more than a front for the CIA.

Mohibi ran to the scene of the attack and helped carry the wounded to the hospital. The experience left him shaken, fearing he would not escape the next Taliban assault alive.

Despite the carnage he has witnessed, Mohibi said he would welcome Taliban fighters back to Kabul if they came under the guidelines of a cease-fire. ‘‘Everyone is fed up with the war,’’ he said. ‘‘We want a cease-fire.’’

So is the whole planet; it is a very small sliver of power-mad psychopaths that are ruining it for the rest of us.

Ahmad Shoaib Shirzad, 33, a banker in Kabul, said that he regrets not joining Taliban fighters in the streets of Kabul last year. ‘‘I wanted to go and hug each other, speak with each other,’’ he said.

Other civilians expressed more hesitation over a cease-fire that could see Taliban fighters return to urban areas for the holidays.

Reza Pazhohish, 30, who works for Afghanistan’s chief executive’s office in Kabul, said that last year, the militants returned in large numbers to his home city, Ghazni, in central Afghanistan. Some of them never left, he said, and two months later, his brother, a police officer, was ambushed and killed in a Taliban attack.....


Afghan women received free food on Monday donated by Muslim Hands, a not-for-profit organization, during the last days of the holy month of Ramadan in Kabul.(Rahmat Gul/Associated Press)

That's a British group, folks.

I just wanted you to see the people standing under our bombs.

--more--"

Then came WWII, of course:

"A politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head outside his home in Hesse state, German authorities confirmed Monday, saying they haven’t identified suspects or a possible motive. Walter Luebcke, who was in charge of the Kassel area regional administration, was found outside his home early Sunday morning by a relative, and attempts to reanimate him were unsuccessful, said Hesse prosecutor Horst Streiff. An autopsy confirmed that the 65-year-old died from a pistol shot to the head, fired at close range, Streiff said. A homicide investigation has been opened but at the moment ‘‘we have no concrete information on a suspect or a motive,’’ he said. Luebcke, a long-time member of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Party, in 2015 received threats after speaking out in support of helping asylum-seekers. The head of the Hesse state criminal police, Sabine Thurau, told reporters the earlier threats had ‘‘no connection to the current crime, according to our knowledge.’’ Neither Streiff nor Thurau would give further details....."

How can they know that at this early stage?

"Carnival Corp. has reached a tentative settlement with federal prosecutors in which the world’s largest cruise line agreed to pay $20 million in fines for some of its ships continuing to pollute the oceans despite promising years ago to stop. The Miami-based cruise line acknowledged in court documents Monday it violated terms of probation from a 2016 criminal conviction for discharging oily waste from its Princess Cruise Lines ships and covering it up. Carnival paid a $40 million fine and was put on five years’ probation. In the new documents, Princess ‘‘admits that it committed the violations’’ outlined earlier this year by prosecutors. These include dumping ‘‘gray water’’ in prohibited places such as the Bahamas and knowingly allowing plastic to be discharged along with food waste, which poses a severe threat to marine life. The proposed settlement was signed by Carnival chairman Micky Arison, a billionaire who also owns the Miami Heat."

Just docked in Italy, the chairman happens to be Jewi$h, and you are to worry about carbon and global warming.

Remember the first war after WWII?

"Kim Yong Chol, former North Korean spymaster and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s counterpart in recent diplomatic contacts between the North and the United States, resurfaced in public this week, undermining a South Korean newspaper’s report that he was banished to forced labor in a re-education camp. The conservative Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s largest daily newspaper, reported Friday that Kim had been sent to a re-education camp as part of a political purge of senior North Korean officials held responsible for the breakdown of the second summit held in February between the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, and President Trump, but some analysts in South Korea quickly questioned the report, saying that it was unlikely for Kim Yong Chol to have been banished because he was still being cited in the North Korean news media in the weeks after the summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, and had retained his vice chairmanship in the ruling Workers’ Party. They said Kim’s influence appears to have been curtailed because he lost another key party post: heading the party’s important United Front Department, which manages relations with South Korea, as well as intelligence affairs. By Monday, it appeared that the skeptical analysts’ assessments were correct....."

Oh, we were LIED TO AGAIN!

So when are you guys going to start listening to us?

"8 missing climbers in Indian Himalayas are presumed dead, officials say, citing photographs" by Mujib Mashal and Suhasini Raj New York Times, June 3, 2019

NEW DELHI — Eight mountain climbers missing for more than a week in the Indian Himalayas appear to have died in an avalanche, disaster response officials said Monday, citing aerial photographs that show bodies in the snow.

The climbers — four Britons, two Americans, one Australian, and one Indian — had been out of contact since May 26, when they set off “with the ambition of summiting a virgin peak” on Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest mountain at more than 25,000 feet.

Nanda Devi, because of its steep slopes and persistent harsh weather, has long remained daunting to even those who have summited Everest. In 1980s, the Indian government declared the main Nanda Devi sanctuary off-limits as a biosphere reserve, but climbers have been trying to reach the summit of one of the peaks, Nanda Devi East, from other directions.

Anup Sah, a mountaineer and photographer who has made four unsuccessful attempts to reach the summit of Nanda Devi, said the terrain was “extremely difficult” with avalanches a constant threat. “The main peak is surrounded by gorges,” he said. “It is a very dangerous fixed-rope climb. God forbid you slip — you go deep into the gorge.”

One of the most high-profile deaths on the mountain was that of an American woman named for it.....

--more--"

Related:

"The month of June won’t stop snow from falling on Mount Washington, forecasters said Monday afternoon. A forecast for Monday night from staff at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire listed a “chance” of snow happening, with the possibility of trace amounts to 2 inches. Forecasters from the observatory had said on Twitter Monday morning that snow was expected at New England’s tallest peak....."

Yeah, “we actually average roughly an inch of snow for a typical June, but....” 

Better watch where you are walking, and did you get a look at the trees?

{@@##$$%%^^&&}

Good to be home again:

"House Democrats, grasping for ways to bring the special counsel’s report to life, said Monday they would convene a series of hearings focused on Robert Mueller’s findings, even if the special counsel would not be on the witness stand for now. The first star witness, in fact, will come from another era and another presidential scandal: John W. Dean, White House counsel for the late former president Richard Nixon who told the Senate in June 1973 that the president had been directly involved in the Watergate cover-up. The hearing, scheduled for June 10 with the House Judiciary Committee, will allow lawmakers to fully air Mueller’s findings for the first time. So far, Democrats’ requests for testimony from key witnesses in the Mueller investigation have been blocked by the Trump administration, and Mueller has yet to agree to appear on Capitol Hill despite delivering a rare public statement last week. The Judiciary Committee is not the only panel trying to fight back against a refusal by the executive branch to comply with oversight demands. The chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee said Monday he would schedule a vote to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas for documents related to the administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat and the Judiciary committee chairman, said his committee’s first hearing would zero in on “the most overt acts of obstruction” documented by Mueller. The special counsel’s report detailed at least 10 cases of possible obstruction by President Trump as he sought to thwart investigators studying his campaign’s ties to Russia and its efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. Republicans mocked the announcement. Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, a member of the Judiciary Committee, accused Democrats of seeking to stage “make believe” reasons to impeach Trump. The committee already has outstanding subpoenas for testimony from two more key witnesses this month, but neither witness — Hope Hicks, a former White House communications director; or Annie Donaldson, chief of staff to the former White House counsel — is likely to show."

