http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/30/trump-priebus-unbound-215440

By ousting Reince Priebus, the president is severing one of his few remaining ties to the GOP.

Reince Priebus looked battered. It was Monday, October 10—the morning after the final presidential debate—and our eyes met as I boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from St. Louis to Washington, D.C. It had been an extraordinary weekend: On Friday night, the biggest bombshell of the 2016 campaign dropped when the Washington Post published a decade-old audio recording on which Donald Trump made lewd comments about groping women. Speaker Paul Ryan disinvited Trump from a unity event in Wisconsin scheduled for the following day, and Priebus, then the chairman of the Republican National Committee, quietly made the case to Trump and his associates that he should quit the race. Trump refused. The Sunday debate, 48 hours after the tape’s release, was dominated by discussion of Trump’s history with women. He dismissed his recorded remarks—“grab them by the pussy,” Trump had said, boasting that his celebrity status allowed him to get away with aggressive advances on the opposite sex—as “locker room talk.”

Priebus occupied a window seat, a pair of staffers to his left. The chair behind him sat empty; my instinct was to grab it and start firing questions through the slit at his left shoulder. But after studying Priebus—the slouched posture, the uncharacteristically rumpled suit, the groaning bags under his eyes—I decided it might backfire. Whether it was pity or strategy, or a bit of both, I settled in two rows back, deciding it would be better to talk upon landing in Washington.

It was an eventful flight: Ryan, while we were at 30,000 feet, had told House Republicans on a conference call that he wouldn’t be defending the president anymore—and urged them to do whatever was necessary to survive in their districts. Meanwhile, there were reports Priebus would hold his own call with RNC members to discuss ousting Trump. Priebus was understandably not keen to discuss any of these developments. But he seemed to appreciate my earlier gesture. When I greeted him, just beyond the entrance to the jet bridge, his staffers tried to shut down any interview. Priebus told them to back off. “It’s OK,” he said, offering the sort of forced half-smile you see at hospital visitations. “Go ahead. Shoot.” We walked out of the terminal and past the baggage claim, covering all of it: the tape, the debate, Ryan, the RNC and what (if anything) it could do at this point. Priebus asked twice to speak off the record, which I allowed. But his most telling comment—in retrospect—came at the end of our conversation, after he explained that the RNC had no mechanism to remove Trump as its nominee.

“Look,” he said, stepping into the sunlight outside Reagan National Airport, his staffers loading up an idling black Chevrolet Suburban. “We don’t get to pick the nominee. And we don’t get to just walk away from him, either.”

http://www.boredpanda.com/mindful-foxes-wildlife-photography-roeselien-raimond/

Roeselien Raimond is a talented Dutch photographer who has stunned us already with her extraordinary pictures of beautiful wild foxes (also here). She’s now back with some new pictures of these mesmerizing animals that she wants to share with Bored Panda readers, and this time she shows that foxes can teach us some valuable lessons.

“Did you ever witness a fox totally stressed out? Agitatedly browsing its agenda or panicking about a double appointment?.. Ever seen a depressed fox, wondering if this is really all there is to life? A fox with social phobia, scared to meet the other foxes? An OCD fox, obsessively avoiding the black stones?.. Nope? This is why;

Foxes master the Art of Living in the Moment. They listen to their body and understand its messages.When the body says hunger, they go find some food. When the body says sleep, they find a quiet place and take some rest.When the body says babies, they find a mate. And when the body is just saying nothing… they adequately respond by doing… nothing. Look at us, with or overcrowded schedules, running from A to B and back like mad, without even really knowing why. Ignoring the signals of our body and exceeding our borders. Foxes don’t look back or forth, they live right here, right now. While we keep puzzling how to lead a meaningful, fulfilling live… foxes just fulfill their lives.

Meditation, yoga… Mindfulness… Foxes just act to it. Time to take a lesson from the Zen-masters themselves, the best teachers ever!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/28/video-man-casually-empties-gas-can-in-phoenix-lgbt-youth-center-sets-it-ablaze/?utm_term=.c8d0685b333f

The video shows a man walking up to the LGBT youth center in the middle of a sunny Arizona day, looking around him as he holds a red gasoline can.

He steps into the center and casually pours liquid onto the floor of the rooms. As he walks back outside, closing the door behind him, the floor erupts in flames, the blaze spreading through the rooms of the center.

No one was injured in the July 12 blaze, but the Phoenix LGBT youth center, run by an organization called one•n•ten, was completely destroyed. Fire officials initially believed it was an accident caused by a “combination of improperly stored rags and batteries mixed with a hot, ventilated room,” Phoenix fire Capt. Rob McDade told the Arizona Republic.

But on Wednesday, the Phoenix Fire Department announced it was investigating the fire as arson, after surveillance footage was recovered of the man dousing the floor with liquid just before the blaze. Authorities asked for help in finding the suspect, identifying him as Darren William Beach Jr., 26.

https://www.good.is/articles/twitter-trump-mount-rushmore

At a rally Tuesday night in Youngstown, Ohio, President Trump made a joke about one day having his face inscribed alongside Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. “I’d ask whether or not you think I will someday be on Mount Rushmore, but, no — here’s the problem: If I did it joking, totally joking, having fun, the fake-news media will say, ‘He believes he should be on Mount Rushmore!’ ” Trump said. “So I won’t say it, OK? I won’t say.”

Trump would have to do a massive turnaround to join the ranks of America’s most highly regarded presidents. In six months, he has zero major legislative achievements and the lowest approval rating at this point in his term since the polls began 70 years ago. So when Trump suggested he may end up on Mount Rushmore, Twitter had a blast Photoshopping him onto the monument.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/politics/trump-military-transgender/index.html

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he plans to ban transgender individuals from serving "in any capacity" in the US armed forces.

The decision reversed a policy initially approved by the Defense Department under President Barack Obama, which was still under final review. Defense Secretary James Mattis announced last month that he was delaying enactment of the plan to begin allowing transgender individuals to join the US military.

"After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military," Trump said in a series of tweets Wednesday morning. "Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail."

"Thank you," he added.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/25/texas-rep-farenthold-says-he-would-challenge-female-gop-senators-to-a-duel-if-they-were-south-texas-men/?utm_term=.415460cf880c



These days, many Washington politicians are unafraid to take verbal shots at one another over legislative discord, whether it’s on social media or on cable network shows. But long gone are the days when politicians would threaten to settle rivalries duels.

So it was a throwback when Rep. Blake Farenthold, a Republican from Corpus Christi, Tex., on Friday criticized some Republican “female senators from the Northeast” for their opposition to efforts to pass a health care overhaul.

Then, he said, “if it was a guy from south Texas I might ask him to step outside and settle this Aaron Burr-style.”

Speaking to local radio host Bob Jones, Farenthold was referring to the 1804 duel in which Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, former treasury secretary and Burr’s long-standing political rival and personal enemy.

Farenthold, who has experienced a fair share of controversies over women’s issues and his interactions with women, did not mention any of these senators by name. But three Republican female senators have been key holdouts from the GOP’s current Obamacare “repeal and replace” proposal: Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska).