Sometime during the next hour and a half, Safeway.com will be delivering groceries. Unlike Store to Door, closed for the 4th, Safeway does not unpack my groceries for me or help me put them away, so I’ll have to break to do that myself. I hope you are having a better holiday weekend than the US.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:02 (average 5:39). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos: …As pr*sident, Donald Trump’s narcissistic tendencies first expressed themselves from the White House briefing podium when Press Secretary Sean Spicer argued against all evidence that the attendance at Trump’s inauguration exceeded that at President Obama’s. It seems almost quaint now—partly because the clear pictorial evidence made it so laughable—but that was an inaugural glimpse of where we were headed, pardon the pun.
It’s no secret by now that Trump is out of his depth, unable to comprehend the vast federal bureaucracy he’s supposed to command, incapable of absorbing the knowledge necessary to inform critical decisions about commanding it, and frankly, uninterested in anything that isn’t directly related to whichever immediate concern has hijacked his limited attention span at any given hour of the day.
But now we are seeing how that psyche is choking off the entire White House from the world, not just so Trump can maintain control over the government, but so no inconvenient truths can infiltrate his fortress and encroach on his reality…
Click through for the entire article. It’s worth it. I agree with the author, that it’s only a matter of time before the Fuhrer screws the pooch. RESIST!!
From NY Times: …Some policy subjects, on the other hand, really are complicated. One of these subjects is international trade. And the great danger here isn’t simply that Trump doesn’t understand the issues. Worse, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
According to the news site Axios, Trump, supported by his inner circle of America Firsters, is “hell-bent” on imposing punitive tariffs on imports of steel and possibly other products, despite opposition from most of his cabinet. After all, claims that other countries are taking advantage of America were a central theme of his campaign.
And Axios reports that the White House believes that Trump’s base “likes the idea” of a trade war, and “will love the fight.”…
Click through for the rest of Paul Krugman’s fine editorial. For one thing a tariff on imported steel, will price all the goods made by US workers with that more costly steel out of competition with foreign products. Bye Bye jobs! How do you spell stupid? R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N! RESIST!!
From Raw Story: A man has been charged with plotting to assassinate President Emmanuel Macron at France’s Bastille Day military parade which the French leader is set to attend with US President Donald Trump, a judicial source said Monday.
The 23-year-old is a suspected far-right extremist who told investigators he wanted to kill Macron at the July 14 national day parade in Paris, a source close to the investigation said.
He said he also wanted to attack “Muslims, Jews, blacks, homosexuals,” the source added.
Police arrested the man at his home on Wednesday in the northwest Paris suburb of Argenteuil after being alerted by users of an internet chatroom where the suspect allegedly said he wanted to buy a firearm.
No doubt Trump is in mourning over the capture of a French Republican terrorist, who was plotting to give Trump a reason to cheer at the parade. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
No wonder Republicans hate the French!
11 Responses to “Open Thread – 7/3/2017”
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4:12 I have no idea how that happened.
DKos – Kerry Eleveld is a sharp cookie, all right. If it were up to just Trump, he woud already be gone. But he still has some loyal staff who are holding things together. And some less loyal (to him) staff who still have enough loyalty (to America) to hold it together.
NY Times – Dunning-Kruger rides again.
Raw Story – So, SOME countries can listen to their own intelligence enough to prevent at least some terrorist acts. Need I say more?
Cartoon – Well, that was an anomaly – someone with power proposing to share (at least the crumbs of) it. They do exist! They are just few and far between. Nick Hanauer comes to mind.
DK/NYT: What a total and insidious mess. A complete ‘covfefe’, imho.
RS: I’m seeing (as others) a rise in hate, and violence, whether it’s here or overseas. What a crying shame.
Cartoon: In reading about him, a man who stood for justice, and equal rights for all. We could certainly embrace a person like that in the WH today.
Lazy, hazy day here. Hope that you get your groceries put away all right. Hope that you have a relaxing evening. Take good care, and Thanks, Tom.
*Nice picture, Joanne. Thanks!!
DK: And, tonight, seen at the gym, Faux News is pushing the “President Trump body slams CNN,” as a featured story. He tweeted something like, “My use of social media is modern presidential behavior,” and the Faux Fools love it! So, now, presidential behavior is that of a 4 year old! Evidence? What does a 4 year old want with evidence? No, wait…I can answer that- He/she makes more use of it than Rumpy does! “Oh, things fall ‘down’ that must mean something universal, hmm”
NYT: Dunning-Kreuger, indeed!!!!!!!!!
