By Kate Zernike @ NYTimes.com, July 7

[....] economists on the left and the right argue that to really rein in health costs, Congress should scale back or eliminate the tax exclusion on what employers pay toward employees’ health insurance premiums. Under current law, those premiums are not subject to the payroll or income taxes that are taken out of employees’ wages, an arrangement that vastly benefits middle- and upper-income people.

That one policy tweak could reduce health care spending, stabilize the health insurance market and, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, shrink the federal budget deficit by between $174 billion and $429 billion over a six-year period.

Lawmakers briefly pondered the idea this year but quickly abandoned it, recognizing how politically explosive it would be [....]

By Janet Reitman for New York Times Magazine, July 6

Recruits at Parris Island have been subjected to severe hazing, far beyond that experienced in other U.S. military boot camps. Is this really the only way to create a warrior?

[....]  ‘‘It’s going to be good, Mom,’’ he told her, before saying goodbye on March 6. ‘‘Don’t worry. I’m ready.’’

That call was the last time she heard her son’s voice.

Raheel Siddiqui was born and raised about 20 miles southwest of Detroit, in the vast suburban-industrial wasteland known as Downriver. There are three military recruiting stations in the area, once a hub of auto manufacturing which is now, like much of the Rust Belt, a region of Best Buys, Taco Bells and Walmarts. Taylor, a city of some 61,000 people, is both the largest and one of the poorest of the Downriver communities: a pocket of mostly white and African-American residents, nearly a quarter of whom live below the poverty line.

Raheel was raised in public housing and spent his high school years intent on escaping his shabby hometown. ‘‘He always wanted challenges,’’ says Jerry Abraham, a former guidance counselor at Truman High whom Raheel frequently enlisted to help him find the hardest classes. In pursuit of a perfect G.P.A., Raheel had virtually no social life, though he had a naïve optimism unusual for a teenager. ‘‘He saw the world as nothing but a wonderful place,’’ says Karey Lee, Raheel’s supervisor at a nearby Home Depot, where he worked part time on the customer-service desk. ‘‘I don’t think he knew that hatefulness existed, to be honest.’’

Military recruiters were fixtures at Truman High [.....]

More accurate than Breitbart's version, I'm sure. Next time invite CNN if you don't want tabloid version. Even Pence wouldn't go into a room alone with a woman. Medieval practices on the one hand...

Breaking: Russia steps up spying efforts after election

US adversary feels emoldened by tepid response by Trump and Obama, intelligence officials say

By  Pamela Brown, Shimon Prokupecz and Evan Perez @ CNN.com, Updated 6:52 PM ET, Thu July 6

Russian spies are ramping up their intelligence-gathering efforts in the US, according to current and former US intelligence officials who say they have noticed an increase since the election.

The officials say they believe one of the biggest US adversaries feels emboldened by the lack of a significant retaliatory response from both the Trump and Obama administrations. "Russians have maintained an aggressive collection posture in the US, and their success in election meddling has not deterred them," said a former senior intelligence official familiar with Trump administration efforts.

 

Russians could also be seeking more information on Trump's administration, which is new and still unpredictable to Moscow, according to Steve Hall, retired CIA chief of operations [....]

Since the November election, US intelligence and law enforcement agencies have detected an increase in suspected Russian intelligence officers entering the US under the guise of other business, according to multiple current and former senior US intelligence officials. The Russians are believed to now have nearly 150 suspected intelligence operatives in the US, these sources said. Officials who spoke to CNN say the Russians are replenishing their ranks after the US in December expelled 35 Russian diplomats suspected of spying in retaliation for election-meddling.

 

"The concerning point with Russia is the volume of people that are coming to the US. They have a lot more intelligence officers in the US" compared to what they have in other countries, one of the former intelligence officials says [....]

A nice analysis of the methods behind Trump's madness:

Why do reporters keep asking President Trump whether he accepts that Russia interfered in the 2016 election? The shortest answer is that he keeps giving interesting answers. During a press conference in Warsaw Thursday, NBC’s Hallie Jackson asked the question once more.

On its face, Trump’s rambling answer was almost incoherent, or at least, self-contradictory. Read closely, however, it illuminates a pattern. When Trump wants to rebut a charge, he seldom flatly denies it. Instead, he generally prefers to sow doubt, skillfully stressing uncertainties to obfuscate and muddy the issue.

‘‘Liberal’’ has long been a dirty word to the American political right. It may be shortened, in the parlance of the Limbaugh Belt, to ‘‘libs,’’ or expanded to the offensive portmanteau ‘‘libtards.’’ But its target is always clear. For the people who use these epithets, liberals are, basically, everyone who leans to the left: big-spending Democrats with their unisex bathrooms and elaborate coffee. This is still how polls classify people, placing them on a neat spectrum from ‘‘extremely conservative’’ to ‘‘extremely liberal.’’

Over the last few years, though — and especially 2016 — there has been a surge of the opposite phenomenon: Now the political left is expressing its hatred of liberals, too. [...]

By Gerry Shih and Muneeza Naqvi, Associated Press via ABC News, July 5

BEIJING  - China on Wednesday insisted India withdraw its troops from a disputed plateau in the Himalayan mountains before talks can take place to settle the most protracted standoff in recent years between the nuclear-armed neighbors who fought a brief but bloody frontier war in the area 55 years ago.

India must pull back its troops "as soon as possible" as a precondition to demonstrate "sincerity," foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters at a daily news briefing.

His comments came after weeks of saber-rattling in New Delhi and Beijing, as officials from both sides talk up a potential clash even bloodier than their 1962 war that left thousands dead [.....]

By Tim Marcin @ Newsweek.com, July 3

[....] Things have gotten so bad for Trump that far more people support impeaching him than support the job he's doing in the Oval Office. A survey in recent weeks from Public Policy Polling—a firm that does public surveys as well as polling for Democratic candidates—found that 47 percent of voters supported impeaching Trump. Americans could, perhaps, feel that way because 49 percent believed the president had obstructed justice in the ongoing investigation into his ties to Russia, according to the Public Policy Polling survey.

Even Trump's average approval rating is a long ways off from the support for his impeachment. The weighted average from data-focused website FiveThirtyEight pegged his approval rating at just 39.5 percent Monday, while 54.4 percent disapproved [....]