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DonViejo's JournalDe Blasio, U.S. mayors warn: Trump budget could lead to public housing 'crisis'
Source: The Hill
BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 06/30/17 12:12 PM EDT
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and 11 other U.S. mayors issued a stark warning to the Trump administration on Friday, saying public housing cuts would lead to a crisis involving the health of residents and crumbling infrastructure.
The letter, which was reported by The Washington Post, pressed the administration to reconsider the $1.3 million cut to the public housing capital fund, which is put toward plumbing, electric systems, and roofs in the 1.2 million public housing units across the country.
“We are on the precipice of a public health crisis in public housing, however, this is a preventable crisis,” the letter addressed to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said. The letter also said aging infrastructure has lead to increased health problems for residents who receive assistance, such as elevated blood-lead levels, as well as asthma and respiratory illness.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget that was released in May showed a $6 billion loss in HUD funding, saying states, local governments, and housing authorities should take up responsibilities that used to fall under HUD.
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/340248-de-blasio-us-mayors-warns-trump-budget-could-lead-to-public-housing
Collusion is back: The strange tale of Michael Flynn, his son and a now deceased Republican operativ
FRIDAY, JUN 30, 2017 04:59 AM EDT
Collusion is back: The strange tale of Michael Flynn, his son and a now-deceased Republican operative
Report: Trump’s former national security adviser implicated in attempted hack of Hillary Clinton’s emails
SOPHIA TESFAYE
Ever since a Justice Department special counsel was named to oversee an investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election after President Donald Trump’s abrupt firing of former FBI director James Comey, one question has hung over the whole affair. Why did Trump back himself into such a precarious situation in order to protect Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser?
For those who have long speculated that Flynn could hold the key to possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russians, a new report from the Wall Street Journal adds yet another bit of evidence pointing in that direction.
In an interview with the Journal last month, a now-deceased GOP operative admitted that during the campaign he asked cybersecurity experts to look for the 33,000 emails supposedly missing from Hillary Clinton’s private server. Peter W. Smith, a moderately well-known Republican researcher who helped peddle allegations from four Arkansas state troopers that they had helped Bill Clinton cheat on Hillary with “dozens of women” in the 1990s, made a series of stunning claims to his close associates and the Journal. Smith said that he sought to obtain Clinton’s emails from hacker forums, that he had contact with Russia’s ambassador during the campaign, and implied that he had worked with Flynn — who also sought to uncover the emails.
Ten days after being interviewed by the Journal, Smith passed away at the age of 81.
According to the Journal, Smith’s shenanigans began last summer, about a month after Trump jokingly called on Russia to release Clinton’s private emails. Beginning over the Labor Day weekend of 2016, Smith mounted a private campaign to obtain stolen emails that he believed had been on Clinton’s private server. Smith assembled a team of technology experts, lawyers and a Russian-speaking investigator and made contact with a number of groups — including, he claimed, some in Russia. Smith also implied in conversations with associates that he was working with Flynn, citing a working relationship with Flynn’s consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, when trying to recruit new team members.
more
http://www.salon.com/2017/06/30/michael-flynn-his-son-and-a-now-deceased-gop-operative-just-revived-the-russian-collusion-question/
Maybe the GOP split is already here - By Jennifer Rubin
By Jennifer Rubin June 30 at 9:30 AM
Since President Trump entered office, the running debate in the political class has focused on the degree to which the GOP is now the party of Trump. Will it ever repudiate him? Could traditional conservatives split from Trumpian populists? These are all variations on a theme — the fate of the GOP in the age of Trump.
Since the special elections and the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, conventional wisdom has held that there will be no internal reckoning within the GOP unless and until the 2018 midterms. Look how docile Republican leaders are! See how Republicans in polls are sticking with him?
Perhaps the split already is underway. Consider four events: 1.) The Senate by a 98-2 vote passes Russia sanctions the White House did not want and, to boot, puts limits on executive discretion to waive them; 2.) Senate conservatives and moderates, in a pincer movement, halt Trumpcare. The president’s notion that it does not cut Medicaid is wildly repudiated by senators from Medicaid expansion states. (The emperor has no clothes; the bill does not have enough support); 3.) A significant number of GOP senators and congressmen condemn the president’s vulgar tweets directed at Mika Brzezinski; and 4.) Moderate House members now threaten to derail the budget (without which there can be no budget reconciliation).
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/06/30/maybe-the-gop-split-is-already-here/?utm_term=.72f2cef2fa6e
Texas Supreme Court: No inherent right to gay marriage benefits
Source: Austin American-Statesman
Chuck Lindell American-Statesman Staff
9:29 a.m. Friday, June 30, 2017 News
A unanimous Texas Supreme Court concluded Friday that there is no established right to government-provided spousal benefits in same-sex marriages.
The 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established the right to same-sex marriage did not decide all marriage-related matters, leaving room for state courts to explore the decision’s “reach and ramifications,” the all-Republican Texas court said.
