7.17 Megan McArdle in the Washington Post: The poor are still poor because, despite their material goods, they still lack public dignity and control over the most important facts of their lives, such as where they live and how their children are educated. By those measures, the War on Poverty is far from over; indeed, it has hardly begun. Yet the poverty line and much of the poverty debate continue to focus on material resources. The left rails about “food insecurity,” a technical measure that doesn’t necessarily mean anyone in the household actually went hungry. The right retorts that obesity is a bigger problem for the poor than hunger. These debates are silly, irrelevant and a distraction from the real war on poverty, which must now be fought against residential segregation, inadequate schools and the other markers of modern disadvantage. Until those battles against poverty are won, nobody will be in any position to declare victory.
7.17 George Will in the Washington Post: Americans elected a president who — this is a safe surmise — knew that he had more to fear from making his tax returns public than from keeping them secret. The most innocent inference is that for decades he has depended on an American weakness, susceptibility to the tacky charisma of wealth, which would evaporate when his tax returns revealed that he has always lied about his wealth, too. A more ominous explanation might be that his redundantly demonstrated incompetence as a businessman tumbled him into unsavory financial dependencies on Russians. A still more sinister explanation might be that the Russians have something else, something worse, to keep him compliant.The explanation is in doubt; what needs to be explained — his compliance — is not. Granted, Trump has a weak man’s banal fascination with strong men whose disdain for him is evidently unimaginable to him. And, yes, he only perfunctorily pretends to have priorities beyond personal aggrandizement. But just as astronomers inferred, from anomalies in the orbits of the planet Uranus, the existence of Neptune before actually seeing it, Mueller might infer, and then find, still-hidden sources of the behavior of this sad, embarrassing wreck of a man.
7.16 James Fallows on Twitter: I propose that neither Sasse nor Flake give another “concerned” speech, nor Corker a “this is wrong” press statement, until any of them CASTS A DAMNED VOTE to back up these statements. Reminder: with a 50-49 Senate, even *one* of them could change the balance.
7.16 Trump: “My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
7.16 Trevor Noah on the Daily Show: “I’m so excited. Africa won the World Cup! Africa won the World Cup! You don’t get that tan by hanging out in the south of France.”
7.16 Quartz: But when it was over and Croatia was left to reckon with the deeply disappointing defeat, {President Kolinda] Grabar-Kitarović was as present and supportive as she’d been during their ascent. She embraced a shattered Modric after he was presented with the Golden Ball, the tournament’s most valuable player award. A hard rain started to fall during the final award ceremony. As handlers rushed to put umbrellas up over the heads of Putin and other dignitaries, Grabar-Kitarović stood in the rain to shake the hand of every player on both teams. Being willing to stand up and project a steady and positive presence in times of disappointment is one of a leader’s most important tasks. The late South African president Nelson Mandela was an advocate of this view. “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur,” goes one quote widely attributed to the late leader. “You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.”
7.16 Trump on Hannity, about Putin: “And he also said there’s absolutely no collusion. Because he gets it. He is one of the people who gets it.”
7.16 Thomas Friedman in the New York Times: From the beginning of his administration, President Trump has responded to every new bit of evidence from the C.I.A., F.B.I. and N.S.A. that Russia intervened in our last election on his behalf by either attacking Barack Obama or the Democrats for being too lax — never President Vladimir Putin of Russia for his unprecedented cyberhit on our democratic process. Such behavior by an American president is so perverse, so contrary to American interests and values, that it leads to only one conclusion: Donald Trump is either an asset of Russian intelligence or really enjoys playing one on TV. Everything that happened in Helsinki today only reinforces that conclusion.
7.16 Hannity, on Republicans who criticized Trump’s handling of Putin: “These Republicans have been so pathetically weak, they have been so feckless, they have been so visionless, they have been so uninspiring, they can’t keep the simplest of promises, and the only reason that there’s not a massive blue wave developing … is because Donald Trump has single-handedly dragged them all kicking and screaming,”
7.16 McConnell: “As I have said repeatedly, the Russians are not our friends, and I entirely agree with the assessment of our intelligence community.”
7.16 Ryan: “The president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally.”
7.16 Gingrich: “It is the most serious mistake of his presidency and must be corrected immediately.”
7.16 John McCain: “This was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory”: “No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake. President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world.”
