New York Sunday Times

There are more articles from them than the Globe staff and correspondents today.

"Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin meet to pursue more pragmatic relations" by Melissa Eddy New York Times   August 18, 2018

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Vladimir Putin of Russia came together Saturday for their first bilateral meeting in more than five years, at a time when President Trump’s brand of diplomacy is testing traditional alliances.

Analysts described the meeting as an attempt to put the relationship between Berlin and Moscow on more pragmatic ground, but few expected it to end with strong resolutions or a new strategic partnership.

Pressed on the nature of the talks at the German government’s villa outside Berlin, Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, indicated the leaders were seeking common ground on acute international issues, such as Syria, Ukraine, and energy.

“Russia is an international actor without whom it is impossible to imagine finding solutions to various problems” in the world, Seibert told reporters in Berlin.

Merkel has been one of Putin’s severest critic since he annexed Crimea in 2014, plunging relations to their worst in decades. So the meeting at the 18th century Baroque palace near Berlin was viewed as a step toward ending Russia’s isolation and an affirmation Merkel’s pivotal role in Europe despite her party’s election setbacks.

Yeah, except he didn't annex Crimea, you lying sack of sh**. 

Beyond that, it's not Russia that's isolated, it's the EUSReali Empire that the NYT mouthpieces for. The Koreans are working around us on peace, despite the distorted portrayal in the AmeriKan pre$$ that tells us they capitulated to Trump and his tough action. That's why Obama got in on the Iranian deal. The other powers were going to make a deal anyway, and the AmeriKan corporations went to Obama and said, "Hey, we can't be left out of the loot." That's why he signed on, not some world peace altruism we were told about by the war pre$$.

Nor are they mentioning Turkey here, which is now firmly pointing East after the failed Obama coup attempt and Trump's new sanctions for holding the CIA pastor. We've lost the Philippines.  Everywhere you go there are hostile governments the CIA has to destabilize or overthrow or friendly governments they need to bolster against their people. Globe isn't telling us anything about Gaza and Palestine because the whole world is shunning Israel and its atrocities. Yeah, the U.S. has enormous economic power but that is waning as well as it's military might.

I'm not reading about any of it in the Globe or the Times because it is their job to portray the Israeli prism as the view of the outside world. That is the garbage we are shoveled every day, and it's getting so old. Time to turn off the TV and stop reading them. 

Trump last month slammed Germany as ‘‘totally controlled by Russia’’ because of its dependence on Moscow for natural gas supplies. Work on a new gas pipeline linking the two countries began in May amid a US threat of sanctions targeting the project.

Russia sees Merkel’s support for the project, despite Trump’s criticism, as evidence of her willingness to assert Europe’s independence. 

How the f*** does the New York Times know what Russia sees?

Looks like they are putting words into their mouth and labeling them like the standard bullish** propaganda they trowel out every day to define the "enemy."

Germany imports about 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, according to government statistics. That is more than any other EU country, but less than the 60 percent to 70 percent Trump cited when he accused Germany of being a “captive” of Russia at a NATO summit in July.

Yeah, Trump distorted and lied. 

I'm sure he did, but the hypocrisy of the world's greatest liars of all times, the New York Times, takes chutzpah.

Oh, and that was before Helsinki so..... sigh.

The Kremlin views divisions between the United States and Europe over trade and the Iranian nuclear deal as a chance for Russia to mend relations with Germany, analysts say.

Germany and Russia could be described as the ultimate international “frenemies,” with economic, cultural, and intellectual ties reaching back centuries. Since the 18th century, they have cycled through a series of conflicts and reconciliations, most recently World War II and the Cold War.

Throughout the Soviet era, Germany was Moscow’s most important trading partner, and many Germans view the strong, positive ties to Moscow as a key contributor to the end of the Cold War and German unification.

When the Berlin Wall fell, Germany reached out to Moscow, partly to help former Soviet bloc countries integrate into the European Union, not only strengthening political and economic ties, but also investing in civil society.

But a break in relations that started with the Russian authorities’ repressive reaction to public protests in 2011 and 2012 worsened in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and supported rebels in eastern Ukraine.

There they go again, repeating the lie of annexation when the Crimean people, in response to the Obama coup in Ukraine, voted for secession from Ukraine. They then petitioned Russia to join it, and the Russians accepted. That's not an annexation, you lying sacks of sh**.

Of course, Israel's annexation and stealing of Palestine land rarely rates a mention, if at all, and that is a real annexation!

Btw, you know, one of the first things I learned in Writing 101 was never start a sentence with but.

And yet that's the grammatical slop I see day after day after day by the wordsmiths in the pre$$. 

I know it is their style, as if they are talking to you, but it is seen as nothing more than sloppiness here. 

