Over the next three weeks, well be preparing for the NBAs long-awaited restart by attempting to answer the single most important question facing every franchisefrom the Washington Wizards to LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers that will be present and accounted for in Orlando. This is 22 Questions.

When we look back at the 2019-2020 NBA season in 10 years (assuming we collectively last 10 more years), 2020 will mark the full-throated arrival of basketballs newest generation. Twenty-year-old Luka Doncic posted statlines that Michael Jordan never reached. Trae Young, in just his second year, is already challenging Stephen Curry and Damian Lillard as the games premier offensive point guard, while rookies Zion Williamson and Ja Morant resuscitated moribund franchises. And thats not even mentioning Devin Booker or Brandon Ingram or Ben Simmons or Joel Embiid or Nikola Jokic or a seemingly infinite number of sub-25-year-old studs let alone Giannis Antetokounmpo, whos about to become only the third player since the NBA/ABA merger to win two MVPs before his 26th birthday. Yet, alone at the leagues summit, LeBron James still remains, 36 years old and still the best player in the world.

The careers of most athletes follow a pretty well-worn arc, tracing the parabola of ascent to plateau to descent. LeBron is different. Rather than peaking, he like pre-meltdown Kanye West has merely gone through different yet equally excellent stages. During his first stint in Cleveland, he dominated with thermonuclear athleticism. In Miami, he became a basketball cyborg, blending ludicrously efficient high-volume scoring with defense better than even technology could imagine. Then, in Cleveland again, he became a system unto himself, willing limited rosters to the Finals through sheer force of will. Now a Laker, hes the biggest and smartest point guard in the world.

Although James is no longer quite the same titanic athlete he was five years ago, hes staved off decline by continually adding to his game. His 25.7 points per game are the fourth fewest hes averaged in a season, but still an elite figure for anyone. Like any good TikTok dad, James is fluent in the ways of the Youths while maintaining his central identity; he has internalized the three-point revolution and is shooting the most threes of his career, but drills trifectas in the goofiest, dad-est way imaginable.

The current iteration of LeBron James is probably best exemplified by the new areas he occupies. This year, hes driving more than he has in any other season that has available tracking data, showing that hes starting his attacks farther away from the rim than he has in previous years. Similarly, his 92 touches per game are by far the most hes enjoyed over the last five seasons, but according to NBA.com tracking stats, his 2.6 paint touches per game are way down from his high of 4.4 in 2015-2016. Taken in composite, its a clear picture of how James has adapted to playing alongside Anthony Davis, ceding certain areas of the floor to the best big man if not teammate that James has ever played with.

After Magic Johnson burped out the clearly not-good strategy of giving Lance Stephenson the reins to explore the outer rim of his sanity, the Lakers have once again entrusted the offense to James. As soon as they get the ball, the Lakers immediately look to funnel the ball to him, and he in turn looks to rifle outlet passes down the length of the court if the defense isnt paying attention; off of rebounds, the Lakers score about six percent more transition buckets when James is on the court than when hes on the bench. Davis is the most frequent recipient of these hit-aheads, thanks to his ability to either slip past defenders or to seal them off and provide James an unmissable target.

Beyond the ability to scrape up easy points in transition, James has also keyed the Lakers half-court offense. James has always been great at making instant reads to identify soft spots in a defense. This year is no exception: the Lakers are the NBAs best cutting team thanks to James.

For the first time, his superstar teammate is also a predominately off-ball player, lending James more creative opportunities. Dwyane Wade and Kyrie Irving may have been Daviss equal as a player, but they were redundant alongside James; Wade and Irving were both special offensive engines, but their production was tempered by the fact that they needed the ball to be at their best. In Davis, James has everything hes ever wanted and didnt know he needed. Despite being a freakish, 25-points-per-game scorer, Davis has an innate ability to bob in and out of the defenses focus, ducking between preoccupied defenders into space for easy points. Unsurprisingly, James has assisted Davis on 172 shots, 42 more than the next closest duo in the league.

