6.30 In the first MLB games played in Britain, the Yanks beat the Red Sox 17-13 and 12-8.
6.30 Bloomberg: U.S. suicide rates are at the highest level since World War II, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. “The U.S. suicide rate increased on average by about 1% a year from 2000 through 2006 and by 2% a year from 2006 through 2016.” Why it matters: “While material well-being has improved, America’s emotional distress has climbed to crisis levels.”
6.30 Alphonso David: Thank you for everything. All of the help you have provided to me and the administration over the years. You are such a great talent. Thank you for your support
6.30 Trump, after taking ten steps into North Korea: “Big moment. Big progress,”
6.30 To Citi Field with Ginny to see the Mets beat the Braves
6.29 Yesterday
6.28 Europe is experiening a heat wave.Temperatures in France reached an all-time high of 114 degrees. In Spain, 10,000 acres of wood and vegetation are being threatened by fire, which may have been started by an “improperly managed” pile of manure that self-combusted.
6.28 Jimmy Carter: “I think the interference, although not yet quantified, if fully investigated would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”
6.28 Trump to Putin at the G20 meeting: : ‘Don’t meddle in the election.’
6.28 Vladimir Putin to the Financial Times: “the liberal idea” had “outlived its purpose” as the public turned against immigration, open borders and multiculturalism.
6.27 Matt Viser in the Washington Post: “Four hours of debating spread out over two nights has scrambled the Democratic presidential primary race, exposing decades-old racial wounds and ripping open newfound divisions that moved the next phase of the race into uncertain territory. The high-profile debates in the most crowded presidential primary in history helped clarify the race in several ways. Former vice president Joe Biden, whose standing atop the polls has been the defining characteristic of the first months of the primary, showed how fragile his lead has become as his record, his age and his ideology came under repeated attack in the second session. Sen. Kamala D. Harris had the most personal and captivating performance, delivering a drumbeat of searing lines Thursday that eventually led her to confront Biden as she questioned his 1970s-era stance — one he still holds — opposing federally-ordered busing as a way to integrate schools. “And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” Harris said, at times looking directly at Biden as he gazed elsewhere. “And that little girl was me.” In a single moment, it allowed Harris to showcase her ability to tap into minority and female voters, the two guiding forces of the Democratic base, while simultaneously casting Biden as deeply out of touch. Biden attempted to defend his record — “it’s a mischaracterization of my position across the board” — but also appeared flustered by a full-frontal attack that was raw and personal.
6.27 E.J. Dionne Jr. in The Washington Post: “In truth, Democrats could feel good about this batch of candidates, the substance of the conversation, and the fact that — despite a lively divide on single-payer health care — the party is far more in consensus than at odds. It was impossible to watch this serious exchange of views and not ponder the 2016 Republican debates and their dominance by Donald Trump and his antics. No Democrat (and we can be thankful for this) tried to stand out in the ways Trump did. Their swipes at each other, such as they were, were mostly subtle, respectful and substantive. No talk of small hands or low energy. Perhaps that reflects a collective Democratic campaign promise: No more indecency, no more recklessness — and, it is not too much to say, no more idiocy.”
6.26 Charlie Sykes in Politico writes an open letter to Democrats: Donald Trump remains historically unpopular because the past three years have cemented the public’s image of the president as a deeply dishonest, erratic, narcissistic, Twitter-addicted bully. As a result, a stunning 57 percent of voters say they will definitely not vote to reelect him next year and he trails Democratic challengers in key states. Trump himself seems to have given up on swing voters, instead focusing on ginning up turnout among his hard-core base. But, as Henry Olsen points out, this is unlikely to be successful because millions of “reluctant Trump voters” from 2016 have already shown a willingness to bail on him by voting for Democrats in last November’s midterms. Even so, Trump could still win reelection, because he has one essential dynamic working in his favor: You. Trump’s numbers are unmovable, but yours are not. He doesn’t need to win this thing; he needs for you to lose it. There are millions of swing voters who regard Trump as an abomination but might vote for him again if they think you are scarier, more extreme, dangerous, or just annoyingly out of touch. And, you have some experience at this, don’t you?
