Jesus h christ almighty.
Trump says he trusts Kim Jong Un. And if he's wrong? "I may be wrong, I mean I may stand before you in six months and say, 'Hey I was wrong,'" said Trump, before adding, "I don't know that I'll ever admit that, but I'll find some kind of an excuse." https://t.co/J2k6ehVhW1 pic.twitter.com/onKaUHP2f3
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) June 12, 2018
Nicholas Kristof doesn’t quite agree with Trump’s take on the hangout with Kim.
… Read the restTrump made a huge concession — the suspension of military exercises with South Korea. That’s on top of the broader concession of the summit meeting itself, security guarantees he gave North Korea and the legitimacy that the summit provides his counterpart, Kim Jong-un.
Within North Korea, the “very special bond” that Trump claimed to have formed with Kim will be portrayed this way: Kim forced the American president, through his nuclear and missile tests, to accept North Korea as a nuclear equal, to provide security guarantees to North Korea, and to cancel war games with South Korea that the North has protested for decades.
In exchange for
Kim played Trump like a violin.
US President Donald Trump says his historic talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that ended in a joint agreement were “tremendous”.
The signed document includes a pledge from Mr Kim to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.
But the Kims have been saying that for years, while doing the opposite.
If Trump had done any preparation he might have known that. If he had brought other people into the room with him they might have been able to tell him that. Granted it’s more likely that he would have forgotten the first and ignored the second, but as it is, he made it impossible for either to happen.
… Read the restBut in an
Ari Berman on why the Supreme Court ruling on Ohio’s voter suppression matters:
… Read the restIn 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act to end the disenfranchisement of black voters in the Jim Crow South. The law was remarkably successful in dismantling barriers to the ballot box like literacy tests and poll taxes, but a few decades later, Congress recognized that more still needed to be done to boost political participation. In the 1988 presidential election, for example, barely half of eligible African American voters cast a ballot.
In response to persistently low voter turnout, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to allow voters to register at Department of Motor Vehicles offices and other public agencies. President Bill
An exchange on a public Facebook post.
Guy: I hate to say this but she doesn’t look like someone who’d be an expert of love…
Me: No, you were right the first time, don’t say it.
Guy: Ophelia Benson Well, she certainly doesn’t.
Me: But that’s not relevant, and it’s just crude sexist bullying.
Guy: Ophelia Benson No, it’s bullying a religious idiot and that is perfectly OK.
… Read the restMe: No it is not.
Guy: Ophelia Benson I love your sense of humour.
Me: And yet you started with “I hate to say this but” so you know perfectly well what I’m talking about. Insulting people’s looks is a worthless way to dispute the content of what they say.
Guy: Ophelia
President Trump has imagined himself at the center of high-stakes nuclear negotiations since at least the mid-1980s, when he tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade the Reagan administration that it needed a New York real estate deal maker to lead arms-control talks with the Soviet Union.
When, in 1989, he ran into the man who filled that job for President George H.W. Bush, he had a bit of negotiating advice: Arrive late, poke your finger into your adversary’s chest and swear at him with a vulgar insult, he told Richard R. Burt.
So his time at the G7 was rehearsal for all that. Good to know.
… Read the restFor Mr. Trump, the looming question now is whether his
Taslima has another piece of bad news.
Shahzahan Bacchu, an atheist poet and publisher was killed today by Islamists in Bangladesh. He was a target, but did not get protection from govt.
— taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) June 11, 2018
… Read the restThe owner of Bishaka Prokashoni, a publishing house, has been gunned down in his home town in Munshiganj.
Shahzahan Bachchu, 60, was shot and killed in his village, Kakaldi, in the district’s Sirajdikhan upazila around 6:30pm on Monday, Munshiganj Superintendent of Police Jayedul Alam told the Dhaka Tribune.
There were five assailants on two motorcycles, the SP said.
Shahzahan had gone to meet friends at a pharmacy near his home before iftar, when the assailants came
The Supreme Court on Monday upheld Ohio’s aggressive efforts to purge its voting rolls.
The court ruled that a state may kick people off the rolls if they skip a few elections and fail to respond to a notice from state election officials. The vote was 5 to 4, with the more conservative justices in the majority.
The case concerned a guy who voted in 2004 and 2008 but not 2010, 2012, and 2014. In 2015 he wanted to vote against a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana and found he’d been stricken from the voting rolls.
… Read the restFederal laws prohibit states from removing people from voter rolls “by reason of the person’s failure to vote.” But they allow
The Post on Representative Pramila Jayapal’s visit to the detention center where women are being held apart from their children:
… Read the restAlthough Seattle is some 1,500 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the debate over family separations hit closer to home for the Evergreen State after dozens of undocumented immigrants were transferred last week to the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac, near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Nearly all of those migrants — 174 out of 206 — were women, said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who spent about three hours Saturday morning meeting with the recently moved detainees at the SeaTac facility.
Most of them were from Cuba, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, she said, but there were also people from as far
That photo of Merkel facing down Defiant Toddler Trump? It is an art history lesson.
Ok, because I'm feeling pedantic as fuck, I need to point out that this photo does not look like a Renaissance painting. It looks like a Baroque painting. pic.twitter.com/LvlvcSZjmu
— Palle! (@Palle_Hoffstein) June 10, 2018
How so?
