A Bitter Bo$ton Globe

That is what comes once the anger washes away:

"Susan Collins goes all in for Kavanaugh — and for Trump" October 05, 2018

In voting yes, Senator Susan Collins of Maine and her fellow Senate Republicans are on the brink of dealing a far-reaching setback to the Supreme Court’s standing in American life. The rush to install Kavanaugh is also a depressing inflection point in the further degradation of our national political institutions. Barring some last-minute reversal, Kavanaugh will be confirmed, and the Supreme Court will never be the same.

Collins seems to think that by voting for Kavanaugh, she is defending the middle, sticking up for fairness and due process, and protecting the institution of the Supreme Court, but she somehow managed to ignore all the concerns about character, integrity, and partisanship that were raised by his own testimony last week.

Unique to recent Supreme Court nominees, Kavanaugh has a long history of dishonesty, much of it politically tinged — baggage he would bring to the court if confirmed and that would cast a permanent cloud over his jurisprudence. Then there’s the partisanship. In responding to Ford’s sexual assault allegations, Kavanaugh launched a blistering, highly partisan tirade that made a mockery of judicial norms. 

The level of tone-deaf hypocrisy from these people is astounding.

At least they didn't call him a liar like last week (the Globe's demonizing of an innocent man calls into question their mental-health. They are starting to talk to themselves).

A single Republican senator seemed to understand that: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who delivered remarks on the Senate floor that laid out the stakes as she explained why she is voting no. She called Kavanaugh a “good man” but said “he’s not the right man for the court at this time.”

The kind of polarization that produces Donald Trump, and produced Kavanaugh’s tantrum last week, is nothing new, but senators from both parties have professed concern about the country’s drift into polarization and partisanship. If they mean it, the time to make a stand and stop its spread is now, with Saturday’s vote.

Still holding out hope, and the Globe will claim the vote is fixed and dismiss it.

To confirm Kavanaugh now, despite strong evidence of his unfitness and partisanship, will only prolong the “great disunity” Collins claims to abhor.

The lasting image will be Collins flanked by two female Republican Senators — Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi — providing cover for their male colleagues. In other words, the women gave permission to doubt Ford.....

Looks like a cat fight, and have at it.

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The Globe dug a deep scratch on the front page:

"Moderates pave way for Kavanaugh’s confirmation" by Jess Bidgood Globe Staff  October 06, 2018

WASHINGTON — The senators’ announcements capped another day of extraordinary drama in the Senate, as undecided lawmakers came forward with their decisions. On Friday morning, Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican, said he was likely to vote to support Kavanaugh on Saturday unless something changed. Both Senator Susan Collins, the crucial moderate Republican from Maine, and Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat, supported Brett Kavanaugh in a morning procedural vote but did not immediately reveal how they would ultimately decide. Of the swing votes, only Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, voted against even advancing the nomination, saying she made the decision to do so as she walked onto he floor.

“I believe we’re dealing with issues right now that are bigger than the nominee and how we ensure fairness and how our legislative and judicial branch can continue to be respected,” Murkowski said, calling it “the most difficult evaluation of a decision that I have ever had to make.”

Kavanaugh’s expected confirmation means a second conservative justice will have been seated by Trump, providing the president with a long-lasting victory. At 53, Kavanaugh could be on the high court for decades to come.

When President Trump nominated Kavanaugh earlier this summer, the battle lines were already drawn, with Republicans praising his credentials — an education at Yale and a 12-year stint on the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Democrats like Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, vowed to oppose the nomination from the outset, and framed it as a battle over issues like health care, voting rights and abortion.

Opposing is one thing; handling it the way you guys did is something else entirely.

Still, with Republicans holding a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate — and numerous Democrats up for reelection in states won by Trump, and thus more likely to support his nominee as a matter of political expedience — Kavanaugh’s nomination seemed likely to succeed, but everything changed in mid-September.

That was when the crucifixion and placing of the crown of thorns began, bringing a frown as we waited in silence for the death of the nomination. The Globe only mentions Ford and Ramirez as accusers, but does emphasize the "hit back by Kavanaugh with angrily forceful and sometimes tearful testimony of his own." 

So what is that supposed to do, imply that he beats his wife?

Even as some of Kavanaugh’s classmates said he drank far more than he admitted to during his sworn testimony, Trump and his Republican allies stuck by him. At a campaign event in Mississippi earlier this week, Trump appeared to make fun of the accuser, college professor Christine Blasey Ford.

Related: Trump campaigns in Minnesota as senators mull Kavanaugh fate

They said he mocked her.

Trump, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, and the all-male Republican majority of the Judiciary Committee had endured mounting criticism for their handling of the Ford allegations. By Friday, though, all eyes were on Collins — a moderate, but more important for the party’s imagery, a woman.

Collins had spent hours on Thursday parsing the details of the FBI’s background check into Kavanaugh, which had been reopened at Flake’s request. On Friday, sitting at a desk on the Senate floor, Collins shuffled her papers and took two sips of water before she rose to speak.

McConnell turned his chair all the way around so he could watch her.

Collins compared the entire confirmation process to a “gutter-level political campaign.” She said she did not believe Kavanaugh would overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that protected the right to abortion, nor that she thought he believed the president to be immune from prosecution, as Democrats have complained, and then she poked holes in Ford’s account of the sexual assault, saying no witness had corroborated her claim, and questioning why no one had come forward to say they drove her home from the party where it was alleged to have happened.

As she wrapped up her 45-minute speech, Collins implored Kavanaugh to “lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court,” but the battle over Kavanaugh may only be beginning: Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, told The New York Times his party will investigate the allegations against Kavanaugh if Democrats retake the chamber in November.....

Just wondering when Democrats will give us a reason to vote for them. 

It's all complaining and rabbit-hole investigations with them, and after bringing impeachment charges they plan to deport him.

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[flip to below fold]

"Nation’s divisions reflected, deepened by fight for court" by Alexander Burns New York Times  October 06, 2018

To the right and left alike, Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination appears less like a final spasm of division — a sobering trauma, followed by calm resolution — than an event that deepens the national mood of turbulence. The country is gripped by a climate of division and distrust rivaled by few other moments in the recent past.

Straight from the instigator's mouth.

This time, historic grievances around race and gender are coming to a boil under the eye of a president who is dismissive of the concept of national unity, with a political base that celebrates the combative way in which he has upended Washington. Trump campaigned as a rough-speaking warrior against the political establishment and its consensus economic policies, and his supporters have mainly applauded him for governing the same way.

I read that, and I thought what do you think his America-first, Make American Great Again program is, Times? 

I mean, it is one thing to disagree with him, but to toss out this political hatchet job distortion and call it analysis is beyond the pale. 

Beyond government, the country’s collective institutions — including the news media, the clergy, and even professional sports and the entertainment industry — are so weakened and distrusted that no obvious balm appears within reach. The Supreme Court, long a contested body, may now be viewed emphatically by one side as an institution under shadow.

Awwww, go cry in your beer, and the court will be just fine once this all blows over.

Rather than calls for comity from political leaders like Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a feeling of apprehension has pervaded the highest levels of American politics.

Joanne B. Freeman, a professor of American history at Yale University, said that since the nation’s founding there had only been “a handful of other times that have been this ugly,” including the run-up to the Civil War.

“There are moments in American history where we get such extreme polarization that the government no longer functions the way it’s supposed to function,” Freeman said: “It’s a virtually systemic abandonment of norms, to a degree that I find alarming.”

You can thank your Democratic and ma$$ media friends for that!

The great trend in American politics has been not toward muting political disagreements but rather toward confronting them — sometimes detonating them at deafening volume over social media.

Since when?

Trump, in turn, became president in large part by mastering the existing divisions at the heart of the country’s culture, exploiting fissures around identity, ethnicity, sex, religion, and class to forge a ferociously loyal coalition that represents a minority of the country but votes with disproportionate power, but those divisions have only grown since 2016, and Trump has continued to embrace and aggravate them, from his equivocal response to a white-supremacist gathering in Charlottesville, Va., to his mockery this week of the #MeToo movement and Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who says Kavanaugh attempted to rape her as a teenager. At a rally in Mississippi on Tuesday, the president flouted the pretense that support for the judge could coexist with authentic concern for victims of sexual assault.

Look at the New York Times blame him for what looks like the Democratic and pre$$ strategy of identity politics! 

I suppose they have to tell themselves this. The painful reality for them is too much.

Trump went far beyond questioning Ford’s account or defending Kavanaugh, instead ridiculing her and stoking the resentments between genders. He warned voters in Mississippi that lying women could come forward to falsely accuse their loved ones of sexual misconduct: “Think of your son,” he urged them. “Think of your husband.”

Even Republicans who back Trump’s agenda have expressed a kind of impotent unease — even agony — over his role as a proud divider.

Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a philosophical conservative who supports Kavanaugh, gave an emotional speech on the Senate floor addressing the #MeToo movement and acknowledging: “We all know that the president cannot lead us through this time,” and it was in ominous terms that Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, explained her decision to oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination.

So what is he arguing for, impeachment?

“I believe we’re dealing with issues right now that are bigger than the nominee and how we ensure fairness and how our legislative and judicial branch can continue to be respected,” she said, adding: “We’re at a place where we need to begin thinking about the credibility and integrity of our institutions.”