6.25 With DJ LeMaheiu‘s first inning homer, the Yankees set a record for homering in consecutive games at 28
6.25 Megan Rapinoe: “I’m not going to the fucking White House.”
6.25 In a disturbing new poll, the Public Religion Research Institute finds that “while at least two thirds of Americans oppose allowing small business owners to refuse products or services to minority groups based on their religious beliefs, a small but increasing proportion of Americans think it should be permissible to turn away customers based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, or race.” As one might expect, the big uptick in those willing to refuse service comes among Republicans, but Democrats aren’t immune from the trend to declare that one’s religion permits discrimination against others. “From 2014 to 2019, the partisan gap on this issue has dramatically increased. Nearly half (47%) of Republicans favor such a policy, which is more than double the 21% who favored the policy in 2014. By contrast, today only 18% of Democrats and 24% of independents support these kind of religiously based service refusals. These numbers are also an increase from 2014, when only 11% of Democrats and 16% of independents agreed.”
6.25 Iranian president Hassan Rouhani: “The White House is afflicted by mental retardation.”
6.25 Eric Levitz in New York magazine: the main lesson of recent events in Albany is that elections have consequences. This year’s legislative session wasn’t bereft of disappointments: Marijuana legalization failed (even as decriminalization progressed); the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act sets ambitious targets, but how they will be enforced remains unclear; and while strengthening rent regulation will provide much-needed relief to millions of embattled tenants, it will do little to improve affordability for those not covered by such protections. But the perfect isn’t the enemy of the good, and imperfect reforms can be indispensable friends to working people. By engaging in intra-Democratic electoral politics, the left has made progressive change in Albany. And if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
6.25 Peter Wehner in the Washington Post: On the right there have been rising feelings of resentment, grievances and rage. A lot of people on the right feel like they have been condescended to by the elite culture, disrespected and mocked for their beliefs, and there’s some merit in that. I did an event at Stanford shortly before the 2016 election with Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist who wrote an outstanding book, “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right.” She said to me prescient words. “What his rise is about,” she told me, “is lost honor and humiliation. Trump is a kind of anti-depressant to his supporters. This is combined with a “Flight 93” mindset — the sense that many are engaged in an existential struggle with the Left and that virtually any tactics, regardless of how ruthless, should be employed in order to prevail. I have friends who in their individual lives are deeply decent, and yet they have admitted to me that they want to figuratively slit the throat of liberals and those on the left, who they are convinced are comprised of malicious people who want to destroy America and destroy them. If that’s your outlook, it can lead you into some pretty dark alleyways. There’s also fear many Trump supporters have about the rapid rate of social change, most especially in the area of sexual ethics, that has left them bewildered and fearful. In addition to that, we’re in the midst of massive economic changes. All of this has roiled our politics and allowed some ugly impulses to rise to the surface.
6.25 Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC: That’s the number one thing that came to his mind. The number one thing was not, ‘I’ve never raped anyone and would never rape anyone.’ The number one thing was, ‘She’s not my type.’ That answer doesn’t prove that Donald Trump is a rapist, but that is a rapist’s answer. A rapist might think that’s a good answer. And it’s an answer Donald Trump has used before.
6.24 Trump: “She’s not my type.”
6.24 President Trump on Monday said New York-based writer E. Jean Carroll was “totally lying” when she accused him of sexually assaulting her more than two decades ago, adding that Carroll is “not my type.”“I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” Trump told the Hill newspaper in an interview. In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday night, Carroll responded: “I love that I’m not his type. Don’t you love that you’re not his type?”
6.24 The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas.
6.23 California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on “Axios on HBO” that it’s highly likely Republicans will wind up as a third party nationally in 10 to 15 years because of their “xenophobia” and “hyper-masculinity.” “They are finished,” Newsom said at his office. White men, Newsom says, were “sold a complete bill of bullshit … It’s just a yard of crap and it’s just damn sad.”
