Trump’s Ultimatum

It certainly has become a global conflagration across the front pages:

"A painful history of Trump’s ‘love it or leave it’ argument" by Liz Goodwin Globe Staff, July 17, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s attacks on four first-term lawmakers of color have reopened a debate on the nature of patriotism and dissent. The rhetoric in his flurry of remarks echoes an old phrase last commonly heard in the Nixon era:

America, love it or leave it.

The theme continued at a rally in North Carolina Wednesday night, when Trump disparaged each of the representatives, including Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who was born in Somalia but is a naturalized citizen. The crowd chanted, ‘‘Send her back!’’

In his remarks, Trump told the crowd: “You know what, if they don’t love it tell ‘em to leave it.”

It's a trick that basically means support the government and its policies, and when can the articles of secession be drawn up for the Mass. legislature to hear?

The flip side is the foreign policy, where we are told we must fight to protect and defend what we love -- freedom. 

What started out as a demand for Omar and fellow Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib to “go back” to their ancestral homelands has morphed into a call for a stringent form of patriotism where criticism of the country is not allowed — a charge that’s being amplified by Republican lawmakers who were less eager to defend Trump’s initial tweets.

“The idea of America: love it or leave it is as old as the country itself,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “The question is: Who are the ‘real Americans?’ And that question rises in the public sphere every 30 or 40 years.”

It can be traced back to the 1800s, when immigrants were demonized and suspected of importing radical ideas, like labor organizing. In the early 20th century, the patriotism of activists and political opponents was questioned as some Americans were stripped of their citizenship for espousing beliefs the government disapproved of, but Trump’s suggestion echoes one period in particular: the turbulent 1960s and ’70s, when “America: Love it or Leave it” emerged as a slogan on bumper stickers and in country songs, and helped boost Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign.

Underneath that is the outlawing of criticism of Israel, which is where this whole agenda is headed, and whose to say it can't happen again? The empty malls turned FEMA camps will do nicely, wouldn't they?

That pithy response to antiwar and civil rights protesters is emblematic of a larger tension throughout US history: Is criticizing the country unpatriotic and disloyal, as Trump suggests, or an expression of love for the country, as Democrats say?

“ ‘America, love it or leave it,’ is not a new sentiment nor a radical sentiment, and it certainly is not a racist sentiment,” Representative Tom McClintock, a California Republican, said on the House floor Tuesday as lawmakers debated a resolution condemning Trump’s earlier comments as racist. “It should remind us of commonly held and enduring founding principles that ought to be uniting us as a free people.”

Just wondering what that means in an age of total surveillance and data collection by the government, a prospect that would have horrified the founding fathers.

We are told we have freedom, but what does that mean? We are the freest nation on Earth, we are told, but have the largest per capita prison population in the world. There seem to be no consequences for the police shootings of citizens that continue despite the Lives Matter movements. 

You are free to consume, yes, but that was true in dictatorships as well. Does choices on the shelves mean freedom? It's the freedom to drink at the barbecue, right? The freedom to wear skimpy outfits and cosmetics. The freedom to create filth as art, the freedom to have sex? 

There seems to be no freedom from the endless wars George Washington and John Quincy Adams warned about (killing mostly people of color, btw), nor does there seem to any freedom from the oppressive yoke of usury and central bank control.

The political platitudes and pablum have become jingoistic rot, and perhaps always where.

While Trump and his defenders are casting this “love it or leave it” argument as a race-blind statement of American values, it sounds very familiar to some civil rights protesters, who were told their activism against segregation was unpatriotic decades ago.

I know the Globe just decided the value was race, but ask the rest of the world what are American values? To them, it seems to mean lying your way into destructive wars that cause the deaths of millions in order to control resources and preserve the dollar as a reserve currency. 

Of course, that could be done much more effectively and cheaply and it begs the question of who is ultimately calling the shots regarding US foreign policy. That's an unspoken value that both parties share.

“I was arrested in 1960 trying to get into a public library,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a former presidential candidate and prominent civil rights activist. In the past, however, painting political opponents and activists as un-American has worked. Nixon rode the anger many felt over civil rights and antiwar activists demanding change to a overwhelming victory over George McGovern, who referenced the slogan in his nominating speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1972.

“We reject the view of those who say, ‘America, love it or leave it’,” McGovern said then.

Despite the revisionism today, the pre$$ wasn't that favorable to the antiwar cause back then. Ali, now revered, was vilified. McGovern was a joke. 

Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern, who worked for George McGovern during his later bid for the presidency, said that he see similarities in Trump’s attacks now.

“It bothers me that Trump is trying to regurgitate an old Nixon tactic because it really goes against what this country is about,” said McGovern, who is not related to the late presidential candidate. “It’s about instilling fear, it’s about trying to characterize people with a different point of view as being Other.”

Actually, it doesn't, it's what this country has always been about, but we need to work the myths back so the present climate of political correctness and framing of political debate makes sense. I mean, he's a Democrat, for crying out loud. You know, the party with the history of Southern slavery and segregation. I know the roles have been reversed since Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, with Nixon completing the flip, but that doesn't excuse blind spots.

Ironically, the president was an avid critic of the country’s policies before he assumed office — and yet didn’t feel the need to leave. He called the country a “laughingstock” or said the world was laughing at America more than 100 times, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Yeah, it's been a little over two years and I'm already tired of his act.

Even his political slogan, Make America Great Again, suggested the country was not, currently, great, and his inaugural address presented a dark portrait of a country many might want to flee, including “mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities” and “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.”

“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” he declared.

Since then, his tone has changed. “Our Country is Free, Beautiful and Very Successful. If you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!” Trump tweeted Tuesday.....

--more--"

They also had Ayanna Pressley out front, who said it was “quite honestly much ado about nothing,” and as far as she is concerned, the fact that she and her three colleagues decided to vote against the bill shouldn’t be cause for outcry from her own party, which led to the criticism from Trump. “I think what people have to appreciate is that this is a deliberative body,” she said, and as she spoke, the phone in the foyer continued to ring.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, is focused on keeping the party unified in the face of Republicans in Congress who want to take back the House majority in 2020, and she believes that a fractured party could help Trump win reelection. “You have to give him credit, he’s a great distractor and that’s what this is about,” Pelosi told reporters Wednesday about the controversy over Trump’s remarks. Indeed, at a rally in Greenville, N.C. Wednesday night, Trump again targeted the four Democratic lawmakers.

Some are wondering Pressley is helping or hurting the cause, and according to John Kerry, Trump can’t hold a candle to her.

‘Send her back!’ Trump supporters find a new rallying cry

I'm sorry, my front-page carried the New York Times account:

"Trump disavows ‘send her back’ chant as Republicans fret over ugly phrase" by Julie Hirschfeld Davis New York Times, July 18, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday disavowed the “send her back” chant that broke out at his reelection rally Wednesday night when he railed against a Somali-born congresswoman, as Republicans in Congress rushed to distance themselves and their party from the ugly refrain.

Wow, he's backpedaling already.

Trump said he was “not happy” with the chant, directed at Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a hijab-wearing first-term Democrat whom the president has singled out repeatedly for verbal excoriation. On Thursday he claimed that he had tried to cut off the chant, an assertion contradicted by video of the event. Asked why he did not stop it, Trump said, “I think I did — I started speaking very quickly.”

In fact, as the crowd roared “send her back,” Trump looked around silently and paused as the scene unfolded in front of him, doing nothing to halt the chorus.

“I was not happy with it,” Trump said Thursday at the White House. “I disagree with it.

“I didn’t say that,” he added. “They did.”

Trump’s effort to dissociate himself from his own supporters reflected the misgivings of his allies, who have flooded the upper echelons of his team with expressions of concern in the wake of a rally that veered into nativist territory. They warned privately that the president was on dangerous ground, according to people briefed on the conversations.

Among them were House Republican leaders, who pleaded with Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday to separate the party from the message embraced by the crowd in Greenville, N.C.

“That does not need to be our campaign call, like we did the ‘lock her up’ last time,” said Representative Mark Walker of North Carolina, a top official in the party’s messaging arm, who attended the rally and tweeted hours later that he had “struggled” with the chant. “We cannot be defined by this.”

Still, while they denounced the chant, Republican leaders declined to criticize Trump.

Congressional Republicans have struggled all week to respond to Trump’s attacks on Omar and three other Democratic congresswomen of color who he tweeted over the weekend should “go back” to their countries. Now they must contend with the nativist fervor of his supporters as captured in the frenzied moment in North Carolina, with a rageful refrain that they worry could further damage their party’s brand.

Yeah, it's all about the "brand" -- a fancy way of saying a snake oil salesman's imagery and illusion.

“Those chants have no place in our party or our country,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, told reporters.

But he says keep doing it, as you will find out below!

Those were almost the exact words used by Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, chairman of the House Republican campaign arm, earlier Thursday, when he repudiated the chant but insisted that the Twitter posts that inspired the slogan had been mere mistakes of wording.

“There’s no place for that kind of talk,” Emmer said. “I don’t agree with that.

“There’s not a racist bone in the president’s body,” he added, referring to Trump’s tweets. “What he was trying to say, he said wrong.”

Then why is the cabinet all white guys except for one Asian-American woman?

Still, Trump’s inner circle seemed to appreciate the gravity of the scene Wednesday night and urged him to quickly repudiate the chant. Ivanka Trump, his daughter and senior adviser, talked to the president about it Thursday morning, people familiar with the discussions said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge them.

This wasn't Jared's idea, was it?

Omar, a Somalian refugee who is one of the first two Muslim women elected to the House, called Trump a “fascist” but said there was nothing new about his behavior or the response of his supporters. She cited his years of false claims that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

She deftly turns to that while steering conversation away from her own trouble (dug up by Steinberg but the Globe won't touch it).

Walker said he had raised the issue with Pence at a breakfast Thursday, saying the chant was “something that we want to address early” before it became a staple of the president’s arena-style rallies. “We felt like this was going to be part of our discussion, to make sure that we are not defined by that.”

