6.28 Arnold Schwarzenegger: “It is foolish to bring back laughable, outdated technology to suit your political agenda. I mean, what are you going to bring back next? Floppy disks? Fax machines? Beanie Babies? Beepers? Or Blockbuster? Think about it. What if you tried to save Blockbuster?”
6.28 Stanley Greenburg: “Democrats should not be distracted by the Trump administration’s boasts of a “booming economy.” Democratic base voters and white working-class women are struggling to survive in a world very different from Washington and Wall Street. Their wages aren’t keeping up with rising costs, especially the cost of health care. Some 70 percent of African-Americans and white unmarried women say they haven’t benefited from the GOP tax cut, as do about 60 percent of Hispanics and white working-class women. These voters are also concerned that tax cuts that reward the rich and add trillions of dollars to the deficit will be paid for by cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. In this research, these voters respond to an economic message that says our elected officials must do better than a short-term spending spree that endangers retirement security for older Americans, health care for families, and education. ”
6.27 Gunman shoots up Capital Gazette in Annapolis, killing five
6.27 Trump: “Harley-Davidson, please build those beautiful motorcycles in the USA, please. Okay. Don’t get cute with us. Don’t get cute.”
6.27 Dana Milbank in the Post: “In her shocking primary upset of Nancy Pelosi’s heir apparent, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just did Democrats a big favor. I mean no disrespect to Rep. Joseph Crowley, . . . [but] this, in a very concrete way, clears the way for a new generation to take the reins of the opposition — leaders who appeal to the emerging electoral majority that already dominates the party and will soon dominate the country: progressive, young, female and nonwhite. It is no accident that Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Latina, is all four.”
6.27 Justice Kennedy, swing vote on the Supreme Court, announces his retirement
6.27 Supreme Court smacks unions on Janus decision
6.26 Supreme Court approves Trump‘s travel ban
6.26 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez upsets Joe Crowley in Queens Congressional primary
6.26 Sen. Debbie Stabenow to HHS Secretary Alex Azar: “This needs to get fixed and needs to be the top priority for what you are focused on in terms of children and families right now. This is on your watch, and we will hold you accountable.”
6.25 Michelle Goldberg in the Times: “I don’t blame staff members at the Virginia restaurant, the Red Hen, for not wanting to help Sanders unwind after a hard week of lying to the public about mass child abuse.”
We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2018
6.24 Robert Samuelson in the Post: “Just what technology controls the United States should adopt to screen transactions with China isn’t clear or easy. The ultimate outcome is likely to be some combination of added powers for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which oversees foreign investment here, and export controls, which regulate sales of technology abroad,” said Martin Chorzempa of the Peterson Institute. But whatever Congress and Trump do won’t be effective unless it’s matched by other major trading countries. Trump either doesn’t realize this or doesn’t care. He’s infuriating the very countries whose support he desperately needs. His policies are more than misguided; they’re backward.
6.22 Brian Kilmeade, host of “Fox & Friends”: Like it or not, these are not our kids. Show them compassion, but it’s not like he is doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country, and now people are saying that they’re more important than people in our country who are paying taxes and who have needs as well.”
6.22 Anne Applebaum in the Post: It is worth noting how often the president repeatedly conflates refugees with illegal immigrants and MS-13 gang members. This is not an accident: He has targeted a group and given them characteristics — they are violent, they are rapists, they are gang members — that don’t belong to most of them. He then describes them with dehumanizing language. Democrats, he has tweeted, “want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our country, like MS-13.” The image of “infestation” evokes, again, vermin and lice. A few weeks earlier, he spoke of MS-13 as “animals,” once again making it unclear whether he meant actual gang members or simply those who distantly resemble them.
6.22 George Will in the Washington Post: “Amid the carnage of Republican misrule in Washington, there is this glimmer of good news: The family-shredding policy along the southern border, the most telegenic recent example of misrule, clarified something. Occurring less than 140 days before elections that can reshape Congress, the policy has given independents and temperate Republicans — these are probably expanding and contracting cohorts, respectively — fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which they should vote. The principle: The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of the Constitution’s Article I powers that they have been too invertebrate to use against the current wielder of Article II powers. They will then have leisure time to wonder why they worked so hard to achieve membership in a legislature whose unexercised muscles have atrophied because of people like them.”
