Trump suspends plan to impose tariffs on Mexico
Related:
"The obvious concern at the White House is whether the economy, just one month from setting the record for longevity, can hold up long enough to bolster Trump’s reelection campaign. Only a handful of economists are predicting a recession — and not until 2020....."
What if we are already in one and they are lying to us?
"The state’s top politicos are vetting 2020 candidates on their way to New Hampshire" by James Pindell Globe Staff, June 7, 2019
They’re regular stops on any presidential candidate’s New Hampshire itinerary: A diner visit in Concord. A town hall in Nashua. A house party with activists in Portsmouth.
Now add a Massachusetts location to that circuit: A stately living room in Louisburg Square.
At least that’s
The pitch from some of Massachusetts’ political elite who are sponsoring invitation-only, off-the-record sessions with White House hopefuls, informally called Conversations 2020, have mostly taken place at Chris Gabrieli’s home on Beacon Hill, and the guest list includes roughly 120 of the biggest political contributors and activists in the state.
And it is the donors who call the shots!
The goal, they said, is to allow members to find a candidate they like and actively support that campaign — either by organizing volunteers, serving in a policy role, or, yes, giving and organizing political contributions.
The region has long been considered a blue ATM for progressive and liberal political candidates who swoop into the metro area to pick up checks — often en route to the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire. What makes these sessions different, organizers said, is in addition to the deep-pocketed donors, they also invite the state’s top activists and policy pros with an eye toward diversity in professional background, race, gender, age, and sexual orientation. The founders say they even invite a few Republicans to the sessions.
Organizers aim to re-create the intimacy of a New Hampshire house party — a political tradition in which a few dozen neighbors and community members pepper questions at a candidate in someone’s home — but for an engaged Bay State group with a track record of involvement in campaigns.
The events are often in the evening, and between 70 and 80 people typically attend the conversations, which include a question-and-answer session with the candidate. At Gabrieli’s home on Beacon Hill, oil paintings of his children adorn the walls alongside a gold-framed art collection. Guests dine on cheese, crackers, and white wine, but the meetings, which began in April, also might be the closest thing to early campaigning taking place in Massachusetts ahead of the state’s presidential primary, which is scheduled to take place three weeks after New Hampshire’s, on Super Tuesday.
Although multiple candidates pass through New Hampshire every week, the presidential action in Massachusetts has been limited to a few fund-raisers and events: Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg made public appearances in the Boston area in April, and former vice president Joe Biden swung through the city on Wednesday.
Yeah, he has been born again and is no longer Catholic.
The series began with a conversation between Gabrieli and Linda Whitlock, who served under three Massachusetts governors and was head of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston. They said they were struggling to figure out who they would back in a sprawling Democratic presidential primary that now includes more than two dozen candidates.
All sacrificial lambs being led to slaughter (except for Bernie).
“We thought it would be useful to gather together Massachusetts residents, some of whom we have worked with in years past, and begin to have conversations with the candidates and kick the tires,” said Whitlock. “Our collective perspective is that no one can remain on the sidelines during this election, and just watching the campaign on television, and just talking about it with friends and family members is not enough.”
As if they are PURCHASING a PRODUCT rather than a POLITICIAN!
They later called Alan Solomont, a former US ambassador to Spain who gathered donations for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. The trio of founders established some ground rules and started to create a list.
One candidate who has declined the Conversations 2020 invitation: Senator Elizabeth Warren. Her campaign told the group they believe such an appearance would violate her policy of giving special access to high-dollar donors.
She is looking better all the time; however, after Brexit and Trump she won't be allowed anywhere near the nomination. Thank God we have rigged elections and voting machines to clear up such confusion.
The group has also invited Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, as well made overtures to Republicans who once were thinking about running for president, such as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and former Ohio governor John Kasich, who both announced last weekend they won’t run.
The only person not invited? President Trump. Although this informal group aims to be bipartisan, its members do share a similar goal of defeating the White House’s current occupant.
Among those who regularly attend the gatherings is Cortney Tunis, the executive director of Pantsuit Nation, a grass-roots group and nonprofit that came out of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat.
Related: "nonprofits provide new ways for corporations and individuals to influence"
As if they needed any more.
“I feel really blessed to meet candidates in this way and talk with them directly,” said Tunis, a 36-year-old African-American woman who lives in the Fenway.
Back Bay resident Rebecca Leventhal, a frequent donor, said she found the gatherings unlike others in Massachusetts politics.
“Often politics nationally and in Massachusetts is very transactional,” said Leventhal, 37. “Here there isn’t a specific ask for money, but the ask is to engage and listen.”
What jou $ay?
--more--"
The piece of sh!t who will be anointed nominee:
"How Biden reversed on a long-held position" by Matt Viser and Michael Scherer Washington Post, June 7, 2019
Nice to see former Globe reporters moving up to the CIA's new$paper.
Joe Biden was in the car on the way to a Democratic gala in Atlanta on Thursday night when he turned to an aide and asked for a pen. The former vice president began scrawling his evolving thoughts on the Hyde Amendment, preparing to make one of the biggest shifts of his 2020 presidential campaign.