And think of that for a minute. If they don't care about the fine details of their own grammar, what makes you think they are any more thorough when it comes to the details of their slop print article!

Merkel and Putin have maintained regular contact. In May, she visited Putin at his summer residence in Sochi, Russia. 

Like I said, everyone is going around the AmeriKan Empire while giving it lip service. That's what you do when confronted by a bully.

Btw, if she visited in may then the lead paragraph is a lie, isn't it? It's not the first meeting in five years.

They can't even keep their own lies straight amongst all the sh** they are throwing around.

But Susan Stewart, a senior associate with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said the leaders’ meeting in Germany should not be viewed as a fundamental shift in German-Russian relations.

There they go again, but.... SIGH!!!!

Instead, it is an indication of the hope that the two sides will be able to reach a compromise on key points while disagreeing on others.

Both Germany and Russia have problems involving Syria.

Merkel’s decision to allow more than 1 million people — most of them refugees from the war in Syria — to apply for asylum in Germany has met increasing resistance from the public and from her own government.

Putin has been unable to find a solution to Syria’s civil war despite having declared “mission accomplished” on several occasions.

Yeah, who else said that? 

Place where we still are, right? 

Obama even sent troops back!

F*** you, NYT!

Both leaders could benefit from finding a way to ensure sufficient political stability in Syria to allow Germany to begin encouraging refugees to return, while Putin is seeking support from Berlin and the European Union to help rebuild the country, said Stefan Meister of the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Germany’s willingness to throw its full weight behind the United States’ decision to impose sanctions on Moscow over its annexation of Crimea, its involvement in the pro-Kremlin insurgency in eastern Ukraine, and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, took the Russians by surprise. 

Yup, they repeated the lie of annexation. Three strikes, your out. 

I know, if you repeat it often enough people will believe it -- except that was then. 

We SEE WHO is NOW never allowing the public to cool off; never admitting a fault or wrong; never conceded that there may be some good in the enemy; never leaving room for alternatives; and never accepting blame. The only difference now is the pre$$ concentrates on several enemies at a time and blames them for everything that goes wrong.

Soon afterward, Germany found itself in the crosshairs of Russian cyberattacks and a campaign in the Russian news media that caused Germany to plunge in Russian public opinion.

But to break out of its international isolation, Russia needs Germany’s support. It hopes to persuade the chancellor not to support a fresh round of sanctions Trump has threatened to impose over the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain.....

How much propaganda and lies can you mentally trigger in an article anyway?

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Right next to that article was this:

"US will not spend $230m in aid budgeted for Syria" by Gardiner Harris New York Times   August 18, 2018

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has announced that it will not spend $230 million earmarked to help stabilize Syria, the United States’ latest step back from a seven-year war that has been largely won by a brutal government and its Russian and Iranian backers.

A brutal government. Okay.

Gonna stabilize Syria after spending the last seven years trying to change the regime, yup.

Administration officials said they would alert Congress that the money, which had already been approved, would not be spent to fix water systems, clear rubble, or dig up unexploded mines in Syrian cities and towns that have been heavily damaged by the war.

Those repairs were seen as vital to persuading hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees to return home — people the Trump administration has largely barred from resettling in the United States.

That's all going on already despite what the New York Times says upon this Sunday. 

It's just distortion after distortion, lie after lie. 

How low can they go?

Also see: Syria vows to help refugees return

What a brutal government, huh? 

Makes you wonder how he got reelected.

I guess if they were a compassionate government, they would be like Israel and allow no right of return, huh?

The unspent funds are part of nearly $3 billion in foreign aid — money allocated last year by Congress with broad bipartisan support — that the administration has so far refused to spend and could rescind or send back to the Treasury.

Yeah, send it back.

In the case of the Syria money, the administration has decided to spend it on other yet-to-be-determined priorities, not return it to the Treasury, officials said Friday.

Spending it somewhere else, huh?

The languishing billions are a reflection of President Trump’s belief that the rest of the world needs to be weaned off its reliance on aid from the United States.

This "journalism" has reached such a point of crapola it is getting impossible to read.

The decision on the Syria money will disappoint European and Persian Gulf allies while cheering Russia and Iran, whose dominant position in Syria will be strengthened by a reduced American commitment.

(Blog editor is just shaking his head)

Pentagon officials have quietly expressed exasperation over the decision, fearing that any failure to stabilize Syria will leave fertile ground for the Islamic State or other extremists to return.

(Blog editor is just shaking his head)

The administration said that the move did not represent any pullback on American goals in Syria, and emphasized that other countries had committed $300 million to the Syrian stabilization effort, including $100 million from Saudi Arabia.

What, we are still going to keep troops there even though the Syrians are preparing to evict them?

At least the Kurds wised up.