It may be too late. 

The genie is out of the bottle -- meaning he will no longer be able to flog them.

Emmer tried to minimize the president’s initial remarks.

“What he was trying to say is that if you don’t appreciate this country, you don’t have to be here,” Emmer said. He quoted a constituent who told him that Omar’s statements led people to believe that she hated America, adding, “How about a little gratitude with that attitude?”

He will be coming up later as well.

--more--"

Now for the equal time:

"Omar responds to Trump after rally-goers chant ‘send her back’" by Jennifer Hassan, Kayla Epstein, Felicia Sonmez and Hailey Fuchs Washington Post, July 18, 2019

WASHINGTON — For the second time this week, people around the world expressed shock at President Trump’s inflaming racial tensions after his supporters responded to his attacks on Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota.

The jarring scene — which followed Trump falsely claiming Omar had praised Al Qaeda —inspired the hashtag #IStandWithIlhanOmar on social media and was trending in the United States on Thursday, along with many other countries including Britain, Canada, and Egypt.

Politicians in Europe took to Twitter and warned that the display at the North Carolina political rally had veered into dangerous territory.

‘‘This is what fascism looks like. We must fight it at home and abroad,’’ tweeted Jess Phillips, a Labour party lawmaker in Britain.

Now let's go attack Iran, right? Never mind invading the apartheid state that represents best his notion of that term.

‘‘Jesus, what next?’’ asked British politician Emily Thornberry, while David Lammy said the footage was ‘‘chilling,’’ adding that ‘‘Fascism spreads like wildfire. Especially when it comes from the President of the United States of America.’’

Oh, the Greens will put that out.

Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, shared a video of Trump speaking and the crowd chanting, and called it ‘‘chilling,” adding: ‘‘fueling hatred based on race is not acceptable in political discourse... history tells us where this leads!’’

On Thursday morning, Democratic support for Omar continued to roll in, as Trump’s targeting of the congresswoman entered its fifth day.

Dozens of British politicians and 14,000 supporters signed a letter of solidarity addressed to the four Democratic congresswomen who have found themselves at the center of a fierce political storm.

‘‘This is the sound of illiberalism, intolerance,’’ Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said on Twitter. ‘‘Listen closely: it’s a danger not just to immigrants and minorities but to all Americans.’’

Look at the supremacist hate group play both sides!

Related:

"An Arizona man who called for a mass shooting at a 2017 Harvard commencement event for black students and also encouraged bombers to target the Ivy League campus was sentenced Wednesday to 15 months in federal prison. Nicholas Zuckerman, 25, pleaded guilty in US District Court in Boston in February to two counts of transmitting in interstate and foreign commerce a threat to injure the person of another, records show. Prosecutors said Zuckerman threatened the Harvard Black Commencement that had been planned for May 23, 2017. Zuckerman spotted a posting on Harvard University’s public Instagram account about the event, and created an Instagram account of his own. Zuckerman’s public defender, Cara McNamara, didn’t immediately return an e-mail seeking comment Thursday morning....."

That's where my print ended it; however, the web version added this:

US Attorney Andrew Lelling’s office wrote in court papers that Zuckerman — who wasn’t in Cambridge in the days before the Black Commencement and wasn’t spotted by authorities monitoring the event — had unsettled the community with his criminal behavior. “The divisiveness of our public discourse does not excuse making any group of people feel unsafe,” Lelling said in a statement Wednesday. “We will investigate all threats that cross the line of free speech and infringe on the safety and security of members of our community, especially when those threats are based on race or other immutable characteristics.”

So what we have is another false flag event upon racial lines being driven by Jews.

A concerned citizen who saw the posts reported them to the Harvard University police, who ultimately referred the case to federal authorities. The case was then investigated by the FBI. “It’s sadly ironic that Nicholas Zuckerman would turn his chilling threats of mass destruction and vile words against graduates at Harvard University, an institution that has molded some of our greatest orators,’’ Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston office, said in a statement. He added, “Let today’s sentence serve as a lesson to all that no hate monger hiding behind a social-media pseudonym can stop others from celebrating the diversity of some of our area’s best and brightest minds.”

Okay, so he just built the call for censorship.

Federal prosecutors had urged an 18-month sentence, but US District Court Judge Indira Talwani instead sentenced him to 15 months imprisonment and three years of supervised release when his incarceration ends. A plea agreement filed in the case said Zuckerman had faced a maximum prison term of 10 years, though the prosecution and the defense agreed that a “reasonable and appropriate disposition” would be 12 to 18 months behind bars, records show. The parties also agreed that Zuckerman should receive a fine of “$5,500 to $55,000, unless the Court finds at the time of sentencing that [the] Defendant is not able and, even with the use of a reasonable installment schedule, is not likely to become able to pay a fine,” the plea deal said.

Now I begin to wonder what his mission was because talk about a $lap on the wrist! 

Finally, it's the Zionist Pre$$ that's taking advantage of this whole story, raising even more suspicions.

Okay, back to the Trump-Omar flap:

Democratic presidential candidates blasted Trump, including Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, who called the chant ‘‘vile,’’ ‘‘racist’’ and ‘‘cowardly’’ and Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, who said Trump is ‘‘stoking the most despicable and disturbing currents in our society.’’

Bernie is right, and out of all the candidates that have a chance, I find him to be the one most willing not to go to war. He has sort of disowned Judaism in a sense that he non-practicing and more kibbutz than anything else. 

Some identified the ‘‘send her back’’ chant as the new ‘‘lock her up,’’ carrying the same feverish intensity as the unofficial 2016 Trump campaign slogan targeting Hillary Clinton. Presidential candidate Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said that in both cases the ‘‘throughline is contempt for women and anyone who threatens this president’s fragile ego,’’ but for many, the most concerning aspect was that the chant reflected the racist ‘‘go back to where you came from’’ trope used by Trump, showing how the president’s xenophobic rhetoric tends to reverberate with approval among certain groups in his base.

Here is the thing with that: the Clinton's are still walking around free despite all the crimes and corruptions, no one has laid a finger on them, and it sort of clues you in to how all this smoke is nothing but noise. The political cla$$ protects itself. That's why I wouldn't be worried if I were Epstein (as that starts to fade down the ma$$ media memory hole) or Acosta.

Many of the president’s most reliable supporters insisted that neither his comments earlier this week nor the chant were racist, suggesting his true message is that Omar should leave because she is critical of America, but even some of Omar’s harshest conservative critics said Wednesday’s rally crossed the line.

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt called ‘‘send her back’’ a ‘‘nativist, terrible chant.’’ Guy Benson, political editor at the conservative website Townhall.com and a Fox News contributor, urged Omar’s critics to chant ‘‘vote her out’’ if they don’t like her policies, not ‘‘send her back,’’ which he called ‘‘appalling.’’

--more--"

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

Speaking of sending people back:

Confusion, fear spread on Mexico border with new US asylum policy

DHS leader tells House committee family separations at border have decreased

Former top Texas judge says she’s leaving GOP over Trump

A former top Texas judge says she has left the Republican Party over President Trump, after his racist tweet telling four congresswomen to ‘‘go back’’ to where they came from. Elsa Alcala joins a small group of conservatives alienated by Trump’s remarks as most of the Republican Party sticks with the president — including through his latest attacks on Democratic representatives of color, three of whom were born in the United States.

‘‘Every day with the Republican Party seemed worse than the day before,’’ Alcala told the Statesman. ‘‘Trump speaks about brown people like me as lesser beings. It’s cliche to say, but the Republican Party left me.’’ The chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, James Dickey, thanked Alcala for her service in a statement, saying his organization is ‘‘sorry that [Alcala] has chosen to no longer support the party that supported her, her colleagues and her successors.’’ Alcala declined to comment to The Washington Post. She was one of two Latinas recently serving on Texas’ highest courts, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Trump’s behavior has tested some Republicans’ allegiance. Announcing earlier this month that he was leaving the GOP, Representative Justin Amash did not mention the president while explaining that he has ‘‘become disenchanted with party politics,’’ but the Michigan congressman has been one of Trump’s most vocal GOP critics. Amash was the first Republican in Congress to say that the president had committed ‘‘impeachable conduct.’’ Amash, too, was dismayed by Trump’s ‘‘go back’’ comments, calling them ‘‘racist and disgusting’’ on Twitter, but other members of the president’s party have become less critical of his most questionable statements.

The judge was appointed by Republican Governor Rick Perry, now invisible over at the Department of Energy.

Far from the Washington turmoil, nearly 200 immigrants become Americans

If a broad welcome for US immigrants has seemed less certain recently, the reception for these latest citizens pushed that issue to the background, at least temporarily. Applause filled the hall, miniature flags fluttered from dozens of hands, and a voter registration table was busy nearby with new citizens eager to join the democratic process.

“This gives me a chance to vote, and that’s what’s most important,” said Edward Lang, 39, a cybersecurity analyst who immigrated to the United States from the West African nation of Ghana. As a citizen, Lang said, he now has a chance at higher security clearances and better jobs.

Better yet, he has job security.

Lang has heard the anti-immigrant rhetoric, but he dismissed much of it as political pandering. “I understand that politics is what it is. It’s important that we do not feed that narrative,” Lang said. “Be of good character. Be the best you can be. Show kindness,” he said. “That’s the answer to the negatives. Hopefully, it will drive away some of the hatred.”

I've got to stop reading the Globe.

"A man who had lived above a market where a local 10-year-old girl was last seen in 1988 has been charged with murder in her death. The death of Christine Cole, whose body washed up on Conimicut Point in Warwick in February 1988, 54 days after she vanished, riveted Rhode Islanders and stymied generations of investigators. On Thursday, Pawtucket police announced that DNA evidence helped them break this case. A forensic scientist at the Rhode Island Department of Health determined on Wednesday that DNA from blood stains on the crotch of Christine’s pants “was consistent” with the DNA profile of a man who was living above Saints Market when she stopped to buy milk on Jan. 6, 1988. Joao Monteiro, 59, was arrested hours later at his job in Cumberland and arraigned Thursday afternoon, still in his CINTAS uniform with the name tag “Big John.” Monteiro, who is Cape Verdean, spoke Creole to an interpreter and showed little reaction as Judge Joseph T. Houlihan Jr. ordered him held without bail on the charge of murder....."