Later that night, reading from those notes and diverting from the prepared teleprompter text, he would reverse a position he had held for nearly four decades and for the first time call for repealing the federal law that sharply restricts the use of taxpayer money for abortion. It was the culmination of days of debate within his campaign and external criticism over an issue that has become fundamentally important for the Democratic Party.
So he junked his core values on the fly in the car, and what are they doing with that fetal tissue anyway?
It concluded the rockiest week of his campaign, one in which he struggled in the limelight after a period in which his campaign performed more smoothly than many Democrats had expected. He has been attacked for his vote on a 1994 crime bill, criticized for avoiding multicandidate events, and came under fire when his campaign lifted lines unattributed for use in his policy documents. None of the stumbles are fatal in themselves, but allies express concern that when they are considered together, Biden could begin to undermine his campaign’s central argument: that he has the best chance of beating President Trump.
The Globe made light of his creepy touchy feely personality (and please get your hands off the children!).
Oh, right, Democrats are telling pollsters they aren’t all that bothered by Biden’s touchiness.
‘‘Democrats see him as a strong candidate against Trump; polls have confirmed that, but the way he runs his campaign affects his electability argument,’’ said Neera Tanden, the president of the liberal Center for American Progress. ‘‘Many successful campaigns have missteps, but a series of them may well hurt the electability case.’’
I think Democrats are realizing that old fossil is going to lose, bull$hit polls notwithstanding, and it's nice to see a Clinton paper call on a Clinton expert for analysis!
Biden’s campaign has drawn strength so far from the conviction among a broad section of the electorate that he is best positioned to defeat Trump. Early polls in the industrial Midwest find him easily beating Trump in hypothetical matchups, and a recent Quinnipiac University poll found Biden beating Trump by four points in Texas, usually safely Republican territory, even as Trump won hypothetical contests against other Democratic candidates.
Are you sick of this agenda-supplying narrative yet?
‘‘I have not seen any faltering on any part by folks who say they are going to support Biden,’’ said South Carolina state Senator Dick Harpootlian, a Democrat and one of the vice president’s top boosters in the state. ‘‘Again, what is driving this is who is going to beat Donald Trump. Everybody believes Joe Biden has the best chance of doing that in 2020. The rest of these folks are untried,’’ but there are ample precedents for an aura of electability to wear off over the grueling course of a campaign, particularly among candidates unable to deftly adjust to their party’s changes. Hillary Clinton faltered in her 2008 presidential campaign by wavering on issues such as driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, giving her rivals opportunities to present her as a tentative leader.
Biden has a long political record filled with positions that could hamstring his campaign in the coming months, including several issues that his rivals have already begun to target. Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent of Vermont, has criticized Biden for supporting free-trade deals, and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massacusetts, has hit him for siding with the banking industry on bankruptcy legislation.
Biden voted for the Iraq War in 2002 - something he later said was a mistake but which led another opponent, Representative Seth Moulton, another Massachusetts Democrat, to add a reference to it as he tweaked Biden on his abortion reversal Friday. Biden has declined to back away from his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Unlike most candidates in the race, he says he does not support the federal legalization of marijuana but thinks possession of the drug should be decriminalized. He was also a supporter in the Obama White House of an effort to allow religious institutions to opt out of the contraception mandate included in the Affordable Care Act — an issue his campaign has declined to speak about since he announced his presidential candidacy.
I'm sure he will soon flip on that, too.
During a recent visit to Nashua, N.H., Biden argued that the 1994 crime bill he wrote had not generated mass incarceration, prompting a swift response from rivals who pointed out that the bill offered clear incentives for states to build more prisons.
Yeah, I love how he passed the buck on that one.
The challenge for Biden is to balance the political realities of the Democratic primary electorate with his own desire to cast himself as campaigning away from the larger pack of Democratic candidates. For the first weeks of his campaign, Biden has parried on many of these topics, as his aides have argued that the debate among liberal activists on Twitter and cable television does not reflect what they see as the moderate core of the Democratic Party.
Yeah, he is out of step with the voters but far ahead in the polls.
He has so far kept a light public campaign schedule, largely avoiding the news media, even as other candidates have made themselves available as part of their daily schedules. When 19 presidential candidates gather Sunday in Iowa for a state party event, Biden plans to be in Washington attending the graduation of a family member.
That's interesting, because the Globe has basically been avoiding campaign coverage since Joe declared, and isn't that the same strategy that Hillary Clinton had?
The debate over the Hyde Amendment burst into public view on Wednesday when the Biden campaign reaffirmed to NBC News that the former vice president still supported the prohibition on federal funding of abortion, with the exception of rape, incest or danger to the life of the mother.
It's the Democratic Party's litmus test, and he's failed!
The campaigns of Bill Clinton in 1992, Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 said they supported a repeal of Hyde, though all signed or voted for legislation that included the provision. In a reflection of the recent leftward pull of the party, Biden was immediately criticized by a range of abortion rights groups, and phones started ringing with complaints.
‘‘Everybody called,’’ said one adviser, who like other Biden aides spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal campaign deliberations. ‘‘All the people called. Everyone called.’’
Most important of all was Boss Alysa Milano (where are his hands and is that coke in her nose?).
Advisers resisted any notion that Biden changed his mind solely because of political pressure, and they insist that his views shifted in recent days.....