What if the credibility and integrity have already been lost, and behavior showing that there is no remorse? Forget about getting it back.

If the Supreme Court faces new questions about its integrity, with Kavanaugh as the cornerstone of a conservative majority, it would only worsen the court’s steady decline in public estimation. A Gallup survey measuring perceptions of major institutions found the court afflicted by the same collapse in trust afflicting the presidency, Congress, the media, banks, schools, and churches. At the start of the millennium, half the country said it had substantial confidence in the Supreme Court; this year, that fraction was 37 percent.

I'll tell you what. Their rulings will still be the law of the land, even if you don't like them.

In Gallup’s 2018 survey, the only government institutions earning powerful support from the public were the military and the police, and those institutions, too, have fallen prey to partisanship and cultural conflict: Trump has thundered against football players who kneel during the national anthem to protest police violence, accusing them of disrespecting the flag and the armed forces. In a sign of Trump’s passionate bond with his overwhelmingly white political base, nine in 10 of his supporters said they disapproved of athletes’ protests, according to New York Times polling. About three-fifths of Americans who don’t support Trump view the protests favorably. 

Sigh. 

Who is dividing now?

Related: White Police Officer Is Guilty of 2nd-Degree Murder in Death of Laquan McDonald

The polls must be why the Globe covered it up.

Officer killed, 6 other officers wounded in South Carolina

Print Globe was quiet about that, too. Must be because the shooter was affluent and didn't fit the ma$$ media profile.

The president’s supporters also, with near unanimity, disbelieve Ford’s account of being assaulted by Kavanaugh in the 1980s. Among voters who disapprove of Trump, just 6 percent disbelieve the allegations. 

That is a strange way to put that last sentence, what with the double negative and all. It's like courtspeak. 

So what is the Times trying to hide and couch?

There is little obvious appetite on the left or right for rebuilding some semblance of bipartisanship in Washington, or in lowering the temperature of political debate. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, drew eye-rolling reactions in both parties for suggesting this week that the Senate could return the standard for ending debate on a Supreme Court nomination to 60 votes — a threshold abolished last year by Republicans, after Democrats ended it for lower-court nominations under former president Barack Obama.

Related: Judge tosses fishermen’s suit against Obama ocean monument

Trump backed Obama on that?

For her part on Friday, as she announced her support for Kavanaugh, Senator Susan Collins of Maine lamented the country’s “great disunity” and an impulse, among different tribes of Americans, toward “extreme ill will toward those who disagree with them.”

“One can only hope that the Kavanaugh nomination is where the process has finally hit rock bottom,” Collins said.....

Every time I think that, Democrats drop lower.

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Related:

"Collins’s decision to back Kavanaugh, detailed in her afternoon address, sent immediate reverberations through her home state, where the debate around the nominee had consumed the attention of Mainers of all political stripes....."

She couldn’t win when there is a shark named Brett Kavanaugh in the water.

More NYT anal-ysis:

"After lots of bluster, Trump has a week to brag about" by Peter Baker New York Times   October 06, 2018

WASHINGTON — He promised so much success that everyone would be tired of all the winning, but after 20 months that proved more arduous than President Trump once imagined, this may be the best week of his presidency so far.

I think it was the Korean summit, but okay.

The all-but-assured confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will cap a week that also saw the president seal an ambitious and elusive new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, one of his top campaign promises, and the latest jobs report out on Friday put unemployment at its lowest since 1969.

See: US unemployment at 3.7 percent, a 49-year low

None of this necessarily changes the fundamentals of an often-chaotic presidency that has defied norms and struggled with scandal, but it gives Trump a fresh narrative to take on the campaign trail just a month before critical midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. With the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, turning quiet during campaign season, Trump has an opportunity to redirect the conversation onto more favorable territory.

“From his standpoint, it’s been a good week after many bad ones,” said David Axelrod, who was a senior adviser to former president Barack Obama. “For a self-proclaimed perpetual ‘winner,’ he will have had some big wins to tout. The jobs figure, other than wages, and the after-NAFTA agreement are positive.”

Still, in Trump’s scorched-earth presidency, even victories come at a cost. The relationship with Canada was deeply scarred by his brutal negotiating tactics, while America has been ripped apart by the battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination, fraught as it was with gender politics that Trump seemed eager to encourage and anger on the left and the right.

More on the left because they are losing.

Until recent days, he proved more effective at blowing up agreements than reaching new ones. He pulled out of an Asian-Pacific trade pact, a global accord on climate change, and a nuclear deal with Iran, but he has made no progress in negotiating replacements, as he suggested he would. His most significant legislative achievement was last year’s tax-cutting package, which was forged in large part by Republican congressional leaders.

The past couple weeks, however, saw Trump seal a revised trade agreement with South Korea and replace the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, which not long ago seemed as if it might be beyond his reach. The continuing fall in unemployment to 3.7 percent was built on the recovery he inherited from Obama — something he refuses to acknowledge — but the booming economy has become one of his strongest political assets, and with Kavanaugh nearing confirmation Saturday, he showed he could push through an important nomination that many predicted was likely to fail.

That first highlighted statement makes you laugh, and will the second be enough to hold the House (should pick up a few Senate seats now).

“It’s a wonderful week. We’re thrilled,” Kellyanne Conway, his counselor, said in an interview. “It shows that his perseverance and his tenacity and his adherence to campaign promises and principles are paying dividends.”

You do believe her, right?

Whether the string of success for Trump will translate into support on the campaign trail could be the defining test of the next few weeks. Trump’s own approval ratings remain mired at just over 40 percent in most polls, a historically low level for a president that usually signals losses for his party this close to an election.

That's what skewed polls will do to you.

“Independents especially are tired of the chaos and the uncertainty,” said Patti Solis Doyle, who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in 2008. “Yes, the economy is good; yes, Trump got two conservative judges on the court; and, yes, he is doing what he promised on the campaign trail” in terms of trade, tax cuts, and tougher immigration enforcement. “But at what cost?” she asked. “Tariff wars, separating children from their mothers, huge deficit. I can go on and on.”

Yeah, I'll bet she could. 

What a shame that he ran a populist campaign that included promises to cut taxes, curb immigration, and raise spending on health and education, and won on the issues that are key in political races this November.

One truism of the Trump presidency has been how quickly the story line changes from week to week, or day to day. New tales of palace intrigue or flare-ups of international tension or revelations stemming from various investigations could easily swamp a message of progress by the Nov. 6 election.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to what next week's ma$$ media theme is going to be and glad it will jot be this.

As Axelrod said, it is not clear “how any of this will factor in a month from now, which is an eternity in the Age of Trump.”

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Meanwhile, just down the road:

"Hundreds march through Boston to protest Kavanaugh confirmation" by Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff  October 06, 2018

About 300 demonstrators gathered outside the Massachusetts State House on Friday night to protest the anticipated confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the wake of allegations of sexual assault and his angry denials at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

Screaming chants like “Down with Kavanaugh, you are not above the law,” the protesters marched from Beacon Hill through the city around 8 p.m., gathering in front of the Edward W. Brooke courthouse.

Sexual assault survivors addressed the crowd, saying the confirmation would send the wrong message to victims of sexual violence.

“I am sad. I am frustrated,” Tori Bilcik of Believe Survivors Boston told the crowd. “But most of all I am furious.”

Hell hath no fury.

Other women expressed frustration and “rage exhaustion” and questioned whether their voices would be heard – but said they felt they had to keep showing up to demonstrate.

“This whole process has just made me very angry, and like most women, I’ve had terrible experiences with sexual harassment, “ said Claire Sadar, 35, of Brighton, who held a sign showing a picture of US Senator Susan Collins and the words, “The Patriarchy Persists because women are complicit.”

“This is something that’s just personally offensive to see that even other women will be dismissive of people’s claims,” she added. It’s important to show up and continue to try to shame people into doing the right thing. We’ve seen that that can sometimes work. You can never stop trying cause that’s what they want you to do — to give up.”

That's why my last breath will likely be drawn behind this keyboard.

Collins, the Maine Republican moderate whose Friday afternoon speech in support of Kavanaugh’s confirmation paved the way for an anticipated majority vote in the Senate on Saturday, was a particular target of scorn among the crowd. Bilcik also blasted her through a bullhorn, criticizing Collins’s claim that she believed the allegations of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford. “To say she believed Dr. Ford is a survivor but that Kavanaugh is not the perpetrator is an insult to survivors everywhere,” Bilcik said.

The protest was endorsed by groups including the Boston Socialist Alternative, Boston Democratic Socialists of America, Indivisible Somerville, and the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts.

Not an election winner. Never has been here.

It attracted many men, including Evan Foss, 34, of Newton, who was alone since his fiancée had to work late and who described himself as “fed up.” Foss said he was outraged that the Senate barely slowed down the confirmation process for a brief investigation into the allegations, and he wondered why Republicans remained so wedded to their pick.

As the marchers passed by Haymarket, they drew applause from several young women who said they would have joined the event had they heard about it sooner. “I think it’s a watershed moment right now in our country,” said one of them, Melissa Mecchi, 25, of Brighton.....

Shops had to close because of the ruckus.