“The president has made clear that we are prepared to remain in Syria until the enduring defeat of ISIS, and we remain focused on ensuring the withdrawal of Iranian forces and their proxies,” said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.

Meaning this government, despite the hubbub over Trump, is still firmly in Zionist pocket.

The diversion of the money seemed sure to anger Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill, particularly because the timing of the announcement, only weeks before the end of the fiscal year, all but ensures that Congress cannot reverse the decision.

Who cares what Congre$$ thinks at this point? 

Either exercise your war powers under the Constitution, or shut up.

“This message of US retreat and abandonment is an embarrassment,” Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Friday.

That is the same Bob Menedez who was friend doctor was caught stealing millions from Medicare while funding trips to the Dominican Republic so Menendez could hook up with underaged girls. 

Of course, he's a lockstep Zionist in the Senate from the U.S. home base for the Jewi$h mafia, and which is why he is still there.

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"A poor corner of France stands its ground against bulldozers" by Adam Nossiter New York Times  August 18, 2018

PERPIGNAN, France — What made the events exceptional was not just that this was a stand by one of the poorest neighborhoods in France. It was also a protest by a unique population, one the French media and academics universally refer to as “les gitans,” or Gypsies.

The Gypsies of Perpignan, who speak Catalan, appear distinct culturally and ethnically from the broader population of Roma, sometimes also referred to as Gypsies, but they are in many ways no less maligned and marginalized in France.

With some 3,000 to 5,000 inhabitants, Saint Jacques is urban France’s largest Gypsy neighborhood, a festering sore of poverty and unemployment, a place normally drawing few allies.

Yet in its fight against the destruction of its neighborhood, the community found help from local preservationists and allied itself with North African neighbors — a group it has clashed with in the past. The community also mobilized its youth, 90 percent of whom are jobless and many of whom hang out in the streets after the sun has set.

The truce achieved with the city over the demolitions is only temporary, said Jean-Bernard Mathon, head of the local preservation society. At least 37 more buildings in Saint Jacques were slated to come down, he said.

“What we want is the rehabilitation of the old core,” Mathon said. “What they want to do is demolish. But they have rebuilt nothing. It’s hideous.”

Saint Jacques, dilapidated, crumbling, and now threatened, even drew the backing of President Emmanuel Macron’s special emissary on historical preservation, the French television personality Stéphane Bern.

Bern wrote on social media that he was “scandalized and shocked by the images of destruction in the center of Perpignan.”

But not those of Israeli bulldozers in the West Bank.

The Globe's web version extended the print. 

Enjoy!

The preservationists point to the delicate balcony railings, the incised roof moldings, the occasional centuries-old doorway and the intricate medieval street grid, and urge renovation rather than demolition.

Yet in a country with more historical districts than it knows what to do with or has the money to pay for, Saint Jacques is something of an ugly duckling.

The moment you climb up to Saint Jacques from Perpignan’s prosperous city center, you enter another land. Saint Jacques was built in the Middle Ages with a narrow grid of houses huddled protectively against one another.

Today, big chunks of plaster and paint are missing from the facades. Shutters are closed. Tall, narrow dwellings crowd together on steep streets plunging down toward the horizon, with the Pyrenees looming in the distance.

The demolitions have pockmarked the district with “useless” squares — Mathon’s word — but its social fabric is intact.

“Look, there was a school there,” said Josiana Caragol, pointing to a now-vacant square. “They’re cutting down all the houses. Is that right? If there is more demolition, they are going to kick us all out.”

The city’s argument for the demolitions is simple, and revolves around numbers. Sixty percent of the district’s population lives below the poverty line. Forty percent of the dwellings are vacant. Overall unemployment is 70 percent. Many children skip school. It is cheaper to rebuild than to renovate.

“You can’t just let people live in insalubrious conditions, just because it’s picturesque,” said Olivier Amiel, the official in charge of the Saint Jacques reconstruction, for which he said about $113 million had been set aside. “Given the urgency of the conditions there, we can’t wait for these aesthetic debates to take place,” he said.

“This program is a last chance for the community,” said Amiel, who added that more than 50 meetings had taken place with community representatives. “You can have preservation without freezing things,” he said, pointing to the dangerous collapse of several buildings.

Amiel said 588 dwellings are to demolished, “restructured,” or rehabilitated, and 312 new dwellings built. But Mathon says there has been no new construction where the houses have been demolished.

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Time for some trash talk (in French):

"Quebec’s ‘trash radio’ host fires up outrage, and big ratings" by Dan Bilefsky New York Times   August 18, 2018

QUEBEC CITY — He has claimed that police officers accused of raping indigenous women could not have done so because the officers were young and handsome and the women had “rotten teeth” and “sniff glue.”

He was accused of mocking a man whose teenage son had committed suicide. He praises President Trump’s unfiltered style of communication.

