Donald Trump told Theresa May she should sue the EU rather than negotiate over Brexit, she has told the BBC.
The US president said on Friday at a joint press conference he had given her a suggestion - but she had found it too "brutal".
Asked by the BBC's Andrew Marr what it was he had said, she replied: "He told me I should sue the EU - not go into negotiations."
Sorry for this trip down memory lane, but I thought it illuminating as I Googled around both because Hayden's a helluva writer with a helluva past, and he sets up some understanding of the current movement in California.
De Leon was a Hillary supporter - but he also symbolizes some of the multicultural movements and yearnings. Feinstein is largely an old-schooler, and certainly not pleasing to the typical liberal Californian on her security stands (though CA's huge defense industry undoubtedly has her back).
This isn't quite New York's version of Ocasio - it's a much more careful shift, even if the vast majority came out for Kevin de Leon in the endorsement (and as Hayden noted, Bernie had few endorsements, which made his movement hard to seriously consider once in office).
The fracking biz also indicates a fault line - the "uncivil" left will also pick an unwinnable nonsensical point-of-view to push, and punish those in disagreement unmercifully. Fracking was one of them, the push to full Medicare-for-all another. But De Leon undoubtedly isn't falling into that minefield. Despite some blunders, his positions seem to be (in my quick scanning of positions and background) firmly rooted in opportunity, and it's hard to see a downside to that.
My first reaction was to go with the tough old broad who'd fought Dem battles for so many years, but Feinstein's not a Pelosi. De Leon's endorsement of Hillary helps me transition - he's not a "burn the boats" guy. (And I'm fine with Ocasio's mini-revolution in the Bronx - the House has a different function than the Senate, and is more a long-term, many-voices pressure that I welcome).
So while I'm sure Feinstein won't take this sitting down, I'm guessing this endorsement is a positive step for California to figure out its next generation leaders and position itself for both the demographic/economic changes as well as the stark political realities in both Sacramento and Washington.
By Kylie Atwood & Margaret Brennan @ CBSNews.com, July 14
As Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's regime violently assaults the southern region of Syria, an area formerly protected by the Trump administration, the members of the all-volunteer rescue organization known as the White Helmets are in danger of assassination.
[....] CBS News has learned the question of how to extract the emergency workers was raised with President Trump in multiple conversations with allied countries on the sidelines of the NATO summit. The Netherlands, U.K., France, Canada and Germany are scrambling to find a way to save the lives of an estimated 1,000 volunteers and their family members. Around 300 of them are considered to be in imminent danger.
Prime Minister Theresa May personally brought up the emergency issue during her meeting with Mr. Trump in the U.K. Formally known as the Syrian Civil Defense group, the White Helmets expect to be marked as resistance targets and slaughtered by Assad's forces, which are backed by Iranian and Russian firepower. "They are promising no retribution on anyone in the southwest but nobody trusts or believes that," a senior U.S. official told CBS News [....]
This weekend, Trump will visit a property that offers a tantalizing and maddeningly incomplete glimpse into the ways that our President makes and spends money
[....] This is the first edition of a weekly column in which I hope to expose, explore, and analyze the financial activity of our President and his associates—including his family, his political appointees, and business partners—and make the case for greater transparency. We know, of course, that the Trump Organization has worked with some truly questionable business associates, that it has run afoul of anti-money-laundering laws, and that its most high-profile business expansion—a line of three- and four-star hotels—has all but collapsed. But, for all the coverage of Trump’s finances, there is so much we just don’t know. And Trump Turnberry offers a tantalizing and maddeningly incomplete glimpse into the ways in which our President makes and spends mo
Analysis by Mark Landler & Julie Hirschfeld Davis @ NYTimes.com, July 14
[...] Just a few hours after President Trump doused expectations of extracting any confession from President Vladimir V. Putin on Russia’s election meddling when they meet on Monday, his own Justice Department issued a sweeping indictment of 12 Russian intelligence agents [....]
The bold move, precisely the kind that Mr. Trump has long resisted, demonstrated how he is almost wholly untethered from his administration when it comes to dealing with Moscow. Whether it is Russia’s interference in the election, its annexation of Crimea or its intervention in Syria, Mr. Trump’s statements either undercut, or flatly contradict, those of his lieutenants.
The disconnect is so profound that it often seems Mr. Trump is pursuing one Russia policy, set on ushering in a gauzy new era of cooperation with Mr. Putin, while the rest of his administration is pursuing another, set on countering a revanchist power that the White House has labeled one of the greatest threats to American security and prosperity.
