Missouri is in the midst of a grand experiment: How effectively can it operate without a governor?

Snip: As Greitens struggles to deal with multiple investigations on multiple fronts, the Missouri House and Senate have taken big steps on K-12 funding, higher education, early childhood education and highway funding.

In doing so, lawmakers have dismissed Greitens’ budget priorities out of hand time after time. It all adds up to an astonishing display of independence. The man’s who’s supposed to be the most powerful official in the state is routinely being ignored.

The General Assembly has been aided by its veteran leadership: Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard ranks as the only man in state history to lead both the House and Senate. House Speaker Todd Richardson continues to command the respect of both Republicans and Democrats in a chamber long known more for its chaos than its order. That’s a considerable feat.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article207523209.html#storylink=cpy

Neurosurgery, one would assume, is a difficult task requiring intelligence, skill, and intense focus. But as former presidential candidate and current Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson recently declared, it is a positive cakewalk compared to working in Donald Trump’s White House.

“There are more complexities here than in brain surgery,” Carson told The New York Times in an interview, perhaps a lame excuse for what the Times revealed to be a morass of problems at HUD: steep cuts to both staffers and budget; a brewing ethics scandal over Carson’s furniture budget; and a president indifferent to both the mission of HUD and to the man he appointed to lead it, whom he reportedly considers a beta “winner,” not an aggressive “killer.”

The result, as the Times reports, is that Carson has been either unable or unwilling to secure the funds that HUD desperately needs to take care of the millions of low-income Americans who rely on public housing and other forms of assistance:


https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/how-ben-carson-hobbled-hud

Apparently not.


https://www.quora.com/Does-the-U-S-President-have-the-highest-level-security-clearance-in-the-U-S-When-are-U-S-Presidents-vetted-Have-all-U-S-Presidents-met-the-requirements

Source: Rawstory.com

Who says public shaming doesn’t work?

According to Crooks and Liars, Joel Osteen is singing a new tune after being blasted online for not allowing people into his church in the midst of Hurricane Harvey. He is now reportedly preparing to open the doors of his Lakewood Megachurch in Houston to people seeking refuge from the storm.

LGBTQ activist Charles Clymer posted an image of air mattresses in the Lakewood church, along with a caption that said the church is “prepping to open their doors.”

Earlier in the day, Raw Story reported that Osteen was blasted on Twitter for tweeting a call for prayers (and later, for attempting to raise money) for those affected by Harvey while keeping the doors to his church closed to people who need shelter.



Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/08/prosperity-gospel-preacher-joel-osteen-to-open-megachurch-to-hurricane-harvey-refugees-after-public-shaming/

Source: Independent

The Brazilian environment ministry is proposing the release of 860,000 acres in the National Forest of Jamanxim for agricultural use, mining and logging.

The government’s order was a compromise measure after protests from local residents and ecologists who claim that the bill could lead to further deforestation in the Pará area.

If approved, the legislation will create a new protection area (APA) close to Novo Progresso. Around 27 percent of the national forest would be converted into an APA, the ministry said.

Carlos Xavier, president of a lobbying group in Pará to decrease the size of the Jamanxim forest, said the APA would bring economic progress to the region.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/illegal-logging-national-forest-of-jamanxim-brazil-amazon-br-163-protests-deforestation-gisele-a7842796.html

It must be weird to be Donald Trump Jr. Like, if you asked me what I did this weekend, I would say, "Oh, not much. Just hung out with my girlfriend and dog. Did a little work. Saw Spider-Man." Not too exciting but nice. Now, if I asked Donald Trump Jr. how his was, he'd have to say something like, "Oh, you know. The New York Times reported about how I met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who was promising me damaging information on Hillary Clinton, which certainly looks bad considering the investigation into collusion between my dad's campaign and Russia... Also, I had a nice brunch." And what's even weirder still is that the above would be Donnie Jr. telling the version of the weekend that made him look the best. In reality, Donnie took a bad situation for him and his father and made it so much worse.

You see, in that New York Times piece, Trump Jr. gave the following statement:

In a statement on Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. said he had met with the Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance. “After pleasantries were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

He said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian children.

More:

http://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-jr-russia-meeting-flub/amp

Evangelicals know Trump is a liar. They just don’t care.As former FBI Director James Comey repeatedly called President Donald Trump a liar, Trump decided to prove him right. In a speech that neatly coincided with Comey’s long-awaited Senate hearing, Trump preened and crowed in front of a rapt audience at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual luncheon. The speech itself? Anti-climactic. He played all the old favorites—a little bit of blood-and-soil, some exaggerated claims about the Johnson Amendment, a dash of persecution complex—and then proceeded to repeatedly violate the Ninth Commandment.

He said he’s added one million jobs to the economy. (False. CNN Money says the number is actually 594,000.) He claimed that insurance companies are fleeing the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges and blaming former President Barack Obama. (Half-true: Companies are pulling out of the exchanges, but they’re blaming the Trump administration’s policies.) He blamed Democrats for the vacancies in his administration. (False: The vacancies exist mainly because he’s been slow to put forward nominees.) He said that Ben Franklin reminded members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to begin their sessions with prayer. This story is beloved by religious right partisans like David Barton, but it is also only half-true. Franklin made a motion to hold prayer, but it was never voted on.

This is the part where people point and laugh at evangelicals. It’s tempting. They seem like easy marks for a con like Donald Trump. But they’re in on the con. Trump wasn’t even the first self-identified Christian to lie at today’s event. Senator David Perdue of Georgia claimed that the U.S. poverty rate is “the same today” as it was when President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, thus proving that big government doesn’t work. But this is a lie. The poverty rate was 19 percent in 1964 and it’s 13.5 percent now.





https://newrepublic.com/minutes/143213/evangelicals-know-trump-liar-just-dont-care