It doesn't help when your campaign lies about it, either!
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Also see: Of faith, politics, and abortion
Globe readers are not happy with Joe's flip-flop as the the state of Alabama is only reinforcing its reputation as ‘‘the land of the backward,’’ full of ‘‘hicks.’’
As if any of this mattered:
"‘In what universe are those going to be passed?’ 2020 Democrats pitching big ideas face uncomfortable question" by Liz Goodwin Globe Staff, June 7, 2019
Elizabeth Warren was on a roll. Halfway through an MSNBC town hall appearance in Indiana Wednesday night, she had wowed the friendly crowd with a bold and tantalizing list of campaign promises — from providing affordable childcare and college to everyone, to creating more than 1 million manufacturing jobs by investing in clean energy.
Then, some of the voters in the audience provided a reality check.
“The thing is, we get everybody promising manufacturing is coming back,” Frank Staples, a 2016 Bernie Sanders supporter, told her. “We get [people] promising all this stuff, and it never happens.”
Another voter, referencing Warren’s proposed multimillionaires tax to fund much of her agenda, declared bluntly: “I just don’t see it happening.” Warren tried to defuse the skepticism by vowing to create a “grass-roots movement,” but moderator Chris Hayes pushed back.
“You’ve got a website full of plans that might pencil out and people might like,” Hayes said, “but in what universe are those going to be passed?”
That is the uncomfortable question hanging over all the Democrats vying for the presidency, many of whom, like Warren, are pushing the most ambitious policy platforms seen in decades: packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College, making college and health care free, and fully transitioning to carbon-neutral energy.
Notice how foreign policy is never mentioned?
“The time for small ideas is over!” Warren declared to thunderous applause last weekend at the California Democratic Convention.
How racy!
Less discussed on the campaign trail is the Herculean political maneuvering it would take to enact and pay for these bold ideas in an era of soaring budget deficits and increasing political gridlock. Abolishing the Electoral College, for example, would probably require two-thirds of the House of Representatives, two-thirds of the Senate, and three-fourths of the states to agree to amend the Constitution.
In a sharply divided Washington that barely managed the most basic function of funding the federal government this year, some of these aims look aspirational to the point of delusional, but political analysts say the big ideas reflect voters’ very dissatisfaction with Washington and its dysfunction. The rising rates of wealth inequality following the 2008 financial crisis — and Americans’ sense that the political system favors large corporations over average citizens — have pushed almost every candidate to grapple with more populist and transformational policies.
Is the reporter saying it doesn't, that our $en$e is wrong?
Then she is delusional, and that's not hard to understand coming from the self-contained, agenda-pushing, narrative-promoting piece of $hit that is the Bo$ton Globe.
See:
"Members of Congress are used to hearing from the usual suspects — the enviros and other lefties— about the pressing need for a law that would curb carbon emissions, but corporate America has joined the crusade. It will be tougher for lawmakers to write off or refuse to meet with the companies who employ their constituents....."
OMFG!
He just admitted this government serves corporate power rather than its citizen constituents!
Liz Goodwin must not read her own paper!
Or else she is nothing but a lying narrative setter!
Either way, she doesn't look good!!
“Democrats have spent decades afraid of their shadows, afraid to offer real solutions to our nation’s problems,” said Rebecca Katz, a longtime Democratic political consultant who worked on Cynthia Nixon’s unsuccessful bid last year for New York governor. “Now we have how many leading contenders for president who have signed up for a Green New Deal? How many are now for Medicare for All? The window has shifted dramatically to the left.”
What an indictment of that party!
That pressure to tackle big, structural problems in the economy and government is being felt across the board, with Democrats floating the boldest, most sweeping ideas in a heated game of one-upmanship that occupies the very heart of the race. Presidential campaigns often feature an “ideas candidate” or two who push the field to embrace bolder policy proposals but don’t generally emerge as a mainstream choice, but this year, spouting big ideas is the norm, not the exception.
“I’m not so naïve as to say everyone is going to sound just like Elizabeth Warren, but they’re all asking these questions,” said Felicia Wong, president of the liberal Roosevelt Institute think tank.
Another think tank, huh?
This crop of Democrats is not the first to ignore political reality when dreaming up unorthodox campaign promises to capture voters’ imaginations. President Trump mastered the strategy in 2016, vowing to build a giant concrete wall along the US-Mexico border that he dubiously claimed Mexico would pay for and promising to block Muslims from entering the country entirely, despite serious questions about the constitutionality of such a move.
Translation: don't expect any change, unle$$ it is for the worst.
“I think Trump himself has widened the aperture of discourse,” said Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank that generated many policy ideas for the Obama administration. “He’s pointed to how the debate in Washington has been too constrained for too long.”
Oh, there she is AGAIN!
Can't the Globe find someone else to talk to?
Trump’s embrace of a massive tax cut that swelled the national debt has also freed Democrats from the constraints of explaining how they would pay for every new policy they tout. Democrats could roll back these tax cuts in order to pay for new programs.
Now the Globe cares about the debt.
“I think Trump’s tax cut gives us $1.7 trillion to use on something else,” former Vermont governor and presidential candidate Howard Dean said.
He's part of the Iranian fringe!