Jeff Fillion, 50, is among the most prominent and provocative talk radio hosts on Quebec airwaves, dominating what his critics call “radio poubelle,” or trash radio. His critics revile him. His fans adore him.

At a time when Trump’s tirades on Twitter and beyond are changing global political discourse, Fillion and his fellow shock jocks are drawing legions of listeners in this picturesque political capital, propagating a cocktail of anti-immigrant, anti-environment and anti-feminist views.

They are also testing the boundaries of free speech in a country that prides itself on liberalism but has seen a growing far right.

Free speech shouldn't have boundaries. That's an oxymoron and contradiction in terms, and yet that is what passes for pre$$ today.

The popularity of trash radio has also underscored how populism is bubbling beneath the surface in Canada — including in Ontario, where Doug Ford, a conservative likened to Trump, was recently elected premier of the province by railing against the establishment.

I suppose it is better than a TRA$H PAPER!

Looks like it is getting to be that time again.

The talk radio genre has proved particularly popular in Quebec City, where fringe anti-immigrant groups like La Meute, or Wolf Pack, stoke fears that immigrants, and Muslims in particular, are incompatible with Canadian values.

Being the seat of provincial power also makes the city an ideal target for talk radio hosts who delight in lampooning the political class.

Accused of being sexist, racist, and generally outrageous, Fillion, an admirer of Ford, counters that he’s none of those things but, rather, a libertarian who is not afraid to speak his mind.

Fascinated by American politics and popular culture after living in Miami as a young man, he said, he was inspired by the way Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern provoked and attracted attention on talk radio.

In person, however, he comes across as far more reserved than his acid-tongued radio presence.....

Oh, he's a phony, is he? 

A two-face like Omarosa (who surprisingly, didn't appear in the Globe today).

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A former neo-Nazi says talk radio was normalizing far-right ideas.

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"White House counsel gives Mueller coveted details" by Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman New York Times  August 18, 2018

WASHINGTON — The White House counsel, Don McGahn, has cooperated extensively in the special counsel investigation, sharing detailed accounts about the episodes at the heart of the inquiry into whether President Trump obstructed justice, according to a dozen current and former White House officials.

McGahn has provided some details that federal investigators would not have learned of otherwise, the officials said.

Looks like they just found another mole, and I'll bet Trump will be furious when he finds this out.

In at least three voluntary interviews with investigators that totaled 30 hours during the past nine months, McGahn described the president’s furor toward the Russia investigation and the ways in which he urged McGahn to respond to it.

He also gave the investigators examining whether Trump obstructed justice a clear view of the president’s most intimate moments with his lawyer.

Yeah? 

Is he supposed to do that?

Among them were Trump’s comments and actions during the firing of former FBI Director James Comey and Trump’s obsession with putting a loyalist in charge of the inquiry, including his repeated urging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to claim oversight of it.

McGahn was also centrally involved in Trump’s attempts to fire the special counsel, Robert Mueller, which investigators might not have discovered without him.

For a lawyer to share so much with investigators scrutinizing his client is unusual. Lawyers are rarely so open with investigators, not only because they are advocating on behalf of their clients but also because their conversations with clients are potentially shielded by attorney-client privilege, and in the case of presidents, executive privilege.

Yeah, I was wondering about that.

“A prosecutor would kill for that,” said Solomon Wisenberg, a deputy independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation, which did not have the same level of cooperation from President Bill Clinton’s lawyers. “Oh my God, it would have been phenomenally helpful to us.’’

McGahn’s cooperation began in part as a result of a decision by Trump’s first team of criminal lawyers to collaborate fully with Mueller. The president’s lawyers have explained that they believed their client had nothing to hide and that they could bring the investigation to an end quickly.

McGahn and his lawyer, William Burck, could not understand why Trump was so willing to allow McGahn to speak freely to the special counsel and feared Trump was setting up McGahn to take the blame for any possible illegal acts of obstruction, according to people close to him.

OMG, the lawyers were screwing Trump from the start and he didn't even know it!

So he and Burck devised their own strategy to do as much as possible to cooperate with Mueller to demonstrate that McGahn did nothing wrong. 

OMG, he's doing a Cohen and covering his own ass!

It is not clear that Trump appreciates the extent to which McGahn has cooperated with the special counsel. The president wrongly believed that McGahn would act as a personal lawyer would for clients and solely defend his interests to investigators, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking.

In fact, McGahn laid out how Trump tried to ensure control of the investigation, giving investigators a mix of information both potentially damaging and favorable to the president. McGahn cautioned to investigators that he never saw Trump go beyond his legal authorities, though the limits of executive power are murky.