6.23 On Meet the Press: Chuck Todd: So you never gave a final order? Trump: No, no, no, no. But we had something ready to go, subject to my approval. And they came in. And they came in about a half an hour before, they said, “So we’re about ready to go.” I said, “I want a better definition.” Todd: Planes in the air? Were planes in the air? Trump: “No, no. “We’re about ready to go.” No, but they would have been pretty soon. And things would have happened to a point where you wouldn’t turn back or couldn’t turn back. So they came and they said, “Sir, we’re ready to go. We’d like a decision.” I said, “I want to know something before you go. How many people will be killed, in this case Iranians?” I said, “How many people are going to be killed?” “Sir, I’d like get back to you on that,” great people these generals. They said, came back, said, “Sir, approximately 150.” And I thought about it for a second and I said, “You know what? They shot down an unmanned drone, plane, whatever you want to call it. And here we are sitting with 150 dead people that would have taken place probably within a half an hour after I said go ahead.” And I didn’t like it. I didn’t think it was, I didn’t think it was proportionate.”
6.23 Maureen Dowd in the Times: “It’s breathtaking that Washington’s conservative foreign policy mandarins would drag us back into Mideast quicksand when we haven’t even had a reckoning about the lies, greed, self-interest and naïveté that led U.S. officials to make so many tragic mistakes in the region.”
6.22 Max Boot in the Post: “The achievement of Denmark, Norway and Sweden is indeed remarkable: Those countries are roughly as wealthy as the United States on a per capita basis but they have less income inequality and a stronger social safety net. By some measures, moreover, they are freer, economically and politically, than the United States. They show that a “free-market welfare state” isn’t an oxymoron. So there is nothing sinister about wanting to emulate the Scandinavian example. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s practical. The Scandinavians have lower corporate tax rates than the United States but much higher individual taxes. According to the Tax Foundation, “The top marginal tax rate of 60 percent in Denmark applies to all income over 1.2 times the average income in Denmark. From the American perspective, this means that all income over $60,000 (1.2 times the average income of about $50,000 in the United States) would be taxed at 60 percent.” The Scandinavian countries also charge hefty value-added taxes of 25 percent on consumption. The United States doesn’t have a national sales tax, and the average rate for state sales taxes is only 7 percent. In all, Scandinavians pay $25,488 a head in taxes compared with $14,793 a head in the United States — 72 percent more. This is what it takes to finance a Scandinavian-style social welfare state. It can’t be done simply by raising marginal tax rates on the wealthiest taxpayers to 70 percent, as Ocasio-Cortez suggests, because few taxpayers pay the top rate. It requires a massive tax hike on the middle class. There is a good reason Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez aren’t advocating this: It’s unpopular. Support for Medicare-for-all plummets from 71 percent to 37 percent if people are told it will require “most Americans to pay more in taxes.” We are far more likely to do what we have done before and add new social-welfare benefits with deficit spending. That’s not the Scandinavian way: In those countries, government debt averages 35 percent of GDP; in the United States, it’s 108 percent of GDP and climbing. Fiscal responsibility is one lesson that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez refuse to learn from the Scandinavians. That doesn’t mean that they are trying to turn the United States into Venezuela. It does mean that turning America into Scandinavia will be a lot harder than they imagine.”