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Imagine if “all they’re doing is continuing to delay. Someone complains about an issue, and no sooner do we fix it than somebody else complains. The sadness of it is that everything they’re complaining about has been proven false.” 

Now they are saying Kavanaugh is a wife beater, child rapist, and slasher of tires.

Well, it looks like the fat lady is getting ready to sing.

The Republicans nursed his nomination back to health after it was all but dead and buried and he was ready to be strung up (they blocked that). Democrats thought he would take a dive after they found out he had acne in high school and had failed to return a library book:

"You no longer have to shell out nearly $2,000 to get a look at the book by the friend of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh — the one about teenage drinking and private school culture. And you have the Boston Public Library to thank. The library uploaded a copy of Mark Judge’s “Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk,” to the Internet Archive this week, making a free digital version available for people to check out. “They own it — they are a library — they bought the book,” said Mark Graham, director of The Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive. “And they chose to make a digital copy available for lending.” The book, which was published in hard copy in 1997 — and has been hard to track down — was uploaded Tuesday. Lisa Pollack, spokeswoman for the library, said in a statement that the BPL is running a pilot program with the Internet Archive, “where an out-of-print book in our collection may be lent digitally, with a standard loan period, one item-loan at a time, as long as the physical copy is not also being lent.’’

Democrats suggest past FBI checks on Kavanaugh include evidence of inappropriate behavior

They are now accusing him of necrophelia and that he would would gut Roe v. Wade (how he knows that, I do not know. Yes, Kavanaugh is now likely to after the way he has been treated by that side; however, it simply means Roberts is now the Kennedy of the court). 

A preview of future decisions?

Missouri down to 1 abortion clinic amid legal battle
Judge’s ruling means Missouri clinic can’t resume abortions

You will have to go to Nebraska.

Houston City Council short circuits proposed robot brothel
Robot pioneer Rethink shuts down

The things were into sado-masochism. 

Ohio’s largest Catholic diocese to out abusive priests
Pope opens youth meeting as sex abuse survivors stage sit-in

Francis choked up during his homily when he welcomed two Chinese bishops because there are no sex abuse allegations coming out of that area.

Mom fills son’s sippy cup with alcohol, gets drunk

It was to put her at ease because she didn't pay her taxes, but when it came time she gladly donated her liver to the boy.

Tapping into a golden political tool

At least the memory losses and blackouts that are a dark side of drinking won’t hurt the beverage’s image (no smoking, though). I mean, I ‘‘think it is juvenile and sophomoric and narcissistic, but I don’t think it has particular relevance to the subject.’’ 

Before the partying, Kavanaugh was a little-known Republican who is a supporter of President Trump, a staunch gun rights advocate, and a social conservative. Now they are saying he is a pro-gun judicial extremist who is going to want to ban vaccinations.

FDA expands use of cervical cancer vaccine up to age 45

Just another face in the crowd, right?

"The appearance of a Facebook executive behind Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation hearings has created some rifts at the company. Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president for global public policy, is a friend of Kavanaugh and worked with him during the George W. Bush administration. Kaplan was seated in a section reserved for Kavanaugh’s friends and family during the hearing. Kaplan wrote Facebook staff in a memo last week that he is aware that this is a ‘‘deeply painful’’ moment, according to several media outlets. The internal turmoil comes at a difficult time for Facebook. Last Friday, the company disclosed a massive hack it found affecting as many as 50 million users. And this week, child advocacy groups filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission saying its kid-focused messaging app violates federal rules against collecting data on kids under 13 without parental permission....."

The hack and this apparent enabling of pedophilia was kept quiet all week.

#MeToo hasn’t brought the change we need

It will have an effect on the governor’s race.

Nobel Peace Prize honors fight against sexual violence

Little bit ironic, don't you think?

Good thing there is no death penalty in Sweden.

Here is where the tide turned:

"Republicans shift their Kavanaugh strategy to attacks on Ford" by Jess Bidgood Globe Staff  October 04, 2018

WASHINGTON — There was a time when Republican senators were so eager to handle an accusation of sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh delicately, they hired a female prosecutor to question the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, on their behalf. Even President Trump, who almost never shies away from a fight, tempered his comments about Ford.

That was last week.

By Wednesday, it had become clear that Trump and his Republican allies had opened a new and risky front in their quest to see Kavanaugh confirmed to the nation’s highest court: to aggressively dispute Ford’s credibility over her allegations that Kavanaugh drunkenly groped her and tried to remove her clothing in high school.

“She’s been treated like a Faberge egg by all of us, beginning with me and the president,” said Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to Trump, on Wednesday morning.

Trump’s comments Tuesday risked further angering women as Republicans barrel toward a confirmation vote as early as this week.

The more aggressive GOP strategy has set up a major collision along the lines of both gender and party. As Republicans renew their scrutiny of Ford and stoke the anger of white Republican men by appealing to their fears of being falsely accused, Democrats and women activists in Washington and beyond are doubling down on efforts to tell personal stories of assault and abuse, and force lawmakers to listen to them.

Both parties do that!

“For too long, far too long, survivors of sexual assault have been afraid to come forward because they thought that powerful men would shout them down and destroy their character,” said Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, on Wednesday. “The president of the United States — the most powerful man there is — confirmed those fears for millions of women in the most despicable way possible.”

On Twitter, Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, urged people to “stop personal attacks & destruction” of both Ford and Kavanaugh, but he seized on a sworn statement sent to the committee by a former boyfriend of Ford’s that claimed Ford once helped prepare a friend for a polygraph exam.

Despite the lies, here credibility is beyond question because, well, you gotta believe the woman.

During her testimony in front of the Judiciary Committee last week, Ford said she had never advised anyone on how to take a polygraph. Her lawyers had given the committee an analysis of a polygraph she took in regard to the allegations, which indicated no deception.

Then she lied under oath, and her test meant nothing. It was her lawyer's picking out an "expert" like a personal injury lawyer sends you to his doctor.

“This statement raises specific concerns about the reliability of her polygraph examination results,” Grassley wrote in a letter to Ford’s legal team. Ford’s former friend has denied Ford helped her.

He said, she said?

Ford’s lawyers responded that she would provide any requested documents to the FBI when she is interviewed for their reopened background check into Kavanaugh — but no interview had been scheduled.

They both gave sworn testimony, so WTF?

The Associated Press reported that a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in the days after Ford and Kavanaugh testified showed that public opinion had started to tilt against Kavanaugh, with 48 percent of voters opposed to his confirmation and 42 percent in favor. Women were far more likely than men to oppose Kavanaugh, 55 percent to 40 percent.

So the Globe says.

The mood on Capitol Hill was tense as demonstrators roamed the Capitol, trying to get Republican lawmakers like Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska and John Kennedy of Louisiana to listen to their stories of abuse.

WTF?!!!!

That is a security threat, and yet they are allowed to roam the halls of the Capitol? 

More survivors of sexual abuse were expected to speak on Thursday in front of the Capitol.

“It is easy for them to dismiss one of us, but when we inundate them with the reality that we are facing, it is impossible for them to ignore us,” said Tae Phoenix, 35, a singer-songwriter from Seattle who was lingering in the basement of a Senate office building, hoping to find a Republican senator whom she could tell about the sexual violations she said she experienced at the ages of 3 and 19.

Why are they responsible for that, and why is Kavanaugh now the receptacle of all sexual transgressions by all men?

In recent days, survivors of sexual assault and abuse have emerged as a vocal group of activists. Two women, Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher, encountered Flake as he entered an elevator last Friday, hours before he asked for a last-minute investigation into the claims against Kavanaugh.

They have been outed as paid activists from the sorority of $oro$, sorry.

Women elsewhere have adopted that tactic this week, inside and outside the Capitol. On Monday, a group of activists occupied a campaign office for Democratic Senator Joe Manchin in Charleston, W.Va., and refused to leave until he heard their stories and committed to vote no on Kavanaugh.

You say whatever you gotta say to get 'em off your back.

The women held a conference call with Manchin around 11 p.m., and nine were arrested shortly before 1 a.m. on Tuesday.

“I know him, and I told him that I was a survivor,” Karan Ireland, a Democratic city councilor in Charleston, who was among those arrested, said in an interview with the Globe. “These stories, they’ve been hidden under wraps for years, decades, and now we’re going to make the space and the time to share them and you’re going to listen.”

In a statement released after the protests, Manchin said, “No man can understand the trauma that women experience from a sexual assault.” He has not indicated how he will vote.

I do agree with that.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said in a Senate floor speech that the protesters would not blunt Republicans’ determination to vote on Kavanaugh.

“I don’t care how many members they chase, how many people they harass here in the halls,’’ McConnell said. “We will not be intimidated by these people.’’

Thank God we have Mitch and not Schumer.

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Here is another look at the FBI report:

"Senators struggle to digest FBI’s Kavanaugh report; test vote set" by Jess Bidgood Globe Staff  October 05, 2018

WASHINGTON — By the end of the day, supporters of Judge Brett Kavanaugh had reason to hope he might be narrowly confirmed. A pair of Republicans whose votes are considered crucial emerged and suggested they were satisfied with what they had seen — though still without committing to support the embattled nominee.

Republicans said they were determined to push through to a vote. A procedural vote was scheduled for late Friday morning, and a final confirmation vote could come as early as Saturday. If just Flake and Collins support Kavanaugh, Vice President Mike Pence could break a 50-50 tie and the nominee would win his seat on the Supreme Court.