6.22 The Red Hen, a restaurant in Lexington VA, asks Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave
6.21 Melania Trump visits a children’s shelter on the U.S.-Mexico border wearing a jacket that said, ‘I really don’t care, do you?’”
6.21 Koko the gorilla is dead
6.21 Albany
6.20 Albany
6.20 Steve Schmidt in the Post: “Trump’s election did not spell doom for the Republican Party. The reality is that our Founders always predicted that one day there would be a president like Trump, and that’s why they designed the system of government the way they designed it. What they never imagined is the utter abdication of a co-equal branch of government, which we’re seeing now. . . . The definition of conservatism now is the requirement of complete and utter obedience to the leader.”
6.20
In two weeks, America will celebrate the 4th of July , the 242nd anniversary of our independence. Across the country, people have begun preparing for the holiday. But along our nation’s borders, our government is dishonoring the values which have made our nation a beacon of freedom.
In the world of atrocities, separating families, and incarcerating children, ranks among the lowest of the low.
And as we see the images of lonely, frightened children in detention camps in Texas, the sickening realization sinks in: this cruelty in being done in our name.
In your name. In my name. In the names of our children.
This is an intolerable insult to everything we hold dear as Americans. It must end.
Those of us raised in the Christian tradition know that one of Christ’s most profound teachings is found in the Gospel of St. Mark, where Jesus asks, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’’
Whatever the administration thinks it is gaining, America is in the process of losing its soul. America is having its soul destroyed.
We need to stop thinking of the violations being perpetrated on our border as having anything to do with an immigration policy.
The immediate issue—what our government is doing to those families—is a simple question of right and wrong.
And what our government is doing is wrong.
Whatever problem Washington thinks this answers, we must make tell our government, your answer is wrong.
Worse, it is immoral. Repugnant.
But the larger question is not how to stop people from Central America from trying to enter our country. The larger question is, what is sending them?
The answer is obvious. Central America sits between South America, the home of the world’s largest producers of illegal drugs, and the United States, the world’s largest consumer of illegal drugs.
The result is uncontrollable levels of crime and violence.
Latin America is home to just 8 percent of the world’s population, but 33 percent of its homicides. In fact, just four countries in the region — Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela — account for a quarter of all the murders on Earth. Of the 20 countries in the world with the highest murder rates, 17 are Latin American, as are 43 of the top 50 cities.
Central America has become our century’s Badlands, a place where order and morality has been overwhelmed by violence and corruption.
No wonder people are fleeing. Put yourself in their shoes. You would flee, too.
Now place yourself in our position.
Our neighbor’s house is burning, and we are turning our backs.
Our neighbor’s children are in peril, and we are closing our doors.
In the face of their desperation, we want to build a wall.
In less than two years, this administration is well on its way to establishing a legacy of shortsightedness that future generations will regret and despise.
Its environmental rollbacks are creating problems whose effects will fall heavily on our children. Its tax cuts will add $1.9 trillion to the deficit, which our children will have to bear.
But with these cruel and indifferent policies towards our southern neighbors, the administration is exacerbating problems that will almost certainly cause our children terrible pain and suffering.
For we are creating people who will hate America.
People who have asked for our help, and who we are treating, not just indifferently, but with cruelty.
People who have come here seeking safety for their children, who instead are seeing us abuse their children, and exploit them for political ends.
I would hate us.
And let’s be honest with ourselves: such hatred is terrorism’s nursery.
In two weeks, we will read and recite words we profess to cherish: “ that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’’
If America is to continue to hold any moral authority in this world, we must uphold those words today.
We must save America’s soul.