This is all more crap then. It's a further attempt by the Deep State, Trump-hating pre$$ to frame him for obstruction -- and his lawyers are helping them do it!

This account is based on interviews with current and former White House officials and others who have spoken to both men, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation.

Through Burck, McGahn declined to comment. A spokesman for the special counsel’s office also declined to comment for this article.

Asked for comment, the White House sought to quell the sense of tension.

“The president and Don have a great relationship,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement. “He appreciates all the hard work he’s done, particularly his help and expertise with the judges, and the Supreme Court” nominees.

In a separate development in the Russia investigation, federal prosecutors said in a court filing Friday that a sentence of up to six months in prison would be appropriate for George Papadopoulos, a former adviser to Trump’s campaign and the first charged defendant to cooperate in Mueller’s inquiry.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about Russian contacts during the campaign, in which he served on a volunteer national security advisory panel and tried for months, unsuccessfully, to arrange a meeting between campaign aides and Russian officials.

He was to meet with whom?

He is due to be sentenced on Sept. 7, after defense lawyers file their own recommendation.

McGahn’s route from top White House lawyer to a central witness in the obstruction investigation of the president began around the time Mueller took over the inquiry into whether any Trump associates conspired with Russia’s interference in the election.

OMG, he was a MUELLER PLANT INSIDE the ADMINISTRATION!!! 

And with all this, they still have not come up with any evidence of collusion or interference!

How can you obstruct "justice" when the very act you are accused of never happened?

When Mueller was appointed in May 2017, the lawyers around the president realigned themselves. McGahn and other White House lawyers stopped dealing on a day-to-day basis with the inquiry, as they realized they were potential witnesses in an obstruction case.

In the following weeks, Trump assembled a personal legal team to defend him. He wanted to take on Mueller directly, attacking his credibility and impeding investigators.

But two of his newly hired lawyers, John Dowd and Ty Cobb, have said they took Trump at his word that he did nothing wrong and sold him on an open-book strategy.

McGahn, who had objected to Cobb’s hiring, was dubious, according to people he spoke to around that time. Allowing a special counsel to root around the West Wing could set a precedent harmful to future administrations.

Who cares about that, they need to get this guy out of office now.

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That to me is an absolutely huge story, and I bet it fades away as fast as Page, Strzok, and all the rest.

Oh, yeah, and speaking of interfering in a foreign election.

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"Trump tax breaks for the wealthy are paying dividends for Republicans" by Jim Tankersley New York Times   August 18, 2018

WASHINGTON — Republicans are struggling to make the $1.5 trillion Trump tax cuts a winning issue with voters in the midterm congressional elections, but the cuts are helping the party in another crucial way: unlocking tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations.

The New York Times tells us the Republicans are struggling to win voters over with the tax cuts. Doesn't mean it is true, and likely means it is not. I mean, consider the source. It's about pushing the narrative of a blue wave, even if they are wrong (like in 2016, remember?).

The money is coming from wealthy conservatives and corporate interests that benefited handsomely from the tax rollback.

Billionaires and corporations are pumping some of their windfall into the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC closely aligned with Speaker Paul D. Ryan. The group is flooding swing congressional districts with attacks on the Democratic candidates vying to wrest control of the House.

The fund’s donors include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has given $30 million and whose company, Las Vegas Sands, reported a nearly $700 million windfall from the tax law earlier this year; and Timothy Mellon, chairman and majority owner of Pan Am Systems, a privately held collection of companies that includes rail, aviation and marketing services, who has contributed $24 million.

Yeah, we never hear about how Israel interferes in AmeriKan politics.

They also include Valero Services, a Texas oil refining company that reported a $1.9 billion benefit from tax cuts in the first quarter and which has given $1.5 million; and a collection of other corporations, executives and financial fund managers.

Well over a quarter of the group’s donations have come through the American Action Network, a separate legal entity that focuses on issues and does not reveal donors, but that spent heavily to promote the tax cuts before and after President Trump signed them into law late last year.

Republicans have struggled to sell voters on the benefits of the tax cuts despite strong economic growth and the lowest unemployment numbers in 20 years.

If so, that probably means voters are being lied to.

If not, well, you know who the liars are, don't you?

Instead, candidates and the Congressional Leadership Fund have focused their campaign advertisements on more visceral issues such as crime and immigration.

Notice foreign policy and the wars are never an issue?

But party leaders say the passage of the law appeased wealthy donors, who had been frustrated by Republicans’ failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act and had threatened to sit out the 2018 campaign.

But!

Btw, it appears there is/was nothing affordable about the Affordable Care Act. 

Talk about failure!

Now, flush with big checks from a handful of deep-pocketed donors, the Congressional Leadership Fund is serving as the party’s best hope of a defense against an electoral defeat in November.

Ever notice how the pre$$ considers money much more important than votes? 

