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Wednesday Toon Roundup 2- The Rest
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Terror
House set to condemn Turkish security attack on protesters
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans and Democrats are set to unleash a wave of bipartisan fury against Turkey over violence against peaceful protesters carried out by bodyguards traveling with the country’s president.
Lawmakers are expected to approve overwhelmingly a resolution that calls for members of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s security detail who were involved in the incident to be brought to justice. The vote is slated for Tuesday evening.
The resolution is backed by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Minority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland. The strong support for the measure reflects lingering anger on Capitol Hill over the attacks last month on demonstrators outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., had demanded that Erdogan and other Turkish leaders condemn and apologize for the “brutal behavior against innocent civilians exercising their First Amendment rights.”
more
https://apnews.com/8eee11fc0cb04449a953b1d16d53fb8a/House-set-to-condemn-Turkish-security-attack-on-protesters
The White House Exaggerated the Growth of Coal Jobs by About 5,000 Percent
On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, claimed that the U.S. has created 50,000 jobs in the coal sector since the fourth quarter of 2016. The statistic carries an important message for the White House. Trump has brought extraordinary attention to the decline of coal jobs, for which he’s blamed Obama-imposed regulations. Coal’s immediate bounce-back would represent a major early win for a president who has made promises to revive the economy of the 1950s, when mining was more dominant.
But Pruitt’s statistic wasn’t just flagrantly incorrect. It’s being used to support a nonsensical argument that the United States should orient its global policy based on a sector employing 0.03 percent of the economy, as there are fewer coal mining workers than there are people employed at Carl's Jr. franchises or Disney World.
Quite simply, the coal sector has added about 1,000 jobs since October 2016—not 50,000. Coal could not have added 50,000 jobs in the last eight months, since that is essentially the size of the entire coal industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pruitt’s statistic would otherwise imply that entire coal mining industry started in October. (Perhaps he meant 50,000 total mining jobs, but the vast majority of those positions have nothing to do with coal jobs; indeed, natural gas-mining workers might even be replacing them.)
more
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/pruitt-epa-coal-jobs-exaggerate/529311/
Greetings from Griftopia!
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
JUN 6, 2017
Meanwhile, in the other precincts of the Camp Runamuck empire, we have a new way to monetize the brand while Pops remains a half-step ahead of the law. And, yes, it’s as tacky as you might expect it to be. From the NYT:
On Monday, the Trump Organization announced plans for a new three-star hotel chain with a patriotic flair, echoing President Trump’s campaign slogan about putting America first and reflecting the organization’s promise to enter into new deals only in the United States. The intention is to differentiate the chain, called American Idea, by featuring artifacts of American culture in the hotels, such as an old Coca-Cola machine in the lobby or American-made sundries in the rooms.
Why do I see in my mind an endless queue of recent immigrants who bought franchises only to discover that the price of the American Sundries was a lot higher than they expected?
(Which reminds me, the president* can’t seem to find an outside lawyer, because a lot of the usual high-priced D.C. mouthpieces are afraid to take him on as a client, because he will neither shut up nor pay up. Repping the president used to be the golden ticket to a career as a Beltway power player. Disruption!)
more
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a55494/trump-cheap-hotels/
Americas Freedom to Protest Is Under Attack
A UN Special Rapporteur was shocked to find abusive employers, anti-protest bills and other signs of a weakening of democracy.
By Michelle Chen
It’s no secret that America’s star is fading on the world stage these days, under a President whose authoritarian tactics have outraged allies and enemies alike. But a recent audit by an international human rights monitor reveals that even before Trump’s buffoonery took over the White House, Washington was failing dramatically to live up to its reputation as a beacon of democracy. UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Assembly Maina Kiai’s dissection of the nation’s systematic betrayal of basic human rights centers on America’s erosion of free assembly and a shrinking public square.
Based on a year-long observation of the country’s governance and civic life that stretches from mid-2016 through the start of the Trump administration, Kiai, whose post recently ended with the publication of the report, sees a massive backsliding in the right to freedom of assembly. The concept encompasses the right to organize and protest and other essential forms of civic and public activism. Though it is formally inscribed in the Bill of Rights, the precept has come under assault under the Trump administration, Kiai says, stoked by the president’s “hateful and xenophobic rhetoric during the presidential campaign” and blatant flouting of civil liberties in his policies and governing style.
Kiai concludes that over the past year, a growing swath of communities of color, workers and immigrants, and other marginalized groups have felt deterred from engaging in social movements, staging protests and other forms of citizen action, or campaigning to defend community and workplace rights.