Impeachment has reached the level of FARCE, and pre$$ and politicians won't go anywhere Kushner.

I gue$$ they have nothing else to do:

"Congress scrambles to avoid $125 billion in spending cuts" by Emily Cochrane New York Times, June 3, 2019

WASHINGTON — A Congress that has struggled all year to legislate returned Monday to face two urgent deadlines that, if not met, could lead to a disastrous default on the federal debt and to automatic spending cuts that would sweep like a scythe through the military, federal health care, and other popular programs.

So glad they are holding show hearings instead.

In October or early November, fiscal analysts predict that the Treasury will run out of room to borrow money to keep the government operating, a catastrophe that could damage the stability of the US economy and force the government to default on its debt.

That's how we got into this me$$, paying the interest on money provided by usurious central banks as Congre$$ abrogates its Constitutional right to control the money supply.

That is about the same time that back-to-back budget deals would expire and strict spending caps enacted in 2011 would come back into force, automatically cutting military and domestic spending across the board by $125 billion. Lawmakers say they need to act now, before recesses in July and August, to avert a crisis, but so far, a divided Congress has found even usually easy things — such as passing disaster relief — hard, and two wild cards loom: a president who, in his business days, bragged about taking on debt and used debt-default threats and bankruptcies to his advantage, and an acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who led the brinkmanship over the federal debt ceiling as a Republican House member.

When these guys scream urgency is when you should hit the brakes.

“We don’t have a lot of people in government right now who know how to govern or who want to govern,” said Representative John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat, chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Few bills have made it through both chambers in the first few months of Congress, and Trump, who has shown himself willing to blow up deals at the last minute, has often shown a lack of concern about the soaring federal debt.

Some lawmakers warn that a monthslong battle over such routine spending as a disaster relief package is an ominous sign for Congress’s ability to meet the fiscal deadlines over the next four months. That package, more than a week after Trump offered his approval, has yet to become law, because House Republicans objected to voting on it over the recess.

One guy was blocking it and they make it sound like the whole party.

Still, lawmakers are holding out hope. Congressional leaders emerged optimistic from private discussions last month with White House officials, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said it was possible that a two-year spending deal and a suspension of the debt ceiling could be merged into one deal, but both Mulvaney, a founding member of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus, and Russell T. Vought, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, have demonstrated a penchant for brinkmanship on the debt ceiling and a desire to keep strict spending limits in place.

I've had my fill of hope.

Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, have said they are pushing to match increases in military spending, which Republicans want, with equal increases in nonmilitary spending, which Democrats favor.....

So which faction of the War Party do you like?

--more--"

Yes, it is an “issue of great concern.” 

Related:

Congress finally to send $19B disaster aid bill to Trump

That NYT slop replaced this printed AP piece I read in the paper:

"House sends long-delayed $19.1B disaster aid bill to Trump" by Andrew Taylor AP, June 3, 2019

WASHINGTON (AP) — A long-delayed $19.1 billion disaster aid bill has sailed through the House and headed to President Donald Trump for his expected signature, overcoming months of infighting, misjudgment and a feud between Trump and congressional Democrats.

Conservative Republicans in the House held up the bill last week, objecting on three occasions to efforts by Democratic leaders to pass the bill by a voice vote requiring unanimity. They said the legislation — which reflects an increasingly permissive attitude in Washington on spending to address disasters that sooner or later hit every region of the country — shouldn’t be rushed through without a recorded vote.

It was one lone Congressman blocking but they leave the impression it was the entire party.

Along the way, House and Senate old-timers seemed to outmaneuver the White House.

The measure was initially held up over a fight between Trump and Democrats over aid to Puerto Rico.

The measure also faced delays amid failed talks on Trump’s $4 billion-plus request to care for thousands of mostly Central American migrants being held at the southern border and among the reasons was a demand by House liberals to block the Homeland Security Department from getting information from federal social welfare authorities to help track immigrants residing in the U.S. illegally who take migrant refugee children into their homes.

As the measure languished, disasters kept coming.

The legislation is also being driven by Florida and Georgia lawmakers steaming with frustration over delays in delivering help to farmers, towns and military bases slammed by hurricanes last fall. Flooding in Iowa and Nebraska this spring added to the coalition behind the measure, which delivers much of its help to regions where Trump supporters dominate.

The bill started out as a modest $7.8 billion measure passed in the last days of House GOP control. A $14 billion version advanced in the Democrat-led chamber in January and ballooned to $19.1 billion by the time it emerged from the floor last month, fed by new funding for community rehabilitation projects, Army Corps of Engineers water and flood protection projects, and rebuilding funds for several military bases.....

That's what took so long; everyone had to get their pork inserted!

--more--"

Related: Mississippi River flooding approaches records set in 1993

They had better get started writing another one.

I'm not kidding when I say one needs only to watch a few episodes of HBO’s “Chernobyl“ and remember the devastation of Fukushima to be reminded of just how dangerous nuclear power is, but while decarbonization remains the ultimate goal, it is shortsighted to dismiss interim measures that could reduce carbon concentrations to levels that hopefully could begin to pacify our inflamed atmosphere, and by keeping nuclear in mix, Goldstein said what I have been thinking for years, but he said it better that I ever could to make nuclear power even more attractive as an alternative to fossil fuels -- if we aren't all dead first.

"Facebook, Google, and other tech giants to face antitrust investigation by House lawmakers" by Tony Romm and Elizabeth Dwoskin Washington Post, June 3, 2019

WASHINGTON — House Democrats plan a sweeping review of Facebook, Google, and other technology giants to determine whether they’ve become so large and powerful that they stifle competition and harm consumers, marking a new, unprecedented antitrust threat for an industry that’s increasingly under siege by Congress, the White House, and 2020 presidential candidates.

The probe, announced Monday by Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island who is the leader of the House’s top competition panel, is expected to be far reaching and comes at a moment when Democrats and Republicans find themselves in rare alignment on the idea that the tech industry has been too unregulated for too long. The sentiment spurred a sharp sell-off in tech stocks to start the week.

Cicilline said the investigation won’t target one specific tech company, but rather focus on the broad belief that the ‘‘Internet is broken,’’ he told reporters.