Was he a citizen or not?

The web version added this:

After Detective Sue Cormier reopened the investigation last August, she spoke with the supervisor of the state forensic science lab, who told her that previous DNA testing found blood from a male inside the girl’s pants, according to the affidavit. With the advancement in technology, Cormier asked for further testing. The results produced a larger profile, which was checked against a state health database. There was a close match to a man who was born five years after Christine disappeared, Cormier said. The suspect would be in his close male lineage — a father, grandfather, uncle, or brother. That led police to Monteiro, who is the man’s father and who had lived in different places in Christine’s neighborhood, according to the affidavit. The detective also contacted Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick, founder of IdentiFinders International, which specializes in genetic genealogy and aided Warwick police in solving the slaying of a jogger in 2013. Although there wasn’t enough in the DNA profile in the blood evidence from Christine’s pants to use the genetic genealogy database, Fitzpatrick was able to determine the probability of the ethnicity of the male and the geographical area of the population group. That area included Cape Verde, the affidavit said. Before this, Cormier said, Monteiro was not on investigators’ radar.

So while the pre$$ is getting you whipped up regarding driver's license databases, they are quietly amassing huge DNA profiles (just something to think about, sorry).

Maybe they could have caught him sooner:

"Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, the notorious drug lord known as ‘‘El Chapo,’’ whose dramatic prison escapes fed his legend as an untouchable kingpin running the world’s largest narcotics trafficking group, was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison. Before the sentence was imposed, Guzmán, 62, turned to look at his family in the packed courtroom, saluted them, tapped his heart, and then angrily denounced his treatment. ‘‘When extradited, I expected to have a fair trial where justice was blind and my fame would not be a factor, but what happened was actually the opposite,’’ he said before the sentence was imposed. ‘‘The government of the United States will send me to a prison where my name will never be heard again. I will take this opportunity to say there was no justice here.’’ By decapitating the most powerful organized crime group in Mexico, Justice Department has scored a major victory in its battle against the cartels. Those organizations, however, have proven to be remarkably resilient to the arrest of their leaders, and current and former US law enforcement officials say that corruption within the Mexican government remains an obstacle. Speaking through an interpreter and reading from prepared remarks, Guzmán said the harsh terms of his confinement are ‘‘psychological, emotional, mental torture, 24 hours a day.’’ Guzmán, who personally ordered people to be tortured and murdered while he oversaw the Sinaloa Cartel, said his prison conditions showed a ‘‘lack of respect for human dignity’’ and blamed the judge for his conviction. In sentencing him to spend the rest of his life in prison, US District Court Judge Brian Cogan said the law gave him no discretion to impose a lighter sentence and the drug lord did not deserve leniency. ‘‘The overwhelming evil is so severe,’’ Cogan said. Federal sentencing laws made it a foregone conclusion that Guzmán would receive multiple life sentences, and his lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman spent little time asking the judge for mercy."

Sure looks like a kangaroo court and show trial. I think Guzman's expectations were too high; however, he had probably worked with US agents in the past so it probably did comes as a surprise.

I'm not doubting the evil, but even his Jew lawyer gave up on him. No wonder he felt ju$tu$ wasn't served.

Now about all that loot:

"Mexico’s president said Thursday he will use legal channels to try to get the fortune of convicted drug lord Joaquin ‘‘El Chapo’’ Guzman returned to Mexico. ‘‘I think that everything that is confiscated and has to do with Mexico must be returned to Mexico,’’ López Obrador said at his daily news conference. ‘‘I think the US government is going to agree to turn over what belongs to Mexico.’’ US officials have estimated Guzman’s fortune at $14 billion, and a judge ordered Guzman to pay $12.6 billion as part of his US life sentence announced Wednesday. The issue is complicated because that is supposedly money his drug-trafficking organization made by distributing drugs in the United States. In the past, US officials have not said how they intend to get Guzman’s money. López Obrador said Mexico has erred in the past by allowing the US to seize money in corruption and criminal cases against Mexican suspects, and pledged that won’t happen again."

Trump is keeping it to pay for the wall.

At least drug deaths are down:

"After three decades of ever-escalating drug overdose deaths, the tide of fatalities may have finally started to turn. Total drug overdose deaths in America declined by around 5 percent last year, the first drop since 1990, according to preliminary government data made public Wednesday. The reversal was slight enough that experts could not be sure whether it was the start of a trend or simply a blip, and even with the shift, the number of deaths in 2018, more than 68,000, still exceeded the nation’s peak yearly historical deaths from car accidents, AIDS, or guns. “It looks like there’s light at the end of the tunnel,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University, but, he added, “there’s nothing to celebrate, because the death toll is still very high.” A decline in prescriptions for opioid painkillers was the major factor for the overall drop in overdoses. Fatal overdoses involving other drugs, particularly the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl as well as methamphetamine, continued to rise. Many in the addiction and law enforcement fields say the overall drop may be a result of more drug users having access to treatment and to naloxone, the overdose-reversing drug. President Trump and Congress have provided $3.3 billion in grants to states since 2017 for treatment, prevention and recovery services, but the money will run out next year."

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

Speaking of health and money:

"House Democrats join Republicans to repeal Obamacare’s ‘Cadillac tax’" by Yasmeen Abutaleb Washington Post, July 17, 2019

WASHINGTON — In a rare bipartisan moment, House Democrats joined with Republicans to repeal the so-called ‘‘Cadillac tax’’ on high-cost employer health insurance that was supposed to help pay for the Affordable Care Act.

The 419-6 vote is a first step toward achieving a long-sought goal of employers, labor unions, and health insurers who have been pushing for full repeal of the tax for several years. Repeal of the tax is one of the few significant measures related to the landmark health law that has won overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats, many of whom grudgingly supported the effort at cost containment as part of the landmark health care law nine years ago, argued Wednesday that it was a de facto tax on working families.

‘‘Today, we’ll honor our promise to the hard-working men and women of the labor as we lift the ‘Cadillac tax’ protecting health benefits that workers have negotiated,’’ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said on Wednesday.

She famously said nine years ago that we will know what's in the bill when we pass it.

What a joke this has all become.

The Senate has a similar bill with bipartisan support, but Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, has not yet said whether he will bring it for a vote. McConnell has been reluctant to take up any health care legislation, Senate aides said, because Democrats are likely to use the opportunity to criticize Republicans’ and the administration’s efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

I'll get to the Senate later.

Health economists warn that repealing the tax would add to the national deficit and increase health care spending. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that repeal of the tax would add $197 billion to deficits over a decade.

Then just raise the limit, or limit the wars.

‘‘The full repeal of the ‘Cadillac tax’ would eliminate one of the most consequential policy levers to actually lower health care costs,’’ said Benedic Ippolito, a health economist at the American Enterprise Institute. ‘‘When it comes to sensible policies about what to do about spending, ironically there’s bipartisan, bicameral agreement that we absolutely shouldn’t do anything.’’

The House passed the legislation using an expedited procedure that allows the chamber to pass a tax cut without an offset as long as there is a two-thirds majority supporting the measure.

Proponents of the measure argue that workers would bear the brunt of the tax, largely through decreased wages.

‘‘The resounding, bipartisan passage of legislation repealing the ‘Cadillac Tax’ is a victory for families with job-based health coverage,’’ said American Benefits Council president James Klein. ‘‘We urge the Senate to promptly approve the measure and send it to the president for signature.’’

We where told the exact opposite nine years ago.

If the tax does go into effect in 2022, about 20 percent of employers offering health benefits would be affected unless they changed their offerings, according to an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

IF? 

They repealed something they weren't even collecting yet!

Republican and Democratic lawmakers have battled each other over the future of Obamacare since its passage in 2010. Republicans have vowed to repeal and replace the law for nearly a decade, but they failed to do so repeatedly in 2017, when they controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House. In their overhaul of the tax code in 2017, Congressional Republicans zeroed out the ACA tax penalty for those who did not purchase health insurance.

In the 2018 midterms, Democrats campaigned on health care — specifically protecting and strengthening Obamacare — which they credited with their take back of the House.....

--more--"

Maybe the Republicans can take it back:

"With name-calling and Twitter battles, House Republican campaign arm copies Trump’s playbook" by Catie Edmondson New York Times, July 17, 2019

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is portrayed as wearing clown makeup. Democratic congressional candidates — including an Air Force combat veteran — are labeled “socialist losers” or anti-Semites. Others have been singled out as Lyin’ Lucy McBath, Fake Nurse Lauren Underwood, Little Max Rose, and China Dan McCready.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, with the blessing of House Republican leaders, has adopted a no-holds-barred strategy to win back the House majority next year, borrowing heavily from President Trump’s playbook in deploying such taunts and name-calling.

Well, that was yesterday.

After losing 40 seats and the House majority in November, Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the committee’s new chairman, and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, decided that their messaging needed to be “ruthless.”

Oh, yeah, remember them?

The offensive hinges largely on the relatively facile notion that by tagging all House Democrats as socialists, anti-Semites, or far-left extremists, they will be able to alienate swing-state voters. On Tuesday night, after the House voted to condemn as racist Trump’s attacks on four congresswomen, the campaign arm’s communications team deluged reporters’ inboxes with message after message calling vulnerable Democratic lawmakers “deranged.”

Their tactics have discomforted some Republicans and highlighted the struggle in the party over how much to lean into the tenor of politics forged by their leader.

“To devolve into childish name-calling usually doesn’t win the argument. I think we can do better,” said Tom Rooney, a former five-term Republican representative from Florida. “Maybe this is what the donors to the NRCC want to hear nowadays. Maybe name-calling raises money, and that’s what we’ve become.”

