May 31, 2018

Call out his lies. He depends on them.

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

May 30 at 7:49 PM

By now, we know that President Trump is a lying demagogue. Because this is not said often enough, he has been allowed to routinize lying and enshrine the vilest forms of divisiveness as a normal part of our politics. Lies do not deserve deference just because a president tells them.

We thought that the media learned during Joseph R. McCarthy’s heyday that “We report the lies, you decide” is not a responsible approach to journalism. Trump’s egregiousness requires everyone to take a refresher course in the lesson of McCarthyism.

At the same time, just calling out deceit is insufficient. It is essential as well to understand why Trump tells particular lies at particular moments and to be hardheaded in judging how effective they are. This is a precondition to turning back the smears and the falsehoods.

Trump’s address Tuesday at a Nashville rally was a lollapalooza of deception. He kept the fact-checkers busy. PolitiFact raised doubts about 15 of his statements and flatly rated 10 of them as “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/call-out-his-lies-he-depends-on-them/2018/05/30/675921a8-644a-11e8-99d2-0d678ec08c2f_story.html

May 31, 2018

Saving Sessions: Inside the GOP effort to protect the AG

By JONATHAN LEMIRE, ERIC TUCKER and LISA MASCARO
1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Days after President Donald Trump deemed Jeff Sessions “beleaguered” and threatened to fire him last July, members of the president’s inner circle made a desperate case to save the attorney general’s job.

The White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and the president’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, pleaded with Trump during a heated Oval Office meeting to keep Sessions, warning that his dismissal would only pour gasoline on the Russia investigation. And, they said, it could alienate those in Trump’s conservative base, supporters enamored with the attorney general’s tough stances on law enforcement and immigration.

Priebus and Bannon both were out of their jobs within the month. But Sessions survived, his reprieve delivered by John Kelly as one of his first acts as chief of staff.

Ten months later, the Republican campaign to save Sessions has continued and — at least for now — succeeded. In private meetings, public appearances on television and late-night phone calls, Trump’s advisers and allies have done all they can to persuade the president not to fire a Cabinet official he dismisses as disloyal. The effort is one of the few effective Republican attempts to install guardrails around a president who delights in defying advice and breaking the rules.

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https://apnews.com/9f341490400a4058ace6e4c1acd5c1b6

May 31, 2018

Roseanne Could Be a Turning Point for Conservative Women

Women had a lot of reasons to vote for Trump, starting with Hillary Clinton. She’s not running now, and his flaws—and those of many of his supporters—are becoming harder to ignore.

KELI GOFF
05.31.18 4:49 AM ET

One of the many reasons people were shocked by Donald Trump's election is that they couldn’t fathom that women would vote against a competent female candidate in favor of a man facing very credible allegations of misogyny and harassment. (For the record, I have written that the lingering allegations against Hillary Clinton’s husband certainly complicated things, but Bill Clinton still wasn’t on the ballot in 2016.)

While the most common media narrative became that white women voted for Trump en masse because they were racists, the truth is much more complicated. Thanks to Roseanne Barr’s racist rhetoric, among other high-profile conservative missteps, Republicans are likely to find out just how complicated these women voters are — and to face a real reckoning at the voting booth.

Plenty of my liberal friends were shocked that any woman could cast a vote for Donald Trump, I wasn’t because I had some conservative friends (and yes they are still my friends) who had done just that. Their reasons came down to the issues that were most important to them, like abortion. For those that consider it murder, they were willing to vote for whichever candidate would nominate justices and push policies to end it – even if that meant holding their nose and closing their eyes in the voting booth. And guess what? For those voters President Trump has delivered, from nominating conservative stalwart Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, to reinstating the global gag rule, which prevents international organizations receiving US Aid from discussing abortion options. (The White House is exploring a domestic gag rule as well.)

There were other reasons women voted for him that many of us may not fully understand, but those women didn’t need us to understand because their reasons made sense to them. For some, they were willing to vote for a qualified female candidate — including a Democrat — but not for Hillary Clinton. They didn’t like her, didn’t trust her and never would. And while they surmised it was possible that Donald Trump engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior, they already knew Hillary Clinton’s husband had and that she defended him. So in their eyes that made the 2016 election essentially a wash. You could either vote for the guy that you knew was a jerk but who you actually agreed with on tax policy or immigration policy or vote for the woman you may not agree with, because she’s a woman, but she’s a woman married to another jerk. Trump and Clinton were the two least popular presidential nominees on record.

more
https://www.thedailybeast.com/roseanne-could-be-a-turning-point-for-conservative-women?ref=home

May 31, 2018

Lithuania and Romania complicit in CIA torture - European court

Source: BBC News



23 minutes ago

European judges have ruled that Lithuania and Romania violated the rights of two al-Qaeda terror suspects by allowing the CIA to torture them.

The US captured Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri after the September 2001 attacks in the US and they are now at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

The CIA operated secret prisons, including in Lithuania and Romania.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said both countries had violated the European prohibition of torture.

The ECHR issued a similar ruling against Poland in 2014.



Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44313905

May 31, 2018

Germaine Greer: 'Some Rape Is Just Bad Sex'

The radical feminist academic Germaine Greer has provoked outrage after she stunned an audience at a literary festival by saying some rapes are just “bad sex” and that society should not view rape as a “spectacularly violent crime.” Greer, who spoke about her own rape as a young woman, said that in cases of violent rape, the courts should concentrate on the violence that should draw bigger sentences, rather than having long trials in which women are humiliated for long periods. Greer acknowledged her thesis would be controversial. “It is moments like these, I can hear the feminists screaming at me, ‘You’re trivializing rape!’” Many observers did indeed feel just that: Safer London CEO Sherry Peck tweeted: “Dreadful ramblings by Germaine Greer. I’m usually happy to listen to opinions different to my own but today after around 20 mins I had to walk out.” Anita Singh, the Daily Telegraph’s arts and entertainment editor, wrote on Twitter: “Had the misfortune to listen to Germaine Greer yesterday. She seemed to be making it up as she went along.”

READ IT AT THE GUARDIAN

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/germaine-greer-some-rape-is-just-bad-sex?ref=home

May 31, 2018

Rudy Giuliani: Mueller Would Be 'Doing a Comey' If He Doesn't Finish by September

by Tamar Auber | 6:46 pm, May 30th, 2018

President Donald Trump‘s lawyer Rudy Giuliani warned on Wednesday that if Special Counsel Robert Mueller does not end the investigation by September 1, he’s “clearly doing a Comey.”

Giuliani’s remarks were made during comments to the press and reported by CNN and other outlets.

Asked about whether he may fire Mueller, Trump’s lawyer noted, “I don’t think he’s going to fire Mueller, Mueller is creating his own problems.” He then called on Mueller to end his probe by September 1.

“Well, if he doesn’t file his report by September 1, mid-September, he’s clearly doing a Comey,” Giuliani stressed, referring to ex-FBI Director James Comey.

more
https://www.mediaite.com/online/rudy-giuliani-mueller-would-be-doing-a-comey-if-he-doesnt-finish-by-september/

May 31, 2018

Trump Starts Twitter Morning Off By (Mis)Quoting Rush Limbaugh on 'Russians Infiltrating a Campaign'

by Caleb Howe | 7:37 am, May 31st, 2018

President Donald Trump started Thursday morning by quoting Rush Limbaugh on the FBI’s investigation:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1002141448232493056

The Limbaugh quotes were played in a clip on Hannity on Wednesday night. Maybe Fox & Friends wasn’t cutting it for the president Thursday morning?

It’s not exactly a direct quote. Trump made it his own, inserting “(hoax)”, and shortened it for Twitter.

Limbaugh’s exact words:



Hoax, scam… the point of the tweet, and the Hannity clip, is that this was a deliberate attempt to hoodwink everyone and sabotage Trump.

more
https://www.mediaite.com/donald-trump/trump-starts-twitter-morning-off-by-misquoting-rush-limbaugh-on-russians-infiltrating-a-campaign/

May 31, 2018

New Memoir Reveals Obama's Thoughts After Trump Won Election: 'Maybe This Is What People Want'

by Rachel Dicker | 5:55 pm, May 30th, 2018

Former President Barack Obama has kept himself largely out of the spotlight after he departed the White House, so any insight into his final days in office represents a pretty substantial revelation.

In his new memoir The World As It Is, former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes chronicles some of Obama’s statements in the months before he left office – particularly about the man who was about to replace him, Donald Trump.

“Maybe we pushed too far,” Obama said to some of his aides just days after the election. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.”

Rhodes recalls Obama talking to several world leaders in his last months in office, including Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who apologized for meeting with Trump at Trump Tower; Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom Obama encouraged to, as it was put in the New York Times, “take on a more vocal role defending the values they shared”; and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who teared up when saying goodbye to Obama.

The book also talks about what Obama could have done to prevent Russian interference in the 2016 election, citing that Obama authorized a warning to be issued by intelligence agency leaders about the threat, but more steps were not taken because Mitch McConnell would not move forward with a bipartisan statement.

“What else did you expect from McConnell?” Obama reportedly asked a furious Rhodes. “He won’t even give us a hearing on Merrick Garland.”

Meanwhile, when Trump was elected, Obama was disappointed, but looked to the will of the people:

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https://www.mediaite.com/online/new-memoir-reveals-obamas-thoughts-after-trump-won-election-maybe-this-is-what-people-want/

May 30, 2018

Trump shows that it takes a tough man to punish innocent children

By Tom Toles
May 30 at 12:29 PM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/05/30/trump-shows-that-it-takes-a-tough-man-to-punish-innocent-children/

May 30, 2018

Federal Reserve votes to ease rule aimed at preventing big banks from making risky financial bets

Source: The Washington Post




By Renae Merle
May 30 at 3:38 PM

Big U.S. banks snagged another big victory Wednesday as federal regulators voted to ease one of the industry’s most despised regulations.

The Federal Reserve approved sweeping changes to the “Volcker Rule,” which was established after the global financial crisis to prevent taxpayer-insured banks from making some risky financial bets. Banks, which have complained for years that the rule is too cumbersome and time-consuming, will gain new flexibility in deciding when a trade is too risky if the proposal is finalized.

“Our goal is to replace overly complex and inefficient requirements with a more streamlined set of requirements,” said Fed Chairman Jerome H. Powell.

Consumer advocates worry that even a slight easing of the standards could open the door for the type of risky trading that contributed to the near collapse of the economy a decade ago.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/30/wall-street-is-about-to-snag-one-of-its-biggest-victories-of-the-trump-era/