‘‘In a lot of ways, there was a reluctance in the early days of the Internet to interfere,’’ the Democratic lawmaker said. ‘‘It was creating so much value in the lives of people that [some felt] you should get out of the way and allow it to flourish.’’

‘‘Over time,’’ Cicilline continued, ‘‘people have recognized there are some real dangers here.’’

Cicilline said Democrats would hold hearings, seek documents — even by subpoena, if necessary — and depose witnesses that could include the leaders of Silicon Valley’s largest companies, who might also be asked to testify publicly. His office said that tech companies, for all their innovations, had created ‘‘escalating crises,’’ from eroding Americans’ privacy rights to depriving ad revenue from cash-strapped local news outlets.

You get to this point and what you realize is this going to be more show hearings; however, in this case it is going to bolster the case for the ever-increasing $ocial media censorship in favor of bolstering the agenda-pushing, war-promoting liars I'm reading every morning. 

Yeah, it's a mouthpiece media, and how long until they are being $poon-fed taxpayer loot -- in the name of fairness, of course! It wouldn't be a "state-run" media like the bad guys!

As for your privacy, they don't give a damn. If they did, they wouldn't have allowed the data collection and storage efforts to be continued and expanded after Snowden, et al.

Related: 

"The Trump administration has signaled in recent weeks that it may seek the permanent renewal of a surveillance law that has, among other things, enabled the National Security Agency to gather and analyze Americans’ phone records as part of terrorism investigations, according to five US officials familiar with the matter....."

I rest my case. Haven't heard a peep out of the Democrats about it, either. So much for his war with the Deep State. He is the Deep State, or is now doing its bidding.

You do know where they send all the stuff, right?

In recent days, the Trump administration has signaled that it, too, has set its sights on Silicon Valley, taking early steps to divvy up future competition oversight of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The efforts by the US government’s two antitrust enforcement agencies, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, could pave the way for more formal probes of each company’s practices, though the agencies’ exact interests aren’t known. 

$ilicon Valley basically is the government. They either store the records for access when requested, or are start-ups funded via the MIC itself (for your own good, of cour$e).

Still, the early efforts won support even among Democratic presidential candidates, such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who long has called for breaking up big tech. Over the weekend, congressional Republicans also praised the Trump administration for turning its attention to the industry. ‘‘This is very big news, and overdue,’’ tweeted Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.

Talk is cheap.

Amazon, Apple, and Facebook did not respond to requests for comment, and Google declined comment. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

The broad, bipartisan focus on Silicon Valley presents the whole of the tech industry with what could be its greatest political test after years of enjoying relatively smooth sailing in the nation’s capital. Even when world regulators had sought to challenge these companies’ business practices — Europe has fined Google $9 billion in just the last three years, for example — Washington had remained a staunch ally of Facebook, Google, and their peers.

The 2016 election, however, began to erode that political good will, as members of Congress began to realize the extent to which malicious actors could capitalize on social networks with vast, perhaps unchallenged reach to spread falsehoods in real time.

Did they lie us into Iraq with headlines blaring from the front pages?

‘‘For a while, tech could do no wrong. They were the font of all innovation, and good things, and progress and democracy,’’ said Rob Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank that counts Apple and Microsoft on its board of directors. ‘‘And now the bloom is off the rose.’’

I would say so.

I'll let the web version take over now:

Atkinson, however, stressed the industry had produced some of consumers’ most well-liked services, from Facebook’s messaging apps to Amazon’s lightning fast delivery of goods that previously had taken weeks to order. ‘‘This is one of the reasons why this is such a hard sell,’’ he said. ‘‘Most consumers just don’t see a problem.’’

Too addicted to the $ocial media and its distractions.

On Monday, Cicilline called it a ‘‘monopoly moment’’ for the tech industry, likening his committee’s investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and their tech peers to past congressional probes of airlines and phone providers, each of which resulted in a fine-tuning of the nation’s antitrust laws. Over the next 18 months, he said, the House Judiciary Committee and its top antitrust panel would focus their review on crafting their own recommendations.

Then they can bribe, 'er, buy, 'er, lobby their way out.

‘‘The open Internet has delivered enormous benefits to Americans, including a surge of economic opportunity, massive investment, and new pathways for education online,’’ said Representative Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the full Judiciary Committee. ‘‘But there is growing evidence that a handful of gatekeepers have come to capture control over key arteries of online commerce, content, and communications.’’

That's what we had before the Internet, when the ma$$ media and pre$$ controlled the entire narrative. They are trying to put the genie back in the bottle, but the awareness is already out there while their machinations become more self-evident every day!

New antitrust scrutiny helped drive down tech stocks Monday. Facebook stock was down more than 7 percent, Google fell by 6 percent, Amazon dropped 4 percent, and Apple 1 percent, a small loss that came on the same day the iPhone giant unveiled a slew of new software updates at its annual developer conference.

I'll check those later.

In recent months, a growing chorus of politicians, academics, and business leaders have argued that tech giants have accumulated too much power and that they should be regulated — or even broken up. In May, Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook, argued in a commentary that it was time to break up the company.

Critics of Amazon have pointed to the company’s dominance of retail e-commerce sales - estimated to be nearly 40 percent of the market, according to eMarketer data from May 2019. Meanwhile, Amazon has expanded into new lines of business, such as groceries, and amassed a massive cloud-computing footprint. Amazon argues, however, that it controls a smaller portion of all retail sales in an industry dominated by players such as Walmart, the largest US retailer.

(What, no qualifier this time?)

For Apple, the concern consistently is its App Store — a portal for games and other software that Apple controls. The iPhone maker long has tangled with companies such as Spotify, a music-streaming app that rivals Apple’s own offering, over charges that Apple makes it harder for competitors to operate. Apple has denied it, but the European Union is reportedly probing the matter.

Google long has struggled to battle back EU regulators who feel its search, advertising, and smartphone offerings put its competitors at a disadvantage. US regulators previously probed the company but opted against bringing major penalties when they closed the investigation in 2013. With Facebook, its struggles with disinformation and privacy have fueled calls from a wide array of critics.

‘‘The Internet platforms have operated with impunity since their founding, producing horrific outcomes for democracy, public health, privacy, and competition,’’ said Roger McNamee, an early investor in Apple, Facebook, and Google and a former adviser to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg who has since become a critic of the companies.