Eighty-seven days after Kavanaugh was first nominated, his fate hinged on this: stacks of paper in a windowless room in the belly of the Capitol, including 46 pages summarizing FBI interviews about allegations of sexual assault by two women — Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez — that have hobbled his nomination. 

The extraordinary measures were needed because if they handed them out to all committee members, the thing would have leaked faster than you can say Brett Kavanaugh.

Members of both parties, separated by their partisan loyalties, seemed to find in the documents what they wanted to bolster their case — and both sides were left seething by the end of the day.

Don't we all really do that? 

See what we want?

At the end of the day, Kavanaugh published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that seemed aimed at assuaging fears about his temperament raised by some who watched his angry testimony at his hearing last week.

The atmosphere at the Capitol remained charged throughout the day. Thousands of protesters — most of them opposing the nomination — marched through the streets, stopping to rally outside the Supreme Court and briefly taking over the lobby of a Senate office building before 293 people were arrested. Some carried signs that referred to their own sexual assaults — “I was 13,” one said. The crowd erupted in cheers when the news came that Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat, had announced she would vote no on Kavanaugh’s confirmation. 

It is going to cost her the election, meaning at least one seat will flip red.

Heitkamp, who is up for reelection and trailing in the polls, had voted to support President Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, but said testimony she heard from Kavanaugh last Thursday had called his temperament and integrity into question. She said she believed Ford and added she had heard from “countless” constituents who told her they had been sexually assaulted.

“I can’t get up in the morning and look at the life experience that I’ve had and say yes to Judge Kavanaugh,” Heitkamp said to a local TV station.

Did she vote for Bill and Hill?

The Senate imposed its extraordinary access restrictions to prevent leaks of the FBI investigative documents. Senators described a highly unusual procedure: Inside the secured room was a tall pile of documents from the FBI’s tip line, as well as reports on the previous background checks done on Kavanaugh and documents from the FBI’s most recent inquiry.

Reading the report — with only one copy available — was something of a logistical challenge. Democrats read them in small groups, according to Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who teamed up with Cory Booker of New Jersey to comb through the interview notes.

“I think it was the single most preposterous situation that I have ever been put in in my entire career in the Congress,” Markey said, adding that he was concerned valuable information in the pile of FBI tips might never be seen. “The good and the bad, the useful and the useless, is all in one huge pile.”

What is he implying there?

“If that’s an investigation, it’s a (expletive) investigation,’’ New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez, who was the subject of a federal corruption prosecution that ended in a mistrial in 2017, declared on Twitter.

Kind of like the investigation into your proclivity for underaged Dominican girls, 'eh, Bob?

Hey, you gotta believe the woman.

Later, when Republicans had the room, Judiciary Committee staffers read some of the reports aloud into microphones as the senators listened, according to participants.

“We’re trying to get it all done efficiently,” said Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. “This is unusual circumstances calling for a kind of unusual process.”

Later on Thursday afternoon, Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who has not yet announced how he will vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination, said he was still not done reading.

“They threw us out,” Manchin said, chuckling. “It’s the Republicans’ turn. They have their hour, we have our hour, so I gotta come back tomorrow.”

As he made his way out, he was approached by a woman who said she was a survivor of sexual assault, echoing the demonstrators who confronted Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who called for the FBI’s investigation last Friday, in an elevator last week.....

--more--"

Did they really get a good look at it because.....

"With canine sex and Hooters, hoaxes point at weakness in journals" by Jennifer Schuessler New York Times  October 05, 2018

One paper, published in a journal called Sex Roles, said the author had conducted a two-year study involving “thematic analysis of table dialogue” to uncover the mystery of why heterosexual men like to eat at Hooters.

Another, from a journal of feminist geography, parsed “human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at dog parks in Portland, Ore.,” while a third paper, published in a journal of feminist social work and titled “Our Struggle Is My Struggle,” simply scattered some up-to-date jargon into passages lifted from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

Such offerings may or may not have raised eyebrows among the journals’ limited readerships, but this week, they unleashed a cascade of mockery — along with a torrent of debate about ethics of hoaxes, the state of peer review and the excesses of academia — when they were revealed to be part of an elaborate prank aimed squarely at what the authors labeled “grievance studies.”

“Something has gone wrong in the university — especially in certain fields within the humanities,” the three authors of the fake papers wrote in an article in the online journal Aero explaining what they had done. “Scholarship based less upon finding truth and more upon attending to social grievances has become firmly established, if not fully dominant, within these fields.”

Embarrassed journal editors quickly stamped the word “Retracted” across published papers this week, while the hoax drew appreciation from scholars who tend to be skeptical of work focusing on race, gender, sexuality, and other forms of identity, but where some saw a healthy unmasking of pernicious nonsense, others saw a sour, nasty rerun of a culture-wars chestnut that proved little more than that you can always fool some of the people some of the time.

“What strikes me about stunts like this is their fundamental meanness,” Sean Carroll, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, wrote on Twitter. “No attempt to intellectually engage with ideas you disagree with; just trolling for lulz.”

As for accusations of trolling, they said the scholars engaged in “grievance studies” were the ones fanning the flames of the culture wars. Their only goal, they said, was to protect the integrity of scholarship, which they suggested was lower in the fields they targeted.

Several of the duped journals have issued statements decrying the hoax. Ann Garry, an interim co-editor of Hypatia, a leading feminist philosophy journal that published the paper “When the Joke’s on You” (a feminist critique of “unethical” hoaxes, as it happens), said she was “deeply disappointed.”

Some critics of the exercise noted that of the journals successfully fooled by the articles, only a few, including Hypatia, have significant standing. Most were interdisciplinary journals in highly niche fields, where there is less agreement about acceptable methodologies and the standards of peer review.

The hoaxers, however, noted that even scholarship that is barely read has consequences.....

Yeah, you gotta beli..... wait a minute!

--more--"

The Globe says Kavanaugh is going to cause divorce rates to rise:

"Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination opens a new fault line in the American marriage: Call it the rage gap" by Beth Teitell Globe Staff  October 04, 2018

A third person has entered the American marriage. Brett Kavanaugh is his name.

Who let him in?

In a matter of weeks, a man previously unknown to the vast majority of Americans has managed to dominate not just the national conversation but the most intimate ones, too, between husbands and wives, in some cases inspiring revelations, in others, triggering tension, even when partners share an antipathy to Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

I feel so sorry for all of you. Wow. The left is immolating itself.

With furor over the nomination boiling, relationship therapists and couples are reporting that anger is in some cases spilling into marital spats.

One of the main issues: Many wives feel their husbands — even those who oppose Kavanaugh — are too skeptical of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her.

“I just had a couple having this discussion,” said Alex Chinks, a licensed clinical psychologist in Needham. The husband and wife, both lawyers, each oppose Kavanaugh, she said. But the man was more focused on Kavanaugh’s drinking and immaturity and the volatility he showed during the hearing than the alleged attack.

“How can you be so dismissive?” the woman asked her husband during the therapy session, Chinks said.

Time to cut off the, you know.

In some other cases, the Kavanaugh hearings were a force for new openness among partners. In the wake of Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Cambridge therapist Kyle Carney is seeing victims of sexual assault deciding to tell their husbands about histories they’d kept secret.

“I’ve seen women stirred up about stuff that happened in their past, and they’re beginning to take the risk to tell their partner or spouse,” she said.

Their fear, she said, is not that their partners won’t understand. “It’s more about women’s own feelings of shame, about, ‘I put myself in a position I probably shouldn’t have.’ It’s been really good in terms of breaking the secrecy and silence.”

We probably never can (unless we are same sex).

All around the city, wives are using Ford’s testimony as a teaching moment, with teenagers, as you might expect, but also with husbands.

“This opened up a conversation we hadn’t previously had over the many years,” said Jennifer Kohn Goldsmith, who works in global health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

On Monday, at a Kavanaugh protest on City Hall Plaza, many women spoke about what might be called a “rage gap” between women and men — even men who genuinely want to understand how women feel and may think that they do.

“He’s not as angry as I am,” said a political consultant from Jamaica Plain, 40, who declined to give her name for the sake of marital harmony.

I was livid when I began blogging, but 12+ years have left me very, very, jaded.

She described herself as a “crazy leftist with a crazy leftist husband,” but even his crazy left credentials don’t mean he’s protesting Kavanaugh for what she thinks is the right reason, which she considers allegations of sexual assault, and not alleged lying under oath, his nonjudicial temperament, or his angry, partisan statements.

Yeah, the problem is all men -- which is why they should be gotten rid of in any way possible. That's how they make you feel.

Nearby, another protester — an Allston woman, 40, carrying a sign that read “Don’t Look Away” — was unhappy her husband hadn’t made the effort to come to City Hall. “He hasn’t prioritized it,” she said.

The divorce papers will be in the mail by Monday.

It was the same story at Healthworks in Coolidge Corner, a women-only gym. “We were watching John Oliver making fun of Kavanaugh crying over his calendars, and my husband said, ‘[Kavanaugh] is really crazy,’ ” said a 30-year-old PhD candidate from Brighton.

Now you are catching on! That is the solution to the problem: resegregation! 

Will clean up the college campuses, too!