One overarching obstacle is the ingrained culture of racism, which has persisted since slavery through Jim Crow and ongoing struggles with institutionalized discrimination. Citing police-community conflict as a primary illustration of structural oppression, Kiai argues, “Racism and the exclusion, persecution and marginalization that come with it, affect the environment for exercising association and assembly rights.” The report directly denounces government agencies’ “hostility towards the Black Lives Matter movement,” contending that, since it is a peaceful exercise of free assembly, “The government has an obligation under international law to protect and promote their ability to do this.” Similarly, the report describes structural corruption driving the use of perverse incentives in the policing of black communities, with “police departments raising revenue through fines and rewarding or sanctioning police officers based on the number of arrests.” These patterns of aggressive policing, Kiai says, disempower neighborhoods by deterring dissent.
more
https://www.thenation.com/article/americas-freedom-protest-attack/?
After years of lobbying by veterans, Colorado adds PTSD as medical marijuana condition
By Alicia Wallace, The Cannabist Staff
Post-traumatic stress disorder is now a qualifying condition for doctor-recommended medical marijuana in Colorado.
Gov. John Hickenlooper on Monday signed Senate Bill 17 into law. The bill opens the doors for Colorado residents to receive a doctor’s OK to use medical marijuana in the treatment of PTSD symptoms.
It’s the first new qualifying condition added under the state’s medical marijuana law since it was implemented in 2001. The state’s eight other qualifying conditions are: cancer, glaucoma, HIV or AIDS, cachexia, persistent muscle spasms, seizures, severe nausea, and severe pain.
The inclusion of PTSD among Colorado’s medical marijuana qualifying conditions has been a hotly contested issue of recent years.
more
http://www.thecannabist.co/2017/06/06/colorado-ptsd-medical-marijuana-veterans/80819/
Trump has filled just 15 percent of the governments top science jobs
Presidents invariably encounter key moments where they need to rely on scientific expertise. George W. Bush faced an anthrax attack after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Barack Obama faced the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the Ebola outbreak. Now President Trump has made a momentous decision about climate change.
“When the crisis occurs, whether it’s an oil well blowout or an emerging disease or a tunnel collapse at a nuclear facility, that’s too late to get up to speed,” said Rush Holt, the chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “You want people who are up to speed before the crisis occurs.”
Trump is facing science-focused problems and issues with a key limitation: lack of staffing. As of June 6, Trump had announced a nominee for just seven, or 15 percent, of 46 top science posts in the federal government that require Senate confirmation, according to a Post analysis.
This failure to fill top science jobs across the federal government has become even more pointed in light of his Paris choice. Recaps of Trump’s decision-making process have highlighted many influences upon it, but none of them principally scientific in nature.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/06/trump-has-filled-just-15-percent-of-the-governments-top-science-jobs/?utm_term=.59350a89a1bc
Trump is now raging at Jeff Sessions. This hints at a deeply unsettling pattern.
On Monday, President Trump angrily lashed out at the Justice Department for defending the weaker second version of his immigration ban. This was odd, because Trump himself signed the executive order promulgating that revised version, which was ostensibly designed to address the court’s concerns about the first — objections the White House itself said it hoped to address.
But it turns out that Trump’s anger at the Justice Department has a deeper source: rage at Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The New York Times reports on what’s at the root of it:
He has intermittently fumed for months over Mr. Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election, according to people close to Mr. Trump who insisted on anonymity to describe internal conversations. In Mr. Trump’s view, they said, it was that recusal that eventually led to the appointment of a special counsel who took over the investigation.
Trump appears worryingly unable to contemplate his own role in bringing about the special counsel. The firing of FBI Director James B. Comey led to reports that Trump allegedly demanded Comey’s loyalty and to Trump’s admission that he fired Comey over the Russia probe. This revealed that the Justice Department’s memo providing Trump his initial rationale for the firing (Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton probe) was bogus. Which led to the special counsel.
Beyond this, though, note this: Trump’s seething anger at Sessions is disconcertingly similar to the anger that led him to fire Comey. As the Times previously reported, Trump privately “burned” as he watched Comey testify to Congress about Russia’s efforts to tip the election to Trump, and was “particularly irked” when Comey conceded his own intervention, via a letter about Clinton’s emails, may have influenced the outcome, which Trump “took to demean his own role in history.” The Post added that Trump was “infuriated” at the FBI’s failure to investigate and stop leaks, which have led to news accounts detailing what the Russia probe was finding.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/06/06/trump-is-now-raging-at-jeff-sessions-this-hints-at-a-deeply-unsettling-pattern/?utm_term=.814061c903c4
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