--more--"

Related:

"Major US stock indexes ended mostly lower Monday amid signs the Trump administration is laying the groundwork to ratchet up scrutiny of some of the market’s biggest names: Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Google. Google’s parent, Alphabet, lost 6.1 percent and Facebook sank 7.5 percent, pulling down communications sector stocks. Technology companies also took heavy losses, with Apple shedding 1 percent on the day that the iPhone seller kicked off its annual software showcase. Amazon fell 4.6 percent as it led a slide in consumer discretionary stocks. Investors were reacting to media reports suggesting that government regulators are setting the stage for potential antitrust probes into each of the four technology giants. The sell-off knocked the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index into a correction, Wall Street-speak for a drop of 10 percent or more from a peak. The Nasdaq hit its most recent record high early last month, before the US-China trade dispute escalated, setting off a monthlong slide. Indexes briefly headed higher, with technology companies among the big gainers, in what appeared to be a budding rebound for the market after it closed out May with its first monthly decline this year, but the slight gains evaporated as investors weighed the implications of a possible wave of heightened scrutiny on the market’s biggest technology companies. The indecisive trading came amid a wave of volatility in the market as investors wrestle with the uncertainty of growing use of US tariffs in international trade disputes. Bond prices climbed again Monday, pulling the yield on the 10-year Treasury note down to 2.07 percent....."

Sort of a $hot acro$$ the bow by the real rulers, those that control the political puppet's strings. They will wreck the stock market if you don't back off!

"Apple executives previewed a large set of privacy and speed-focused changes to the company’s phone and computer software Monday, some intended to help it diversify to offset eroding sales of its bedrock product, the iPhone. The software showcase is an annual rite. This year, however, Apple is grappling with its biggest challenge since its visionary cofounder, Steve Jobs, died nearly eight years ago. Although still popular, the iPhone is no longer reliably driving Apple’s profits the way it has for the past decade. Sales have fallen sharply for the past two quarters, and could suffer another blow if China’s government targets the iPhone in retaliation for the trade war being waged by President Trump. Apple’s keynote focused largely on minor feature updates to its flagship software, but hinted at its shift toward a services-focused company. Apple also emphasized its privacy protections during the keynote....."

They must not have seen these:

"An estimated 11.9 million patients’ personal and medical information may have been exposed in a data breach of a collections agency that works with Quest Diagnostics Inc. and the insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc. Quest said in a securities filing that it had been informed of the breach by American Medical Collection Agency, an Elmsford, N.Y.-based collections firm. For eight months, an unauthorized user had access to personal information including credit card numbers and bank accounts, medical information, and personal information such as Social Security numbers. Quest, which operates medical testing centers around the United States, said it has suspended sending collections requests to AMCA and is working with law enforcement and with UnitedHealth on the effects of the breach. Quest said it was informed of the incident on May 14."

Guess who is the prime suspect:

"Dating app Tinder is now required to provide user data to Russian intelligence agencies, the country’s communications regulator said Monday. The app was included on a new list of online services operating in Russia that are required to provide user data on demand to Russian authorities, including the FSB security agency. Russia adopted a flurry of legislation in recent years tightening control over online activity. Among other things, Internet companies are required to store six months’ worth of user data and be ready to hand them over to authorities."

Oh, like here, although I $uppo$e it is your point of view that matters most. 

No wonder you can't get a date.

"Across the country, Democrats and Republicans fight over voting rights" New York Times, June 3, 2019

PHOENIX — After a record turnout in November swept Democrats into several key federal and state offices in Arizona, the Republicans who have dominated the State House for a decade did two things: They raised the specter of election fraud, and they proposed a sheaf of bills to tighten the rules for registering to vote and for casting ballots.

Hey, it was all due to the donors!

With the presidential election 18 months away, state-level struggles are underway to control the rules for voting in 2020, but warnings of stolen votes and corrupted voter rolls that used to muster support for restrictions are being countered by citizen initiatives to restore voting rights, and suddenly, the fights are not so lopsided.

That's a given these days, since at least the year 2000.

Since 2010, 25 states, mostly Republican-led, have toughened ballot laws, but by the time Arizona’s Legislature adjourned last week, only two comparatively minor new bills tightening ballot rules had made it to the governor’s desk.

The headline struggle is in Florida.

Must be why they met in Israel!

The Democratic-run New Hampshire Legislature sent the Republican governor legislation last month to undo barriers to voting by college students from out of state. In North Carolina this week, the Republican Legislature abandoned an effort to impose rules that would render many student IDs useless at polling places.

There was some sort of scandal there and a new election was ordered, but not in Alabama.

Voting-rights advocates sued to overturn a law enacted in Tennessee that saddled voter-registration drives with fresh requirements. The Texas Legislature adjourned in May without passing a bill that would have imposed criminal penalties for voter-registration errors, and a suit by advocates forced Texas officials in April to abandon a false claim that nearly 100,000 people on voter rolls were probably not citizens, and forced the Republican acting secretary of state to resign.

He was purged.

Elsewhere, the movement to expand ballot access has enjoyed a string of once-unlikely victories. Nevada’s Legislature voted last month to restore former felons’ rights, after Louisiana’s restoration of rights in February. The New York Legislature lowered barriers to voting, Delaware authorized early voting, and a nationwide movement to automatically register eligible people when they visit government offices appears to be gaining momentum.

All the better to fraud you with.

“There really is a significant rise in activity,” said Wendy R, Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, but in Arizona, Republicans control the governor’s office and Legislature, but the state is shifting. From 2000 to 2018, as the state’s overall population grew by 40 percent, its Hispanic population nearly doubled, to nearly 1 in 3 Arizonans, and in the midterm elections in November, Democrats made inroads. Besides taking one of Arizona’s seats in the US Senate, they reclaimed a majority of the nine congressional seats, elected the party’s first secretary of state since 1991, and nearly took control of the 60-member House.

Republicans say their goal is to keep elections honest, and public faith in the results high.

“If you’re going to manipulate the system, you’ve injected a sense of doubt into what happened with these ballots,” said Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a Republican state senator. “And that kind of doubt is dangerous.”

You've already lost me after the endless string of rigged elections since, well, forever!

Ugenti-Rita acknowledged fraud in Arizona elections is negligible. Still, she said, legislators should prevent election manipulation — just as transportation officials do not wait for fatal accidents before posting speed limit signs.

Arizona has a history of election-law scrapes.....

--more--"

Meanwhile, back in Florida:

"An 81-year-old former Miami-Dade educator and school board member shot at officers during a chase, before crashing his car, police in Florida said. Solomon Stinson faces charges in a series of events Sunday afternoon that began with him pointing a gun at a woman while driving slowly through a Miramar neighborhood, described by police as an aggravated assault. Later, Stinson shot at a man’s car, shattering the back window, following an argument in a mall parking lot, and then followed and fired at a woman’s car, The Miami Herald reported. Nearby streets were shut down and residents were told to remain inside, while police tried to take Stinson into custody. He was ‘‘unwilling to surrender,’’ police said, and officers used a ‘‘less lethal weapon’’ to take him into custody. Stinson was hospitalized with minor injuries. No one else was injured. It’s unclear whether he has a lawyer....."