For the communications arm of the committee, that has translated into circulating photographs depicting Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as a clown and barraging reporters with statements reminding them of the nicknames with which they refer to Democratic lawmakers and candidates. Some are just referred to as “socialist losers.” Others have been given their own bespoke tags.

Representative Underwood, Democrat of Illinois, is “Fake Nurse Lauren.” (Underwood, who earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Michigan and worked as a research nurse, never worked specifically with patients.) Representative Collin C. Peterson, Democrat of Minnesota, is “Cranky Collin.”

Representative McBath, who represents Georgia’s Sixth District, has become a particular target for the committee. During the campaign, she said she briefly moved to Tennessee to help her husband work through family issues, then switched her residency back to Georgia. Claiming that she is not a resident of Georgia, the committee sent a gift basket to the Tennessee home of her husband. Fox News, obtaining a copy of the signature, wrote an article featuring a comment from the House Republican campaign arm that reiterated that McBath is a resident of Tennessee, but a close look at the signature showed that her mother-in-law — “M McBath” — signed for the package — a fact mocked by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Committee officials show no sign of tempering their attacks.

That was yesterday.

“We make no apologies for aggressively calling out the anti-Semitic racists in the socialist Democratic Party totally consumed by their hatred of President Trump and America,” Chris Pack, communications director of the campaign arm, said in a statement.

McCarthy, too, stood firm behind the strategy. He praised Emmer’s “strong tactical sense and impressive work ethic” in a statement. “As a conference, we are united behind his vision to campaign on offense — and expand the map by outworking, out-recruiting and exposing the corrupt, inept new Democrat Socialist Party,” McCarthy said.

Well, that was yesterday. They are sending that strategy back now.

Republican campaign operatives backing the strategy argued that aggressive tactics were necessary to rouse the interests of sleepy and shrunken local press corps. Adopting the mantra that “all news is good news,” the committee appears to believe that even if reporters choose instead to write about its bare-knuckled tactics, they are at least reiterating the nicknames and points that House Republicans hope will reach voters.

In other words, they plan to use the pre$$!

“If that’s what it takes to get a story,” said Mike Shields, who joined the National Republican Congressional Committee as director of its independent expenditure program in 2009 and helped Republicans win a 63-seat gain. “There needs to be a shift in mindset to be in the majority. It’s better than getting no coverage at all,” but the unrestrained use of nicknames also has provoked public outcry. After the committee issued a statement in early June mocking the stature of Representative Rose, a moderate Democrat from New York, who stands at 5 feet, 6 inches, even some Republicans came to his defense.

“Instead of working on bipartisan issues, Little Max Rose is content passing socialist bills” for “giggles,” Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the committee, wrote in an official release that used an epithet before giggles. “Playtime is over, Max.”

Members already displeased with what they felt were needlessly aggressive personal attacks felt the committee had crossed a line by taunting a veteran: Rose served in the Army for almost five years and was wounded in Afghanistan, earning a Purple Heart. Representative Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin, called it a “stupid tactic and a counterproductive tag.”

“I hope the lesson the NRCC draws from that is to not do it again,” Gallagher said.

Yeah, don't insult a veteran whose a Congre$$man but the mess at the VA, throw money at it and then bury it.

--more--"

Related:

"Last Friday, the House passed a measure banning the VA from considering veterans’ income from state-approved cannabis industries as a reason to deny them their benefit of a low-rate home loan guarantee with no money down....."

The vet said he was “blown away, and it’s cool because we fought the good fight.” 

"Health care unified Democrats in 2018. Now it’s dividing them" by Jess Bidgood Globe Staff, July 18

WASHINGTON — After two years of Republicans’ unsuccessful attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Democrats won back the House majority in 2018 with a unified focus on health care.

Now the scalpels are out, and the issue is swiftly becoming one of the clearest dividing lines in the Democratic presidential primary.

In dueling speeches and barely veiled potshots this week, former vice president Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders ratcheted up the debate over whether to shore up Barack Obama’s signature achievement by creating an option to choose health care from a government system, as Biden wants, or to transition to a fully government-run system with no role for private insurance companies, which is Sanders’ long-held dream. Meanwhile, candidates such as California Senator Kamala Harris have been accused of waffling as they grapple with the politics of the issue.

So they are going to take away the Cadillac tax that was supposed to pay for it, but are now going to turn around and offer a public option that they didn't nine years ago?

The flip side is that the VA, of all places, is where you get a government-run system and that's sadly a mess.

As the health care battle turns increasingly bitter, what was so recently a political winner for Democrats, akin to kissing babies, is transforming into a minefield that could expose breaks in the party on a fundamental issue and, some worry, threaten the eventual nominee’s success against President Trump.

After “due to sheer incompetence, the president handed Democrats a political gift.” 

The contours of the argument reflect the party’s leftward drift a decade after Democrats were unable to muster support to include the public option — the ability of people to choose to pay for a government-run health care plan — into the Affordable Care Act, but the debate also has Democrats nervous that a drawn-out fight could cede their advantage on the issue back to Republicans, whose efforts to gut provisions of the health care law, like protections for people with preexisting conditions, have been broadly unpopular.

Meanwhile, we all get sicker and sicker.

Progressives, however, are determined to make their case for a more sweeping overhaul — Medicare for All — that would put everyone into a single-payer government health care system with expanded benefits. They are frustrated by what they see as distortions of Sanders’ plan, which left-leaning candidates including Senator Elizabeth Warren endorsed with a show of hands at the first Democratic debates.

“I think we knew when the moderators at the debates asked candidates to hold up their hands, we all knew that it could be used against them,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive political strategist. “We just thought it would be the Republicans who did it.”

For some Democratic voters, anxiety about Medicare for All has become a motivating issue.

“Medicare for All sounds absolutely wonderful,” said Sandra Jones, 73, a mental health counselor who went to see Biden in Dover, N.H., last week, and is leaning toward supporting him, but, she added, “I know that many people have health care that they like, yes, that works for them. So a plan needs to accommodate everybody.”

They don't know anything else.

The party’s smackdown is unfolding in the context of a larger battle between crusading liberals who are dazzling progressive voters and frustrated moderates trying to push back on controversial proposals like the decriminalization of crossing the border and student loan forgiveness.

Oh, the poor, set-upon, corporate moderates.

Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, a Democratic presidential candidate who has positioned himself as a pragmatist, said, “It’s important to have this discussion now so we don’t follow Bernie off a cliff that will make us lose the general election.”

His followers will. I would rather lose on principle than vote for the lesser of two evils.

Sanders hit back against those criticisms on Wednesday in a 43-minute speech at George Washington University, in which he decried a bloated insurance industry and astronomical health care costs. He also suggested a transition to government-run insurance would be much less painful than his critics have suggested and defended the tax increases it would require.

“My Republican friends and some others,” he said, “seem to think that people hate paying taxes but they love paying insurance premiums.”

Good point.

Biden, by contrast, has cast himself as a defender of the Affordable Care Act.

“I oppose the Republican Party trying to get away, get rid of Obamacare. . . . I oppose Democrats who are trying to do that,” Biden said in New Hampshire last week, over a dripping ice cream cone, before calling out Sanders and his advocacy for Medicare for All.

“He says it’s going to end all private insurance. I mean, he’s just straightforward about it. And he’s making this case,” Biden said.

Biden calculates that the public is not ready for a totally government-run system, but his own plan of creating an option for consumers to choose government health coverage could come with risks. His promise this week that people who like their insurance plan could keep it echoed Obama’s much ballyhooed — and incorrect — promise that people who liked their doctors could keep them under the ACA.

I give the reporter credit for pointing out Joe's recitation of Obama's lie. I don't know if the American people will be fooled by that again.

Candidates including Warren and Harris could benefit as Biden and Sanders, whose poll numbers have slipped, fight it out. Neither has released a comprehensive health care plan of their own.

Health care has long been a thorny issue for candidates of both parties. Bill Clinton was unable to enact universal health care. Obama faced a hurricane’s worth of blowback after he passed a health care overhaul in 2010, and the Republicans who assailed it have so far been unable to come up with an alternative.

Specialists say Sanders’ proposal for Medicare for All faces steep odds, including opposition from interest groups and uncertainties over whether Democrats will win control of the Senate in 2020, or unify behind the proposal if they do.

Yeah, we all know it doesn't stand a chance, but you never know unless you put it out there and send it over.

Medicare for All is popular among Democrats, but some party elders worry aspects of it could leave the party vulnerable.

“What the public wants is to have a choice,” said Howard Dean, a former Democratic presidential candidate who has been the governor of Vermont and top party official. “I do think, ‘They’re going to get rid of your health insurance programs’ is a great point of attack for Republicans,” but that is not to say campaigning on Medicare for All is certain to be toxic. During the 2018 midterms, some Democrats who supported the idea won in swing districts.

Too bad we never really get one in this two-party duopoly and oligarchy called government.

“The opposition to it didn’t really break through as a national message,” said David Wasserman, the House editor of the Cook Political Report. “That could be really different in 2020 if the Democratic nominee has a proposal that pleases the left of the party.”

Even if liberal Democrats win the argument and make it to the White House, they could face political costs as they try to implement a health care program. Vermont spent years trying to build a single-payer system before the Democratic governor, Peter Shumlin, abandoned the effort in 2014 after complaints over its cost.

“When I got into office, I found you can’t just fix the payment system when your system’s broken in the first place, when it’s gobbling up money faster than you mint it,” Shumlin said in an interview. “Who can come up with a plan that delivers better quality care to everyone for less money?”

That's a stunning statement, and get those Federal Reserve printing pre$$es rolling then!

--more--"

Here is a way to control costs:

"Blue Cross’s approach to paying doctors based on quality of care shows results, Harvard study finds" by Priyanka Dayal McCluskey Globe Staff, July 18, 2019

A decade-old experiment to put a dent in Massachusetts health care costs by changing the way doctors are paid appears to be working — offering a potential strategy to combat one of the most vexing problems in today’s economy.