RS: While there appears to be evidence that people, in general, as per “40 questions, 50 people,” are coming together, that may be, in part, pushing the crazies farther out!
Good cartoon. Some people have been ahead of their times, in good ways.
Puzzle — 3:02 I’m riding that horsie and we are riding away from you, Puddy Tat!
Daily Kos — The trouble is, when (not if) he screws the pooch, people will get killed, and killed in bigger numbers than ever before. With Drumpf, he’ll also find a way to blame it on Obama and his sycophants will fall in line right behind him. Mental illness might be a “reason” for his actions, but what reasons do his sycophants have to prop him up, counter to the good of the nation?
NY Times — I think what Drumpf and others forget is that American corporations originally made steel for example but shipped the jobs overseas to less expensive countries where they could make bigger profits. At the same time, technology has made huge strides so that many of the jobs that could return will not be the ones that left and there will be fewer of them. Case in point — Carriere. Drumpf danced around the ring during the campaign extoling his negotiation skills when he announced that Carriere was not going to send 1,100 jobs to Mexico. That was a deceitful claim. Carriere is sending 700 jobs to Mexico and the union is obviously upset as are workers who trusted candidate Drumpf, now pResident Drumpf. To aggravate the situation further, most of the jobs remaining in the US were never slated for Mexico inn the first place. As to tariffs, that will do little — as Krugman explains, it is basically a catch 22 situation. Tariffs will increase the production costs of goods made in the US and make so they can’t compete with foreign products. But the other side of that coin is that US labour costs are higher. Who wins? To be clear, I am not advocating for American wages to drop. There is more to consider including cost of living, although Republicans would love to gut workplace wages and regulations.
Raw Story — And the alt right goes on ad nauseam about “liberals” being violent, being terrorists? Extremists come in all persuasions, but the right has joined forces with the likes of White Nationalists, the KKK, neo Nazis, and various right wing militias. So who are the terrorists?
Cartoon — It is amusing that Republicans hate the French because it was the French that fought against the Brits with the Americans during the revolutionary war, and with the Confederacy during the Civil War, although that was largely a supply train arrangement. The French wanted a supply of cotton.
Resist and Persist!!!
Hopefully later tonight I will have an article ready to publish WRT Canada 150. If not, tomorrow. Just a bit late. I hope you were able to get things put away w/o too much trouble.
It’s a tie! Half that horsie is MINE
Put that spoon away! My half of the horsie wants to live, so yours has to live too! Maybe we put it out to stud and you get a baby horsie.
No way! I’ll take a Rump Roast from each cheek, but that’s the best deal you’re gonna get. And if I win today’s puzzle, which appears likely, you can have it.
DK: Can Drumpf screw the pooch more than he already has? The man has been mentally unstable for years, but now he’s under a looking glass all the time, it’s more apparent and he needs more and more people to tell him how great he is to keep the big bad world out there at bay. To keep “functioning” he has to keep reality at bay and surrounding himself with enablers like his cabinet, his staff, Faux News and the GOP, all telling him what beautiful clothes he’s wearing for their own gain. The trouble is that when Drumpf really flips his lid, this may lead to a civil war with many deaths in gun-toting America or even worse to a nuclear disaster when he “decides” on that “pre-emptive” strike on North Korea. That is why the Chines are also enabling him and still willing to engage in phone conversation with him after “a flurry of actions by the United States — selling weapons to Taiwan, threatening trade sanctions and branding China for human trafficking — that rankled the Chinese.” Drumpf may have made it clear which pooch he was going to screw when Trump Warns China He Is Willing to Pressure North Korea on His Own.
NYT: As usual Paul Krugman is on point. You know he is when the GOP trolls – yes, even The New York Times has them – get angry and start to comment, i.e. attack him.
RS: Funny that, because Macron has shown himself a little Drumpfian yesterday, taking the whole government to Versailles at the cost of € 1 million to make a great entrance through the halls of Louis XIV’s palace to make a speech on how he’s going to reform government (smaller, referendums etc.), but failed to mention anything about his (long) awaited economical plans. His opponents now call him “Little Sun King”
. I suppose that doesn’t matter much to you’re a far-right extremist.
Cartoon: Ahhh, those good old days of “The Era of Enlightenment”, that enormous influence on your Founding Fathers.
Screw the pooch is a military pilots’ term, referring to a mistake leading to a fatal crash. In that context, it’s one pooch per person.
Bad enough that Twitler is in WAY over his head – but it’s pathetic that he makes NO effort to correct that … or even care.
Thanks all. Heated hugs!