Sol went a little bonkers, huh? 

That the cover for the crisis drill?

"Editorial: The only way to break the pattern of mass shootings

Another dozen dead in a mass shooting — this time in Virginia Beach — and by now everyone knows the drill. Begin with praising the bravery of the first responders, who should never have to respond to such horrific crimes in the first place. Mourn the victims, the latest lives cut short by America’s raging gun violence epidemic. Cue the chorus of politicians issuing their thoughts, prayers, and excuses.

Then, of course, come the newspaper editorials calling for stricter gun controls.

Still, however rote gun tragedies may seem now, America cannot go numb. This massacre is every bit the outrage as the last. Eleven city employees and a contractor were killed on Friday afternoon by a gunman who entered a municipal building with two handguns, one of which was reportedly equipped with a noise suppressor that may have made it harder for victims to identify the gunshots. The killing ended only when police arrived and fatally wounded the killer in a shootout, but the script doesn’t end here, and the next acts are sadly predictable. As the details emerge after a mass shooting, gun activists typically use the particularities to poke holes in proposed gun restrictions.

Yes, each mass shooting is different. Killers don’t all exploit the same loopholes, but the common denominator is always the same: firearms. If we want fewer mass shootings, we need fewer guns, in the hands of fewer people.

Many Americans looked on in admiration when New Zealand reacted to a mass shooting by promptly enacting new gun restrictions. It seems impossible to imagine such a response here, but the only way to break the pattern in the United States is to keep pushing: At the least, the Senate should take up and vote on the House legislation.

The victims in Virginia Beach were black and white, old and young. Mass killings happen at schools, workplaces, churches, and this awful story will keep repeating itself — until Americans demand a different ending.....

--more--"

Drill, script, ending, they are telegraphing the operation without really saying it!

"Blood found in missing Connecticut mom’s home" by Associated Press June 3, 2019

NORWALK, Conn. — The case has stunned residents of New Canaan, a wealthy suburb of New York City, which is about 60 miles away from the affluent Hartford suburb where 51-year-old Fotis Dulos and his 44-year-old girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, lived in a large home that Jennifer Dulos, 50, and the children left two years ago.

Oh, now I under$tand why it's all over the news.

Fotis Dulos’s lawyer, Eugene Riccio, said his client was not expected to post bail. Troconis posted bail Monday afternoon and did not comment as she left the courthouse wearing a GPS monitoring device.

Jennifer Dulos went missing May 24 after dropping her kids off at school and missing appointments that day. She and Fotis Dulos have been embroiled in a contentious divorce and child custody case for the past two years. Their children range in age from 8 to 13 and include two sets of twins.

Police have searched locations in several towns including a park in New Canaan where Jennifer Dulos’s vehicle was found and the Hartford suburb home in Farmington.

The arrest warrants said clothing, kitchen sponges, and other items with Jennifer Dulos’s blood were found at various locations in Hartford in garbage bags police believe were dumped by Fotis Dulos and Troconis, based on surveillance videos and cellphone location data.

Jennifer Dulos is the daughter of the late Hilliard Farber, who ran Chase Manhattan Bank’s bond trading desk before founding his own brokerage firm in 1975.

Now the ma$$ media coverage really makes $en$e.

Fotis Dulos is a developer of expensive homes who borrowed money from his wife’s parents to buy properties, according to a lawsuit filed against Fotis Dulos by Jennifer Dulos’s mother, Gloria Farber. The lawsuit in Connecticut state court claims Fotis Dulos has failed to repay Gloria Farber about $1.7 million in loans given to him.

This does not look good!

Court documents filed in the divorce case say Jennifer Dulos feared Fotis Dulos would harm her in some way in retaliation for her filing for divorce, and she noted he had a gun. Jennifer Dulos has primary custody of the children, with their father getting to see them every other weekend.

After Jennifer Dulos went missing, Fotis Dulos asked the divorce case judge to grant him custody of the children. In a motion filed last week, he said the five children are staying with 85-year-old Gloria Farber in New York City and are being protected by an armed bodyguard.....

--more--"

Related:

Ann Landers’ daughter reboots mother’s famous column

You didn't need to tell me twice!

James Holzhauer finally dethroned on ‘Jeopardy!’

He lost on "Who is Julian Edelman" when the answer was "Who is Matt Damon," and that is when the celebrations began.

Kevin Spacey’s lawyer goes after alleged victim’s cellphone, DA’s office

That sickening sexual predator is trying to intimidate while get back in the eye of the camera (how pathetic).

Also see:

"Assistant District Attorney Mariah O’Rourke said armed robbery suspect Dante Mirabella, 53, has a lengthy criminal record and admitted to Boston police detectives while in custody Sunday that he committed three armed robberies in the North End on May 29 and May 30, including one of a parking lot attendant after the Bruins played Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final....."

He just wanted to “come clean,” over a $300 to $400 theft.

So how was the game?

Maybe this guy will come clean:

"Imprisoned nearly half his life and then arrested 4 months after release, a young man is convicted of murder" by Maria Cramer Globe Staff, June 3, 2019

Shaquille Brown, who was arrested on murder charges four months after leaving prison in 2017, was found guilty Monday, a conviction that will probably return him to prison for the rest of his life.

A Suffolk jury convicted Brown, 24, of killing Christopher Austin, a 20-year-old baggage handler who was shot in the head on a Dorchester street on June 28, 2017, on his way to work at Logan Airport.

Brown looked stunned and hugged one of his lawyers, Lisa Newman-Polk, tightly as the forewoman said “guilty” to charges of first-degree murder and two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm. Brown’s other attorney, Mark Bennett, hugged his client and fought back tears.

“It’s disappointing,” Bennett said following the verdict as Newman-Polk sat, sobbing, on a bench outside the courtroom.

Austin’s mother, Grace Richardson, who sat in the front row of the courtroom with Austin’s aunt and a friend, left the courtroom quickly after the verdict was read.

Richardson, who spent 40 years working in early-childhood education, said the verdict was not a victory, but a reminder that more must be done to improve the lives of troubled young people in Boston.

See: State’s low-income children deserve better education

Another admissions scandal brewing.

Suffolk Assistant District Attorney David Bradley declined to comment on the verdict, citing a policy that forbids prosecutors from discussing cases publicly. All first-degree murder convictions are automatically appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

The Globe featured Brown in a November 2018 story that detailed his childhood, his years in juvenile custody, and his time in the adult prison system, where he spent much of his time in solitary confinement.

When he left prison, Brown had no job prospects and no strong connections to mental health or social programs to help him navigate his return.

He had come straight out of Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, the state’s maximum security prison, where he had served time in a restrictive unit for inmates with diagnosed mental illness. Yet the state Department of Mental Health declined to accept him as a client, saying he did not qualify for services.