6.22 Axios: As President Trump fixates on Joe Biden as his opponent in the 2020 general election, some moderate Democrats are more afraid of Bernie Sanders becoming the eventual nominee. Driving the news: A two-day conference by the centrist Democratic group Third Way focused on helping the party figure out “the way to win” in 2020. These Dems are sick of economic messages that focus on “free stuff” rather than opportunity, as former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp put it. Ideas like free college are “fluffy” and perceived as “handouts,” said Anna Tovar, mayor of Tolleson, Arizona. Particularly with Latinx Democrats, she said, “They want to work towards [those opportunities] and be proud of that.” Third Way argues these plans can be politically potent for Republicans. “We shouldn’t be running on these ideas; we should be running from them,” said Jon Cowan, the group’s president. They’re not down with Medicare for All: Among 1,291 Democratic primary voters polled by Third Way, there’s a 17-point difference in support for Medicare for All between “Twitter Democrats” and primary voters as a whole. In fact, they’d love if all the 2020 Democrats got off Twitter entirely. Listening to the Twitterverse “will help re-elect Donald Trump,” said Lanae Erickson, Third Way’s SVP for social policy and politics. They’re also trying to obliterate the “blue bubble” created by liberals — perpetuated, they say, by appearances on cable and by obsession with online reach. “If you killed it on that podcast, I assure you we did not hear you,” said Steve Benjamin, mayor of Columbia, SC A twist: Elizabeth Warren — who’s viewed as the closest candidate to Bernie ideologically — gets a pass with these moderates. They say she’s focused on a Democratic capitalist message, while they view Bernie as a full-blown socialist. Be smart: President Trump is likely to label any of the candidates some sort of a Democratic socialist. But these folks are adamant anyone but Bernie can win — a gay mayor, an African American woman, a Latino from Texas. The bottom line: Expect the tension between liberals and centrists within the Democratic Party to increase as these issues (Medicare for All, the Green New Deal) get prime airtime at the debates
6.21 George Conway: “Trump didn’t realize UNTIL TEN MINUTES BEFOREHAND that a planned airstrike would kill over a hundred people and would therefore be grossly disproportionate to the loss of a UAV?. . . To say this is amateur hour would defame amateurs.”
6.21 After ordering a retaliatory air strike on Iran, Trump aborts the mission, saying the potential loss of life (150) would have been disproportionate. Later, he threatens to obliterate Iran.
6.21 In the supermarket this morning, the set of pleasant pop standards playing in the background was interrupted by a Charmin jingle, during which a chipper lady sang “My heinie is so bright and shiny.”
6.21 E. Jean Carroll, a New York-based writer and women’s advice columnist, accused President Trump of sexually assaulting her more than two decades ago in a dressing room of a Manhattan department store. Carroll saod that during a chance encounter with the then-real estate developer at Bergdorf Goodman in late 1995 or early 1996, Trump attacked her in a dressing room. She said he knocked her head against a wall, pulled down her tights and briefly penetrated her before she pushed him off and ran out. She said she hoped that telling her story “will empower women to come forward and not feel bad. . . . I blamed myself and I was silent and I felt guilty. I beat up myself terrible.” Carroll, now 75, said she told two close friends about the episode at the time. One of them told The Post on Friday that Carroll described the incident to her shortly after it occurred and that she had unsuccessfully urged Carroll to go to the police. Trump vigorously denied the accusation, calling it “fake news.” Carroll also said that she had been groped by Les Moonves.
6.20 Axios: Cook Political Report‘s Dave Wasserman predicts Democrats flip Michigan and Pennsylvania, increase their stronghold in California, and narrow the loss in Texas — helping Dems win the popular vote by nearly 5 million votes. But Trump narrowly holds onto Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin and keeps the White House by a single electoral vote
6.19 Moderate Democrat Joe Cowan: points out that Hillary Clinton bested Trump in 2016 by a combined 7 million votes in California, New York and Massachusetts – two million more than Obama beat Mitt Romney by in 2012. But she underperformed Obama by nearly 3 million votes in the other 47 states. “Blue-state passion is not enough to win the presidency,” he said. He presented survey research that showed the breakdown by state of how many people identify as liberal, conservative and moderate to make the case that Democrats must persuade moderates. Across Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – which Clinton lost by a total of about 77,000 votes – 26 percent of voters identify as liberal, 34 percent say they’re conservative, and 39 percent say they’re moderate. Cowan said this means that the Democratic candidate will need to win 61 percent of moderates across the blue-wall states that crumbled in 2016 to prevail in 2020. He posited that winning Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida necessitates an even higher share of moderates. “That is not a far-left strategy: That’s a partisan-plus-persuadables strategy,” he said.