[...] “The president has hobbled his own executive branch, and the executive branch has hobbled its own president,” said Strobe Talbott [....]
[...] In his hawkishness toward Moscow, Mr. Coats lines up with other members of Mr. Trump’s national security team, from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The national security adviser, John R. Bolton, has publicly encouraged Mr. Trump to keep pressing Russia on election meddling, noting that in a preparatory meeting with him, Mr. Putin denied Russian state involvement, but not any Russian involvement at all [....]
The White House enshrined a tough approach to Russia in its national security strategy, which was written under the direction of Mr. Bolton’s predecessor, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who spoke regularly about the threat Moscow posed to America’s institutions [....]
By Patricia Cohen @ NYTimes.com, July 13
Corporate profits have rarely swept up a bigger share of the nation’s wealth, and workers have rarely shared a smaller one.
The lopsided split is especially pronounced given how low the official unemployment rate has sunk. Throughout the recession and much of its aftermath, when many Americans were grateful to receive a paycheck instead of a pink slip, jobs and raises were in short supply. Now, complaints of labor shortages are as common as tweets. For the first time in a long while, workers have some leverage to push for more.
Yet many are far from making up all the lost ground. Hourly earnings have moved forward at a crawl, with higher prices giving workers less buying power than they had last summer. Last-minute scheduling, no-poaching and noncompete clauses, and the use of independent contractors are popular tactics that put workers at a disadvantage. Threats to move operations overseas, where labor is cheaper, continue to loom.
And in the background, the nation’s central bankers stand poised to raise interest rates and deliberately rein in growth if wages climb too rapidly [....]
By Marisa Fernandez @ Axios.com, July 13
Amazon’s e-commerce sales are expected to top $258 billion this year, up 30% from one year ago with projections for 2018 even more staggering in each Amazon category, according to a survey by eMarketer.
Why it matters: The survey shows the reality of Amazon’s untouchable advantage against other retail companies. E-commerce giant eBay, is second to Amazon and only has 6.6% of the market share. The projections of each category on Amazon are more staggering, as each one is expected to grow in 2018 by massive margins [....]
By Julie Miller @ VanityFair.com, July 13
Weinstein’s lawyer called his client’s sit-down with The Spectator columnist “a social meeting between old friends” and “not an interview.”
When we speak of government, we refer to the various technical and bureaucratic means by which policies and plans are delivered. Government involves officials, data-gathering, regulating and evaluating. As a governmental issue, Brexit involves prosaic problems such as how to get trucks through ports. Sovereignty, on the other hand, is always an abstract notion of where power ultimately lies, albeit an abstraction that modern states depend on if they’re to command obedience. As a sovereign issue, Brexit involves bravado appeals to “the people” and “the nation.” These are two incommensurable ideas of what power consists of, although any effective state must have both at its disposal.
One way to understand the rise of reactionary populism today is as the revenge of sovereignty on government. This is not simply a backlash after decades of globalization, but against the form of political power that facilitated it, which is technocratic, multilateral and increasingly divorced from local identities.
A common thread linking “hard” Brexiteers to nationalists across the globe is that they resent the very idea of governing as a complex, modern, fact-based set of activities that requires technical expertise and permanent officials.
Petition @ Change.org (He needs only a few more signatures at the link for this weekend, if you like this sort of protest. It makes me laugh, so I think it's a good thing in these sad times.)
[....]Trump is coming to Scotland and protestors going to Turnberry have managed to secure the blimp to fly in the area around Turnberry.
Due to the airspace restrictions in place for Trump's visit, the protestors are seeking flight clearance to fly the blimp near the president on his visit to Scotland.
Police on the ground will allow it with the authorisation of pertinent parties. Emails have been sent to the Chief of Police in Scotland, National Air Traffic Control, the Civil Aviation Authority and the First Minister.
The purpose of this petition is to provide the link to these authorities to show that there is clear and substantive public interest in it flying as is the protestors right pursuant to the rights [....]
More here
NATO spends more than 13 times as much as Russia on defense. Even if you didn’t count U.S. spending, the other members combined spend more than four times as much as Russia. And that’s without most of them reaching the 2 percent of GDP goal.
By Zachary Basu @ Axios.com, July 12
The Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm that was one of three entities indicted by Robert Muellerfor conspiring to interfere in the 2016 election, created 48 Twitter accounts dating back to 2014 that were designed to mimic local news outlets, according to an investigation by NPR.
Why it matters: The now-suspended accounts, which had names like @ElPasoTopNews and @Seattle_Post, gained the trust of thousands of followers over the course of two years by posting real local news headlines. The potential for these accounts to mobilize at any moment and influence a narrative suggests that the Russian misinformation campaign — which was evidently a years-long effort — had an acute understanding of the authority and respect that local news commands in American society [....]