He fell through the cracks, huh?

He reluctantly moved to Boston, where he feared gang rivals would target him, but prosecutors said Brown targeted Austin as he was leaving a bodega on Ashmont Street the morning of June 28, 2017. No motive was given for the killing of Austin, who had no gang ties and no criminal background.

Austin lived a quiet life with his mother in Dorchester, where he composed music on his computer.

There was no physical evidence tying Brown to the killing. Police found no murder weapon or bullets, and pants that investigators believed Brown wore on the day of the murder tested negative for gunshot residue, but video footage from the bodega placed Brown at the scene and showed him looking at Austin as he came out of the store after buying some candy.

One witness said he saw a man with a chipped tooth approach Austin minutes later on the street. That witness and another man testified that after the shooting, they saw a man with a chipped tooth flee the scene. Brown has a chipped tooth.

Bradley also pointed to a .38 caliber revolver found in Brown’s mother’s apartment and full-metal-jacket bullets that were found in Brown’s girlfriend’s purse. Neither the weapon nor the bullets were connected to the murder, but Bradley said they amounted to “little pieces of coincidences” that provided enough evidence for a conviction.

“You have all the evidence to find him guilty,” Bradley told the jury during closing arguments last week.

Or not. 

Doesn't look like much at all has change in the AmeriKa Ju$tu$ $y$tem.

During his closing argument, Bennett described the evidence as thin and said investigators zeroed in on Brown without looking at other potential suspects.

It's not like it would have been the first time. They usually zero in on someone and ignore exculpatory evidence. Why make the job harder when you have a record and career to promote?

“He’s got a chipped tooth, perfect!” Bennett said. “Like a chipped tooth is something rare.”

The case began with two defendants: Brown and Keith Cousin, who had been charged with murder under the theory of joint venture because he drove Brown to the bodega that morning in a blue Honda, but by the end of the seven-day trial, Judge Michael D. Ricciuti decided that prosecutors had failed to meet their burden of proof against Cousin, 32, who had come to Boston from Georgia that summer to celebrate his mother’s birthday.

The highly unusual decision was made on the basis that prosecutors had failed to prove that Cousin shared the intent to kill Austin, according to Cousin’s lawyer, Christopher Belezos.

In September 2017, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that defendants in fatal crimes who did not commit the actual killing could not be convicted of first-degree murder unless prosecutors could prove they set out to kill the victim or knew their actions would have fatal consequences.

Before that ruling, a defendant who acted as a getaway driver or provided weapons could be convicted of murder even if prosecutors did not establish the defendant intended for anyone to die.

Surveillance footage from the bodega showed Cousin and Brown together in the Honda before the shooting. But footage after the shooting showed there was no passenger in Cousin’s car, Belezos said. Video showed Cousin driving away at a normal rate of speed, he said.

“It was a pretty thin case against him all along,” Belezos said. “It’s unfortunate it went as far as it did.”

Cousin, who had a job digging graves for veterans before his arrest, was grateful for the judge’s decision, Belezos said. Cousin’s mother, who was in the courtroom when the judge rendered the decision, wept with relief.....

--more--"

Related: Boston hip-hop artist Daniel Laurent takes on gun violence

Also see:

"A Rhode Island coin dealer serving a 660-year prison sentence for laundering more than $135 million for a Colombian drug cartel is requesting compassionate release. The Providence Journal reports that 61-year-old Stephen Saccoccia argues that he qualifies for early release under the First Step Act, a new federal sentencing and prison reform law, because his crimes were not violent and he’s been a model prisoner....."

Maybe Brown could give Kushner a call, 'eh?

All started in school:

"South Boston school’s temporary closure causes chaos" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, June 3, 2019,

The Notre Dame Education Center, a charity founded by nuns, forged an unusual partnership with a developer in the hopes of continuing its mission amid a rapid rise in South Boston real estate prices.

A year after buying the center’s quarter-acre Old Colony Avenue property for $4.5 million, the nonprofit’s good standing in the neighborhood helped it win city approval for a controversial six-story apartment building on the site. The school would survive, by operating out of one floor, but things have soured since Notre Dame started preparing to close its building for two years during construction, and to move some of its classes to temporary spaces.

First, the Notre Dame board decided to suspend the school’s English-as-a-second-language and adult basic education classes for roughly 400-plus students, citing insufficient funding. About 15 full- and part-time teachers would lose their jobs as a result, including two nuns from the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

Then the situation worsened in late May when those teachers were laid off with three weeks of classes remaining. Last week, students and teachers were surprised to find themselves locked out of the school.....

--more--"

What they will miss most is the food:

"Parents, doctors, and students urge tighter food allergy safety laws in Mass. schools" by Kay Lazar Globe Staff, June 3, 2019

Roughly 7 percent of Massachusetts students have a food allergy, yet not all schools stock epinephrine to treat a severe reaction, or train staff to deal with such emergencies.

With the prevalence of the food allergies shooting up at least 50 percent since the late 1990s, doctors, students, and their parents on Monday urged state lawmakers to support legislation addressing these gaps. 

Well, something has to be causing it but you may not be able to say anything because of their clout while the government is reactive rather than proactive.

“Each day . . . I leave my son in his school’s hands,” said Dr. Christine Olsen, a radiation oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital whose seven-year-old son, Zeke, has severe food allergies. “The fact that he can have a life-threatening event to something as simple as a cracker or breaded chicken is horrifying to me as a mother.”

Dr. Michael Pistiner, a pediatrician and director of advocacy and education at Mass. General’s Food Allergy Center, said legislation is needed to “help our state patch up vulnerabilities and keep unacceptable disasters from occurring.”

Speaking at a packed hearing, he said several other leading physician groups that collectively care for thousands of students with food allergies, including colleagues at Children’s Hospital Boston and the Massachusetts chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, supported tightening school food allergy laws.

Legislation sponsored by Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, a Newton Democrat, would require public and private schools to create a comprehensive plan that trains staffers, including custodians, bus drivers, athletic coaches, and teachers to recognize the symptoms of a severe allergic reaction. It would also require schools to develop policies for treating allergic reactions when school nurses are not available.

No offen$e, but how much is this going to co$t the already underfunded $chul $y$tems?

Many schools have school allergy plans, Creem said but “many schools do not, and children are at a huge risk.”

Oh, right, never mind.

Don't drink the water, either.

Massachusetts is one of only two states — the other is Hawaii — that prohibits anyone other than a school nurse to administer epinephrine to a person experiencing a first time reaction, Pistiner said.

Some schools don’t have a nurse, or the nurse covers several buildings at once, leaving students vulnerable in an emergency.

Creem’s bill would address that gap by allowing nurses to train other staff members to administer epinephrine in these cases. It would also grant immunity from lawsuits to any authorized employee, and to the school stemming from rendering such treatment, and the legislation would require schools to maintain a stock supply of generic epinephrine that would be available to all students, stored in an “easily accessible unlocked location,” with the inventory regularly checked for expiration and replacement.

And that should keep the money flowing into the pharmaceutical that makes it.

While the bill does not include an estimate of the potential cost to schools, Creem and the doctors who testified said the expense should be minimal because of grants and other programs that typically supply epinephrine to schools for free or significantly reduced prices.

How many times have we $een that before?

Creem’s bill would require schools to annually report data about food allergies to the state health department, including the number of students with allergies, broken down by type of allergy and the number and nature of allergic incidents.

Pistiner pointed to a troubling statistic: Nearly one-quarter of the reported emergency treatments in Massachusetts public schools for severe allergic reactions in 2017 involved students or teachers who didn’t realize they had an allergy before that serious incident.

Maja Currier said she discovered that the school her daughters attend, Kingsley Montessori in Boston, didn’t have a school nurse or stock epinephrine until Currier pushed for both two years ago.

Her 12-year-old daughter, Lorelei Currier, told legislators she always carries an EpiPen — an auto-injector filled with epinephrine — for her peanut allergy, but she worried about other students who might not. She urged the panel of lawmakers to pass the bill “to make children feel safer” at school.

I wasn't going to say it, but now the cause looks like the scores of vaccines the kids get because of peanut oil adjuvant that allows the body to absorb the vaccine.

Olsen, the Mass. General radiologist, told lawmakers just how scary it is to be a parent of a student with such allergies — even for a doctor who is trained to handle emergencies.

“Despite having 15 years of medical training and practice before Zeke was born, I was not prepared for the diagnosis of food allergies,” Olsen said.

She described learning strategies to prevent exposure to allergens, and to understand the signs of a severe reaction. Because her son is allergic to sesame, peanuts, tree nuts, and eggs, she has become compulsive while shopping, talking to herself in the cookie aisle, she said, and dialing up food companies if their product doesn’t have an allergy statement on the packaging.

“Proper training will result in creating a safer environment for our kids,” Olsen told lawmakers. “Please, let’s not let a tragedy make us wish we had made this a law.”

--more--"

Then everybody wins, right?

"A big win for Leiden’s digital health efforts" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, June 3, 2019

Can Boston become the premier global hub for the digital health sector, the way it has for biotech?

Jeff Leiden sure thinks so. The Vertex Pharmaceuticals CEO has watched the biotech industry’s prominence grow here during the past two decades. Vertex certainly played a key role in that growth, but Leiden might prove to be more critical to digital health’s success, if the sector follows a similar trajectory.

Don't they have a new CEO?

Leiden’s pet project is grounded in his advocacy work with the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, a coalition of high-powered CEOs. A new digital-health-focused venture fund? Leiden was there, investing his money. State tax credits for angel investors? Leiden pushed for that. An incubator for digital health startups? Guess who played a starring role?

Bunch of pirates and their tax breaks!

The latest victory: Leiden and his team of digital-health advocates persuaded the organizers of HLTH to move the health care conference and the roughly 6,000 attendees it will bring to Boston’s Seaport in October 2021. The deal was signed within the past few weeks.

HLTH chief executive Jonathan Weiner says Leiden’s Boston team made a compelling case to leave Las Vegas behind.....

--more--"

Also see:

"California on Monday became the latest state to sue the pharmaceutical company behind the painkiller OxyContin, alleging it falsely promoted the drug as not addictive even as it emerged as one of the most widely abused in the United States. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra accused Purdue Pharma and its former president, Dr. Richard Sackler, of stoking the crisis with irresponsible practices. Maine also sued Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family on Monday, alleging they committed unfair and deceptive business practices in violation of the Maine Unfair Trade Practices Act."

They should have gotten immunity from lawsuits like the vaccine makers.

Related?

"Maine would allow doctors to prescribe terminally ill people a fatal dose of medication under a bill that faces final legislative action in the state Senate. The Democratic-led Maine House voted 73-72 to enact the bill Monday as lawmakers recounted the last days of their own loved ones. Democratic Rep. Michele Meyer said no one knows how precious life is like a dying patient seeking a peaceful end. Republican Rep. Amy Arata argues that doctors can make mistakes and that the bill could have unintended consequences....."

Ya' think?

{@@##$$%%^^&&}

Where you wanna eat tonight? 

"Picture a civic engagement building for community group meetings located alongside an open play area and by a water-wall-lined promenade that leads to an event space fronting Cambridge Street. In the winter months, there’s a skating rink in the middle of the plaza — and in the summer, a farmer’s market....."

Let's find somewhere else:

"With a 15,000-square-foot megarestaurant, can Davio’s pick up the Anthony’s Pier 4 mantle?" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, June 3, 2019

The city is saturated with new restaurants, the Encore Boston Harbor casino is picking off top hospitality talent, and the Seaport is still proving itself as a place where restaurants can thrive.

So this new space, slated to open in the late fall, is ambitious, even considering Steve DiFillippo’s voracious appetite for growth, but it also represents something more to DiFillippo, who at 58 is pondering his legacy.

“See right over there, that’s where Pier 4 was, the restaurant,” he says, pointing down the harbor to the crumbling rubble of the next pier where, for a half-century, Anthony Athanas hosted the city’s glitterati at his namesake restaurant.

In its 1980s heyday, Anthony’s Pier 4 was among nation’s highest-grossing restaurants, taking in about $12 million a year, but it closed in 2013, as much a victim of encroaching development as changing tastes.....

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He is like a "kid on Christmas morning."

Lunch was better:

"A cryptocurrency pioneer is behind a more than $4.5 million charity bid to have a private lunch with billionaire investor Warren Buffett. The Glide Foundation said in a news release Monday that the top bidder was Justin Sun, founder of Tron and CEO of BitTorrent. The online auction raises money for the Glide Foundation’s work to help the homeless in San Francisco. The eBay auction ended Friday night with Sun’s winning bid of $4,567,888. Buffett isn’t a fan of investing in cryptocurrencies, calling them nonproductive assets."

Where is the bathroom because I think I'm going to vomit.

You have a place to flop for the night?

"Thanks to a thicket of zoning rules, the suburban communities of Greater Boston have lots of ways to make it difficult to build apartments and other multifamily housing that many of their residents don’t want. Now housing advocates are cataloging those ways, and looking for new approaches to getting more homes built....."

Boeing ordered to inspect 737s for wing cracking

It adds another headache for a company trying control the fallout from two deadly crashes and get its top-selling plane flying again.