Supporters of gay marriage have vowed to appeal such a ruling to the federal courts, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court clearly stated that all marriages must be treated equally.
“The Texas Supreme Court’s decision this morning is a warning shot to all LGBTQ Americans that the war on marriage equality is ever-evolving, and anti-LGBTQ activists will do anything possible to discriminate against our families,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and the advocacy group GLAAD.
Read more: http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-supreme-court-inherent-right-gay-marriage-benefits/YhIJSUN9u9Uy2d8n0exU2I/?ecmp=statesman_social_twitter_2014_virtualcapitol_sfp
Trump's Mika tweets were gruesome - but the "resistance" needs to stop fainting every time he says..
THURSDAY, JUN 29, 2017 07:00 PM EDT
Trump’s Mika tweets were gruesome — but the “resistance” needs to stop fainting every time he says something inflammatory
Trump's Twitter abuse of Mika Brzezinski was just daily outrage fodder — and as usual we all took the bait
CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Why the shock and the awe?
Earlier on Thursday, in response to criticism from MSNBC personalities Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, Donald Trump took to Twitter and offered up the following missive:
I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!
His comments received the expected and designed outcome. The online commentariat, members of the professional chattering class and others responded with anger at his mean-spirited, childish, sexist and misogynist comments about Mika Brzezinski.
Trump is as Trump does. His comments about Brzezinski are a reflection of who he actually is. They should not surprise anyone. Donald Trump has bragged about sexually assaulting women by grabbing their vaginas without permission. He insulted Hillary Clinton during the campaign by making allusions to her menstruation. He has talked publicly about finding his own daughter sexually attractive and he overtly views women primarily as sex objects.
more
http://www.salon.com/2017/06/29/the-resistance-needs-to-stop-collapsing-to-the-fainting-couch-every-time-trump-says-something-ignorant-or-inflamatory/
War on the media is all Trump and conservatives have left - since they can't get anything done
FRIDAY, JUN 30, 2017 05:00 AM EDT
War on the media is all Trump and conservatives have left — since they can’t get anything done
Conservatives have totally lost the ability to govern, so they attack the press to distract the public
MATTHEW SHEFFIELD
It is no coincidence that President Donald Trump, a man who tells lies with a frequency and ease unprecedented in modern American history, has made attacking the journalists who cover him an essential component of his public relations strategy.
“Every president has shaded the truth or told occasional whoppers,” New York Times columnist David Leonhard wrote in his June 23 catalog of the president’s multitude of falsehoods. But “no other president — of either party — has behaved as Trump is behaving. He is trying to create an atmosphere in which reality is irrelevant.”
Trump’s love of deception has been in evidence throughout his many decades as a public figure, starting from his days as a low-rent New York real estate developer. He even admitted how much he loves lying in his ghostwritten autobiography (which he falsely claims is the best-selling business book of all time).
“I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion,” reads one of the most salient passages in “The Art of the Deal.”
Thirty years after writing it, Trump’s ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, disavowed and explained the passage to New Yorker writer Jane Mayer:
“He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it,” Schwartz said. Trump’s constant reliance on untruths “gave him a strange advantage.”
more
http://www.salon.com/2017/06/30/attacking-the-media-is-the-only-thing-conservatives-have-left/
Forget the stupid tweets: There's big news on Trump's Russia connections - and he doesn't want you..
FRIDAY, JUN 30, 2017 08:05 AM EDT
Forget the stupid tweets: There’s big news on Trump’s Russia connections — and he doesn’t want you to read it
New reports link Michael Flynn to hacking and reveal Trump's massive business deals in the former Soviet Union
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
Well, Thursday was a lot of fun, wasn’t it? We got to spend the day wallowing in presidential misogyny, a treat we haven’t been able to savor since we heard Donald Trump brag about getting away with random crotch grabbing because he is such a “star.” No one can be surprised. We knew he was a snake before we let him in.
As much as the president’s grotesque tweets served as a grim reminder of his true character, Trump did manage to do the one thing he has been dying to do for weeks: move the press off the Russia story. Sadly for him, it only lasted a few hours before yet another late-breaking Russia scoop hit. The Wall Street Journal’s Shane Harris published a story that links former national security adviser Michael Flynn to a longtime right-wing operative named Peter W. Smith, who told Harris he had engaged with Russian hackers to obtain the so-called “missing emails” from Hillary Clinton’s private server. Smith also claimed he was in touch with Michael Flynn and possibly his son, both of whom he knew through some earlier business dealings.
Harris also reports that “investigators have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary.” That would be quite a coincidence if there were two different operations described exactly that way. As they say, stay tuned. There’s no way of knowing if this man was just blowing smoke about Flynn or whether it represents the first evidence that there was some collusion between the campaign and Russia, in this case through an outside intermediary steeped in right-wing opposition research for decades.
Smith died in May, but his history suggests it’s at least plausible that what he told Harris is true. Murray Waas wrote in Salon way back in 1998 about Smith’s role as the instigator of “Troopergate,” which led to the Paula Jones lawsuit against Bill Clinton (with which Kellyanne Conway’s husband George was intimately involved) and the rest was history. Smith is exactly the kind of man who would have involved himself in a nefarious scheme like this.