This is a Renaissance Painting. The subjects are evenly spaced across the canvas, equidistant to the viewer as if on a stage. The postures are quite mannered instead of natural. This is Primavera by Botticelli btw. pic.twitter.com/MmMug6A0tT
— Palle! (@Palle_Hoffstein) June 10, 2018
Ah yes, so they are – although I will say, advertisers still pose women with their feet pointed like that.
… Read the restNow here is a Baroque
Ugh this is so repulsive. It may seem comparatively minor but the attitude behind it is…hideous.
Solomon Lartey spent the first five months of the Trump administration working in the Old Executive Office Building, standing over a desk with scraps of paper spread out in front of him.
Lartey, who earned an annual salary of $65,969 as a records management analyst, was a career government official with close to 30 years under his belt. But he had never seen anything like this in any previous administration he had worked for. He had never had to tape the president’s papers back together again.
Why did he have to do that? Why do people still have to do that? Because Trump tears … Read the rest
Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on A declaration of ignorance and policy insanity.
It is one of the things I keep saying: We in Africa need to take Trump being elected as a warning that we cannot rely upon the West.
We need to boost our funding for the sciences, boost our spending on developing our own economies, and cut all reliance on American goods and services, because America is fundamentally headed by a madman.
The American market is always talked up as if servicing American demand is this path to wealth, yet it is remarkably rare when an outside player can actually make any headway in it. The demand economy just isn’t there anymore, it is all … Read the rest
Trump’s people are running around echoing his tweets bashing Trudeau, no doubt in hopes of making Trump look less deranged and backstabby.
… Read the restPresident Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Sunday accused Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of undermining the US and its allies with comments he made at the G7 summit.
“It was a betrayal,” Kudlow said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Kudlow was speaking following the G7 summit in Canada on Saturday. As Trump flew from the summit with US allies to a planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, he lashed out at Trudeau for what he said were his “false statements” at a news conference and said the US
A press release from Seattle’s congressional representative Pramila Jayapal:
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, member of the House Judiciary Committee, issued the following statement after demanding and being given access to the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac, Washington to look at conditions and speak with 174 immigrant women detained inside:
“What I heard from the women today being held at the detention center was heartbreaking. They are there only because of the Trump administration’s cruel new ‘zero tolerance’ policies of family separation. They spoke of fleeing threats of rape, gang violence and political persecution. They spoke of their children who have been killed by gangs and their fear of being raped. The mothers could not stop crying when they spoke about … Read the rest
Paul Krugman on the summit frolics.
[T]here has never been a disaster like the G7 meeting that just took place. It could herald the beginning of a trade war, maybe even the collapse of the Western alliance. At the very least it will damage America’s reputation as a reliable ally for decades to come; even if Trump eventually departs the scene in disgrace, the fact that someone like him could come to power in the first place will always be in the back of everyone’s mind.
That’s why I keep saying we’ll never live this down. He got selected, he got elected, and he trashed the joint. Not a sign of health.
… Read the restHe didn’t put America first; Russia first
Trump did a press conference before he hopped on the plane to Singapore to meet that nice Mister Kim.
… Read the restQ As you were heading into these G7 talks, there was a sense that America’s closest allies were frustrated with you and angry with you, and that you were angry with them and that you were leaving here early to go meet for more friendlier talks with Kim Jong Un in Singapore. And I’m wondering if you —
THE PRESIDENT: It’s well put, I think.
Q — if you view it the same way. And do you view the U.S. alliance system shifting under your presidency, away —
THE PRESIDENT: Who are you with, out of curiosity?
Q CNN.
THE PRESIDENT:
Helen Rosner in the New Yorker yesterday:
… Read the restBourdain’s fame wasn’t the distant, lacquered type of an actor or a musician, bundled and sold with a life-style newsletter. Bourdain felt like your brother, your rad uncle, your impossibly cool dad—your realest, smartest friend, who wandered outside after beers at the local one night and ended up in front of some TV cameras and decided to stay there. As a writer himself, he was always looking out for other writers, always saying yes, always available for interviews and comments. You had to fight through a wall of skeptical P.R. to get to someone like Guy Fieri, but Bourdain was right there, for everyone, in equal measure. He remembered names. He took every
Tritler wants to lay waste to all the rules, throw out all the treaties and accords, tear up all the agreements, pull the US out of all the deals. He wants to break everything, so that he can make his mark, and also so that he can make America safe for crooks and thugs like him.
… Read the restAs he pursues his America First agenda, Mr. Trump has driven a wedge between the United States and its allies by imposing aggressive tariffs, abandoning the Paris climate change accord and pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal that the Western democracies negotiated along with President Barack Obama.
And with no warning on Friday, Mr. Trump deepened that rift by directly challenging the
… Read the restPresident Trump said on Saturday that he had brought up with America’s closest allies the dramatic prospect of completely eliminating tariffs on goods and services, even as he threatened to end all trade with his counterparts if they didn’t stop what he said were unfair trade practices.
Speaking to reporters at the end of a contentious weekend meeting of the Group of 7 nations in a resort town outside of Quebec City, Mr. Trump said that eliminating all trading barriers would be “the ultimate thing.” But he railed about what he called “ridiculous and unacceptable” tariffs on American goods and vowed to get rid of them.
“It’s going to stop. Or we’ll stop trading with