7.16 Alina Polyakova of the Brookings Institution: “It seems to me that this is the summit that Putin was waiting for his entire life. I think he completely set the agenda at the summit. It was telling that the U.S. president did not mention Ukraine or Crimea once. The U.S. president also didn’t mention U.S. sanctions and basically let the Russian president set the agenda on Syria and other items as well.”
Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???
— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) July 16, 2018
7.16 Anderson Cooper on CNN: “You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit in front of a Russian leader truly that I’ve ever seen.”
7.16 David Frum in The Atlantic: We still do not know what hold Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump, but the whole world has now witnessed the power of its grip.
7.16 Putin, on whether he wanted Trump to win: “Yes, I did.”
7.16 Dan Balz in the Washington Post: Monday’s news conference was the capstone to an international trip in which, at every opportunity, the president undercut U.S. allies in Europe while playing nice with Putin. He did this through repeated derogatory tweets, backroom hectoring of European leaders (especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel), interviews with the British media (in which he attacked British Prime Minister Theresa May) and the U.S. press, and in public settings with other world heads of government.
7.15 France wins World Cup, defeating Croatia 4-2. Never has their been an own goal in a World Cup Final; this game had two
7.14 Patricia Cohen in the NY Times: “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. . .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.”
7.13 Mueller indicts a dozen Russian intelligence officers for hacking the DNC
7.12 Tom Verducci in SI: Rarely, and not since the Cubs made Ernie Banks an icon of patience, has a team done less with a player this great than the Angels have done with Trout. One player can’t impact baseball the way someone like James can in basketball, but the truth is that baseball teams with a historically great player tend to be very good at some point. The Angels have been an exception. Twenty-four teams have won a playoff game since Trout broke into the big leagues. His Angels are not one of them. The only time they reached the playoffs with Trout, in 2014, the Royals swept them in the first round. More than the catch-all complaint of “better marketing,” baseball players more than other athletes need postseason exposure, especially in the World Series, to be transcendent national stars. Trout, for instance, says he cannot remember ever being invited on to a late-night talk show. More viewers watched the Music City Bowl last December between Northwestern and Kentucky than have ever seen Trout play a single regular or postseason game in person. His kind of greatness never has been this obscure. Of the eight players with the highest WAR through their first eight seasons, Trout is the only one never to have won a postseason game. In fact, the Angels have been in first place for a total of 83 games in Trout’s career.
7.11 Washington Post: in 2016 Kavanaugh reported between $60,000 and $200,000 in debt, spread between three credit cards and a personal loan. That’s a lot of money! Shah offered that some of the debt may have been related to home improvements, but it appears that the vast majority of it—tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands—was spent on ticket plans to watch the Nationals glide through meaningless regular seasons and then bomb out of the playoffs with all the reliability of the phases of the moon.
7.11 John Schnatter, the founder of pizza chain Papa John’s, resigned as chairman of the company’s board after reports surfaced that he used a racial slur in a conference call in May
7.10 Tab Hunter dies at 86
7.10 HHS Secretary Alex Azar: “It is one of the great acts of American generosity and charity, what we are doing for these unaccompanied kids,”
7.10 Twelve Thai boys and their coach were rescued from a flooded cave in northern Thailand.
I want to repeat a statistic I use in every talk: by 2040 or so, 70 percent of Americans will live in 15 states. Meaning 30 percent will choose 70 senators. And the 30% will be older, whiter, more rural, more male than the 70 percent. Unsettling to say the least https://t.co/EGPD5nE4qG
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) July 10, 2018
7.10 Paul Waldman in the Post: That vote will be a vivid reminder that we are living in an age of minority rule. In fact, that is one of the central features of this political era. The Republican Party represents a minority of the American electorate, yet it controls not only all three branches of the federal government but also most state governments, as well. Why do I say that a vote in Kavanaugh’s favor is an example of minority rule? Because the body that will confirm him is built in its current formation to almost guarantee Republican control, despite the fact that most American voters selected Democrats to represent them there.Using Dave Leip’s invaluable election atlas, I added up all the votes cast for Democrats and Republicans in the 2012, 2014 and 2016 Senate elections, which put the current Senate in place. I didn’t bother with the few special elections since 2012, which in total wouldn’t change the results much, but I did include Bernie Sanders’s and Angus King’s last elections, since they are nominally independent but caucus with the Democrats. Here are the results:
Republican votes: 102.3 million
Democratic votes: 117.4 million
In the elections that determined the current Senate, there were 15 million more votes cast for Democrats than for Republicans. Yet Republicans maintain control and therefore get to confirm President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.Well, that’s just how it is, you might say. Blame the framers. And that’s true: They set up a system in which Wyoming’s 580,000 residents get two senators and California’s 40 million residents also get two senators. But that doesn’t mean it’s fair or right or that Democrats shouldn’t be livid in cases like this where it leads to such an antidemocratic outcome. And the GOP’s built-in advantages combine to make the country much more hostile to the policies the majority actually wants. So we will now have an intensely conservative Supreme Court in which five of the nine justices were appointed by Republican presidents, despite the fact that in six of the past seven presidential elections, the Democratic candidate won the most votes. That’s because of the electoral college, another feature of our system with a built-in Republican advantage.
