Snip[/iThis one, however, was easy to get right, in part because Donald Trump the candidate had made his attitude toward the press clear, and in part because I had worked as a journalist in Russia for many years. I may have been the first journalist blacklisted by the Kremlin back in 2000, Vladimir Putin’s first year as President. The Putin Administration went on to reduce the number of regular Presidential press conferences to one a year. (Sometimes Putin will be moved to hold an additional press conference or two, and he generally takes part in a brief, carefully orchestrated press appearance after meetings with foreign leaders.) The Trump Administration began asserting its power over White House correspondents by establishing that lying was a feature of its communications with the media, then excluded cameras from some White House briefings, then discontinued the practice of daily briefings, and has finally banned a reporter from the White House.

Snip:
The Trump Administration has the media in a vise. On the one hand, most of what comes out of White House mouths is poison to the public conversation: because it’s a lie, or an expression of hate, or both. Simply reporting Trump’s lies and incendiary comments, however critically, serves to entrench his world view as a part of our shared reality. At the same time, he is the President. His Twitter pronouncements find a sympathetic audience among tens of millions of Americans. Refusing to engage with his words would mean refusing to engage with Trump voters and with the Trump Administration itself. It would mean walking away from politics altogether, which, for journalists, would be an abdication of responsibility.

[link:https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/should-the-press-boycott-the-white-house-press-briefings?

Fellow journalists and members of the White House press corps came to the immediate defense of CNN’s Jim Acosta on Wednesday after the Trump administration revoked his press credentials.

Snip:

After repeatedly asking the president questions, provoking a heated outburst, an intern stepped forward to try to take a microphone from the CNN reporter as he moved to evade her. Within hours, Acosta said the Secret Service had denied him entry to White House grounds and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed the reporter had placed his hands on the young woman.

Snip:

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, said the move was a “very bad sign” and something he had “never seen since I started covering the White House in 1996.


That account prompted a full-throated outcry from many political journalists.

The White House Correspondents’ Association, a coalition of the reporters who cover the executive branch, released its strong objections to the move, calling the decision “out of line” and “unacceptable.”


“Journalists may use a range of approaches to carry out their jobs and the WHCA does not police the tone or frequency of the questions its members ask of powerful senior government officials, including the president,” the group wrote. “Such interactions, however uncomfortable they may appear to be, help define the strength of our national institutions.”

The group urged the White House to “immediately reverse this weak and misguided action” and encouraged the public to watch the video of Acosta’s interaction with the intern.


“Other presidents did not fear tough questioning,” Baker wrote on Twitter, noting that Trump may have intentionally called on Acosta to lash out. “If he really thought [Jim] was unfair, then why did he call on him? Because he wants the confrontation.”

Reuters’ White House correspondent Jeff Mason, who said he was seated next to Acosta, said he did not see his colleague “‘placing his hands’ on the young intern.”

MORE:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/reporters-defend-cnn-jim-acosta_us_5be3ae6be4b0e84388935da9

Does anyone have recipes for the keto diet?

Donald Trump Jr. has a new celebrity enemy in his sightline: comedian Chelsea Handler.

He also has a new ally: actor James Woods, who has joined the president’s eldest son in attacking Handler online.
Chelsea Handler
✔
@chelseahandler
I can’t wait for Donald Trump junior to flip on his father. That’s going to be awesome.

Donald Trump Jr.
✔
@DonaldJTrumpJr
Solid point...

James Woods
✔
@RealJamesWoods
Think it’s safe to say she has sucked at way more than two things... https://twitter.com/donaldjtrumpjr/status/1034472268259307520 …
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/donald-trump-jr-called-sexist-approving-actors-suggestive-tweet-shaming-chelsea-handler-105340662.html

The Hiil

A black Wisconsin man recorded footage this week of a white woman calling the police on him while he tried to gain access to his own car.

Corvontae Davis told a local ABC affiliate that the woman called the police on him to report he was breaking into a car as he tried to get change from his own vehicle to pay a parking meter on Tuesday.

"I was getting ready to put money in a meter or whatever, and she has nothing else better to do and asked me if I was breaking into my car," Davis can be heard saying in a video he shared on Facebook, which has since garnered over 63,000 views in the past several days.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/402325-woman-calls-police-on-black-man-trying-to-get-into-his-own-car

A Georgia police chief is defending the use of a Taser on an 87-year-old grandmother after she was seen walking around with a knife near her home, which her family says was for cutting dandelions for a salad.

Martha Al-Bishara, 87, whose family says she doesn’t speak English, was gathering the flowers Friday on property belonging to a Boys and Girls Club organization in Chatsworth when a staff member called 911 on her for trespassing, the Dalton Daily Citizen-News reported, citing the police report.

“She’s old so she can’t get around too well, but looks like she’s walking around looking for something, like vegetation to cut down or something. There’s a bag too,” the caller told police in the 911 recording. The caller, who described the woman as wearing a “Muslim hat-looking thing,” said there were no children outside and that the woman said she didn’t speak English.