Whats more, James has improbably become a more versatile passer than ever before, playing as a pick-and-roll ball-handler at career-highest frequency. Whereas his previous half-court passing largely came from fairly static situations like post-ups or isolations, hes now mixing in quick live-dribble passes alongside his regular menu of drive-and-kicks and skip passes.

Accordingly, James can make full use of his basketball genius, daring opponents to outsmart him. They rarely do. Big men must try to negotiate how much space to allow James without giving him easy shots at the rim or letting the roll man carve out enough room for a lob; help defenders away from the action must constantly calculate the marginal cost of pinching into the paint (known as tagging the roller) to stop the initial pick-and-roll, knowing that doing so will result in an open corner three. With James, defenses truly have no good options. A dunk from the roll-man is obviously bad, but rim-attempts for James or open corner threes for Danny Green are also decidedly not good.

Even on a macro level, James unlocks the Lakers team-building possibilities. In contrast to their crosstown rivals, the Los Angeles Clippers, the Lakers have a fully actualized identity. Since James is able to carry such a tremendous offensive load, the Lakers can load up on role players and defensive specialists without losing any offensive potency. Danny Green or Kentavious Caldwell-Pope or Javale McGee cant create their own shot, but thats immaterial when James can create so many for them. Even Davis is a more natural sidekick than leading man, having the most efficient and successful year of his career next to James. On the whole, the Lakers might have the least collective playmaking talent on their roster of any playoff team, but James allays any and all concerns his skillset alone provides a foundation for building a flexible offense out of unidimensional players.

James, presumably, wont maintain this level of play forever, and this might very well be his last real chance to add to his legacy and chase down the ghost of Michael Jordan. But, right now, who cares? Theres no use dwelling on some hypothetical matchup that only exists in our imagination. Either way, if LeBron isnt the GOAT, hes certainly the King. Long may he reign.

See the article here:

22 Questions: Is LeBron James Still the Best Player in the NBA? - InsideHook

- Advertisement -

James Cameron created movie Alita Battle Angel of 2019 had an astounding accomplishment. That attracted the science fiction story about a teenager cyborg who was discovered by a specialist in an upstate. The cyborg yields to a condition, Alita, is of which has been delineated in the movie, each one. As youll find a continuation of it to observe, be as it may the story of the film will push forward. We are currently talking Alita Battle Angel two, which is anticipated to show up soon. Things being what they are, when are we getting Alita Battle Angel 2?

We can not make any speculations about the release date or the plot Since the producers have kept silent about the spin-off.

Thus, we hope in the very best and will sit tight to the upgrade from the producers.

The cast of Alita Battle Angel 2 would have Rosa Salazar as Alita, Christoph Waltz, as Dr Dyson Ido. There is A continuation open to get some new on-screen character to appear in it as well, nevertheless, who they could be is yet not known.

The narrative rotates. She winds up after Hugos passing. After Hugos flight, Alita needs to make her position on Earth and assesses herself. She attempts to return to its pioneer and the town of Zalem, which is secretive.

- Advertisement -

View original post here:

Alita Battle Angel 2: Release Date, Cast, Plot And Everything You Need to Know - World Top Trend

A coronavirus relief agreement in Congress looked illusory Thursday as new economic data showed a U.S. economy buckling under the pandemic's weight.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., tried to unanimously pass an extension of the weekly enhanced federal unemployment insurance Thursday afternoon that would slash the benefit from $600 to $200 per week.Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., rejected it.

Schumer then attempted to unanimously approve the $3 trillion rescue package House Democrats passed in May. That legislation also failed, leaving Congress no closer to breaking an impasse over how best to boost a health-care system and economy ravaged by the pandemic.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. will hold a meeting in her office at 8:00 p.m. Thursday night with Schumer, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, NBC News reported.

Democratic leaders and Trump administration officials left a meeting Wednesday saying they had not come close to bridging a gulf in their priorities for an aid package.