7.7 Steve Ditko dies at 90
7.7 Sicario II: Day of the Soldier
7.6 Oceans 8 with Ginny, Cara, Molly and Shawn
7.6 The United States imposed the first duties on $34 billion in Chinese goods early Friday, officially launching a trade war between the world’s two largest economies. Moments later, the Chinese side fired back, accusing the United States of violating WTO rules setting off “the largest trade war in economic history to date.” . . . Although the Chinese statement did not outline targets, Beijing has promised to slap levies on an equal amount of American goods, including heartland staples like soybeans, corn, pork and poultry — a move President Trump said would compel the U.S. to hit China with levies on up to $500 billion in products.
7.6 Washington Post list Governor Cuomo in 12th place among Democratic presidential contenders. Sanders is in first place. Says the Post: New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo: The most recent Siena College poll has Cuomo actually widening his primary lead over former “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon; he led by 35 points. The primary is Sept. 13, and Cuomo’s performance could either kill or fuel his 2020 ambitions. (Previous ranking: 11)
7.6 Trump: I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.
7.6 Trump: “And by the way, you know all of the rhetoric: ‘Thousands points of light.’ What the hell was that? What does that mean? I know one thing: ‘Make America Great Again’ we understand. ‘Putting America First’ we understand. ‘Thousand points of light?’ I never got that one. What the hell is that? Has anyone figured that out? It was put out by a Republican.”
7.6 In Thailand, an ex-Navy SEAL diver died while trying to rescue a soccer trapped in a cave
7.5 EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigns. “My desire in service to you has always been to bless you as you make important decisions for the American people. I believe you are serving as President today because of God’s providence. I believe that same providence brought me into your service. I pray as I have served you that I have blessed you and enabled you to effectively lead the American people. Thank you again Mr. President for the honor of serving you and I wish you Godspeed in all that you put your hand to.”
7.5 Envisioning a 2020 matchup against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Trump imagined bringing a DNA kit to one of their debates and demanding that she use it to prove that she’s got Native American ancestry. “We have to do it gently because we’re in the #MeToo generation, so we have to be very careful,” he said to scattered laughter. “We will very gently take that kit, and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm — even though it only weighs probably two ounces.”
7.5 Mitch McConnell says federal government helpless to stop school shootings. “It’s a darn shame.”
7.2 Michelle Wolf on Rep. Maxine Waters’ controversial call to heckle members of President Donald Trump’s administration when they’re out in public. “You can’t just casually harass these people. You have to insult them specifically. You’ve got to hit their deepest insecurities with the hot venom of a teenager from a broken home.”
7.2 Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known nearly universally as AMLO, is elected president of Mexico
7.2 LeBron James leaves the Cavs to sign a free agent contract with the LA Lakers for four years at $154 million
7.2 Madeleine Albright to the BBC: “I do not think he is a fascist. I do think he is the most undemocratic president in modern American history.”
7.2 Susan Collins on CNN: “I would not support a nominee who demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade.”
7.2 Michael Cohen to George Stephanopoulus: “To be crystal clear, my wife, my daughter and my son, and this country have my first loyalty.”
7.2 In South Africa, at least one and perhaps as many as three poachers hunting rhinos were eaten by lions.
7.1 Jonathan Chiat in New York: Over the last generation, the Republican Party has moved rapidly rightward, while the center of public opinion has not. It is almost impossible to find a substantive basis in public opinion for Republican government. On health care, taxes, immigration, guns, the GOP has left America behind in its race to the far right. But the Supreme Court underscores its ability to counteract the undertow of its deepening, unpopular extremism by marshaling countermajoritiarian power.