I suppose it will pay for the war for Israel, 'eh, Howard?
Sanders started the trend among Democrats toward bolder proposals in the 2016 primary, with the audacious ideas of free college and health care that were miles beyond the more modest proposals emanating from Obama’s White House.
Yeah, he was cheated out of the nomination, and had he won it he would now be president and not Trump. Nice going, Globe, and all collaborators in the Clinton crime family schemes.
“He has done more than anyone in the Democratic Party to expand the imagination of what is possible,” said Representative Ro Khanna of California, cochair of Sanders’ campaign. “I think he’s very pleased that the campaign is now about big ideas.”
And he is technically not even a Democrat.
In this election cycle, no one has been more aggressive in the policy arms race than Warren. She has picked up Sanders’ mantle, but surpassing him in both specificity and volume.
She is trying to outmaneuver him, and why must the AmeriKan ma$$ media frame every issue in terms of war?
She’s churned out proposals to cancel most student debt entirely, create a new federal agency focused on job creation, and fund a national network of child care centers to bring down daycare costs, all paid for by her most audacious proposal of all — taxing the assets of “freeloading” multimillionaires and billionaires.
Yeah, how audacious to proclaim an attempt to level the ever-expanding wealth inequality.
I gue$$ Liz missed her chance because a guy won the presidency with the "audacity of hope," remember?
What the "journali$tic $tyle" is telling you is that the Globe must pretend to be for Warren because she is from Massachusetts and a Democrat, but they don't really want her.
“The difference between Warren and Bernie is Bernie has ideas and Warren has plans,” Katz said. “And she has plans to accomplish her plans.”
Among other candidates, Harris has embraced Medicare for All and a massive teacher pay raise, Pete Buttigieg has suggested expanding the Supreme Court, and Jay Inslee has laid out the most ambitious climate change targets of any Democratic contender, but these candidates are proposing sea changes in government at a time when Washington has never been more partisan and dysfunctional. A quarter of the federal government shuttered for its longest stretch ever this year, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who blocked much of Obama’s agenda, has barely moved any legislation since Democrats took control of the House this year, a preview of his likely strategy if a Democrat wins in 2020.
If Republicans retain the Senate majority in 2020, it’s hard to imagine these liberal policies becoming law, which means candidates risk disappointing and alienating supporters lured by those big ideas.
I've already been alienated and and no longer disappointed because I don't expect anything out of this monied, corrupt, and fa$ci$t government that is controlled by Big Jewry.
“The failure to deliver on promises and the reality of political gridlock on Capitol Hill these days is one of the reasons why anger against politicians is so high,” said Jim Manley, a former top aide to former US senator and Democratic majority leader Harry Reid.
At a recent Warren rally in Oakland, several of her supporters said they see her policy proposals as a statement of her values, not a precise and ironclad list of what she would accomplish in the White House.
“She’s not taking a piecemeal approach to policy making. She’s like, ‘We need to fix these big problems now,’ ” said Jamal Johnson, a graduate student in the Bay Area. “I think that’s a good bargaining position,” and Warren builds in the difficulty her agenda would face into her campaign slogan: “Dream Big, Fight Hard.” She is one of just a handful of candidates to endorse elimination of the filibuster in the Senate, which would mean legislation would only need the support of 50, not 60, senators to move forward.
Still, the Democratic candidate leading the early polls, Joe Biden, has largely avoided making similar promises. His high name recognition means he doesn’t need big ideas to draw attention, but his support so far also raises questions about how hungry the electorate is for promises of transformational change in a year when the main objective of so many Democrats is to simply unseat Trump.
Although Biden unveiled a sweeping climate change plan Tuesday, he’s otherwise sat out the heated policy primary and instead emphasized the need to find common ground with Republicans. That reflects the view among about two-thirds of Democratic primary voters in a recent CNN poll who said it was very important to them to have the president work across the aisle.
The Globe reporter forgot to mention that he plagiarized the climate speech (not the first time he has done such things, either), and it was JUST A MISTAKE!
“The design of our system is that we have to reach consensus on everything,” Biden said in Concord, N.H., Tuesday night.
Some of Biden’s supporters are attracted to his vision of moderate bipartisanship.
Now she is pimping for Biden!
“He’s not making outlandish promises that we know can’t be fulfilled, but he cares about people,” said Dr. Don Levi, a retired pediatrician who went to see Biden campaign in Nashua last month.
Other Democrats said they feel so unsettled by the presence of Trump in the White House that they’d rather defeat him before considering major policy changes.
“We’re in a car crash. Not the time to buy a new house,” said Mindy Musumeci, another Biden fan who joined him on the trail in Nashua, but the former vice president is making his own promise to voters, one that may be the most dubious of all: that simply by replacing Trump, as Biden reassured a group of New Hampshire supporters in May, he would be able to get a Democratic agenda passed.
“With Donald Trump out of the White House, you will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends,” Biden said.
He doesn't have a God complex, does he?
--more--"
What we need is another Andrew Jackson.
"President Trump lashed out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, for a second day in a row Friday...."
More fake news from the Bo$ton Globe, and wouldn't it be better if Trump just stepped down over all the lies?
You want to impeach him?