In a new study, researchers at Harvard Medical School found that a payment plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts that rewards doctors who control costs is linked to smaller increases in health care spending and better-quality care.

Blue Cross’s payment program gives doctors a fixed amount of money to take care of their patients. When doctors stay on budget and improve care, they can earn bonuses. If not, they can be penalized.

Some call it rationing.

Rising health care costs are a perpetual concern in Massachusetts and across the country, and many experts believe spending growth will not let up unless the payment system changes.

The program was linked to an average 12 percent savings on medical claims over eight years.  The Blue Cross program and others like it differ from earlier experiments in payment reform because of their emphasis on quality measures. Blue Cross requires doctors to score well on dozens of different measures before they can earn bonuses.

The Blue Cross program gives doctors special funds to invest in care management. Atrius — among the first medical groups to join the Blue Cross program — used some of that money to hire new care managers who worked with patients to control their blood pressure. In 2009, 65 percent of Atrius patients had blood pressure in a healthy range. A decade later, that has grown to 85 percent.

Those pills are big bu$ine$$.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts has been more aggressive than other states in taking on health care costs. It set a target — 3.6 percent — for controlling annual increases in total statewide health spending. It also created a new watchdog agency, the Health Policy Commission.

Yeah, another layer of bureaucracy always helps ($omeone at lea$t).

In 2017, the most recent year for which figures are available, total health care spending in Massachusetts increased 1.6 percent — the lowest level in five years — even though costs remained a burden for many patients.

Dr. David Blumenthal, president of the New York-based Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit that does health policy research, said the Harvard study demonstrates that payment reform is a critical piece of the strategy to control costs.....

--more--"

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

So what else is the House working on?

"Democrats divided as House to vote on whether to consider Trump impeachment" by Rachael Bade and Mike DeBonis Washington Post, July 17, 2019

WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday voted to kill an impeachment resolution against President Trump, a move likely to rankle the Democratic Party’s liberal base clamoring for the ouster of the president.

The vote was 332 to 95 as House Democratic leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, joined with Republicans to stop the measure. It was a surprising turn and created the unusual optic of the Democratic leader working with the GOP a day after a divided House voted to condemn Trump’s racist remarks.

Then they all drove away in a Cadillac.

Representative Al Green, of Texas, had put Democratic leaders in a bind Tuesday night by filing articles of impeachment accusing Trump of committing high crimes and misdemeanors. His resolution, which cited Trump’s racist comments singling out four minority congresswomen, was privileged, requiring that the House act within two days.

‘‘It’s time for us to deal with his bigotry,’’ Green told reporters Wednesday. ‘‘This president has demonstrated that he’s willing to yell fire in a crowded theater, and we have seen what can happen to people when bigotry is allowed to have a free rein. We all ought to go on record. We all ought to let the world know where we stand when we have a bigot in the White House.’’

I tend to think of him as a crypto-Jew supremacist, but it's the same thing.

Pelosi, who has been reluctant to launch an impeachment inquiry, backed a procedural vote to table, or effectively kill, the resolution, avoiding a direct vote on the impeachment articles. Republicans supported Pelosi’s effort, receiving the sign-off from the White House, according to a Republican congressional aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

‘‘With all the respect in the world for Mr. Green . . . we have six committees who are working on following the facts in terms of any abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and the rest that the president may have engaged in,’’ Pelosi told reporters when asked about Green’s efforts. ‘‘That is the serious path that we are on — not that Mr. Green is not serious, but we will deal with that on the floor.’’

The vote split the Massachusetts delegation, with Representatives Katherine Clark, Joseph Kennedy III, James McGovern, Seth Moulton, Ayanna Pressley, and Lori Trahan voting against killing the resolution and Representatives William Keating, Richard Neal, and Stephen Lynch voting for tabling it.

Any vote is politically fraught for Democrats as the party’s liberal base pushes for Trump’s impeachment, and several 2020 presidential candidates have urged the House to move swiftly to force him out of office. So far, 86 House Democrats favor launching an impeachment inquiry, though several were reluctant to endorse Green’s effort.

Liberal groups pressured Pelosi to allow a direct vote on the impeachment articles. CREDO Action, a group that says it has 5 million activists, said in a statement that the House needed to begin proceedings ‘‘immediately’’ because ‘‘Trump is a racist who has repeatedly abused the powers of the presidency to harm black and brown communities and to make a quick buck for billionaires off the backs of working families.’’

Just like the last guy.

Rather than tabling the resolution, several House Judiciary Committee Democrats tried to convince Pelosi and other leaders to refer the articles of impeachment to their panel. Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler, of New York, a private supporter of impeachment, argued that that is how such matters are historically handled, but he was rebuffed, according to congressional officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

‘‘If you are of conscience and see what is happening . . . one would have to vote to refer, and not to table,’’ said Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, of Texas, a Judiciary Committee member, but Democratic leaders were wary of headlines suggesting the party is moving toward trying to oust Trump and worry that ‘‘referring’’ to committee may be spun by Republicans as a step in that direction. Indeed, even before the vote, Republicans were relishing the possibility of using the vote against their political opponents.....

It's all about keeping control of the House, huh?

--more--"

I have contempt for them all:

"House holds Barr and Ross in contempt over Census dispute" by Nicholas Fandos New York Times, July 17, 2019

WASHINGTON — The House voted Wednesday evening to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt of Congress for their refusal to turn over key documents related to the Trump administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The citations for two Cabinet officials, approved 230-198, will breathe new life into a dispute that has touched all three branches of government over why Trump administration officials pushed to ask census respondents if they were US citizens and what that question’s impact would be.

Democrats investigating the issue believe that the documents and testimony being shielded would confirm that the administration’s long-stated rationale for collecting the data — to better enforce the Voting Rights Act — was merely a cover for a politically motivated attempt to eliminate noncitizens from population statistics used to allocate political representation, diminishing Democratic power.

They are kicking all of us around like footballs.

The Supreme Court hinted at that theory last month in a ruling about the citizenship question, when it rejected the administration’s stated reason for adding the question as “contrived,” and in an unusual twist, President Donald Trump himself all but confirmed those suspicions this month when he said of the citizenship question, “You need it for Congress, for districting.” Last week he announced his government would give up the effort in light of the high court’s decision.

Democrats said Wednesday that their investigation would continue regardless, in an effort to vindicate Congress’ oversight authority and potentially neuter future attempts to discourage participation by noncitizens in the census. “It is bigger than the census. It is about protecting the integrity of the Congress of the United States of America,” Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the Oversight and Reform Committee chairman, said as he whipped up support on the House floor. “We need to understand how and why the Trump administration tried to add a question based on pretext so that we can consider reforms to ensure that this never happens again.”

The Commerce Department, the Justice Department and the White House all swiftly issued statements condemning the vote as a bad-faith smear that ignored administration officials efforts to cooperate. Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, called the action a “ridiculous and yet another lawless attempt to harass the president and his administration.” She added, “their shameful and cynical politics know no bounds.”

She has become Public Enemy #1 of the Wa$hington Pre$$ Corp.

Wednesday’s contempt vote formally authorized the oversight committee to take Barr and Ross to federal court to seek judicial enforcement of subpoenas for the material in question. A lawsuit is expected in the coming weeks, and the administration has maintained it is on firm legal footing in its position.

It also leveled a stinging personal rebuke to Barr and Ross by formally referring them to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. There is no real risk the department will pursue the case — Barr is the head of the Justice Department — but only once before has Congress held in contempt a sitting member of a presidential Cabinet: Eric Holder, President Barack Obama’s first attorney general.

The Justice and Commerce departments maintain that in this case they have sought to fully cooperate within legal bounds with the oversight committee’s requests. Democrats, they argue, are more interested in a political clash that can attract media attention and embarrass the administration than they are in actual fact-finding and prematurely abandoned the negotiating table.

Barr and Ross dispatched a last-minute letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California on Wednesday urging her to call off the vote. The materials the committee had demanded, they said, would require violation of legal privileges and executive privilege.

“The key remaining issue is how the departments and the committee will address the material that is protected by privileges that have been repeatedly affirmed by the courts,” they wrote. “There is no information to hide; there are institutional integrities to preserve.”

Barr is big on those.

Republicans have backed them up at each step, arguing Democrats are abusing oversight powers to contest a reasonable policy goal, but Democrats easily defeated their efforts to kill the contempt citations and replace them with a bill requiring the inclusion of a citizenship question by law.

“Why are they doing this? Why are they doing this? All because they don’t want a simple question on the census,” said Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top ranking Republican on the Oversight Committee. “This resolution is ridiculous, and we should vote it down.”

It is not unusual for Congresses and White Houses of opposing parties to face off over oversight demands, haggling over documents and witnesses, but there is scant precedent for the volume and intensity of the disputes between this Democratic House and Trump, whose administration has taken a dim view of Congress’ authority to compel executive branch cooperation.

The House Judiciary Committee, for instance, has been locked in a dispute with the Justice Department and White House over access to evidence underlying Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference and access to key government officials who served as witnesses to the former special counsel. It may soon spawn additional contempt votes and court action, and an effort by the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee to obtain Trump’s personal and business tax returns has already been redirected to federal court after the Treasury Department refused to comply with requests and subpoenas.

They already moved his testimony back, as predicted, and are obsessed with the narrative.

Wednesday would be the first time the House actually voted to hold a government official in contempt in one of the fights. The Judiciary Committee recommended that the House do so with Barr in the dispute over Mueller’s evidence, but the two sides struck a last-minute deal to avoid a formal contempt vote and the House merely voted to authorize court action to enforce the subpoena.