6.19 Consultant Jim Messina, telling The Washington Post that while Trump’s national job approval rating may be in the low to mid-40s, a slight majority of voters in the battleground states approve of his handling of the economy. “The thing that keeps me up at night is that President Trump is outspending us by a devastating amount of money in the battleground states doing exactly what we did in 2011 on driving an economic message. The winner of the last six presidential races has been the person who wins the single question: Who’s better on the economy? … While we have this 917-way primary, we have got to stay focused as a movement on pushing back against Trump on these economic issues in the states that matter, and we really have to be laser-focused about it. … I promise you we will be sitting there on Election Day not sure who is going to win.”
6.19 Albany
6.18 Albany
6.18 David Jolley on MSNBC: “This is a president who is in trouble tonight politically in terms of his own reelection. It is still early, but this is a president who needs to move in the polls and he didn’t get it done tonight. . . .What we saw tonight was a tired, lazy, undisciplined political message focused on the grievance politics that elected him in the first place,” Jolly said. “And as the polls show, the American people are kind of tired of that narrative. It didn’t work in November of 2018, it’s not working tonight in Florida and across the nation as well.”
6.17 Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez: “The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the ‘Home of the Free’ is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it. . . .I don’t use those words lightly. I don’t use those words to just throw bombs. I use that word because that is what an administration that creates concentration camps is. A presidency that creates concentration camps is fascist, and it’s very difficult to say that.”
6.17 Harvard un-admits Kyle Kashuv, a Parkland survivor and conservative activist, after discovering he had tweeted racial epithets in his early teens
6.16 Maureen Dowd in the Times: “The Trump White House may be a clown show and a criminal enterprise. But it’s also an actual presidency. It’s turning out to be a genuinely reactionary administration led by a wannabe authoritarian who refuses to recognize constitutional checks on power. The real danger is not the antics but the policies.”
6.15 New York Times: The U.S. cyberwarfare strategy against Moscow “has shifted more toward offense, … with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian [electric power grid] at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before.” Why it matters: “It is intended partly as a warning, and partly to be poised to conduct cyberstrikes if a major conflict broke out between Washington and Moscow.” The intrigue: “Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps.” “Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.”
6.15 Cuomo Bridge, lit teal for Tourette’s
6.15 Birthday dinner in Nyack with Ginny, Cara and Shawn.
6.14 Jonathan Chiat in New York: The Mueller report shows no obstruction of justice, and the obstruction it shows is fake, and Congress can’t hear from a person who testified about obstruction. We just have to take Trump’s word on this, even though his words contradict other words of his. Just what you’d expect an innocent person to say, basically.
6.14 Eric Wemple in the Washington Post: “She always kept her composure and she was always right on the money with what she said,” said Fox network’s Jesse Watters on the afternoon program “The Five.” In fact: Sanders stood at the White House briefing room lectern and lied. That’s not a matter of opinion. That’s not a matter of bias. That’s not a matter of analysis. It’s a documented event. On Page 72 of Volume II of the Mueller report, there’s a rundown of how Sanders spun for President Trump upon his firing of then-FBI Director James B. Comey. Faced with questions about the prudence of the dismissal, Sanders argued that “countless” FBI officials had reached out with words of support. Mueller’s investigators questioned Sanders about those comments. As it turned out, Sanders said, “countless” was a “slip of the tongue.” Another line from the report: “She also recalled that her statement in a separate press interview that rank-and-file FBI agents had lost confidence in Corney was a comment she made ‘in the heat of the moment’ that was not founded on anything.”
6.13 The Toronto Raptors beat the Golden State Warriors for the NBA title. Kawhi Leonard joins Kareem Abdul Jabbar and LeBron James as the only players to win the series MVP trophy for two different teams
6.13 Max Boot in the Washington Post: Trump is not, of course, unique in his willingness to break the law to win office. But he is unique in his audacity to advertise on national television his willingness to do so. He is trolling for any dirt that any foreign intelligence service might have on the Democrats. He is thereby kneecapping the FBI, which is charged with enforcing the laws against foreign interference, just as he kneecapped the CIA by saying that it should not have recruited Kim’s brother as an informant. What Trump said may not be illegal, but it is definitely unethical, unpatriotic — and impeachable. He has once again violated his oath to “faithfully execute the office of president” and “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” It is almost as if Trump is daring Congress to impeach him. He is thumbing his nose at lawmakers, arguing in a legal brief filed Tuesday that they have no right to investigate his conduct. He is essentially saying: As long as I remain in office, I will violate the law. What are you gonna do about it?