Impeach him for this:
"Trump allows high-tech US bomb parts to be built in Saudi Arabia" by Michael LaForgia and Walt Bogdanich New York Times, June 7, 2019
WASHINGTON — When the Trump administration declared an emergency last month and fast-tracked the sale of more American arms to Saudi Arabia, it did more than anger members of Congress who opposed the sale on humanitarian grounds.
It also raised concerns that the Saudis could gain access to technology that would let them produce their own versions of American precision-guided bombs — weapons they have used in strikes on civilians since they began fighting a war in Yemen four years ago.
Yeah, it's all falling apart now.
The emergency authorization allows Raytheon Co., a top American defense firm based in Waltham, Mass., to team with the Saudis to build high-tech bomb parts in Saudi Arabia. That provision, which has not been previously reported, is part of a broad package of information the administration released this week to Congress.
The move grants Raytheon and the Saudis sweeping permission to begin assembling the control systems, guidance electronics, and circuit cards that are essential to the company’s Paveway smart bombs. The United States has closely guarded such technology for national security reasons.
Multiple reports by human rights groups over the past four years have singled out the weapons as being used in airstrikes on civilians. One attack, on a Sanaa funeral home in October 2016, led the Obama administration to suspend bomb sales to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.
The new arrangement is part of a larger arms package, previously blocked by Congress, that includes 120,000 precision-guided bombs that Raytheon is prepared to ship to the coalition. These will add to the tens of thousands of bombs that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have already stockpiled, and some in Congress fear the surplus would let the countries continue fighting in Yemen long into the future.
The emergency declaration, invoked in part because of tensions with Iran, prompted a broad bipartisan pushback from lawmakers who were concerned not only about the war, but also about whether the Trump administration was usurping congressional authority to approve arms sales.
A group of senators that includes Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, and Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, announced Wednesday that they would introduce 22 separate measures expressing disapproval of the deals.
“Few nations should be trusted less than Saudi Arabia,” Paul said in a statement Thursday. “In recent years, they have fomented human atrocities, repeatedly lied to the United States and have proved to be a reckless regional pariah. It is concerning and irresponsible for the United States to continue providing them arms.”
That's where the print copy ended.
Defense contractors have established close ties with the Trump administration, and key executives from several companies, including Raytheon, have made their way into high-ranking positions. Raytheon’s former vice president for government relations, Mark T. Esper, was confirmed as Army secretary in 2017.
The defense firm has also cultivated ties to the Saudi government. During President Trump’s visit to the kingdom in May 2017, Raytheon signed an agreement to work more closely with the Saudi Arabian Military Industries Co., a holding company owned by the country’s sovereign wealth fund. It was unclear whether the new production deal fell under that plan.
The production agreement took some lawmakers by surprise. Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, an outspoken critic of the Yemen war, said it seemed “to serve no purpose other than to forfeit our technology and prevent future congressional oversight.”
The arrangement, which would effectively outsource jobs, appears to be at odds with Trump’s position that arms sales are important because of the American jobs they create.
Yeah, WAR is GOOD for BU$INE$$!
Rob Berschinski, a senior vice president at Human Rights First, an advocacy group, said the administration’s decision was “about siding unreservedly with favored Middle Eastern authoritarians, no matter who they kill or how they repress their citizens.” Berschinski, a former deputy assistant secretary of state, added, “It has nothing to do with American jobs.”
I don't see any criticism regarding Israel coming from Juman Rights Watch!
--more--"
Contrary to popular opinion, I want WWIII to get off the ground.
I know it will mean massive destruction and suffering; however, the sooner we get it going to sooner the EUSraeli Empire will fall, and that will be a great day, a great day, for the people mom this planet (including Americans).
Gotta give the U.S. credit, too; they are trying like hell to start it:
"Russian and US Navy ships narrowly avoid collision in Philippine Sea" by Andrew Higgins and Megan Specia New York Times, June 7, 2019
MOSCOW — After years of increasing assertiveness by Russia’s military in waters and airspace around its borders, a Russian destroyer nearly collided Friday with a US warship in the waters of the Philippine Sea.
More Jew York Times sh!t!!
Each side blamed the other for the episode, which took place in Asian waters that have previously been the site of an intense naval rivalry between the United States and China, but from which Russia, though a Pacific power, had been largely absent.
NATO has repeatedly accused Russia’s warplanes and warships of staging dangerous, threatening maneuvers in the Baltic and Black seas, but the episode Friday was the first potentially catastrophic near miss involving Russian and US naval vessels so far from Russian shores since the end of the Cold War.
Russian state-controlled media suggested that the near collision, the second close encounter involving US and Russia forces this week, had been staged by the Pentagon to coincide with a visit to Russia by President Xi Jinping of China, who has overseen a steady increase in economic and military ties between Beijing and Moscow.
China and Russia are not officially military allies, but they have staged joint military exercises and increasingly look to each other for leverage against Washington, with which both have severely strained relations.
That is a war we will not win, folks.
Major General Vladimir Bogatyrev, chairman of the National Association of Reserve Officers, told Russian state media that “it is not by chance that these actions happened during the visit to Russia by the head of the People’s Republic of China.”