The only other direct precedent for Tuesday’s vote was in 2012, when Republicans then in control of the House held Holder in contempt in connection with requests for information about the botched “Fast and Furious” gun trafficking investigation. Republicans ended up suing the Obama administration in the case and ultimately prevailed, but the case took years to wind its way thought the courts and could have gone on longer if the Obama administration had continued to appeal.

That involved the government giving the Mexican drug cartels guns, ostensibly to track where they went; however, several of them were found to have been used in the killing of border agents, but hey, who remembers that now with a crisis on the border?

The outcome in the census case could take just as long, potentially outlasting Trump’s term unless the two sides reach an agreement.

And the 2020 census itself!

--more--"

"Trump spoke to Cohen, aides amid scramble to pay Daniels, court documents show" by Devlin Barrett, Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger Washington Post, July 18, 2019

WASHINGTON — Newly unsealed court documents show that then-candidate Donald Trump communicated repeatedly with his lawyer Michael Cohen amid the election year scramble to keep quiet allegations that Trump previously had an affair with an adult film actress.

The documents were released Thursday at the direction of a federal judge in New York, who disclosed a day before that an investigation into suspected campaign finance violations had ended. Trump and those close to him long said they were unaware that Cohen had bought the women’s silence, but phone calls and text messages documented by the FBI suggest they were closely involved.

It's nothing that is impeachable, for it happened before he was president, and is at best a campaign finance violation worthy of a fine.

The new details about the investigation are unlikely to have legal consequences for the president or those close to him because the hush-money investigation has concluded; however, the documents could further erode their credibility.

That takes for granted that they had any.

The unsealed portion of the search warrants offers new details about the scramble inside Trump’s inner circle to keep quiet any allegations about Trump and porn star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

No offense, but it was between consenting adults if it happened. I'm not dismissing the immorality here; however, it pales in 

The Trump campaign was particularly concerned about the accusation because The Washington Post had revealed on Oct. 7, 2016, that Trump was caught on an ‘‘Access Hollywood’’ recording referring to women in vulgar terms.

I know there are accusations of rape out there, and maybe Epstein has something on him; however, vulgar words are free speech, right?

The following day, Cohen received a call from Trump’s spokeswoman at the time, Hope Hicks.

‘‘Sixteen seconds into the call, Trump joined the call, and the call continued for over four minutes,’’ according to the document.

When Hicks testified before the House Judiciary Committee last month, she said she was ‘‘never present’’ at a time when Cohen and Trump discussed Daniels. She also said she ‘‘had no knowledge of Stormy Daniels’’ during the campaign other than that she had heard Daniels’s name mentioned as possibly ‘‘shopping stories around.’’

Asked by congressional investigators why she made statements during the campaign that the president had no relationship with Daniels, she replied, ‘‘I was relaying information from the reporter to the different parties involved, primarily Michael and Mr. Trump, and that was the response that was dictated to me. I didn’t ask about the nature of the relationships.’’

The House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether Hicks lied to Congress, according to an official with knowledge of matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. The official said lawmakers may probe the hush-money issue more closely in light of the new details. A lawyer for Hicks declined comment.

That is supposed to be serious; however, parades of government and corporate officials go up there and do it all the time.

For days, Cohen negotiated with Daniels’s lawyer to craft a settlement that would buy her silence, according to the court documents. It ended up taking weeks to finalize, with Cohen creating a limited liability company to make the payment.

I forget who was her lawyer (no wonder he hasn't been on TV).

When The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2018 that Cohen had arranged for Daniels to be paid in the days before the election, Cohen first falsely claimed that he had made the payment on his own without consulting with Trump. Four days before the search warrants were executed, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he had been unaware of the payments.

Cohen later acknowledged that they were arranged at Trump’s direction. During congressional testimony in February, Cohen released copies of checks he received to reimburse him for the payment, including a check signed by Trump while he was serving as president. Cohen told Congress that he had lied to the public and to first lady Melania Trump about the Daniels matter. Trump, he said, had assured him in an Oval Office meeting in February that he would take care of Cohen’s debt related to Daniels.

Too bad he lied because there is your toehold.

‘‘I am going to jail in part because of my decision to help Mr. Trump hide that payment from the American people before they voted a few days later,’’ he said.....

--more--"

Also see:

"The House voted Thursday to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, delivering a long-sought victory to liberals and putting the Democratic Party’s official imprimatur on the so-called Fight for $15, which many Democratic presidential candidates have embraced. The bill would more than double the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour — about $15,000 a year for someone working 40 hours a week, or about $10,000 less than the federal poverty level for a family of four."

It's not Trump's world, but could cause Cohen to become a Democrat.

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

Time to move over to the Senate:

"Two Republican senators move to slow 9/11 victims bill" by Devlin Barrett Washington Post, July 17, 2019

WASHINGTON — A Republican senator moved Wednesday to stop for the moment legislation providing compensation to 9/11 workers, sparking an emotional appeal on behalf of those sick and dying after responding to Ground Zero.

A lot was left in the rubble of 9/11.

Though lawmakers for several weeks generally declared broad support for the measure to extend a victims compensation fund, the objections of two conservative senators suggest its Senate passage may stall or require more political muscle to enact.

There is only one lobby I know with that much muscle.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, spoke out on the Senate floor Wednesday after Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, proposed that the bill be approved by unanimous consent. Under Senate rules, an objection from a single senator can block a measure offered via unanimous consent.

Paul said he objected because any program that would last decades ‘‘should be offset by cutting spending that’s less valuable. We need, at the very least, to have this debate,’’ he said, adding that he would offer an amendment on the cost of the bill when it reaches the Senate floor.

Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, also has placed a hold on the legislation, according to advocates.

So did I for a couple of days.

Paul’s objection angered Democrats, who have been able to muster bipartisan support for the bill, which has 73 co-sponsors in the Senate.

‘‘I am deeply disappointed that my colleague has just objected,’’ Gillibrand said. ‘‘Enough of the political games. Our 9/11 first responders and our entire nation are watching to see if this body actually cares. Do we care about the men and women who answer the call of duty?’’

At times, Gillibrand’s voice cracked with emotion as she made a case for the measure’s quick passage.

‘‘Thousands of those men and women have died,’’ she said. Others, she said, still have to ‘‘face the terrifying reality that they are going to die, because of what they did on 9/11 and the months thereafter.’’

A spokeswoman for Paul said the senator wasn’t seeking to block the bill, but rather to add a provision to pay for it. It’s unclear how he plans to do that.

I say raise the debt limit, print more money. Then this economy will collapse like one of those three towers that fell.

The International Association of Fire Fighters wrote to Lee on Wednesday urging him to lift his hold on the legislation, which the House passed overwhelmingly last week.

‘‘On behalf of the nation’s 317,000 professional fire fighters and emergency medical responders, I insist that you immediately lift your hold,’’ IAFF president Harold A. Schaitberger wrote to Lee. ‘‘The fact that you choose to make these brave men and women wait another day to pass this critically important legislation is simply unconscionable.’’

A spokesman for Lee said the senator ‘‘fully expects the 9/11 compensation bill to pass before the August recess and he is seeking a vote to ensure the fund has the proper oversight in place to prevent fraud and abuse.’’

Senators often place holds on bills in an effort to add or remove something, or to force a concession from fellow lawmakers on another issue.

Even the holiest-of-holies and the great American heroes are being used as a political football, and you think they care about average voters?

The 9/11 victim compensation bill passed in the House, 402-12, following the death of a former NYPD detective, Luis Alvarez, who testified last month about the urgent need to replenish the fund. Officials say that money is fast running out, leading to payout reductions by as much as 70 percent for recent applicants.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, has pledged to bring the measure to a vote soon, but it now appears he has some resistance.

‘‘Senator McConnell is living up to his commitment made to 9/11 responders when they handed him Luis Alvarez’s badge, and he appears to be trying to get this passed as quickly as possible under Senate rules,’’ said Ben Chevat, executive director of Citizens for the Extension of the James Zadroga Act, a group that advocates for the legislation.

McConnell’s commitment came after he was publicly attacked by Jon Stewart, former host of ‘‘The Daily Show,’’ who lambasted lawmakers for dragging their feet.

Stewart has become the celebrity face of the effort to make the 9/11 fund permanent, and has said he plans to return to Congress when the Senate votes on the issue.

Some bloggers have pointed out how, once again, it's a Jewish face that is placed before us regardless of any issue or cause, in an attempt to keep the proper narrative in place.

The fund provides money to those who have contracted diseases that have been linked to exposure to toxic debris in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

That's the pile the Bush regime said was safe to breath, and they also told nearby residents just to wipe everything down with a damp cloth. Of course, they would never have lied to us about such a thing, or WMD, or anything, so I'm sure the problem lies with you.

The $7.3 billion fund has paid about $5 billion to roughly 21,000 claimants. About 700 were for deaths that happened long after the attacks.

Lawmakers created the fund in 2011 to compensate for deaths and illnesses linked to toxic exposure at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa., after four hijacked airliners crashed that morning in 2001. 

With more than 19,000 additional unpaid claims, the fund is running out of money. Rupa Bhattacharyya, the special master overseeing the funds, announced that pending claims, including those that were received before Feb. 1, will be paid at 50 percent of their prior value. Subsequent claims are being paid at just 30 percent.

Under current law, the fund is scheduled to stop taking claims in December 2020. The new legislation would extend the program for seven decades, at an estimated cost of $10.2 billion for the first decade.

This is starting to look like another Holoco$t™ $ituation as far as the unquestioned sanctity of the event, and I imagine much of it will be hush money for future generations as well.

A searing congressional hearing last month, featuring testimony from Stewart and the dying Alvarez, refocused public attention on the plight of the sick workers and the faltering fund.

And just as quickly, like a collapsing trade tower, the focus was again moved away.

It's a delicate balancing act. You want to keep the searing or molding event in the public consciousness for agenda-driving purposes, but not place it in front of them for too long for fear of questions and calls for investigation.

--more--"

Related:

Senate poised to pass bill extending victims’ compensation fund for 9/11 responders

Someone must have gotten to Paul and Lee.