They are so focused on the campaign cash, as if that wins you elections. 

Let's face it. The pre$$ would prefer a democracy of one dollar, one vote. 

If not, they $ure act like it. Clinton had gobs more cash than Trump.

The fund’s executive director, Corry Bliss, who runs both that group and the American Action Network, said some of his donors did not favor all the provisions of the tax law, but all of them hailed its passage as the rich fruits of total Republican control of Washington.

Had the tax bill failed, Bliss said, “I think they would have been very disappointed and very deflated.”

How bli$$ful.

A super PAC like the Congressional Leadership Fund is allowed to raise unlimited donations, including from corporations and unions, but is not allowed to coordinate its efforts with candidates.

Democrats have their own super PAC dedicated to House campaigns, the House Majority PAC, which Friday started a harshly negative digital attack ad on the Republican House leadership and those who aspire to be in it. The group has raised more than $32 million this year.

The arms-length distance between such organizations and the politicians they back can be very short. In May, Politico reported that Ryan flew to Las Vegas with Bliss and Norm Coleman, a former senator and chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, to meet with Adelson. 

Do I even need say it?!!

That's why neither one of these parties is any good. They are both in the thrall of Zioni$t intere$ts.

After the speaker laid out his case for help defending the Republican House majority, he stepped out of the room while Coleman made the request and secured the $30 million.

“The American people know that the Republicans who control Washington sold them out with a disastrous tax giveaway to the rich and big business that the rest of the country is being forced to pay for,” said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the liberal campaign group American Bridge.

“The fact that those same corporations and wealthy individuals have turned around to bankroll Republican campaign efforts is further proof of what this travesty was all about,” he said. 

What is a travesty is continuing to read this agenda-pu$hing political slop in the paper.

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Maybe the Democrats will elect "Nuke 'Em Joe" to Congress, and we will get another Deep State Democrat in office.

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"Trump accuses social media firms of discrimination against conservatives" by Emily Cochrane New York Times  August 18, 2018

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. — President Trump said Saturday that conservative voices were being unfairly censored on social media, hinting that he might intervene if his allies’ accounts continued to be shut down.

“Social media is totally discriminating against Republican/conservative voices,” Trump wrote on Twitter, saying that “censorship is a very dangerous thing.”

“Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won’t let that happen,” he added.

I don't see what he can do about it, other than yank their licenses and then he is playing right into their hands. 

He's not wrong, though. I've noticed in preparing articles for post these last few months that Google is censoring my blog. I've gone on with several unique key words to try and find former posts to offer as links because Blogger's internal search only covers a the last year or two of posts, and I'm nowhere to be found. In addition, the hits on this blog have cratered. 

Social media companies, facing pressure from lawmakers and users over their role in the rise of misinformation and partisan division, have promised to step up their enforcement practices.

They have banned a number of pages and accounts in recent weeks for being involved in activity intended to disrupt the midterm elections, and almost all of the major platforms removed content from Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracy theorist, this month over what they called hateful and violent speech.

The far-right conspiracy theorist. 

As opposed to the conspiracy theorists that publish print papers. You know, the people that said U.S. ships were fired on by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin, the ones that told you babies were thrown out of incubators in Kuwait, the ones that -- and the NYT in particular with Michael Gordon and Judy Miller -- blared headlines about WMD in Iraq when the U.N. and everyone else knew he had been disarmed.

Related: 

"In his time, those divisions deepened, reaching a nadir in the invasion of Iraq. Over his objections, the campaign went ahead on the American and British premise that it was meant to disarm the Iraqi regime of chemical weapons, which it did not have or, at least, were never found."

What is more there to say. 

Now the NYT is trying to tell us that after 15 years of occupation, that there may still be hidden weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! 

Have they no shame or embarrassment whatsoever? 

They are as dead as Kofi Annan! 

After the content from Jones and his website, Infowars, was removed, he issued a plea to Trump to block the companies’ actions and “come out before the midterms and make the censorship the big issue.”

In the same video appeal, Jones urged Trump to “point out that the communist Chinese have penetrated and infiltrated” the US election system and are “way, way worse than the Russians.”

Jones just proved what a controlled-opposition agitator he truly is, which is why I removed the links to his sites a long time ago. You don't make this the issue in November, and he never, ever, points out the Zioni$t stranglehold on this country, and what I'm saying isn't new. 

He was outed as controlled opposition long ago, and now you wonder if he isn't a collaborative straw man and traitor helping to take us all down. Just playing his role.

Minutes after his tweets Saturday morning about social media, the president — who has long had an affinity for conspiracy theories — appeared to do just that.

They way they are throwing around the word conspiracy today, one has to think that they are really desperate and in trouble. That editorial flurry led by the Bo$ton Globe must have backfired.