“That,” she said unhappily, “was the most passionate he got.”

I'm very passionate about the solution I just proposed, almost as passionate as I am about reinstitution Prohibition!

Many women say they understand why their husbands are not as passionate about Ford’s accusations: For men, sexual assault, or fear of it, is not nearly as common.

Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus.

“I think the rage boiling over among women is the culmination of the myriad experiences we have all had, including the ever-present messages we got to suck it up, forgive and forget, not make a big deal out of nothing,” a rape survivor from the Boston suburbs e-mailed the Globe.

Why Kav take brunt?

“We have been groomed to gaslight ourselves, and our psyches simply cannot take it any longer,” she wrote. “Thus the visceral rage. I don’t think that’s something my husband could relate to, as supportive and informed and ‘woke’ as he is.”

Even before the Kavanaugh hearings, women were angrier than men about the current state of politics, according to a national poll conducted for the University of Delaware’s Center of Political Communication in midsummer.

More women than men said they were anxious (50 percent versus 40 percent) and angry (66 percent versus 58 percent) about politics, according to the poll. Women also reported that they are more likely to vote in the midterm elections this fall, with 63 percent citing anxiety as the reason and 49 percent saying it was anger that would drive them to the polls.

The gender divide isn’t just splitting husbands and wives, said Deborah Offner, a Newton psychologist who specializes in adolescents.

Great, this thing is now splitting up entire families and estranging them from one another!

She has a patient — a student at a local progressive prep school — who was eager to talk about the fact that her father and her grandfather both “feel bad” for Kavanaugh.

“She finds that outrageous,” Offner said.....

--more--"

Maybe Kavanaugh will get cancer or commit suicide after he's confirmed. 

Maybe that would square things and make the Globe happy?

Now they are saying Kavanugh took food from the mouths of disabled children before pushing them out a window.

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Looks like the Republicans are trying to buy votes to keep the House:

"Congressional Republicans tentatively agree to raise federal worker pay, rebuffing Trump" by Erica Werner The Washington Post  October 05, 2018

WASHINGTON — Republicans who had been pushing to give civilian federal workers a raise hailed the outcome. GOP lawmakers, including Virginia Representative Barbara Comstock, had pushed President Trump to reverse his initial decision in August to deny the raise.

Republican Representative Tom Graves of Georgia, who chairs the spending subcommittee that handles the issue, credited Comstock for pushing for the result. Comstock is in a tough campaign to hang onto her northern Virginia House seat, and the salaries of the tens of thousands of federal employees in her district had become an important issue in her race.

‘‘Thanks to Barbara Comstock’s tireless advocacy, there is an agreement in place on pay raises,’’ Graves said in a statement to The Washington Post. ‘‘This wouldn’t be resolved without her help, or without President Trump’s booming economy.’’

Comstock said in an interview that she lobbied Vice President Pence for a raise for the civilian workforce, and that he was receptive, but the White House, citing budget constraints, never reversed its opposition.

‘‘I’ve been making the case for the rank-and-file side,’’ Comstock said. ‘‘I’m confident we will get it. We need to retain talent in the federal government.’’

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesperson for Pence said the vice president’s office was not involved in negotiations on the raise.

The average federal worker salary is around $85,000, according to the federal Office of Personnel Management, but the American Federation of Government Employees, representing about 750,000 federal workers, says that number is inflated by the high salaries of some doctors and scientists, and that the bulk of federal workers make between $33,000 and $55,000 a year.

Around 15 percent of the nation’s 2.1 million federal workforce live in and around Washington. The majority of the 2.1 million work all over the nation at military bases, federal labs, national parks, veterans hospitals, and other facilities scattered throughout the states.

Most federal civilian employees received a 1.9 percent raise in 2018, and would be in line for another 1.9 percent raise in January 2019 under the congressional deal. Members of the military are on track to receive a 2.6 percent raise in January.

The question of government worker pay was among the final issues being negotiated as lawmakers rushed to finish a package of congressional spending bills last month, including the one funding federal salaries. Because no agreement was reached before the end of the fiscal year Sept. 30, the bills were wrapped into a short-term spending measure that runs through Dec. 7.

No complaints regarding that rush.

The House has already adjourned through the midterm elections, so lawmakers will resume talks when they return to the Capitol following the elections.

Oh, it's just a promi$e, not a done deal.

Democrats support the pay raise for civilian workers but are opposed to lifting the pay freeze for executive-level appointees that was in place throughout much of the Obama administration. It’s uncertain whether that element of the GOP deal will survive final talks.

‘‘There is no reason that the Trump administration, which boasts the wealthiest Cabinet in modern history, should be held to a different standard than the Obama administration when it comes to pay increases,’’ Representative Nita Loweyof New York, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. ‘‘If Republicans were really focused on fiscal responsibility for America’s kids and grandkids, they wouldn’t be trying to increase pay for the vice president and senior Trump officials.’’

The executive-level employees in question include political appointees tapped by the White House who fill the top rungs of Cabinet agencies as well as dozens of smaller federal agencies, and ambassadors who are not career members of the Foreign Service. 

Everybody is getting raises!

All have seen their pay frozen under language that’s carried over in annual appropriations bills since the Obama administration, following the two-year government-wide pay freeze President Barack Obama put in place in 2011 following the recession.

The provision affecting them would lift the freeze and reinstate the salary limits at where they would have been had the freeze not gone into effect, according to Democratic aides.

For about 1,100 senior political appointees — whose annual salaries now range from $155,500 to $199,700 — that could mean a substantial bump in pay.....

No concern regarding deficits?

--more--"

Related(?):

"Charlestown Navy Yard redevelopment plan gets $3 million federal grant" by Laura Crimaldi Globe Staff  October 06, 2018

For more than a century, the brick Hoosac Warehouse has stood in the shadow of the USS Constitution, the historic warship that draws about 500,000 tourists to Charlestown every year.

The six-story building has served as a storage facility, and later a chocolate factory, but now sits vacant on the edge of the Charlestown Navy Yard.

On Friday, the leaders of the US Navy and US Department of the Interior announced the nondescript structure will play a key role in the future of the historic site during a ceremony near “Old Ironsides.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the federal park system in Boston will get $3 million to draw up plans to transform the warehouse into the new home of the USS Constitution Museum and a visitor center run by the National Park Service.

The visit from Zinke, who was joined by Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer, drew some protesters, who displayed signs and waved small American flags.

A group of veterans and Sierra Club representatives said they oppose a proposal from Zinke and a bipartisan group in Congress that would use revenues from energy leases on public lands to pay for upgrades at national parks.

Matt McLaughlin, a Somerville alderman and veteran, shared video with the Globe of him confronting Zinke. The men shook hands and spoke briefly, but Zinke declined to discuss the issue with him, according to the video.

“He’s bragging about serving the parks but he’s only serving the parks through exploiting them,” McLaughlin said in an interview. “He’s weakening the park system.”

--more--"

Not even a thank you from the Globe or state leaders!

Got some returned mail for you:

"A Utah Navy veteran confessed to sending four envelopes containing the substance from which ricin is derived to President Trump and members of his administration, authorities said in court documents. William Clyde Allen III, 39, made the confession while speaking with investigators after his arrest at his house in the small city of Logan, according to documents filed Wednesday night in a Utah court. He told them he had purchased castor beans and sent the letters that had the beans in them. The documents filed to justify Allen’s arrest did not state a motive. He was being held on a $25,000 cash-only bond. State investigators working with the FBI said the envelopes with ground castor beans were mailed last week to the president, FBI director Christopher Wray, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and the Navy’s top officer, Admiral John Richardson. Authorities have said that the letters were intercepted, and that no one was injured. Castor beans can cause injury if swallowed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Investigators say all four letters tested positive for ricin. Allen served in the Navy from 1998 to 2002, according to Navy records. He has a criminal record in Utah that includes child abuse and attempted aggravated assault."

What's with the grin?

Did you see what else washed up?

"The death toll rose to more than 1,500, but as help and supplies began arriving, there were other signs of progress....."

I get so angry when they say that in the face of an emergency (they shouldn't have abandoned the warnings)!

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So where are you going to stay overnight?

"Workers at Marriott hotels in Boston go on strike" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff  October 03, 2018

Hotel workers walked off the job at seven Marriott hotels in Boston Wednesday morning, launching the city’s first major hotel strike in modern history following months of fruitless contract negotiations.

I've done that, lots of times.

The work stoppage involves more than 1,500 Marriott International employees, from housekeepers to bartenders to doormen, at some of the city’s most prominent hotels, including the Ritz-Carlton Boston, Sheraton Boston, and Westin Copley Place.

Heading into the holiday weekend, some guests were informed that they would not receive room service or house cleaning. Restaurants closed. Further disruption was possible as the union representing UPS workers said they would not cross picket lines to deliver food or other provisions.

The hospitality workers union, Unite Here 26, is pushing for more protections for workers as the industry undergoes major changes, mainly driven by technology, and is calling on companies to protect worker hours, provide more secure schedules, and improve sexual harassment protections.

The union represents employees at more than 30 hotels in the Boston area but is focusing on Marriott — the largest hotel company in the city and the world.....

--more--"

Yes, these are ‘‘extraordinary times,’’ as they go from the front page to the upper-lefthand corner of page B11 before fading entirely.