Behold, a new breed of Republican for the Trump era.
Seth Grossman won the Republican primary last month for a competitive House seat in New Jersey, running on the message “Support Trump/Make America Great Again.” The National Republican Congressional Committee endorsed him.
Then, a video surfaced, courtesy of American Bridge, a Democratic PAC, of Grossman saying “the whole idea of diversity is a bunch of crap.” Grossman then proclaimed diversity “evil.” CNN uncovered previous instances of Grossman calling Kwanzaa a “phony holiday” created by “black racists,” labeling Islam a cancer and saying faithful Muslims cannot be good Americans.
Grossman gave an interview claiming that he supports diversity in part because he likes “to go to Chinese restaurants.” He called the oppression of African Americans “exaggerated.” And this week, the liberal group Media Matters found that Grossman had previously posted a link on Facebook to a white-nationalist website’s piece claiming black people “are a threat to all who cross their paths.”
After weeks of delay, the NRCC finally withdrew its nomination.
Many such characters have crawled out from under rocks and onto Republican ballots in 2018: A candidate with ties to white nationalists is the GOP Senate nominee in Virginia (and has President Trump’s endorsement); an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier is the Republican candidate in a California House race; a prominent neo-Nazi won the GOP nomination in an Illinois House race; and overt racists are in Republican primaries across the country.
Many will lose primaries, and the rest will lose in November. GOP officials have disavowed this crop of unsavory candidates, though sometimes hesitantly. It is an indication of where Trump has taken the party that Republicans need the support of people like this.
........
Dana Milbank, WashPo op-ed piece yesterday
[....] It’s tempting to blow all this off as a single, insignificant incident in a small town. It isn’t Los Angeles’s Rampart, after all. Or Chicago’s systemized torture. But it also isn’t unique. There’s a steady stream of stories like this one. I was alerted to this particular story by a former police officer who now advocates criminal-justice reform. (He asked me not to use his name, for reasons that will be apparent in a moment.) I asked him: In his experience, how common is this sort of thing? His response:
This is very common in policing. Looking back on my career, I realize just how often I acted similarly and didn’t even realize it. It was subconscious. I was trained and subtly incentivized to do so. You intentionally create conflict and manufacture noncompliance in order to build your stop into an arrest situation. Because that’s what generations of law enforcers who have been steeped in a fear-based, comply or else, us-vs.-them mind-set do. They arrest people. Arrests are a primary measure of productivity and gives the appearance your department has solved a problem.
Most aggressive cops have honed this to an art. They are savvy, know exactly how to weaponize numerous petty laws, ordinances, use-of-force policy and procedure against citizens. This cop was off his game and clumsily went through the motions like a desperate door-to-door perfume salesman. Except when cops manufacture a “sale” like this, the “customer” ends up arrested, criminalized, emotionally and financially devastated, not to mention possibly physically beaten or worse. And the justice system will deem it legal, even when it isn’t.
As far as the police leadership and prosecutors, they knew exactly what they were doing. If someone makes a complaint, you find something, anything to charge them with. [....]
Trump and Pence trot out bad-cop, good-cop routine as fears rise over trade war and NATO spat.
By Christopher Cadelago @ Politico.com, July 11, 3:18 pm EDT
Related links offered on Politico home page:
Dana Milbank, WaPo opinion piece, yesterday. Clearly this qualifies as news.
.....
So Putin is fine, but Europeans are killing us. Using this distinction, we can extrapolate a taxonomy:
Things that Trump thinks will kill us:
● Free markets.
● Free trade.
● Democracy.
● Free speech.
● Free press.
● Opposition parties.
● Independent courts.
● The rule of law.
● Human rights.
Things that Trump thinks are fine*:
(* from the April human rights report on Russia by Trump’s State Department)
● Extrajudicial killings.
● Enforced disappearances.
● Torture.
● Arbitrary arrest and detention.
● Lack of judicial independence.
● Political prisoners.
● Severe interference with privacy.
● Severe restrictions on freedom of expression.
● Violence against journalists and bloggers.
● Blocking and filtering of Internet content.
● Severe restrictions on the rights of peaceful assembly.
● Increasingly severe restriction on freedom of association.
● Restrictions on freedom of movement.
● Severe restrictions on the right to participate in the political process.
● Restrictions on opposition candidates’ ability to seek public office and conduct political campaigns.
● Widespread corruption at all levels and in all branches of government.