“All of the fools that are so focused on looking only at Russia should start also looking in another direction, China,” Trump wrote. “But in the end, if we are smart, tough and well prepared, we will get along with everyone!”

This is getting us nowhere. I don't want a war with China any more than I want a war with Russia, Iran, or anyone for that matter.

Trump’s tweets Saturday, sent from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., were not the first time he has accused social media companies of discriminating against Republicans.

Last month, he joined with prominent conservatives who have seized on the heightened enforcement of guidelines and the concept of shadow banning on Twitter — making social media posts invisible to everyone except the posters themselves — as proof of biased attacks on their views. Twitter has said that it does not shadow ban users, although it has struggled to define what its policies against hate speech are.

It's not a concept, you bastards. It's a policy that has been enacted already!

In the case of Jones, it did not initially join the other major platforms in removing his content, and has since taken relatively minor steps against him.

Jones has had his posts and videos on his personal account and on Infowars severely restricted or removed by Apple, Facebook, Google and Spotify. Twitter, which initially said Jones and Infowars had not violated its policies, later suspended the two accounts for a week for violating rules against inciting violence.

In his tweets Saturday, Trump urged social media companies to “let everybody participate, good and bad,” saying that while networks like CNN and MSNBC might be “fake news,” he does not “ask that their sick behavior be removed.”

That's the difference between them and us. I'm for all speech. It's up to the consumer to discern fact from fiction. They are free to print their slop, just as I am free to not buy or read it.

Yet Trump has waged relentless attacks on news coverage that he does not like, and has long expressed hostility toward traditional press freedoms.

And yet they are still not listening.

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

"As states rush to curb prescription costs, drug companies fight back" by Robert Pear New York Times   August 18, 2018

WASHINGTON — States around the country are clamping down on pharmaceutical companies, forcing them to disclose and justify price increases, but the drug manufacturers are fighting back, challenging the state laws as a violation of their constitutional rights.

Unflipping real!

That reminds me, too. No mention of asshole Brennan anywhere today. 

Another backfire, 'eh?

So now it is a CON$TUTUTIONAL RIGHT to PRICE GOUGE?

The pharmaceuticals might want to check Article I, Section 8, Clause 3. Turns out they have the right to regulate commerce.

Even more states are, for the first time, trying to regulate middlemen who play a crucial role by managing drug benefits for employers and insurers, while taking payments from drug companies in return for giving preferential treatment to their drugs.

Not only that, states are suing over the opioid epidemic, and Trump wants to join them.

The bipartisan efforts by states come as President Trump and his administration put pressure on drug companies to freeze prices and reduce out-of-pocket costs for consumers struggling to pay for drugs that often cost thousands of dollars a month.

Twenty-four states have passed 37 bills this year to curb rising prescription drug costs, according to Trish Riley, the executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy, a nonpartisan forum of policy makers, and several state legislatures are still in session.

The burst of state activity on drug costs recalls the way states acted on their own to pass laws to expand health insurance coverage in the years before Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

“In the absence of federal action, states are taking the lead in combating high drug prices,” said state Representative Sean Scanlon of Connecticut, a Democrat.

A bill passed unanimously this year by the Connecticut General Assembly illustrates a popular tactic: States are shining a spotlight on drug price increases as a first step toward controlling costs.....

I decided to skip the rest for the obvious reason (obsolescence), and Jerry Brown says “Californians have a right to know why their medication costs are out of control, especially when pharmaceutical profits are soaring.” 

So how goes the fight against the fires anyway?

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Better be careful standing up to the drug companies. Bad things seem to happen to people that do, and at the very least the lobbying loot and campaign contributions will dry up.

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

"Sex abuse report lists beloved priests, and Pennsylvania churches reel" by Elizabeth Dias New York Times   August 18, 2018

PITTSBURGH — Everything felt normal until the news alert popped up on Cindy Depretis’ cellphone Tuesday afternoon.

It was a link to a list of the hundreds of Catholic priests in Pennsylvania accused of abusing children in a bombshell grand jury report. She scrolled to the names of priests near Pittsburgh.

“I got to the C’s,” she recalled tearfully as she sat in her office at Holy Angels Parish. Friends started to text her. “Is that our Father Crowley?” She could only force out one word: yes.

The Rev. John David Crowley for decades had been the hero of Holy Angels, a white clapboard church in southeast Pittsburgh, tucked below the bypass, by the old narrow-gauge railroad running along the creek.

He was the pastor there for nearly 34 years, known as one of the most popular priests in the region. Then, in 2003, he abruptly retired.

Last week, the church learned why: Crowley had been accused of sexual abuse, including of a minor, and the claim was found to be credible and substantiated.