"Encouraging reports on hiring and growth in the service sector sent small companies and banks higher Wednesday and knocked bond prices into a tailspin. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note spiked to its highest level in more than seven years. Both reports were stronger than analysts expected and suggest the economy is in good shape in spite of rising interest rates and oil prices, and the ongoing trade dispute between the United States and China. ‘‘This is evidence of strong economic growth and the likelihood earnings will continue to be good,’’ said Ameriprise chief market strategist David Joy. While some experts think the economy will slow somewhat in the third and fourth quarter, Joy’s view is that ‘‘we’re not going to get much of a slowdown.’’ "

Stores are going to be popping up all over the place and will become anchor tenants as sales are expected to grow in a strong economy that added 230,000 jobs.

"Many of the events at the festival are free, but participants can purchase passes for special programs and networking events for between $150 and $600 in advance of the festival. A full schedule is at hubweek.org. At the start of this year’s festival, HUBweek has added what it calls a Change Maker Conference, where experts from across a swath of disciplines will focus on a series of intensive conversations around diversity and inclusivity. “At its core, the HUBweek 2018 theme — We the Future — is participatory. It is intended to be a call to action and an invitation to come together to create our shared futures,” said Linda Henry, cofounder of the festival and the Globe’s managing director...."

Here is more self-serving the front page garbage:

What you need to know about Red Sox-Yankees

Isn't there a section for that stuff?

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"Trump attacks ‘failing New York Times’ over tax scheme reporting" by Eileen Sullivan New York Times  October 03, 2018

The Times was hoping it made him angry, but it didn't.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday criticized a New York Times investigation into his and his family’s use of dubious tax schemes over the years and the origins of his own wealth, calling the article an “old, boring and often told hit piece.”

He wrote: “The Failing New York Times did something I have never seen done before. They used the concept of “time value of money” in doing a very old, boring and often told hit piece on me. Added up, this means that 97% of their stories on me are bad. Never recovered from bad election call!”

Trump did not offer an outright denial of the facts in the Times report, such as that the money he made during his decades in real estate came from tax schemes of dubious legality, the existence of records of deception in documenting the family’s financial assets, and that the beginning of the president’s so-called self-made fortune dates back to his toddler years when, by the time he was 3 years old, Trump earned $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father.

Nor did Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, during a subsequent briefing with reporters.

Asked to identify what in the article was incorrect, she said, “I won’t go through every line of a very boring 14,000-word story.”

Instead, she said the article demonstrated that Trump’s father believed in him. Sanders said the article accurately portrayed the confidence Trump’s father had in him, and she quoted a sentence that was included in the Times report, which originated in a 1976 Times article about Trump. “Everything he touches seems to turn to gold,” Trump’s father, Fred C. Trump, is quoted as saying at the time for a profile on Donald Trump.

I'm starting to believe.

In response to a question, Sanders said some of Trump’s taxes remained under audit. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump acknowledged that he reported a $916 million loss on his 1995 tax returns to avoid paying personal federal income taxes.

Yeah, the Obama administration not only criminally spied on the campaign and transition, they also had an audit of his taxes going. Don't you think they would have released something if they had found anything?

Trump has consistently refused to release his tax returns — although making returns public has been a common practice by every president and most presidential candidates dating back decades.

Well, he has broken all the precedents so why not?

That has left questions about his personal finances, business practices, and taxes paid to the federal government. The 18-month Times investigation was based on reams of records and documents about the Trump family empire, though it did not unearth the president’s tax returns.

Where did they come from, Mueller's office or the DA handling Cohen?

In the Twitter post, Trump singled out the notion of “time value of money,” an economic concept about how the value of one dollar today is worth more than the value of one dollar tomorrow.

On Monday, the president declined to comment on the article, despite several attempts over a period of weeks. A lawyer for Trump, Charles J. Harder, provided a statement with broad denials for the investigation’s findings.....

Why would he want to talk to them?

--more--"

This might be the reason Mueller has been so quiet:

"Trump allies, offering no specifics, say former FBI official gives ‘explosive’ testimony in Russia probe" by Karoun Demirjian Washington Post  October 03, 2018

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s closest congressional allies said Wednesday that a four-hour interview with former FBI general counsel James Baker had ‘‘fundamentally changed’’ their understanding of the Justice Department’s Russia investigation, confirming and furthering their previous convictions that federal law enforcement agencies were biased in their scrutiny of Trump’s campaign.

Republican representatives Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Jim Jordan of Ohio, both leaders in the conservative House Freedom Caucus, called the closed-door meeting the ‘‘most informative’’ interview they have had in the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees’ nearly year-long probe into the FBI’s investigations of the Trump campaign’s alleged Russia ties and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Democrats have repeatedly argued that the Republicans’ aim is to undermine and discredit the FBI and Justice Department, as well as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. They have also criticized the probe’s format of conducting private interviews, saying that doing so allows Republicans to misrepresent witnesses’ testimony.

They have discredited themselves.

Jordan told reporters that Baker informed them of a ‘‘completely new’’ and ‘‘explosive’’ source who provided information ‘‘directly’’ to the FBI ‘‘during the time that [the Justice Department] and the FBI were putting together’’ an application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. He offered no details about the source, or the information the source provided to the bureau, beyond saying it was ‘‘related to the whole Russia investigation.’’

Now the WaComPo cares about details.

Baker declined to comment to reporters as he departed the interview. The FBI’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Jordan’s characterization of Baker’s testimony.

Meadows and Jordan have been among Trump’s most dogged defenders as the president seeks to discredit federal law enforcement’s Russia investigations, which Trump has labeled a ‘‘witch hunt.’’

Now it is the Democrats calling the FBI into question regarding the Kavanaugh report.

Earlier this year, Meadows and Jordan led a movement to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for refusing to turn over documents they believed would expose the Mueller investigation’s ‘‘rotten’’ foundations, as Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, has described it. Republican Party leaders’ support for their efforts has ebbed and flowed.

Jordan hinted that Baker’s testimony may have bolstered their complaint that the FBI failed to include in its surveillance application evidence that would have steered suspicion away from Page. It ‘‘sheds even more light on just how wrong this whole idea, when they took this dossier to the secret court and did what they did,’’ he said.

Related: "A district court judge has upheld a clerk-magistrate’s decision not to issue a criminal complaint against a Plymouth police captain who was accused of assault and battery by a female patrol officer. Plymouth Police Chief Michael E. Botieri announced the decision Wednesday in a news release....."

Also see: Secret courts: too much power, too little transparency

The complaint is they deliberate behind closed doors for the benefit of the powerful, and it has nothing to do with the military tribunals under Bushbama.

The dossier, a collection of intelligence detailing Trump’s alleged personal and business ties to Russia, has also been a chief focus of GOP lawmakers who say it was the source of the FBI’s entire investigation. The bureau denies that charge, which has also been undercut by reports that Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos told Australia’s ambassador to Britain that the Russians had dirt on Clinton months prior.

Reports from whom?

A spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee Democrats did not immediately respond to a request to comment on Jordan’s characterization of Baker’s testimony. Only a handful of lawmakers attended Wednesday’s hearing, as the House is not currently in session.

In recent weeks, the panel has interviewed individuals they believe are linked to the dossier’s production and dissemination throughout the intelligence and federal law enforcement communities, including Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department official who spoke with the dossier’s author on several occasions. Later this month, they plan to interview Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, who briefly worked as a contractor for Fusion GPS when the research firm was involved with Steele. Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson has declined an invitation to meet with the panel. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican representative from Virginia, has since subpoenaed Simpson for a deposition.

That put them on the warpath.

Meadows and Jordan suggested Baker’s interview could be the most important for them as they prepare to speak with Rosenstein, to whom they plan to pose many of the same questions they asked of Baker about the FBI’s application to surveil Page.

Lawmakers also want to talk to Rosenstein about a New York Times report that he suggested recording Trump and potentially removing him from office. Rosenstein has denied he said those things, though he offered to resign in the wake of the report’s publication.

Trump has cancelled and not rescheduled a meeting with him if that means anything.

Baker is expected to return to Capitol Hill to finish his interview, which was cut short because of a scheduling conflict, Meadows and Jordan said. They described him as a ‘‘cooperative’’ witness.

Baker left the FBI in the spring, and now works at the Brookings Institution. He was a close associate of former FBI Director James Comey, on at least one occasion receiving a memo Comey drafted following a meeting with Trump.

Baker was also linked to the members of Comey’s inner circle, including former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who wrote memos detailing Rosenstein’s alleged suggestion of wiring the president; and former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who exchanged anti-Trump text messages. McCabe, Strzok, and Page have left the bureau amid questions of their ethics and conduct.

They were Strzok out.

Baker was caught up in a leak probe last year surrounding news reports about surveillance techniques of an e-mail provider that appeared to stem from a dispute between the FBI and National Security Agency. He was accused by Republicans, in a report published by Politico, of disclosing information about the Trump-Russia dossier to Mother Jones, a left-leaning media outlet. David Corn, the author of that story, has denied that Baker was his source.

Baker was never charged with wrongdoing, but he was reassigned when FBI Director Christopher Wray took office. He left the bureau after a decades-long career this spring.

--more--"

They had nothing more to say after that.