Where is Ted Kennedy when you need him?

Also see: 

"The Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve updates to international tax treaties, some of which were negotiated in the early years of the Obama administration, in a bipartisan victory for multinational companies. The so-called treaty protocols with Switzerland, Japan, and Luxembourg were approved a day after senators passed a protocol with Spain. Two Republican senators, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, voted against approving all four treaties. Getting to the votes required a multiyear lobbying campaign by some of the largest business groups in Washington, a coordinated push from the Trump administration and Senate Republican leadership — and the triumph of Kentucky’s senior senator, Mitch McConnell, over Paul, who had successfully stalled treaty approval for years."

There are the troublemakers again. 

They better be careful or they will be sent back to their districts unemployed.

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

As for trade treaties:

"US objections to French tech tax overshadow G-7 finance meeting" by Thomas Adamson and Alex Turnbull Associated Press, July 17, 2019

CHANTILLY, France — The Trump administration is objecting to France’s plan to tax Facebook, Google, and other US tech giants, a rift that’s overshadowing talks between seven longtime allies this week on issues ranging from digital currencies to trade.

As finance ministers from the Group of Seven rich democracies gathered Wednesday for a two-day meeting at a chateau in Chantilly, near Paris, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin planned to take a tough line against host France.

He's going to drive it really hard.

He was going to object to France’s proposed percent tax on revenues of large tech companies with French finance minister Bruno Le Maire, according to a senior US Treasury official.

The controversial tax, which the French parliament passed days ago and could be signed into law within weeks, has already provoked a strong rebuke from the White House, which said it could lead to US tariffs on French imports.

The relationship is as emblematic as the dead tree Macron brought Trump, and likely has to do with French foot-dragging on Iran.

The rift risks feeding into broader disagreements, including on trade, after the US imposed tariffs on some EU goods last year, drawing retaliation from Europe.

‘‘We are very disappointed that France has passed a unilateral service tax,’’ said the Treasury official, who said Mnuchin was to raise the issue during a bilateral meeting with Le Maire. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as the meeting had not yet taken place at the time.

French officials have indicated their national digital tax — the first of its kind and created without any EU-wide agreement on the issue — is intended to spur an international agreement during the G-7 meeting. They said it will be withdrawn if a global deal is forged, a gamble that could provide negotiating leverage with the US.

Discord is no stranger to G-7 meetings. Last June, Trump roiled the G-7 summit in Canada by first agreeing to a group statement on trade only to withdraw from it while complaining that he had been blindsided by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s criticism of Trump’s tariff threats. In an extraordinary set of tweets, Trump threw the G-7 talks into disarray.

I guess it's a good thing he is not there this year, given what is going on. They would probably tell him to go home.

Officials seem to be prepared for the potential for ugly divergences at this week’s G-7, with Mnuchin saying it could end with just a report of the discussion — rather than the traditional final statement signed by all.

The regulation of technology companies is emerging as a major issue around the world. The US is following the European Union’s lead in taking a closer look at whether some of them are too big for the good of the wider economy. The topic was underscored Wednesday, when EU regulators opened a formal antitrust investigation into Amazon, echoing similar ones against the likes of Google and Microsoft.

Only the banks are too big to be tampered with!

Related: "Amazon faces a widening inquiry in Europe over whether it unfairly uses data collected from third-party sellers who rely on its platform, the latest move by regulators around the world to curb the growing power of big technology companies. Europe has been at the forefront of regulating the tech industry on issues like antitrust, tax evasion, privacy protection, and the spread of hate speech and other harmful content. Google has been fined three times in the past two years for anticompetitive business practices, resulting in penalties totaling more than $9 billion. In 2016, Apple was ordered to repay about $14.6 billion for unfair tax benefits it has received in Ireland. The investigation announced Wednesday could eventually lead to fines for Amazon or demands that it change its business practices. A settlement could also be reached, or the case could be dropped....."

Also see: EU fines Qualcomm $271 million for alleged ‘predatory pricing’

It's all about the Benjamins.

Beyond the US and France, which holds this year’s rotating chair, the G-7 includes Germany, Britain, Italy, Canada, Japan, and representatives of the EU. The Chantilly meetings serve to prepare the framework for a summit of the G-7 heads of state and government in August in the French Atlantic resort of Biarritz.

The talks come against a bleak backdrop of slowing global growth and Trump’s America-first trade policies, which have led to a bitter tariff war with China on top of the tensions with Europe.

Where the US may find more common ground with its G-7 partners will be in its mistrust of cryptocurrencies like Facebook’s recently announced Libra, a position shared by the French.

Le Maire wants to lead on this issue, singling out Libra for scrutiny. ‘‘The red line for us is that Libra cannot and should not transform itself into sovereign currency,’’ Le Maire warned reporters outside the royal stables at Chantilly, a town famed today for horse racing. 

He just proved how deep in the pockets of bankers are governments.

‘‘We won’t accept that multinationals emerge to be private states — that’s to say multinationals that would have the power of a state but not the obligations linked to the sovereign states, notably the control by citizens,’’ he added.

Le Maire said that, unchecked, Libra could exploit Facebook’s vast trove of data and lead to an increased risk of embezzlement, the financing of terrorism and the destabilizing of sovereign money.

The sky is falling, the sky is..... wait a minute, it already fell a long time ago!

‘‘Libra will be pegged to a basket of currencies including the dollar and euros. At a given moment, what if Libra decides to rebalance itself in favor of the euro, in favor of the dollar?’’ he asked.

‘‘It will have direct repercussions on the currency’s stability.’’

Members of Congress, holding a two-day hearing on Libra this week, demanded to know why Facebook, which has massive market power and a track record of scandals, should be trusted with such a far-reaching project.....

That's because ‘‘Facebook is dangerous, and it would be crazy to trust Facebook,’’ but that was quickly put out.

--more--"

Time to make $ome money:

"On Wall Street, do profits trump democracy?" by Larry Edelman Globe Columnist, July 17, 2019

This country was built on the twin foundations of democracy and capitalism, but does Wall Street, the emblem of our free market system, care if American democracy is debased, as long as the profits keep rolling in?

It’s a question worth considering as stock prices trade near record highs even as the longest US economic expansion in history shows signs of losing momentum. It’s a question worth considering as Democratic presidential candidates offer up audacious but unproven plans to overhaul policies for health care, trade, climate change, and immigration that could redefine just what kind of economy and democracy we have, and it is a question worth considering as President Trump makes clear he won’t hesitate to defile American politics and defame democratic institutions (an independent Congress, central bank, news media) to get reelected.

The central bank, Congre$$, and the ma$$ media and pre$$, are far from democratic. They represent the interests of corporations and oligarchs.

For those of you who don’t spend the summer tracking stock prices, the market has been climbing to new highs since bottoming out in late December. The strong job market and healthy consumer spending have overcome investors’ concerns about the impact of the trade war with China and slowing global growth, but most of all, investors are buying because the Fed has all but promised to cut interest rates, likely after its next policy meeting on July 30-31. Just seven months ago, the Fed was on a campaign to boost rates to keep the economy from overheating.

Lower rates make stocks more attractive compared with fixed-income investments such as US government bonds, and act as a kind of insurance policy against cooling growth by making sure there is plenty of cheap money for consumers and businesses to borrow.

I don't know how you respond to such a mind$et.

“The global economy is slowing, and has been for more than year. The US was bucking that trend — until now,” said Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro at Fidelity Investments in Boston. “The market believes that this is a soft patch that will pave the way for ongoing growth as the Fed steps in just at the right time.”

Give equity investors low rates, decent economic growth, and rising corporate earnings, and they are content. It doesn’t seem to matter when Trump acts more like a dictator than a president: berating the Fed in an effort to influence monetary policy; refusing to comply with legitimate requests from Congress; threatening mass roundups in immigrant communities; and relentlessly seeking to obscure the truth by lying.

That last one is a pretty serious charge coming from the lying, agenda-pu$hing, war-promoting pre$$, but as long as investors are content. If not, well, you know.

Not the kind of behavior that should inspire investor confidence — unless, of course, the same president cuts taxes and guts regulation of the environment and big banks. Complicity? No. Enabling by turning a blind eye? Absolutely, but investors should be worried, and lower rates from the Fed won’t save us from the president’s worst instincts.

Yeah, no collu$ion here!

Will the Fed save the day this time?

OMG, they are one of the reasons for the crisis, and yet the pre$$ narrative is how they saved the $y$tem (as you lost your home).

Probably not, said Megan E. Greene, a senior fellow at Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a member of the board of the National Association for Business Economics. Even if the Fed buys us a couple more quarters of economic growth, the markets are ignoring problems that will haunt us in years to come if we don’t deal with them soon: income inequality, rising sea levels, stagnant wages, costlier health care, and so on.

That crap comes up every four years, just in time for a vote, and then it's back to bu$ine$$ as usual until the next cycle.

These are dispiriting days in the life of our democracy. It’s time for Wall Street to reckon with something deeper than quarterly profits.....

He's now enlisting Wall Street in the political wars, huh?

--more--"

Related:

"US stocks reversed course from an early slump and closed higher Thursday to break a two-day losing streak after technology and bank stocks rallied. Corporate earnings are in full swing and investors have been cautiously assessing results and company statements. The volatile market is still on track for a weekly loss despite the S&P 500 opening the week with a record high close. The pullback has barely dented the big gains made by every major index this year, including a 19.5 percent rise for the S&P 500 index. The latest batch of results are providing a better picture of the economy after months of ups and downs in the market because of policy concerns and lingering trade disputes. ‘‘We’ve been watching the game and now we actually get to see the scorecard,’’ said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network. The results so far have reflected financial strength from banks as the broader economy holds up with solid job growth and consumer confidence. ‘‘The consumers are still making things happen out there and it’s showing up in the earnings to a surprising degree,’’ he said."