The United States, he added, had deliberately provoked the incident in the Philippine Sea in an effort to “demonstrate to us the supposed strength of the American fleet and lawless behavior in the wide expanse of global seas,” but he also hinted that Russia was not merely an innocent bystander.
He hinted it, huh, JYT?
PFFFT!
The whole thing sounds like a replay of the Kerch Straight incident, and all you need to know is the false charges leveled against Russia regarding the annexing of the Crimean Peninsula.
First, they didn't annex it. Crimea voted for a referendum to secede from the Ukraine and join the Russian federation, and the Russians accepted.
Then the lie is repeated and repeated and repeated, and we all know that if you lie about one thing you lie about all things (so when are they reopening the case?).
Therefore, when I'm told Russian vessels seize Ukrainian ships in Black Sea in a naval attack by Russia (details of the confrontation are murky!!!) that gives Putin a new chance to test west’s resolve in his own backyard, I'm disinclined to believe it until I see some evidence.
Amid the crisis, a meeting was canceled as officials have since accused Russia of denying passage to Ukrainian commercial traffic in and out of Mariupol and Berdyansk, but at least NATO allies have boosted their presence with more ships deployed and more air policing.
No one asks questions about the war drums when they come up against a determined drive by national security adviser John Bolton.
Not even McKinsey could rehabilitate Putin after Mueller found the truth.
The US Navy said the near collision took place around 11:45 a.m. local time as a result of an “unsafe and unprofessional” move by a Russian destroyer, the Admiral Vinogradov, which came within 50 to 100 feet of the USS Chancellorsville, according to a statement. The cruiser had to quickly maneuver to avoid a collision, the Navy said.
Where is the trash can, because the that is where all U.S. military pronouncements belong.
Commander Clayton Doss, a spokesman for the 7th Fleet, said in the statement that the Russian destroyer had made an “unsafe maneuver” against the Chancellorsville, a guided missile cruiser, “putting the safety of her crew and ship at risk.”
Russia gave an entirely different version of events, with the Pacific Fleet press service telling the state-run news agency Tass that the US vessel had hindered the passage of the Admiral Vinogradov, forcing it to perform a dangerous maneuver to avoid a collision.
Guess which version I am believing.
“The US cruiser Chancellorsville suddenly changed its course and crossed the Admiral Vinogradov destroyer’s course some 50 meters away from the ship,” the press service said, according to Tass. “In order to prevent a collision, the Admiral Vinogradov’s crew was forced to conduct an emergency maneuver.”
The US Navy released two video clips of the events on its YouTube channel, including one that showed the Russian vessel quickly pulling close alongside the USS Chancellorsville. Also visible, however, were what appeared to be sunbathing Russian sailors on deck of the Admiral Vinogradov, which suggests the Russian vessel was not on high alert at the time and was not engaged in a planned provocation.
Oh, JouTube let those stay up, huh?
I think the video speaks for itself!
The military encounters have become a common feature with tensions heightened between the two countries. Relations have grown increasingly rocky because of anger in the United States over Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, its annexation of Crimea, and its influence in the conflicts in Syria and Venezuela.
There they go again, repeating the lie about Russian interference and annexing of Crimea (which is comparable to Venezuela, where the US government is telling the Russians not to interfere in our backyard).
On Tuesday, the US Navy’s 6th Fleet said that a P-8A Poseidon aircraft was intercepted by a Russian fighter jet three times in a period of about three hours while flying over the Mediterranean Sea.
The 6th Fleet said in a statement that the first and third intercepts were safe, but it expressed concern about the second, citing what it said was a “high-speed pass” that caused turbulence that put the pilots and crew of the US aircraft at risk.
“While the Russian aircraft was operating in international airspace, this interaction was irresponsible,” the Navy said in the statement. “We expect them to behave within international standards.”
Unlike the U.S., and Israel can violate any airspace it likes whenever it wants.
One does wonder how the rest of the world continues to put up with the asshole AmeriKan government and its mouthpiece media.
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Related:
"A group of United Nations human rights experts called Friday for an international inquiry into the state of human rights in the Philippines because of the “staggering number” of unlawful killings by the security services and official attacks on people and institutions who defend human rights there. In a strongly worded condemnation of President Rodrigo Duterte’s three-year rule, 11 UN special rapporteurs said the body’s Human Rights Council should set up an independent investigation “given the scale and seriousness of the reported human rights violations” and the climate of official impunity in which they occur. The joint statement, by an unusually large group of experts, seeks to galvanize international action in the Human Rights Council, which convenes a new session this month. In their statement Friday, the experts took aim at wide-ranging abuses beyond the war on drugs. They cited extrajudicial killings and summary killings of children, people with disabilities, indigenous people, trade union representatives, and land rights activists....."
But no investigation of Saudi actions in Yemen or the Israeli slaughter of Gazans.
They should call it the JUnited Nations from now on!
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Time to take the high road:
"Look now, because odds are this is the last time you’ll see the view from inside a penthouse at One Dalton. The superluxe Back Bay condominium and hotel tower is getting ready to open this summer, and on Friday developer Carpenter & Co. held a media tour to show off the swanky Zuma restaurant, the Four Seasons spa, and, yes, the jaw-dropping views from the top floor. It’s the tallest residential building in Boston, and sales have been strong, said developer Richard Friedman. He said most of One Dalton’s 165 condos have sold, but would not disclose how many. Most of the buyers, he said, are well-heeled Boston-area residents, refuting a common criticism that One Dalton is mainly for foreign investors....."