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Trying to keep it all in the family:

"Melania Trump seems at ease on visit to Africa" by Katie Rogers New York Times   October 04, 2018

CAPE COAST, Ghana — With the unrelenting Ghanaian sun serving as her spotlight, Melania Trump has stepped out of her husband’s shadow, apparently showing the world what some 5,200 miles of breathing room away from her home city can do.

On Wednesday morning, on the second day of a four-nation African tour, the first lady looked more comfortable striding into a meeting with local leaders on the coast of Ghana than she has perhaps ever looked in Washington.

Given the bedlam of late in the US capital, that may be understandable, but as she makes her first big solo trip abroad, Trump seems ready to show another side of herself: the happy one.

I guess she is unhappy in Washington. She went along with the campaign because she didn't think he would win.

Trump has offered simple acts of grace on behalf of an administration with a fraught diplomatic history with Africa. She has spent much of her time just expressing appreciation to her hosts.

“Thank you very much for having me,” she told the Ghanaian first lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo, when the two met.

“Thank you for having me,” she said to a small cluster of Ghanaians before entering a palace hall.

“Thank you for your warm welcome,” she signed in the guest book of a stone fort through which thousands of enslaved people once passed.

From the moment she touched down here Tuesday, Trump has done her best to soften the image of an administration known for its sharp elbows, and of President Trump, who outraged many Africans with his reference to “shithole” countries.

How well it will work remains to be seen.

Marie-Franz Fordjoe, a journalist, said it might take more than a visit from Melania Trump to heal the bruised feelings. The visit, she said, is “insignificant, as we are very much aware of President Trump’s isolationist foreign policy and his overt aversion to people of color.”

That's who the pre$4 talked to, huh? 

Another journalist? 

And they say we are enclosed in a bubble!

Acquaintances of the first lady said the trip was also giving her a chance to show the world what she is really like when she is not onstage in Washington and swamped by cameras. 

Thanks for admitting its all a show.

“That’s the first lady I know,” said Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s communications director. “She loves meeting people, learning new things, and being around kids. This is who she is.”

Chris Ruddy, a friend of the Trumps, said the qualities Trump shows in private were now showing themselves.

“It is true of successful first ladies that they have shined when they are away from the spotlight on their husband,” Ruddy said. “Melania is a remarkably caring and charismatic person, and these trips demonstrate that.”

The printed Globe then turned it off.

Trump had some especially tricky terrain to navigate Wednesday when she visited the Emintsimadze Palace to officially ask a regional chief for permission to visit that fort.

Flanked by girls playing traditional horns, the first lady walked slowly into a room with a large photograph hanging in it. Its name? Obama Hall. The photo? A picture of the man who preceded her husband in office. President Barack Obama and his family made the same journey in 2009.

After Trump’s aides presented a basket of gifts, a charmed-looking chief granted his permission for her to visit the fort, Cape Coast Castle.

There, as the waves of the Gulf of Guinea crashed against the shore, the first lady wandered the passageways, poking her head into hatches that offered a view into the depths of ancient dungeons where slaves were kept in hellish conditions until they were sent abroad. (When Obama visited, he said the castle “reminds us of the capacity of human beings to commit great evil.”)

Probably wondering when her husband will be there.

Trump spent a few minutes in a dungeon that once housed male slaves before they were dragged across the threshold of the “door of no return” and to waiting ships. She paused at the archway — and then stepped through.

Trump generally avoids journalists, but at the castle Wednesday, she fielded their questions. Her tone was sober.

“I will never forget the incredible experience and the stories that I heard,” she said. “The dungeons that I saw — it’s really something that people should see and experience what happened so many years ago. It’s really a tragedy.”

Trump’s visit has so far lacked much fanfare.

In Cape Coast, a group of men at the palace strung up a large welcome sign in the courtyard in which it appeared that her first name had initially been misspelled. In Accra, the Ghanaian capital, the usual buzz associated with a visiting high-profile personality seemed to be missing.

Nana Amba Eyiaba, queen mother of Cape Coast, said Ghanaians had anticipated Trump’s visit with a mixture of excitement and anxiety.

“There are so many countries in Africa, but she chose to come here,” the queen mother said. “It means there are some expectations from us. She will learn something about our culture and learn at first hand what Ghana is like.”

She also said, “I think her ‘Be Best’ project will benefit our children, which in turn will benefit our country.”

At a hospital in Accra, Trump turned her focus on her biggest interest as first lady — children — giving out “Be Best”-themed blankets and teddy bears.

When she scooped up a chubby-cheeked baby boy from the crowd, photographs spread across the world. They were picked up by a White House eager for a bit of good news on a day when the administration was doing battle on numerous fronts. “Sweet moment,” declared Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president’s press secretary. The first lady also met with a group of mothers who sat before her, bouncing babies on their laps and breast-feeding. Trump watched as a baby boy was weighed, and she smiled approvingly.

“Healthy boy,” Trump told the boy’s mother.

It took the president a few hours to acknowledge that his wife was elsewhere in the world. When the first lady first touched down in Africa, her arrival seemed to be down the list of urgent topics for the White House.

There was the president’s success at securing a new NAFTA deal. And, of course, there was the battle over Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee. 

Of course.

At a rally in Mississippi on Tuesday in which he mocked the account of the woman who has accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, Donald Trump took a brief moment to praise the job his wife was doing “hugging and kissing children” in Africa.

“You think that’s an easy job,” the president told his supporters, “That’s not an easy job. That’s a tough job. She is fantastic.”

--more--"

Also see:


First Lady Melania Trump was playfully bumped by a baby elephant in Kenya on Friday (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Trump Jr. then shot it before getting stuck in mud.

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Another place where it is hard to get the gas fires going:

"Utility unveils housing plan in Merrimack Valley residents displaced by gas fires" by Milton J. Valencia Globe Staff  October 05, 2018

LAWRENCE — With a plan to hand out thousands of space heaters scrapped because of safety concerns, Columbia Gas is now offering to put up thousands of victims of the Sept. 13 gas disaster in hotel rooms, apartments, and trailers instead.

There will also be a congregate shelter and warming station at the former Malden Mills building in Lawrence that can house 250 people — and expand to include 1,000 — as a fallback option. Columbia Gas is footing the expenses up front, including daily travel costs.

Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera said the initial plan to provide residents with space heaters was no longer viable, because so many older homes had aging electrical systems that raised fire and safety concerns.

“Shame on us if we would get caught on our heels in a cold snap,” Rivera said Friday, describing the southern section of the city as a “disaster zone,” with thousands without heat or hot water. Construction crews have taken over many streets in a concerted effort to replace miles of older pipes by Nov. 19, creating traffic detours and congestion.

Meantime, residents remain on edge about the risk of another gas calamity. On Tuesday, a gas leak caused by a boiler problem at a local school on Tuesday left residents in a state of panic, Rivera said.

“People are concerned, this is not a normal state of being,” he said.

Investigators suspect the Sept. 13 disaster involved the rapid over-pressurization of the local gas system network that supplies parts of Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover. More than 80 house fires and explosions were reported across the area, killing one person, injuring two dozen, and forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents until gas could be safely shut off.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident, has singled out work on low-pressure pipes in a section of Lawrence as a focus of its inquiry.

See:

Storms and Explosions
Sunday Calm
Last Gasp
Final Breath
Crown of Thorns
Friday's Frowns

That was when the coverage went out.

Columbia Gas, which has not commented on the cause of the incident but said it would assume full financial responsibility. Columbia Gas has sent out teams of plumbers and electricians to assess individual homes and businesses. On Friday the company released a schedule and online map detailing the order of home inspections, block by block, in the affected area.

Company representatives have said they will not restore gas to any property where the appliances and meters have not been verified as safe.

“The next steps of our mission to restore natural gas service are dependent upon our ability to access homes and businesses,’ said Joe Albanese, a construction company executive and former Navy Seabee captain who has been tapped to lead the recovery effort.

Rivera, who had been critical of Columbia Gas’s immediate response to the disaster, said he is optimistic that the company will meet the Nov. 19 deadline, but he said the alternative housing plan was put in place to accommodate residents in advance of cold weather.....

Now it is time for Beacon Hill to act.

--more--"

Related:

All those gas workers in the Merrimack Valley need a place to live. How about on a cruise ship?

National Grid lockout taking toll on development

"A 76-year-old woman, who was bedridden, has been identified as the person fatally injured when a fire broke out in an Arlington residence last week. Margarita Tsugunyan fell asleep while smoking in her bed, which she had placed in the living room of her residence on Osborne Road, on Sept. 29, according to the state fire marshal’s office. The fire was discovered around 9 p.m., and two of the woman’s neighbors tried to help by using a garden hose to douse the flames until Arlington firefighters arrived, officials said. Tsugunyan was the ninth person to die in a fire linked to improper use of smoking materials. Overall, the state has recorded 31 fire deaths, the fire marshal’s office said."

She was smoking in bed when the gas came on and singed her eyebrows.

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Look who got locked out at Harvard:

"Harvard places head diving coach on leave amid sexual misconduct allegations" by Danny McDonald Globe Staff  October 03, 2018

Just weeks after hiring a new head diving coach, Harvard University has placed the man on leave following sexual misconduct allegations made against him in a federal lawsuit out of Indiana.