Bank stocks are already at record levels, so what is there to worry about:

"Trade issues prompt local manufacturers to paint a gloomy picture" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, July 18, 2019

Optimism abounds on Wall Street, if the stock market’s recent peaks are any indication.

Talk to local manufacturers, and you will get a much gloomier view.

One major red flag appeared on Wednesday in the New England section of the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book, a roundup of regional economic conditions. Manufacturers are not pleased with this country’s trade policy, and many are lowering their business outlooks for the year as a result.

As with other Beige Book surveys, the sample size is small, the data anecdotal, but the picture painted by the seven manufacturers contacted by Boston Fed researchers isn’t a pretty one, especially considering the apparent health of the broader US economy. (As is typical, the Fed keeps its sources anonymous.)

So nice of the Fed to paint us a picture, and I just love anecdotal evidence, don't you?!

Local manufacturers say the country’s trade policy is causing them to face higher costs, reduced demand for their products, and more uncertainty. They’re scaling back on big purchases, or at least delaying them. Five of the seven contacts reported flat or reduced employment. One electronics manufacturer cut staff by 10 percent because of the tariffs, and moved an assembly line from the United States to Germany to avoid tariffs on Chinese-made components.

They talked to seven firms and it's supposed to be the whole world.

The Trump administration’s stated goal is to boost domestic jobs, but economists say the ongoing fight with China could have the opposite effect, as the US tariffs and China’s retaliation work their way into the economy.

Many manufacturers are trying to find overseas alternatives to China to source their supplies — sometimes without much luck.

These concerns are showing up in Associated Industries of Massachusetts’ monthly polls.....

For how long?

--more--"

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

Time to get outside:

"Louisiana grabbed many of the headlines from former Hurricane Barry, but the super-soggy storm made history in Arkansas where it unloaded nearly 15 inches of rain, a new record for a tropical weather system in the Razorback state. Arkansas is now the fifth state to post a new tropical storm or hurricane rainfall record since 2017, joining Texas, Hawaii, North Carolina, and South Carolina. These exceptional rain storms keep happening and appear to be part of a trend toward more extreme events, connected to climate change....."

It's all leading to a mass extinction event.

All the better to poison you slowly:

"The Environmental Protection Agency rejected a petition by environmental and public health groups Thursday to ban a widely used pesticide that has been linked to neurological damage in children, even though a federal court said last year there was ‘‘no justification’’ for such a decision. In a notice to the Federal Register on Thursday, the agency wrote that ‘‘critical questions remained regarding the significance of the data’’ that suggest that chlorpyrifos causes neurological damage in young children. The agency said that the Obama administration’s decision to ban the product — used on more than 50 crops, including grapes, broccoli, and strawberries — was based on epidemiological studies rather than direct tests on animals, which have historically been used by the EPA to determine a pesticide’s safety. The EPA’s decision, which represented a win for industry, drew swift condemnation from groups that have pushed for years to remove the pesticide from the market."

That's bad chemistry, but at least our democracy is intact.

I hope it doesn't affect the greens on the golf course:

"A 6-year-old Utah girl died Monday after she was struck in the head by a golf ball hit by her father in what her uncle described as a ‘‘fluke accident’’ that ‘‘you couldn’t repeat if you tried.’’ The accident occurred shortly after 10 a.m. as Aria Hill sat in a cart on a path about 15-20 yards to the left of her father as he teed off at Sleepy Ridge Golf Course in Orem. His drive struck her in the back of the head at the base of her skull, Lieutenant Trent Colledge of the Orem police told the Daily Herald. She died after being airlifted to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. David Smith, the girl’s uncle, said his niece was a ‘‘golfing buddy’’ for her father. ‘‘She loved doing it and had a good time with it all,’’ Smith told KSL. ‘‘That was one of their things that they would do together. It was something that was really important to them and something they did all the time.’’

Meet Trump's partner for his weekend game:

"Pakistani authorities on Wednesday arrested Hafiz Saeed, the accused mastermind of devastating 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, police said. Designated a terrorist by the United States, Saeed was the leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which carried out a four-day coordinated terrorist assault across in India’s commercial capital, killing at least 160 people. Saeed later said he left the group and founded the Jammat-ud-Dawa charity. The organization has been accused of acting as a front to fund militant activities. In 2012, the United States offered $10 million for information leading to Saeed’s arrest, and two years later it formally named Jammat as a terrorist group. Analysts see Saeed’s detention as a major move ahead of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s first official visit to the United States. He is scheduled to meet with President Trump on Monday. In Washington, Trump welcomed the arrest. In one of a series of tweets on various topics Wednesday morning, Trump wrote: ‘‘After a ten year search, the so-called ‘mastermind’ of the Mumbai Terror attacks has been arrested in Pakistan. Great pressure has been exerted over the last two years to find him!’’ Contrary to Trump’s characterization of a prolonged ‘‘search,’’ however, Pakistani authorities have been aware of Saeed’s whereabouts for years. His political party participated in national elections last year, and he was photographed casting his ballot. In a 2012 news conference in a hotel near the Pakistani army headquarters, he publicly mocked the US bounty on his head. ‘‘Here I am in front of everyone, not hiding in a cave,’’ Saeed declared. He said of the $10 million US reward: ‘‘Why don’t they give it to me? I can tell them my whereabouts on a daily basis.’’ Trump and Khan have traded barbs in the past. On Twitter last year, Trump accused Pakistan of taking billions of dollars from the United States without doing enough to address terrorism."

That was done so Khan could give Trump a gift, unlike bin Laden, who was never there.

This is how they are getting from hole to hole:

""Tesla’s plan to deliver fully self-driving cars this year worries regulators, experts" by Faiz Siddiqui Washington Post, July 17, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO — Tesla is racing to be first to the market with a self-driving car made for the masses, promising to send as soon as this year an over-the-air software update that will turn hundreds of thousands of its vehicles into robo-cars, but its push to put untested and unregulated features in the hands of its drivers is putting industry executives and regulators on edge.

Tesla shows little sign of such caution, and because autonomous vehicles are largely self-regulated — guided by industry standards but with no clearly enforceable rules — no one can stop the automaker from moving ahead.

The Washington Post spoke with a dozen transportation officials and executives, including current and former safety regulators, auto industry executives, safety advocacy group leaders, and autonomous-vehicle competitors. In interviews, they expressed worries that Tesla’s plan to unleash robo-cars on the road on an expedited timeline — likely without regulated vetting — could result in crashes, lawsuits, and confusion. Plus, they said, Tesla’s promised ‘‘full self-driving’’ features fall short of industry standards for a true autonomous vehicle because humans will still need to be engaged at all times and ready to intervene in the beginning. Some of the people interviewed requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

‘‘That concern among the industry writ large is real and valid because what potentially happens is you’re going to see fatalities in the news attributed to Tesla vehicles and the response you’re going to get from certain policymakers — kind of a knee-jerk reaction,’’ said a former senior official with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which oversees the motor vehicle industry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could comment candidly about the industry view of the company’s claims. That, in turn, will affect ‘‘other manufacturers who were a lot more deliberate, a lot more careful.’’

Tesla has said it already has better real-world data than the rest of the industry. The company’s artificial-intelligence program is being trained in real time by data collected from every Tesla already on the road. Every touch of the steering wheel helps inform the company’s software of how to react to various scenarios.

Tesla, which launched its first consumer vehicle just over a decade ago, was founded with the goal of bringing electric cars to the masses. It has outpaced most rivals for years, launching cars that have a range of up to 370 miles.

And it keeps on running:

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk wants to morph its Autopilot system, which keeps cars within their lanes, performs steering functions and can summon and park cars without the drivers controlling the steering wheel, into his ‘‘full self-driving’’ suite, through a combination of the hardware already in its cars and over-the-air software changes that would add increased capabilities for city driving.

Looks like a scheme to rev the $tock price!

The company has also said that it has a demonstrated track record of safety, registering just one crash for every 2.87 million miles in which drivers had Autopilot engaged in the first three months of the year. That compares with normal cars crashing every 436,000 miles, but Autopilot is intended for use on highways and freeways, relatively uncomplicated roads with long straightaways that have fewer crashes, so it is unclear how comparable those statistics are. Tesla has declined to release more-detailed data.

Tesla cars also would eventually connect to the ‘‘Tesla Network,’’ equipping them to give rides when their owners aren’t using them, similar to the ride-hailing services of Uber and Lyft.

‘‘By the middle of next year, we’ll have over a million Tesla cars on the road with full self-driving hardware,’’ with the ability to find the vehicle owners, drive them to their destination and park the vehicle, Musk said at Tesla’s Autonomy Investor Day in April. It will be at ‘‘a reliability level that we would consider that no one needs to pay attention ... meaning you could go to sleep.’’

Don't worry, the crash will wake you up.

‘‘The fleet wakes up with an over-the-air update,’’ Musk said. ‘‘That’s all it takes.’’

Pray to God there isn't a glitch.

Meanwhile, competitors are racing to build their own autonomous taxi fleets expected to transport people without drivers within a few years. Companies including Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, as well as Lyft-backed Aptiv and GM Cruise are piloting autonomous vehicles in Arizona, Nevada, and California — three states that have become testing grounds for self-driving cars.

Tesla is betting it can win the race with its software updates. Its approach represents a stark departure from the more conservative approaches by many companies testing self-driving cars. For instance, when Uber’s self-driving vehicle hit and killed a pedestrian, the company halted testing of its vehicles for months.

Tesla has raised eyebrows with its statements that autonomous driving can be achieved through a slimmed-down system that sheds all but the most critical equipment. Musk says he wants Tesla’s system to use a combination of cameras and radar sensors that triangulate a field of vision, similar to human eyesight, forgoing lidar. It also forgoes a driver-monitoring camera to improve safety in the cabin, instead relying on torque-sensing steering-wheel monitors to detect whether the driver’s hands are on the wheel.....

The slightest touch makes it veer out of control.

--more--"

Whadda you know, the battery is dead.