6.13 The Office of Special Counsel says that Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, repeatedly violated the Hatch Act and should be fired.
6.13 According to a new survey from Bankrate, 23% of Americans who were adults when the recession started in December 2007 say they are now financially worse off than they were before the recession hit. That’s just under 50 million Americans. Another 25% say they are doing the “same.” In all, just over half believe their “overall finances” are better than before.“Americans were and continue to be in a degree of denial of the financial crisis and Great Recession,” said Mark Hamrick, Bankrate’s senior economic analyst. “One of the constant themes that presents itself in the data is that Americans are still digging out in many ways from that experience. While some have managed to prosper in the decade since, there are still tens of millions who are struggling to even get back to where they were before the economy took a turn for the worse.” Complicating matters, not all the gains of the current bull market – which is over a decade old – have been distributed equally. While almost a third of women said their overall financial situation is worse now, less than a fifth of men said the same.“On every metric, women were not keeping up with the improvement with men,” Hamrick explained. “That’s everything from wages, to retirement savings, to paying down debt, or the value of their homes. It’s rather depressing in that regard.”
6.14 Albany
6.13 Albany
6.12 Albany
6.12 With a 4-1 Game 7 victory, the St. Louis Blues defeated the Boston Bruins, winning the Stanley Cup for the first time in the team’s 50 year history.
6.12 George T. Conway III and Neal Katyal in The Washington Post: On Tuesday, Trump gave us direct evidence of his contempt toward the most foundational precept of our democracy — that no person, not even the president, is above the law. He filed a brief in the nation’s second-most-important court that takes the position that Congress cannot investigate the president, except possibly in impeachment proceedings. It’s a spectacularly anti-constitutional brief, and anyone who harbors such attitudes toward our Constitution’s architecture is not fit for office. Trump’s brief is nothing if not an invitation to commencing impeachment proceedings that, for reasons set out in the Mueller report, should have already commenced.
6.12 Trump, after Stephanopoulos asked why he didn’t answer Mueller’s questions under oath: “Look, George, you’re being a little wise guy, okay, which is typical for you. Just so you understand, very simple, it is very simple, there was no crime.”
6.12 Asked by ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos in the Oval Office on Wednesday whether his campaign would accept such information from foreigners — such as China or Russia — or hand it over the FBI, Trump said, “I think maybe you do both. I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump continued. “If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent’ — oh, I think I’d want to hear it.” Trump disputed the idea that if a foreign government provided information on a political opponent, it would be considered interference in our election process. “It’s not an interference, they have information — I think I’d take it,” Trump said. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI — if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, ‘oh let’s call the FBI.’ The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”
6.12 Bernie Sanders: In 1944, FDR proposed an economic bill of rights. But he died a year later and was never able to fulfill that vision. Our job, 75 years later, is to complete what Roosevelt started. And that is why today I am proposing a 21st century economic bill of rights. A bill of rights that establishes once and for all that every American, regardless of his or her income, is entitled to the right to a decent job that pays a living wage. The right to quality health care. The right to a complete education. The right to affordable housing. The right to a clean environment. And the right to a secure retirement.
6.12 Rep. Norma Torres: “It is tiring to hear from so many sex-starved males on this floor talk about a woman’s right to choose.”
6.12 Kraft says it’s repackaging its classic ranch dressing as “Salad Frosting” — in a squeezable tube — pitching the product as an “innocent, smart lie” to help parents get kids to eat healthier.