Congress is struggling to find common ground on coronavirus relief as statistics show an economy still experiencing damage from an outbreak spreading throughout the country. Initial jobless claims climbed to 1.43 million last week, rising for the second straight week. U.S. GDP also fell by a record 32.9% in the second quarter during the peak of pandemic-related shutdowns an expected but still devastating plunge.

Congressional leaders are now tossing blame for the inevitable expiration of the $600 per week enhanced federal unemployment insurance. The policy ends after Friday, though states stopped paying out the extra benefit last week leaving millions of Americans facing a sudden and sharp drop in income.

On Thursday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of refusing to "engage" with the GOP after it released its coronavirus relief proposal on Monday. Republicans unveiled the plan more than two months after the House passed a rescue package, which Democrats considered their opening offer in the next round of aid discussions.

"Either our Democratic colleagues come to the table, or the American people won't get the help they need," McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said on the Senate floor.

The sides will have to resolve differences on a range of issues, most notably the unemployment insurance extension. Democrats want to maintain the $600 per week jobless benefit, on top of what recipients get from states, into next year. Republicans want to cut it to $200 per week through September, then set it at 70% wage replacement.

Democrats have also criticized the lack of several other provisions in the GOP plan, including direct aid for state and local governments and funds for rent, mortgage and food assistance. They also oppose liability protections for businesses, doctors and schools, which McConnell has said will have to be in any bill he brings to the Senate floor.

On Thursday, Schumer said the lack of a Republican consensus on pandemic aid has hindered progress toward a deal. Multiple GOP senators have said a large share of the caucus does not support the legislation Republicans released this week.

"Our friends on the other side now are scrambling," he said on the Senate floor.

As they moved closer to Friday's deadline without a comprehensive deal, both President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin floated the possibility of passing a short-term deal to extend the unemployment insurance and a federal eviction moratorium on Wednesday.

Schumer and Pelosi have both shot down a temporary fix.

Even as the progress of talks looked bleak Thursday, Schumer said he believes the parties can still reach a deal.

"It's never easy, it's never painless, but it can be done," he said.

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.

See the article here:

Congress can't agree on the next coronavirus stimulus deal as relief funds dry up - CNBC

That didnt last long. It never does.

A week after Donald Trump was hailed by some media figures for a change of tone in his coronavirus briefings, the US president on Tuesday praised a doctor who believes in alien DNA and demon semen, grumbled about his low approval ratings and abruptly walked out when challenged by a female reporter.

Its presidential, Jim, but not as we know it.

It has become a familiar pattern. Trumps outrage machine has numbed the media so that shocking statements are normalized to the point that they no longer register as news. Its therefore actually more newsworthy when he says something vaguely similar to what a President Jeb Bush or President Marco Rubio might have said.

In other words, Trump touts junk science or Trump accuses Obama of spying is no longer new and unexpected, but more likely to be met with a shrug. But Trump embraces science or Trump shows compassion would fit the definition of genuinely surprising and headline-making.

The consequence of this brings to mind former president George W Bushs phrase the soft bigotry of low expectations. Any hint of Trump struggling for redemption is lauded out of proportion. Clinging to an optimistic view of human nature, some media commentators need to believe its true.

When he won the presidential election in 2016, there was endless talk of a pivot to presidential that never came. When he delivered his first speech to a joint session of Congress in January 2017 and honored the widow of a Navy Seal, the CNN pundit Van Jones declared: He became president of the United States in that moment, period.

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah recently compiled seven clips from late March and early April in which the MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski spoke of a dramatic shift in tone and others noted a somber tone or similar.

Trump was only speaking as any world leader might be expected to speak. But because it went against his expected type, it was worth remarking on. Soon, however, he reverted to his more familiar style, lambasting reporters especially women of color pushing hydroxychloroquine despite the evidence and going down in flames with idle speculation about injecting disinfectant.

So as Noah pointed out, last weeks pivot was deja vu all over again. In his first coronavirus briefing since April, Trump warned that it will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better and endorsed wearing masks. It was hardly a The only thing we have to fear is fear itself moment but, when the bar is as low as bleach injections, Trump was rewarded.

Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist, tweeted: Trumps press conference today marks a change in tone and a more disciplined and realistic approach. It will be a good message for the public and he will benefit from it politically. Welcome news.

Yet even at that briefing, Trump took the time to bestow his best wishes upon the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell charged with being part of Jeffrey Epsteins sex trafficking ring. If any other president had done so, a firestorm would have raged for days. With number 45, it was merely another here today, gone tomorrow controversy.

And as the Associated Press noted, The change in tone lasted a day by Tuesday, the Republican president had returned to lashing out on Twitter at his Democratic critics.

Indeed, it was soon enough the same old Trump, culminating in his retweet on Monday of a video in which a group of lab coat-wearing doctors pushed false and misleading claims about Covid-19, then his defense on Tuesday of one of the doctors who rejects the need for face masks and promotes hydroxychloroquine, as well as claims that alien DNA is used in medical treatments and some gynecological problems are caused by people dreaming about having sex with demons.

This assault on presidential tone is not trivial. It is a key characteristic of the consoler-in-chief role of the American president in times of crisis and tragedy. Some say Bill Clinton became presidential only after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. But with Trump, the repeated media narrative of him pivoting to more presidential behavior is a triumph of hope over experience.

Jennifer Rubin, a Washington Post columnist, wrote on Tuesday: The medias fetish with tone seems to tell us more about the media than Trump. It is part of the mainstream medias collective determination to avoid spelling out how irrational and impulsive he actually is.

The media engages in gaslighting by disingenuously presenting Trump as a rational president, Rubin added. The medias acknowledgment of the frightening reality we have lived with for four years will come, I suspect, only after Trump leaves office.

Go here to see the original:

Pundits heralded Donald Trump for his new 'tone'. That didn't end well ... - The Guardian

In Washington, DC, fears of a new war ran deep. At one particularly anxious meeting, a young staffer noticed that Secretary of State George Marshall remained cool and collected. "Mr. Secretary," he asked, "how in the world can you remain so calm during this appalling crisis?" Marshall, who was the US Army's Chief of Staff during World War II, replied bluntly, "I've seen worse."

Like George Marshall, we as a nation have seen worse, both epidemiologically and economically. Voting -- the central, unifying act of functioning democracy -- went forward in troublesome decades past.

It's insulting to the American public to even suggest that this sacred constitutional right should be undermined by an authoritarian President tanking in the national polls to Joe Biden.

From the earliest days of the republic, regular elections and orderly transfer of power have been signatures of American democracy. That we were able to achieve both so early is a testament to the wisdom of the Founders, but even they disagreed over the limits of executive authority.

In 1797, that worry faced its first test as President John Adams contemplated a second term in the midst of escalating tensions with France. Jefferson, Adams' vice president, feared that escalation could distract the nation from the "pivot of free and frequent elections." If war came, he wrote, no one could foresee "into what port it will drive us."

Luckily, Adams maintained the peace. The 1800 election proceeded as scheduled. And for more than 150 years after, Americans brooked no possibility of postponing our quadrennial presidential rite, despite war, panic and pestilence.

Public opinion was split, with most New England states refusing to send militiamen to the cause and later formulating a plan to secede from the Union. With the nation divided and under attack, Madison might easily have considered postponing that year's election.

Instead, he won a second term, kept the union together and negotiated an end to hostilities.

Across the country, intemperate voices argued, as one commentator put it, "that politics should be completely adjourned during the building of the defense program; that opponents of the party in power should sit down and shut up; that, in fact, the presidential election should be postponed until the danger to this country is over."

"For more than three centuries," Roosevelt continued, "we Americans have been building on this continent a free society, a society in which the promise of the human spirit may find fulfillment. . . . It is this that we must continue to build -- this that we must continue to defend. It is the task of our generation, yours and mine. But we build and defend not for our generation alone. We defend the foundations laid down by our fathers. We build a life for generations yet unborn. We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind."

Like Lincoln, Roosevelt understood his duty to the Founders' great experiment.