“See’s seeing us, she hears what we’re saying, she may not know what we’re saying, but we’re telling her to stop and there’s a Taser pointed at her and there’s a firearm that’s unholstered there. Most people, that’s kind of the universal command for stop,” he said. He added that using a Taser was the “minimum force.”


https://www.yahoo.com/news/police-chief-defends-taser-elderly-203814357.html

Howard Lorber, a Manhattan developer and executive chairman of Nathan’s Famous Inc., the hot dog company, is hosting a fundraiser for President Donald Trump in the Hamptons, according to two people familiar with the event.

SNIP:

Last year, Trump described Lorber as one of his two best friends. In 1996, Trump and Lorber traveled to Moscow together to explore business opportunities.

Lorber was an economic adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. And the president last year appointed him chairman of the board of trustees for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Lorber is chief executive officer of the Vector Group, parent company of the New York real estate powerhouse Douglas Elliman Realty. He didn’t respond to requests for comment.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-14/hot-dog-honcho-to-host-trump-campaign-fundraiser-in-the-hamptons?utm_medium=social&cmpid=socialflow-facebook-politics&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=politics&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic

(If the birtherism campaign strategy, the Mexican rapists comment, the good people on both sides argument, the attacks on NFL players, the LeBron James critique, the efforts to avoid renting apartments to African-Americans, the Central Park jogger case, the wall, the Muslim ban, the disparaging of a Mexican judge, the suggestion that all Haitian immigrants have AIDs, the "shithole countries" description, the response to Hurricane Maria, the backing of Joe Arpaio and Roy Moore, and the constant dog whistles to the alt-right haven't swayed you, spelling out an offensive word sure isn't gonna make the difference...)

Nextdraft.

Omarosa Manigault Newman is on the talk-show circuit this week to promote her forthcoming book, Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House, which promises salacious details about the administration’s inner workings. The biggest revelations so far have to do with three recordings: a rumored Apprentice-era tape of Donald Trump saying the N-word; a tape of chief of staff John Kelly firing Manigault Newman in the White House Situation Room, where recording devices are typically prohibited; and a recording of a phone call in which Trump claims he didn’t know she’d been fired.

Manigault Newman claims to have heard the N-word recording, though her book says she only heard about it from a few people in the know. The other two tapes are Manigault Newman’s own—she made them, and she’s been broadcasting them strategically in advance of her book’s Aug. 14 release date. She played the Kelly recording on Meet the Press on Saturday and the Trump recording on the Today show Monday morning, and anonymous White House officials told ABC News that they believe she has even more tapes, perhaps recorded with some kind of audio-capturing pen.

But even if Manigault Newman and her tapes say exactly what the president’s opponents want to hear—that he’s a racist, that he’s a bumbling idiot, that he has no control over his own White House—her “insider’s account” will never be as satisfying as the anti-Trump resistance might hope. The first problem is the source. Manigault Newman, like the president, is an opportunist built for and by reality television. Her willingness to do anything for notoriety, including but not limited to playing the villain on a corny game show and signing up for a role in a racist presidential administration, makes her an unreliable narrator.



Whether Manigault Newman is lying or telling the truth feels beside the point.


https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/omarosa-tapes-there-is-nothing-the-former-trump-aide-can-say-or-do-that-could-possibly-matter.html?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

I’ve heard it in more personal contexts over the last few weeks, and just a few minutes ago I opened an email from “People’s Action” that propagates the myth that abusers can become your friends if you’re just kind enough to them and give them what they want: to feel big, strong, powerful, comfortable, and “whole” or other words for happy or satisfied.

Talk of offering “a better option” to them and taking pains to make them not feel like they have to “reject Trump” or “admit he’s wrong” or “face their behavior” is dangerous, self-harming, self-destructive talk that enables abuse to continue, because it’s completely ineffective and gives them the sense that voting for Trump is the right choice because now you’re groveling or pandering to them.

You can’t satisfy a supremacist or a narcissist, or people who are devoted allies to them. Your very existence upsets them. Being kind to them, bleeding for them, and even sacrificing your life for them either won’t result in them feeling anything positive toward you, or will result in a blip of positivity that will quickly be replaced by yet another expression of rage and yet another instance of abuse.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s words about love defeating hate don’t apply to supremacists and narcissists, or to people who are devoted to them. Those kinds of “bullies” don’t “bully” because they are seeking to fill a need for a social relationship with an authority figure. Those “bullies” aren’t “hurt people who hurt people.” Assholes like that enjoy being assholes, and that’s why they gravitate toward each other and commit abuse in packs. They are driven by lust for inflicting violence on others, by lust for control, and by lust for personal excess.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/11/1787482/-Sick-of-the-make-your-abusers-comfortable-arguments-from-liberals