I'll tell the maid to wake you:

"A year after Supreme Court ruling, Mass. House to vote on bill to boost unions" by Matt Stout and Victoria McGrane Globe Staff, June 3, 2019

The Massachusetts House is moving to strengthen the hand of organized labor, nearly a year after the Supreme Court dealt it a major financial and a symbolic setback by ruling that public sector workers who opt to not join unions can’t be required to pay collective bargaining fees.

House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo said the chamber will vote Wednesday on legislation that would allow public sector labor groups to bill nonmembers for certain “reasonable” fees.

“The [Supreme Court’s] Janus decision was looked at as a blow,” DeLeo said Monday. “We wanted to send a message here in Massachusetts in response to that decision.”

This week’s vote marks a major step for a bill that has helped fuel unusual tension between the Democratic-controlled House and normally friendly labor groups. After a Senate-approved version of the bill stalled in the House in July, frustrated labor groups withheld endorsements and donations from virtually all House Democrats.

They are finally realizing how much in corporate pocket they are over there.

DeLeo said the House didn’t take up the legislation last year because he felt it lacked a broad enough consensus among labor groups. “Now,” he said, “I think everybody’s on board.”

Yeah, gonna have some NEW RULES!

The House bill teed up for Wednesday is largely similar to what the Senate supported last year, including allowing labor groups to charge nonmembers for representation during arbitration and grievances.

On Monday, Governor Charlie Baker indicated his general support for legislation to address the Supreme Court decision.

The measure’s intent, according to lawmakers and supporters, is to ensure that labor groups are able to recoup what can be costly legal fees. It could also begin soothing rankled labor leaders who feel that Democrats haven’t moved quickly enough to address their priorities.

Tran$lation: they need your lobbying check.

“Our frustration was not getting a return on investment when you give to politicians,” said Louis Antonellis, business manager of IBEW Local 103, which announced in January that it was withholding donations from state legislators, in part, because the bill didn’t pass last session.

You have to be either wealthy or a corporate intere$t.

“I hope they get the message loud and clear and that they’re going to do better,” he said. “This is a great first step and a start.”

Chris Carlozzi, state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, pointed to DeLeo’s remarks last month, accusing the Massachusetts Teachers Association of engaging in “juvenile tactics” during a rally. “Imagine what they’ll do to someone who might want to opt out of the union,” Carlozzi said, yet the Massachusetts Legislature is far from alone in seeking to soften the court decision.

Left wing thugs.

After the Supreme Court ruled, DeLeo said last June that he hoped to take up a bill to “soften the blow” before the two-year legislative session ended, but even after the Senate passed its version at the 11th hour, it never reached the House floor, frustrating labor officials, who have longed supported the State House’s Democratic supermajority.

“There was a lot of frustration, no doubt. But you know what, that’s the past,” Steven A. Tolman, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, said Monday. “We’re working with them on this bill, and I think it’s a very good bill.”

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Oh, yeah, you can forget about your family leave:

"Beacon Hill considers delay in taxes to fund paid family leave" by Colin A. Young State House News Service, June 3, 2019

If the state is going to delay by three months the payroll taxes that will fund Massachusetts’ new paid-leave program for family and medical issues — something that advocacy and business groups are pushing for — the decision will probably happen this week, the governor said Monday.

The fledgling Department of Family and Medical Leave plans to begin collecting a 0.63 percent payroll tax from employers on July 1 to fund the program, estimated to cost $800 million.

It was launched so that workers can more easily take care of themselves and their families without facing financial crises.

In a letter sent late last month to Governor Charlie Baker, Senate President Karen Spilka, and House Speaker Robert DeLeo, Associated Industries of Massachusetts and Raise Up Massachusetts said there’s a need for a three-month extension before the start of the required contributions and the deadline for approving exemptions for employers with their own paid-leave plans.

“It’s something that we’ll consider. Whether or not we will agree to that extension is yet to be seen,” DeLeo said on Monday after meeting privately with Baker and Spilka.

Baker said that he has “certainly heard from the same people that the Legislature has heard from” and that the program, mandated in 2018, is ready for its planned July launch.

“We’ve done the work to be ready. The systems are in place; the operating model is up,” Baker said after Monday’s meeting with legislative leaders.

No computer glitches that seem endemic regarding these sorts of things?

A three-month delay, officials from Raise Up, AIM and other groups wrote, would provide more time to address “the lack of employer clarity on the regulations,” to communicate with employees about payroll deductions, and to enable insurance companies to develop products to assist employers.

How long is it going to take?

The new law calls for up to 12 weeks of job-protected paid leave to care for a seriously ill or injured family member, to care for a new child, or to meet family needs arising from a family member’s active-duty military service.

The legislation also authorizes up to 20 weeks of job-protected paid leave to recover from a worker’s own serious illness or injury or to care for a seriously ill or injured service member.

Benefits are scheduled to become available Jan. 1, 2021, for workers who are seeking time off to bond with a new child, take care of a sick or injured service member, or tend to a serious personal health condition.

On July 1, 2021, benefits are expected to be made available for workers to care for a family member with a serious health condition.

Don't hold your breath.

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It's a gamble either way:

"Judge: Federal wagering law only applies to sports gambling" Associated Press June 3, 2019

CONCORD, N.H. — A federal judge ruled Monday that a law prohibiting interstate wagering applies only to sports gambling, setting aside a Justice Department opinion that some states feared would make online lottery activities illegal and put the programs they fund at risk.

Judge Paul Barbadoro’s ruling came in response to a suit filed by the New Hampshire Lottery Commission, which said a Justice Department opinion issued last year subjects its employees to prosecution, creates uncertainty about whether it should cease operations, and could cost the state more than $90 million a year.

The case revolves around the Wire Act, a 1961 law meant to target the mob that prohibits interstate wagering. Decades later and with the Internet ruling everyone’s lives, New York and Illinois asked the Obama administration whether selling lottery tickets online violated the law.

The department in 2011 concluded that online gambling within states that does not involve sporting events would not break the law, but the agency changed its mind in November, interpreting the act as applying to any form of gambling that crosses state lines, not just sports betting. Some feared that, if strictly interpreted, that opinion would outlaw lottery tickets sold online and prohibit all lottery-related activities that use the Internet.

I was told above the Internet was broken.

I'm glad they fixed it.

That raised concerns about the viability of online poker and other gambling across states, as well as state lotteries. Money from lotteries typically funds a variety of programs, from education to senior citizen services.

How $ad is it that poor people's dough is used to allegedly fund those underfunded programs while the corporate welfare checks are cut, 'eh? 

The whole $y$tem is up$ide down!

On Monday, Barbadoro said New Hampshire had the standing to sue and that the Wire Act was limited to sports gambling.

“Today’s ruling is a historic victory for the State of New Hampshire and we are proud to have led this effort,” said Governor Chris Sununu. “New Hampshire stood up, took action, and won — all to protect public education in our state.”

Do they teach the kids how to scratch a ticket or deal cards?

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