In the postwar era, the United States continued to be the symbol of rock-solid democracy. Candidates could come and go, but faith in what seemed like the natural cycle of our elections was near absolute.

Fast forward to 2004. As the first post-9/11 presidential election loomed, Newsweek reported that members of George W. Bush's administration wanted to usurp Congress's power to set presidential election dates, citing the need for quick decision making were terrorists to strike immediately before the election.

One Texas voter quoted in the Odessa American got right to the point: "We expect this kind of talk from tinpot dictators or Third-World banana republics desperate to hold onto power," he said, "not from the current administration of the world's oldest constitutional republic."

So the next time Trump tweets or suggest that the 2020 election might be postponed, patriotic lawmakers should shut him down hard. Ballots will be cast.

Our country has seen worse and always had the fortitude and democratic idealism to carry on. November 3 is the gold-stamped day. The race for the White House has begun.

See the rest here:

Sorry, Donald Trump: The 2020 presidential election is on - CNN

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech during a tour of the Double Eagle Energy Oil Rig in Midland, Texas, July 29, 2020.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are in agreement on sending a second batch of $1,200 stimulus checks to millions of Americans.

And now President Donald Trump is upping the ante, calling for the government to cut checks for more than that $1,200 figure.

"I'd like to see it be very high because I love the people," Trump saidWednesday. "I want the people to get it."

The president did not elaborate on how much higher he wanted the checks to be.

More from Personal Finance:$600 unemployment boost almost over. For some, aid will fall by 93%Americans more worried about Social Security amid pandemicA third of small-business owners tapped personal funds to stay afloat

Trump's comments come after Senate Republicans introduced the HEALS Act earlier this week, their targeted $1 trillion plan for shoring up the U.S. economy. House Democrats in May passed their own bill, the HEROES Act, which would cost about $3 trillion.

Both parties are now working to come to a consensus on issues where they are divided, particularly unemployment insurance. The extra $600 per week in federal unemployment benefits expires this month. Lawmakers are at odds over how much extra help they want to provide to jobless Americans going forward.

That would include up to $1,200 for individuals or $2,400 per married couple, plus $500 for dependents, according to the Republicans' HEALS Act. This time, however, the definition of dependents would be expanded to include adults. Last time, those payments were limited to children under age 17.

Both sides of the aisle apparently have come closer to an agreement on the second stimulus checks. Both bills call for sending up to $1,200 to individuals under similar terms to the first checks in their legislative proposals.

But a group of Republican senators on Thursday unveiled a new proposal calling for $1,000 stimulus checks for both adults and children with valid Social Security numbers. A family of four would stand to receive $4,000.

The government appropriated a total of approximately $300 billion toward the CARES Act stimulus checks. So far, the government has deployed about $260 billion of that money, the Treasury Department has said.

"If you increase the value of the checks, it would certainly increase the total cost," said Adam Michel, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "If you're still going to stick to a $1 trillion target, you would have to reduce things elsewhere."

The payments may not provide the intended boost to the American economy because many people aren't spending because they're afraid to leave their houses amid the coronavirus pandemic, not necessarily because they don't have the resources, he said.

"This idea that these checks have been termed stimulus checks doesn't mean that they're actually stimulative in any way," Michel said.

Chuck Marr, senior director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank, said he thinks Trump's comments are "perplexing" in light of the proposals from both Democrats and Republicans.

Other forms of financial aid should come first, Marr said, including expanded unemployment benefits for people without jobs, eviction protections for those in danger of losing their homes and nutrition assistance for those with limited access to food.

"These are all very targeted, very important proposals that need to be in there first," Marr said.

Stimulus payments would be helpful, he said, though they are somewhat broader in terms of whom they would help.

Visit link:

Trump wants second stimulus checks to be more than $1,200. Experts question whether that's the right relief - CNBC

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the new edition of Insider Today. Please sign up here.

"Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself," the late John Lewis. He left the New York Times a posthumous essay to be published the day of his funeral.