6.12 In its opening match of the World Cup, the USWNT beat Thailand 13-0. Alex Morgan had five goals.
6.11 Jon Stewart: “As I sit here today, I can’t help but think what an incredible metaphor this room is for the entire process that getting health care and benefits for 9/11 first responders has come to. Behind me, a filled room of 9/11 first responders, and in front of me, a nearly empty Congress.”
6.11 Kathleen Parker in the Post: In Alabama, where a new law denies abortion to women even in cases of incest or rape, a rapist may still pursue custody rights of a child conceived during his assault.
6.11 Pete Buttigieg: “You will not see me exchanging love letters on White House letterhead with a brutal dictator who starves and murders his own people.”
6.11 According to a study released last month by Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, low-income kindergartners who received high scores on tests of academic talent fared significantly worse when it came to graduating from college and obtaining a desirable entry-level position than 5- and 6-year-old children who performed poorly but came from families in the top income quartile. How much worse? The richer group of children, it seems, had to try very hard to fail — they had a 7 in 10 chance of meeting the milestones. For the less well off, the numbers were reversed. They had a 3 in 10 chance of meeting the goals.
6.10 Arizona and Philadelphia combined to hit a record 13 home runs
6.10 Until today, when someone Googled “mueller report,” an infobox popped up that classified the report as “fiction.”
6.10 Quartz: In Range Epstein makes a very compelling case for generalization. He provides reams of scientific data on education and professional excellence, showing that high grades and early promise are often not harbingers for later exceptionalism but can be signs of a mind too inflexible to innovate and too steeped in convention to challenge intellectual norms. He shows how throughout history dabblers have managed to connect ideas from different fields and thus changed the world, pointing to the 15th-century artist Michelangelo, who fancied himself a poet; Johannes Kepler, the 17th-century mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer whose work challenged human understanding of the universe’s workings and spawned a scientific revolution; and the 19th-century naturalist, geologist, and biologist Charles Darwin of evolutionary theory fame. Most compelling of all is the evidence that having a capacity for abstraction and the ability to transfer concepts is the key to success in our “wicked” world. While it’s true that some chess grandmasters and world-class athletes start early and drill hard, this repetition is only effective in golf or games with strict rules and easily quantifiable results, Epstein says. Those are “kind” worlds with limited possibilities. In life, however, and especially in postmodern life, where rote tasks are increasingly automated and pretty much any fact can be discovered with a web search, the rules aren’t straightforward. What it takes to be great is intellectual flexibility. Epstein argues that people who don’t have a strict plan dictating what they will be and a narrow focus on a single interest end up making amazing contributions to the culture because they can transfer knowledge from one field to another. They understand concepts and see how these might apply to other areas, whereas the specialists are so steeped in one set of facts that they may miss the forest for the trees. If you only have one tool, you’ll use it in every situation—but you can’t use a hammer to screw things and you can’t use a saw to hammer a nail, so the wise human accumulates a bunch of tools, and getting this varied toolkit takes time.
5.9 On Facebook, my friend Chris Policano posted a photo of our former mutual boss John Scanlon, here with his assistant Judy Frost Mackey, now a big PR force at Lazard.
6.9 In the Dominican Republic, Big Papi is shot in the back
6.9 Bryan Cranston, accepting his Tony: “I would like to dedicate this to all the real journalists around the world, both in the press, the print media and the broadcast media — who actually are in the line of fire with their pursuit of the truth. “The media is not the enemy of the people — demagoguery is the enemy of the people. “