The bishop of Pittsburgh at the time, Donald Wuerl, now cardinal archbishop of Washington, gave Crowley the choice to voluntarily retire and quit active ministry, or face removal.

Crowley chose retirement. The families of Holy Angels were kept in the dark. They even protested his departure on his way out.

Across the country last week, Catholics reeled from the news that Pennsylvania priests had abused more than 1,000 children over decades, and that bishops largely hid their crimes from the public.

It was front page news, and of course, proves that conspiracies can be kept secret despite the protestations and denigrations from the pre$$ and e$tabli$hment.

In the Pittsburgh diocese, which had almost a third of the state’s accused priests, Catholics in nearly every parish tried to figure out if the pastors they knew had ever been accused, or had known, of allegations they kept secret.

Some of the names on the list were no surprise, as some priests had faced public criminal proceedings and were removed from ministry. Other priests had been the subject of rumors. But many, like Crowley, had died before their actions were publicly revealed.

As national anger has boiled over, and as the Vatican insisted to victims that Pope Francis was on their side and dioceses rolled out crisis communications playbooks, the families of Holy Angels have grappled with what to do.

When asked about Crowley outside the church this past week, parishioner after parishioner struggled to respond.

A man leaned on the railing of the church steps and cried as he remembered how Crowley had baptized his children. Women confided that they had been tossing and turning every night, unable to sleep. After long silences, many insisted the allegations just had to be false.

The Rev. Robert J. Ahlin, the current pastor, sat motionless in his suspenders at the parish house the day after the report was released. When he arrived to take over after Crowley left, he remembered getting some calls from parishioners wary of the official line that he had retired because of his age and health.

“You always hear rumors,” Ahlin, 74, said. “No one at the time said, ‘Father did so-and-so, he was removed.’ Whether they had suspicions or not, I don’t know.”

A few minutes later, Ahlin decided to read the grand jury’s findings for the first time. He silently pulled up Page 631 of the massive report, where Crowley’s case was recorded: A mother and her twin adult daughters, one of whom was 16 at the time of victimization, brought a complaint against Crowley in 1992 and again in late 2001.

Later, an adult man reported that Crowley had sexually abused him when he was 11 to 12 years old.

In the summer of 1992, a mother and her adult twin daughters came forward and said Crowley abused them, one of whom was 16 at the time, according to the report. The Pittsburgh diocese told The New York Times the abuse occurred in 1976.

Three months later, Crowley was sent for a mental health evaluation at St. Michael’s Community. Evaluators “opined that Crowley was being truthful in his denials” and recommended that he have “outpatient therapeutic support to address insecurities, low self-esteem and obsessive-compulsive tendencies,” the report said.

He returned to his parish.

Two years later, the church surprised him with a large outdoor party under a tent to celebrate his 40th year as a priest.

In 2001, the mother and her daughters again brought their complaint to the diocese.

It wasn’t until the next year, amid the outcry over the Boston Catholic sex abuse scandal and coverup, that the diocese referred the allegation to the Allegheny County district attorney, and to the church’s review board. By then, the statute of limitations had long expired.

“The Independent Review Board found the allegation credible and recommended that Father Crowley either be allowed to retire without faculties or, if he refused, that a canonical trial be commenced,” the Pittsburgh diocese said in a statement to The Times.

Wuerl allowed Crowley to tell his parish that he was voluntarily accepting an early retirement because he was two years shy of 75, the age when priests voluntarily offer to resign, according to the grand jury report.

“This was permitted, according to Wuerl, to ‘protect his [Crowley’s] reputation in the widespread community,’ ” it states.

--more--"

Related:

"More than 1,000 sign letter asking US Catholic bishops to resign" by Laura Crimaldi and Cristela Guerra Globe Staff  August 18, 2018

As Catholics throughout Greater Boston heard Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley’s message at weekend Masses assailing the church for “clerical sins and clerical failures” that caused the clergy sex abuse crisis, a letter asking all US Catholic bishops to resign over the scandal topped 1,000 signatures.

The letter, published Friday on the website Daily Theology, says the crimes documented in a recently released Pennsylvania grand jury report about child sex abuse by more than 300 priests “evince a horror beyond expression.” The letter requests the bishops resign collectively as a “public act of repentance and lamentation.”

“While many perpetrators have been held accountable in one way or another for their crimes, we have yet to establish clear and transparent systems of accountability and consequence for Church leadership whose failures have allowed these crimes to occur,” O’Malley said in the statement. “The crisis we face is the product of clerical sins and clerical failures.”

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Also see: Cardinal O’Malley cancels Ireland trip to focus on St. John’s Seminary investigation 

Globe has hushed it up ever since!!!!

A new law helps banks flag fraud against seniors

By guess who, and if I wanted to read the New York Times, Globe, I would have bought a New York Times.