That story will undoubtedly be picked over quite a bit in the coming days. Unfortunately, another big Russia story, arguably even more significant, landed yesterday and few people seem to have noticed. Kevin G. Hall and Ben Weider of the McClatchy Washington bureau reported that Trump’s business dealings in countries of the former Soviet empire were much more substantial than he’s let on and his ties to bankers, oligarchs and politicians in the area are much more consequential. They write:
more
http://www.salon.com/2017/06/30/forget-the-stupid-tweets-theres-big-news-on-trumps-russia-connections-and-he-doesnt-want-you-to-read-it/
Conway Slams TV Hosts Who 'Play Armchair Psychologist,' and Ridicule Trump's 'Mental State'
by Ken Meyer | 9:12 am, June 30th, 2017
Kellyanne Conway gave an interview to Fox & Friends on Friday, where she (naturally) ran defense for President Trump as he continues to take heat for his shockingly personal tweets against Mika Brzezinski.
Conway began by reacting to how Scarborough and Brzezinski addressed Trump’s slams as they held their show today.
“It’s incredible to watch people play armchair psychologists ridiculing the president’s physicalities, his mental state,” said Conway. “A lot of these people on TV do not criticize his policies. They do not criticize his actions and his beliefs. They criticize him. The office of the president and its current occupant.”
Conway launched into her usual criticisms about how the press cherry-picks which Trump tweets to cover while giving less attention to the other aspects of the presidency. Conway called Trump’s Twitter habits the “democratization of information” since the mainstream media can no longer be trusted to keep out their “corrosive” elements or discuss any issue that reflects positively on Trump.
Ainsley Earhardt eventually asked Conway about those who say that Trump was “sexist” for attacking Brzezinski over her looks. Conway answered that Trump has elevated women throughout his life, and she thought the sexism allegations were “rich” considering the “never-ending assault” of gender-based criticisms Conway has to deal with.
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http://www.mediaite.com/tv/conway-slams-tv-hosts-who-play-armchair-psychologist-and-ridicule-trumps-mental-state/
Mitch McConnell, America's No. 1 obstructionist, is trying to make big things happen
By Marc Fisher and Sean Sullivan June 30 at 6:00 AM
Mitch McConnell never particularly took offense when his opponents branded him America’s No. 1 obstructionist, the Darth Vader of Capitol Hill. Call him dark, call him evil, he embraced it all, even posting the most biting cartoons on his office wall.
He was happy to let others handle the oratory and the inspiration and the fleshing out of a governing philosophy. Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr., the 75-year-old senior senator from Kentucky, would focus on the winning part.
Based on the electoral math alone, this should be the Senate majority leader’s moment, the veteran lawmaker finally in command with an inexperienced president and a young House speaker as his partners in a united Republican government.
Despite this week’s embarrassing decision to slam the brakes on the replacement of Obamacare — which President Trump promised would happen “immediately” after he took office — McConnell may yet push through some version of the Senate’s health-care plan. But even if he does, it’s clear that the man who titled his autobiography “The Long Game” faces an extended period of ideological division within his party, deeply damaged relations with the Democrats, and an uncertain bond with an impatient and impetuous president.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/mitch-mcconnell-americas-no-1-obstructionist-is-now-trying-to-make-big-things-happen/2017/06/29/93071b3e-5c35-11e7-9fc6-c7ef4bc58d13_story.html
At one Trump golf resort, fake Time magazine covers are taken off the wall
By Francisco Alvarado and David A. Fahrenthold June 29 at 5:58 PM
DORAL, Fla.— Two copies of a fake Time Magazine cover that featured a picture of Donald Trump and a large headline praising him have been taken down from the walls of Trump’s golf resort here outside Miami, a few days after The Washington Post revealed that the cover was phony.
On the wall of the resort’s Champions sports bar, the spot formerly occupied by the fake magazine cover was empty. Only a pair of thumbtacks remained on the wood-paneled wall.
In the Doral resort’s pro shop, the phony Time portrait had been replaced by a framed copy of Fortune Magazine from 2004, depicting Trump with the headline “TRUMPED!” That cover is real, but it’s not quite as laudatory as the fake was: a smaller headline on the cover mentions “The mess at his casinos.”
Two hotel executives interviewed by The Washington Post said they had been “instructed to take down the artwork by our corporate team.” They would not say where the fake covers had gone. They spoke on the condition that their names not be used because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.
Earlier this week, The Post found evidence that the phony covers had been hung in at least eight Trump clubs, including the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. In at least two of them — Trump golf clubs in Ireland and Scotland — the cover had already been taken down by the time The Post story was published on Tuesday.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-one-trump-golf-resort-fake-time-magazine-covers-are-taken-off-the-wall/2017/06/29/d54f2654-5d0b-11e7-9fc6-c7ef4bc58d13_story.html
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