● Thousands of fatal incidents of domestic violence, to which the government responded by reducing the penalty for domestic violence.
● Thousands of fatal incidents of child abuse.
● Trafficking in persons.
● Institutionalization in harsh conditions of a large percentage of people with disabilities.
● State-sponsored as well as societal violence against LGBTI people.
As we have seen for some time during the Trump era, the good guys are the bad guys, and vice versa. The world has been upside down for so long that American toilets now swirl in the opposite direction.
...........
By Reid Wilson @ TheHill.com, Jul 10
[....] Helena District Court Judge James Reynolds invalidated some of the signatures Green Party backers submitted to the secretary of state’s office, either because the signatures did not match those on file, because they did not match a registered voter or because of improper signature-gathering practices [....]
The state Democratic Party had sued to block the Green Party’s access to the ballot, claiming Republicans had improperly manipulated the signature-gathering process.
Earlier this year, state Democrats raised concerns after ostensible Green Party supporters turned in more than 7,000 signatures on the final day of qualifying. At least two of those signature-gatherers identified themselves in social media postings as employees of Advanced Micro Targeting, a Republican political consulting firm in Nevada [....]
The owner of a Greek restaurant praised Rep. Ted Lieu for his work in Congress and gave him a free dessert. Big contrast from the treatment Trump administration workers received recently.
Donald Trump told Theresa May she should sue the EU rather than negotiate over Brexit, she has told the BBC.
The US president said on Friday at a joint press conference he had given her a suggestion - but she had found it too "brutal".
Asked by the BBC's Andrew Marr what it was he had said, she replied: "He told me I should sue the EU - not go into negotiations."
Sorry for this trip down memory lane, but I thought it illuminating as I Googled around both because Hayden's a helluva writer with a helluva past, and he sets up some understanding of the current movement in California.
De Leon was a Hillary supporter - but he also symbolizes some of the multicultural movements and yearnings. Feinstein is largely an old-schooler, and certainly not pleasing to the typical liberal Californian on her security stands (though CA's huge defense industry undoubtedly has her back).
By Kylie Atwood & Margaret Brennan @ CBSNews.com, July 14
As Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's regime violently assaults the southern region of Syria, an area formerly protected by the Trump administration, the members of the all-volunteer rescue organization known as the White Helmets are in danger of assassination.
This weekend, Trump will visit a property that offers a tantalizing and maddeningly incomplete glimpse into the ways that our President makes and spends money
Analysis by Mark Landler & Julie Hirschfeld Davis @ NYTimes.com, July 14
[...] Just a few hours after President Trump doused expectations of extracting any confession from President Vladimir V. Putin on Russia’s election meddling when they meet on Monday, his own Justice Department issued a sweeping indictment of 12 Russian intelligence agents [....]
By Patricia Cohen @ NYTimes.com, July 13
Corporate profits have rarely swept up a bigger share of the nation’s wealth, and workers have rarely shared a smaller one.
By Marisa Fernandez @ Axios.com, July 13
Amazon’s e-commerce sales are expected to top $258 billion this year, up 30% from one year ago with projections for 2018 even more staggering in each Amazon category, according to a survey by eMarketer.
By Julie Miller @ VanityFair.com, July 13
Weinstein’s lawyer called his client’s sit-down with The Spectator columnist “a social meeting between old friends” and “not an interview.”
When we speak of government, we refer to the various technical and bureaucratic means by which policies and plans are delivered. Government involves officials, data-gathering, regulating and evaluating. As a governmental issue, Brexit involves prosaic problems such as how to get trucks through ports. Sovereignty, on the other hand, is always an abstract notion of where power ultimately lies, albeit an abstraction that modern states depend on if they’re to command obedience. As a sovereign issue, Brexit involves bravado appeals to “the people” and “the nation.” These are two incommensurable ideas of what power consists of, although any effective state must have both at its disposal.
Petition @ Change.org (He needs only a few more signatures at the link for this weekend, if you like this sort of protest. It makes me laugh, so I think it's a good thing in these sad times.)
[....]Trump is coming to Scotland and protestors going to Turnberry have managed to secure the blimp to fly in the area around Turnberry.
NATO spends more than 13 times as much as Russia on defense. Even if you didn’t count U.S. spending, the other members combined spend more than four times as much as Russia. And that’s without most of them reaching the 2 percent of GDP goal.
Behold, a new breed of Republican for the Trump era.
Seth Grossman won the Republican primary last month for a competitive House seat in New Jersey, running on the message “Support Trump/Make America Great Again.” The National Republican Congressional Committee endorsed him.