Wow, nice ass!
Related: A 24-story tower could rise on the edge of Chinatown
"Apartment building that burned in 2017 while under construction finally opens" by Tim Logan Globe Staff, June 7, 2019
A mixed-income apartment building in Dorchester that was largely destroyed in a fire while under construction two years ago finally celebrated its official opening Friday.
US Representative Ayanna Pressley and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh joined developer Trinity Financial to cut the ribbon on Treadmark, an 83-unit apartment and condo building on Dorchester Avenue near the MBTA’s Ashmont Station on the Red Line.
The $45 million building was hailed by many as a model for the sort of housing Boston needs more of to dent some of the nation’s priciest rents, but it also became a cautionary tale of sorts when a construction accident sparked a fire that devastated the wood frame building shortly before it was scheduled to open in 2017.
It sure looked like arson to me, but after sinking more than $10 million in city, state, and federal subsidies, they couldn't claim that.
With the help of insurance, Trinity was able to rebuild. The building opened earlier this year.
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Also see:
Sarepta CEO says he welcomes Vertex’s effort to develop muscular dystrophy drugs
Sanofi Taps Novartis Executive as CEO in Race for New Drugs
Haven wants to help ‘the American public get better health and reduce the costs,’ JPMorgan CEO says
Influencers promoted vaping without suitable warnings
Time to close the book on this:
"Barnes & Noble is sold to hedge fund after a tumultuous year" by Alexandra Alter and Tiffany Hsu New York Times, June 7, 2019
Barnes & Noble has been acquired by the hedge fund Elliott Advisors for $683 million, a move that has momentarily calmed fears among publishers and agents that the largest bookstore chain in the United States might collapse after one of the most tumultuous periods in its history.
The sale marks a surprising new chapter in the 40-plus year history of Barnes & Noble, which evolved from a single Manhattan bookstore in 1971 and grew into a national fleet of superstores. In the 1990s, Barnes & Noble was often vilified as a greedy corporate giant that slashed book prices to lows its competitors could not match and helped put struggling independent booksellers out of business across the United States, but in recent years, Barnes & Noble has been decimated by the strength of online booksellers like Amazon and struggled to make a profit.
How poetically ironic!
Mike Shatzkin, chief of Idea Logical Co., a book industry consulting firm, said a sale was probably the best outcome for the company’s future.
“Somebody else had to save Barnes & Noble — the present ownership succeeded in a completely different environment and was not ready to jump into the 21st century,” he said.
The all-cash transaction valued Barnes & Noble stock at $6.50 a share, a premium of nearly 42 percent over the retailer’s stock price Wednesday, before a report by The Wall Street Journal about an impending deal drove up the price Thursday.
The sale was approved unanimously by Barnes & Noble’s board.
James Daunt, chief executive of Waterstones [who] will also act as Barnes & Noble’s CEO acknowledged that Barnes & Noble faced significant challenges as it sought to reverse years of decline and Amazon continued to gobble up market share, but he expressed confidence that investing in stores would pay off in the end.
In recent years, there have been encouraging signs that the print retail business is rebounding, and publishers hope that a revitalized Barnes & Noble could take advantage of that shift. Independent bookstores are thriving again, and print sales are rising while e-book sales are declining. Even Amazon is investing in physical bookstores across the country.....
Yeah, keep telling yourselves that and maybe it will come true.
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And leave it to the Globe to ruin your vacation.
APRIL UPDATES:
"Progressives try to push Mass. Legislature to left" by Victoria McGrane and Matt Stout Globe Staff, April 5, 2019
When Progressive Massachusetts hosted its first “lobby day” four years ago, the number of people who showed up fit into a small conference room on the State House’s top floor.
More like Progre$$ive!
This week, more than 100 people gathered for the grass-roots group’s daylong push on Beacon Hill, imbibing Dunkin’ coffee before fanning out to lawmakers’ offices, gripping checklists of more than a dozen bills on everything from same-day voter registration to reducing greenhouse gases.
“Even though the state might not be as liberal as many people think it is, we should make it as liberal as people . . . like to think it is,” Jonathan Cohn, chairman of the group’s issues committee, told members from many of its 16 chapters across the state.
Amid growing frustration among some on the left that the Legislature isn’t moving boldly enough, activists are redoubling their pressure on Beacon Hill to act on their key legislative priorities. The progressives are pushing to bolster the state’s education funding system, battle climate change, and block local and state police officers from performing the functions of immigration officers, a bill known as the Safe Communities Act.
Good luck with those corporate-bought chambers.
The session ahead, following some key 2018 election victories, will be a key test of just how much clout the Democrats’ progressive wing has gained, in either chamber, both on and off Beacon Hill. Their push comes in a political environment that includes a moderate Republican governor who wields infrequent vetoes and, in his fifth year in office, still enjoys a relatively close working relationship with Democratic leaders.