The suit, dated Sept. 30, alleged that Chris Heaton solicited naked pictures from female athletes at a residential diving program called Ripfest, where Heaton served as a coach. According to the suit, Heaton also sent pictures of his penis to young female athletes.

He Weinered 'em!

The suit stated that girls complained about Heaton to the president of the program on numerous occasions, starting in 2015.

In a statement, university spokeswoman Rachael Dane said the school was unaware of any misconduct allegations when it hired Heaton in August to be the head diving coach.

They didn't get the FBI to do a thorough background investigation?

“Upon learning of allegations of sexual misconduct from media reports, Harvard immediately placed Mr. Heaton on leave, pending a review by Harvard University,” Dane said in the statement.

It was unclear whether Heaton was placed on paid or unpaid leave. He is not named as a defendant in the Indiana suit.

??????

Attempts to reach Heaton were not immediately successful Wednesday afternoon.

According to the suit, Heaton is still a USA Diving coach.

USA Diving, the sport’s national governing body, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. That organization, according to the suit, is aware of complaints against Heaton.

Ripfest, the Indiana-based diving program, according to the suit, “fostered, permitted and/or ratified a culture that tolerated sexual harassment, objectification, assault, and abuse.”

--more--"

Reminds me of Larry Nasser. 

You remember him, don't you?

Related: Lawrence Bacow inaugurated as Harvard’s new leader

He's already getting a failing grade even with the champagne corks popping:

"The sound of popping balloons mistaken for gunshots sent colleges in the Fenway neighborhood and Boston Latin School briefly into lockdown Thursday afternoon, police said. “With all the talk about school shootings, this was just a little too real for one day. I think I’m just going to go home and lay down,” said Rhiannon Charren, 19, who was studying for her nursing exam on the second floor of the library when she first received messages around 2:40 p.m. from the university about an active threat in the building....."

Happened next to BU’s data sciences center and the search continues for the balloonman.

Related:

"A man from Oxford accused of driving around Dorchester threatening to rob people at gunpoint pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of armed car jacking, assault with a dangerous weapon, and armed assault to rob, officials said....."

The DA dropped the charges.

"Armed robber taken down by Brighton liquor store owner allegedly tried to steal nearly $500" by Emily Sweeney and Danny McDonald Globe Staff  October 03, 2018

When an employee at Sabatino’s Italian Kitchen, which is located next door, saw employees of the liquor store wrestling with the robber outside, he went out and stepped in to help. They managed to wrestle the suspect to the ground and disarm him, the report said.

Boston Police Commissioner William Gross said in a statement that while the efforts of those involved were appreciated, citizens should refrain from putting themselves in harm’s way when a crime occurs.

“While we’re certainly grateful for the community involvement and intervention that led to the arrest of the armed suspect in this case, the fact remains we’re incredibly fortunate that nobody was injured during this incident,” Gross said in a statement on bpdnews.com. “Keeping our citizens safe remains our highest priority, and while we appreciate the assist, in the future we would encourage community members to refrain from taking matters into their own hands and instead call 9-1-1.”

Yeah, let 'em rob you! 

He must be drunk!

--more--"

Also see:

"Methuen police officers arrested two residents Wednesday after they found cocaine, fentanyl, a gun, and a young child during the execution of a search warrant, police said. Officers in the Methuen Police Narcotics/Gang and Intelligence Unit searched an apartment at 10 Willow St. as part of an ongoing investigation into drug trafficking, police said. Officers seized 10 bags of cocaine totaling about seven grams, 53 bags of fentanyl totaling about 56.9 grams, a semi-automatic handgun, and $1,940 in cash, Methuen police said in a statement. The child, whose mother was in the apartment, was put in the emergency custody of the state’s Department of Children and Families, a DCF official said. Neither the DCF nor police were able to provide any additional information on the child. One of the arrested residents, Edgar Arias, 29, was charged with three counts of distribution of fentanyl, trafficking fentanyl, and possession of a Class B substance with intent to distribute. Arias also had two additional warrants for his arrest on drug charges out of Waltham District Court, police said. Chelimar Gonzalez, 28, was charged with possession of a firearm without a license, police said.

"Jailhouse recordings obtained from the Middleton House of Correction link a child rape suspect to a plot to solicit the murders of his two alleged victims, a prosecutor said Thursday. The recordings were briefly referenced during a hearing in Essex Superior Court for Scott Smith, 38, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he raped two minors in Salisbury, as well as charges of possessing child pornography and providing alcohol to someone under 21. Relatives of the alleged victims attended Thursday’s hearing but declined to comment afterward. Smith has been held since June but was poised for release Wednesday, following Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley’s decision to set bail at $1,000 with conditions that he remain on house arrest and submit to GPS monitoring. But Smith’s release was held up when prosecutors came forward with a motion to revoke his bail, citing new allegations that he tried to solicit the alleged victims’ murders, according to Essex prosecutors. Judge Thomas Drechsler ordered Smith held, setting up Thursday’s hearing on the state’s motion. Then on Thursday, Drechsler continued the hearing to Oct. 15 to allow time for Smith’s lawyer to review the evidence related to the alleged murder plot. Smith hasn’t been charged in connection with the alleged plot and has been moved to the jail in Billerica."

I guess everything adds up.

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Time to get down to bu$ine$$:

"Bernie Sanders to launch plan to break up Wall Street giants" by Jeff Stein Washington Post  October 03, 2018

WASHINGTON — Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is proposing legislation that would place a hard cap on the size of financial institutions, a proposal that would splinter Wall Street’s biggest firms in an effort to ward off future taxpayer bailouts.

I would support that!

The measure is dead on arrival with a Republican Congress and President Trump in office, and even if the current Democratic Party were to take control of government, it would face a difficult path to passage, as many of the party’s moderates have opted for answers to the banking crisis that did less to alter the financial system.

Proving that both parties are owned by bankers.

Sanders’ bill would force federal regulators to break up six different Wall Street firms — JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley — as well as insurance giants such as Prudential Financial and MetLife.

Related: General Catalyst said to be in talks to sell stake to Goldman Sachs unit

What's in those glasses?

Despite its unlikelihood of passing in the near term, the measure could become a marker for Democrats seeking support from the party’s progressive voters, much like a single-payer, universal health care system has become.

PFFFT! 

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of being appealed to and used for my vote.

Sanders touts the plan as a way to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis of a decade ago, when banks on the edge of collapse were large enough that their failures would rock the fundamentals of the global financial system. In response, the federal government extended the banks huge loans, a move largely credited with blunting the crisis but also giving government funding to wealthy individuals at a time when unemployment was soaring and thousands were losing their homes.

‘‘We spent huge amounts of money bailing them out, and they are significantly larger now than they were back then,’’ Sanders said in an interview. ‘‘It’s time we return to that discussion, especially now for the 10th anniversary [of the crash].’’

In response to the crisis, Democrats narrowly passed a broad banking law that was meant to ensure that ‘‘too big to fail’’ banks took steps to ward off failure.

See: Senate Sends Along Financial Fraud Bill 

Their failure capped a career.

The law, signed by former president Barack Obama, had 16 separate chapters and ran more than 2,300 pages long. Sanders’s measure runs seven pages, and instead goes after the size of banks, arguing firms of that size pose an inherent risk to the economy.

Turns out the Fed took too long writing the rules and the most recent Congre$$ repealed it!

The senator, who identifies as a Democratic socialist, and his supporters say the firms should be broken up to prevent future rescues, while critics say Sanders is advancing an unpractical bill with no chance of being enacted.

At least the article helped fill up my paper.

Four of the six biggest banks are on average 80 percent bigger than they were when they started receiving bailout funding about a decade ago, according to Sanders aides, as many of the largest financial firms acquired distressed banks during the crisis.....

Meaning they have even more control over the economy, and are much too big to jail!

They then talk to an economist at MIT who served as chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and who supports the bill. 

--more--"

Related:

"California’s new law requiring at least one woman on boards of listed companies will barely touch the largest businesses in the state. All but one already are compliant. Only cloud-software provider Veeva Systems Inc. has no woman director....."

Meaning it was a NOTHING LAW, passed only as a feel-good political tool of illusion.

Fortunately, men and women come out equal in Bo$ton.

The fellows are always paid more, that's what has them upset.

Kennedy International Airport to get a $13b upgrade

If you are flying out of Logan I hope you get a seat (here is a book for the flight).

Honda to invest in Cruise, GM’s venture in self-driving cars

They already have $100 million in the Hopper.

Investment firm Clarus being bought by Blackstone

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On the world stage, it is the U.S. that acts like a sexual predator:

"Though unlikely to lead to arrests or convictions, the accusations formed the latest round of an international public shaming of the Kremlin by the West....."

The ruble slid lower as the US probes an Estonian bank accused of money laundering whose CEO has resigned over the case. That's why Germany and Japan are cozying up to the U.S.

Meanwhile, China is trying to undermine Trump because it ‘wants a different American president’ as "the world’s biggest chocolate maker is looking east for growth amid a waning sweet tooth in the United States and Western Europe. Zurich-based Barry Callebaut AG agreed to buy Moscow-based Inforum to expand in the world’s second-largest chocolate market by volume, the Swiss company said Thursday....."

The bad news is all shopping bags will be checked for chocolates and cosmetics as they return home.