6.9 Ali Stroker became the first wheelchair user to ever win or even be nominated for a Tony Award
6.7 Trump tweet: For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!
6.7 Axios: A truly bizarre trend is having an impact on the economy: Wealthy people and corporations have so much money they literally don’t know what to do with it. At a time when growing income inequality is fueling voter discontent and underpinning an array of social movements, the top 1% of earners and big companies are holding record levels of unused cash. The big picture: U.S. companies raked in a record $2.3 trillion in corporate profits last year, while the country’s total wealth increased by $6 trillion to $98.2 trillion (40% of which went to those with wealth over $100,000). So, where is all the money going? Large companies around the world are overwhelmingly and uniformly choosing not to reinvest much of it into their businesses. They’re hoarding it in cash and buying back stock, the IMF notes. Wealthy households and individuals are pouring money into asset managers, betting on companies that lose $1 billion a year, bonds from little-known Middle Eastern republics, and giving hot Silicon Valley start-ups more venture capital than they can handle. How we got here: The Fed’s quantitative easing program pushed the cost of borrowing money to next to nothing for nearly a decade, allowing companies to splurge on debt. Globalization allowed them to reduce labor costs, meaning that gains effectively were returned as profit and used by public companies to boost stock prices. These factors, combined with the tax cut favoring owners over workers, eroded unions and reduced employees’ ability to demand higher wages. The bottom line: Money that would previously have been split between businesses, workers and the government is instead sitting in corporate accounts.6.7 Mac B: Thank you so much for being such a great colleague and model of good humor for the entire nation. When I think back on this job I will think first and foremost of all the time spent with you and Tom – the foxhole banter, the camaraderie. Thank you for the encouragement when I needed it, and thank you for not always taking things so seriously. I
6.7 Albany. Went by the Schuyler mansion
6.6 Albany
6.5 Tucker Carlson: “Republicans in Congress can’t promise to protect American industries. They wouldn’t dare to do that. It might violate some principle of Austrian economics. … Instead, the words you just heard are from — and brace yourself here — Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. . . Yesterday, Warren released what she calls her plan for economic patriotism. Amazingly, that’s pretty much what it is, economic patriotism. There’s not a word about identity politics in the document.”
6.5 Trump on Laura Ingraham: “Nancy Pelosi, I call her ‘Nervous Nancy,’ Nancy Pelosi doesn’t talk about it. Nancy Pelosi is a disaster, OK? She’s a disaster. And let her do what she wants. You know what? I think they’re in big trouble.”
6.5 Pelosi: “I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison.”
6.4 Jennifer Rubin in the Post: Two things are for certain. First, the longer the field remains huge, the better for Biden, who sails above the blur of lesser-knowns. Second, Biden very well might not beat himself, as the pundits expected; a not-Biden competitor is going to have to take it from him, and at this point it’s far from clear who’s best positioned to do that.
6.3 After a 32-game wining streak that netted him $2,462,216 (a mere $58,484 shy of Ken Jennings’ record $2.52 million won over 74 games), James Holzhauer–“that smirking weenie,” in the words of Julie Mihaly–is defeated on Jeopardy by a librarian from the University of Chicago
6.3 David Brooks in the Times: “It’s hard to look at the generational data and not see long-term disaster for Republicans. Some people think generations get more conservative as they age, but that is not borne out by the evidence. Moreover, today’s generation gap is not based just on temporary intellectual postures. It is based on concrete, lived experience that is never going to go away. Unlike the Silent Generation and the boomers, millennials and Gen Z voters live with difference every single day. Only 16 percent of the Silent Generation is minority, but 44 percent of the millennial generation is. If you are a millennial in California, Texas, Florida, Arizona or New Jersey, ethnic minorities make up more than half of your age cohort. In just over two decades, America will be a majority-minority country. Young voters approve of these trends. Seventy-nine percent of millennials think immigration is good for America. Sixty-one percent think racial diversity is good for America. They have constructed an ethos that is mostly about dealing with difference. They are much more sympathetic to those who identify as transgender. They are much more likely than other groups to say that racial discrimination is the main barrier to black progress. They are much less likely to say the U.S. is the best country in the world. These days the Republican Party looks like a direct reaction against this ethos — against immigration, against diversity, against pluralism. Moreover, conservative thought seems to be getting less relevant to the America that is coming into being.
6.3 Shortly before a state dinner in the UK, Trump calls London Mayor Sadiq Khan a “stone cold loser.”
6.2 Rep. Tim Ryan on CNN: “An African American baby born in Youngstown, Ohio, has a higher infant mortality rate than a baby born in Iran.”