6.20 After changing the administration’s story on family separation no fewer than 14 times, Trump backs down. Or not.
6.19 On Fox News, Democratic National Committee adviser Zac Petkanas began relating an anecdote of a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was taken from her mother and put in a cage. In the middle of his comments, fellow guest Corey Lewandowski cut in.“Womp womp,” President Trump’s former campaign manager said, making a dismissive trombone-like sound effect. “Did you just say ‘womp womp’ to a 10-year-old with Down syndrome?” Petkanas shot back. “How dare you,” he repeated as Lewandowski attempted to speak. “How dare you. How dare you. How absolutely dare you, sir.”
6.19 AP: Smoking in the U.S. has hit another all-time low: 14% of U.S adults (about 30 million people) were smokers last year, down from 16% the year before, and 42% in the 1960s
6.19 Jennifer Rubin in the Post: No matter how many times President Trump insists, there is no “law” requiring the administration to incarcerate families and rip children from their parents’ arms. Sen. Joe Manchin III , no left-winger, said simply, “No law requires pulling children from the arms of their parents.” Sen. Ben Sasse likewise explains, “The administration’s decision to separate families is a new, discretionary choice. Anyone saying that their hands are tied or that the only conceivable way to fix the problem of catch-and-release is to rip families apart is flat wrong.” That doesn’t stop Trump
6.19 Hugh Hewitt: This could be “Trump‘s Katrina.”
6.18 Ann Coulter on “The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton”: “I would also say one other thing, these child actors weeping and crying on all the other networks 24/7 right now — do not fall for it, Mr. President,”
6.18 Trump: “The United States will not be a migrant camp, and it will not be a refugee holding facility. You look at what’s happening in Europe, you look at what’s happening in other places. We can’t allow that to happen to the United States. Not on my watch.”
The administration’s current family separation policy is an affront to the decency of the American people, and contrary to principles and values upon which our nation was founded. The administration has the power to rescind this policy. It should do so now.
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) June 18, 2018
You can’t simultaneously argue that family separation isn’t happening, that it’s being used as a deterrent, that the Bible justifies it and that it’s @TheDemocrats fault. @POTUS is not being served well by his advisors on this issue.
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) June 18, 2018
6.18 Quartz: When it comes to making the most important and the most long-term decisions, Bezos has a simple rule that’s quite useful: “Focus [your vision] on the things that won’t change.” At Amazon, this means that everything is built around their value of customer obsession. They don’t try to hop on every new fad because they don’t know which one will still matter. They do, however, know that in 20 years, customers will still want faster deliveries and cheaper products. They can build a future around making that a primary area of focus. Similarly, if you’re 30 years old, you may not be able to say exactly how your personal taste will evolve tomorrow, but you can be reasonably sure that if you have enjoyed being creative for 20 years, then the next 20 years likely won’t change that. You can build a career around that.
6.17 Mexico beats Germany, 1-0; ensuing celebration causes earthquake
6.17 Stephen Bannon on ABC: “I think [Trump] speaks in a particular vernacular that connects to people in this country.”
6.17 Fred Hiatt in the Post: He was fired 10 months ago, but Stephen K. Bannon has won. Truculent, anti-immigrant nationalism; disdain for the “deep state”; disparaging democratic allies while celebrating dictators: These are now the pillars of President Trump’s rule. In his administration’s policy, foreign and domestic, and in the compliant Republican Party, Bannonism is ascendant. Corey Stewart, the xenophobic, Confederate-celebrating Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Virginia, is cheered by Trump as the face of this new party. Sen. John McCain, tweeting on behalf of old principles, is a total outsider. Supposed leaders such as Mitch McConnell and Paul D. Ryan fall abjectly into line. This is the victory not only of a Trump personality cult, as it has been described, but also of an ideology, one closer to Putinism than Reaganism.
6.17 Laura Bush: I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.
6.17 “Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform. She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart.”
6.17 Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen: “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”
6.17 On Sunday, The Washington Post reported on a previously unknown point of contact between the 2016 Donald Trump campaign and a Russian offering negative information about Hillary Clinton. That new report, involving a Trump campaign staff member and longtime Trump ally Roger Stone, means that at least six members of Trump’s broader team knew about offers of dirt from Russians during that campaign — and, depending on how that information was shared, as many as 10 may have, including Trump.