State Senator James B. Eldridge, one of the cofounders of the Senate Progressive Caucus, said the early days of the new session have been encouraging. He pointed to the recently passed ban on so-called gay conversion therapy for minors and elimination of the family cap on welfare benefits, both of which were sent to Governor Charlie Baker on Thursday. The Legislature also approved $8 million for family planning programs to replace the federal funds that the Trump administration is expected to halt in early May for health centers that discuss abortion, but many of the most progressive measures that passed the Legislature in recent years, from hikes to the minimum wage to establishing a paid family and medical leave program, were largely powered by outside groups frustrated by a lack of movement on Beacon Hill. After activists and labor unions mounted campaigns to put these issues on the ballot, the Legislature forged last year’s grand bargain that raised the minimum wage and established paid family leave (as part of the deal, lawmakers also created a permanent sales tax holiday, among other changes).
And they stripped your time-and-a-half overtime.
“Had we not had the ballot initiative, either they wouldn’t have passed or they would have passed but not nearly as strong as they did,” said Lew Finfer, codirector of Massachusetts Communities Action Network and one of the leaders of Raise Up Massachusetts, a coalition of labor, faith, and community groups behind many of the initiatives.
Progressives were further emboldened by two 2018 electoral victories. Jeffrey Sánchez and Byron Rushing, both Democrats and the House’s highest-ranking Latino and black representatives, respectively, were swept from office last fall by primary opponents who charged they had fallen out of step with their liberal districts.
Sánchez, for one, was berated by challenger Nika Elugardo, a self-described “super left” Democrat, after a Senate-passed provision to stop supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement with state money was left out of the budget that Sánchez helped shepherd to the governor’s desk, but whether this enthusiasm on the left can translate into more change inside the State House is still unclear.
Looks like bullying to me, and are you sick of getting jerked around yet?
One trial balloon may be the Fair Share Amendment, which would change the state constitution to allow for a surtax on high earners. Another potential stress test, according to Finfer, is the debate over the school funding formula and ultimately, how much new state money is dedicated toward it.
“That’s kind of the bellwether issue,” he said. “How much impact will the progressive legislators have on that?”
On paper, the Legislature’s progressive wing is strong. The House Progressive Caucus currently lists 58 members, the same number as last year but with an infusion of vocal freshmen members such as Elugardo, Lindsay Sabadosa of Northampton, and Liz Miranda of Dorchester, all of whom attended the Progressive Massachusetts event Wednesday. (Democrats hold 127 House seats out of a total of 160.)
At 19 members, the Senate Progressive Caucus comprises a majority of Senate Democrats and has grown so much that its members are in the process of electing a steering committee for the first time, said Eldridge, but in practice, neither caucus votes as a bloc and thus many activists say the size of the groups doesn’t translate into influence.
Unlike the corporate or Jew lobbies.
In recent years, the Senate has been seen as the Legislature’s more liberal chamber, passing legislation — for example, on gender identity and environmental protections — that often lands with a thud at the doorstep of the House, which had traditionally followed the more moderate Democratic politics of Speaker Robert A. DeLeo.
“At every step, the House ‘progressives’ heel to Speaker DeLeo, who is not particularly progressive, an autocrat, and seems to have scant legislative ambition,” wrote activist Charley Blandy on the progressive blog he founded, Blue Mass Group.
Other Democrats say the idea that the House and DeLeo are an impediment to progressive priorities is unfair and untrue.
They point to recent legislation championed by DeLeo, such as gun safety and transgender rights. Abortion rights advocates heaped praise on DeLeo for his role in pushing the recent emergency bill to replenish federal funding from the Title X program, which supports family planning and sexual health care services for low-income people.
“We have a bold agenda this session, from banning so-called gay conversion therapy as we did last month to a progressive approach toward health care and education,” said Representative Kate Hogan of Stow, a member of DeLeo’s leadership team. “As a practical progressive who likes to get things done, I’m proud to be a member of what is, by any metric, one of the most forward-leaning and progressive legislative chambers in the country.”
DeLeo’s office said no one from Progressive Massachusetts asked to meet with the speaker during the lobby day. “The speaker looks forward to building on this existing stack of accomplishments over this current session with other proposals including his to invest $1 billion over the next decade in community-driven, large-scale climate and resiliency projects,” said a DeLeo spokeswoman.
In the meantime, activists say they will continue to e-mail, call, and fill Beacon Hill offices, as did more than a dozen Progressive Massachusetts members who crammed into state Senator Michael F. Rush’s office on Wednesday. Wearing blue-and-white stick-on name tags, they spent more than half an hour with three aides, promoting their priority bills such as the Safe Communities Act, ranked-choice voting, and a measure to encourage the state to move to 100 percent renewable energy by 2045.
“It takes people like us to push things to the top of the pile,” Rachel Poliner, of West Roxbury, told them. “Times are different than they were a few years ago. . . . You could say that all of us — as voters and as legislators — have been a little too complacent. Why is the MBTA in the shape it’s in? Right, so we’re upping the ante.”
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No complaints about the pay raises, huh?
Also see:
Mass. senator wants to restore voting rights for incarcerated felons
More chances for vote fraud!
Suffolk DA Rachael Rollins again speaks out about Baker administration
What a difference a month can make for Pete Buttigieg in New Hampshire
And a visit to AIPAC, too!