Andy Kiersz/Business Insider Sourc: US Bureau of Economic Analysis

GDP plunged at an annualized rate of 33% in the second quarter, by far a record drop. The pandemic lockdowns caused the economy to shrink about 10% in the quarter. Meanwhile, weekly unemployment claims increased again to 1.43 million, the 19th week in a row with more than 1 million claims.

President Trump suggested postponing the presidential election, which he cannot do. Trailing badly in the polls, Trump tweeted falsely that mail-in voting could make the election "FRAUDULENT." Only Congress could change the date of the presidential election, and only a constitutional amendment could change Inauguration Day.

Former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain has died at 74, apparently of COVID. He had been hospitalized for weeks, and had contracted the virus shortly after attending President Trump's Tulsa rally. A former restaurateur, Cain briefly led the GOP field in 2011. Trump considered him for the Fed board in 2019, but didn't nominate him after widespread opposition.

It's time to take Trump seriously, figuratively, and literally

This morning President Trump tweeted about delaying the election due to the pandemic.

Twitter

In April Trump's rival, Vice President Joe Biden, predicted the President might try to delay the election if his poll numbers looked bad, and they look hideous.

Twitter

Remember that this is a pandemic that spun out of control largely because of a lack of federal response. Trump only put on a mask himself a few weeks ago. The White House could create the conditions for safe elections by competently handling this crisis, but it won't. That's why we're here.

Trump works by gut instinct, and he has never let his ignorance of how the US government works or the limits of presidential power stop him from trampling on the rights of others. (See: His multiple attempts at passing a travel ban on Muslim countries.) The fact that he can't change the date of the election won't stop him from knocking on every door, or trying to open any window he can, into victory.

We already have evidence that Trump will stop at nothing to improve his chances for reelection. Two weeks ago he tried to get Republicans to defund coronavirus testing in Congress' upcoming pandemic relief bill to make infection numbers look better for him.

If you think someone who is willing to do that won't try to hinder the democratic process, I have a gold-plated, Trump-branded bridge to sell you. And I don't just mean Trump will try messing with vote counts, I mean he will be messing with our faith in the outcome of this election and the process of democracy itself. That's the bare minimum of what he will do.

It is in this man's inherent nature to use all of his power unfortunately, the power of the presidency for his own power's sake. That is exactly how Henry Wallace, Vice President of this country from 1941 to 1945, described American fascists.

"A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party."

Be vigilant. Take Donald Trump seriously, literally, figuratively. He is a desperate demagogue limited only by what we the people will abide. Linette Lopez

If you're enjoying this story,sign up now for the Insider Today newsletterto receive more of these insights from Henry Blodget and David Plotz.

Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP Now we know what Jeff Bezos' worried face looks like

Four masters of Silicon Valley the CEOs of Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook testified before Congress to answer for their anti-competitive behavior yesterday, and in stark contrast to previous hearings they were visibly shaken by the questions they were asked.

As I put in my column, we got to see Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' worried face.

Some highlights in case all you caught were the clips of Republicans screaming about being silenced (there was some of that, but there was more productive questioning):

All in all, the CEOs seemed caught off guard. They expected this hearing to be more of the same from Washington a series of uninformed questions from geriatric senators who barely read email. It was not that. Catch the whole column here. LL

FILE PHOTO: View of the Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas Reuters

Exxon is reclassifying employees as poor performers in order to hide layoffs as performance-based job cuts. Internal documents and 19 insiders reveal that the company is pushing managers to downgrade employees in order to force them out for performance reasons. In April, Exxon required managers to put at least 8% of employees in the poor performer category, up from a previous minimum of 3%.

There was some fraud, but not a ton of it, in the PPP program. The SBA watchdog has found about $300 million in potentially dubious small business loans, out of more than $500 billion issued.

Inside the sarsen circle at Stonehenge. James Davies/English Heritage

Scientists have finally figured out where the huge stones at Stonehenge came from. The 80 "sarsens," which weigh 25 tons each, were brought from about 15 miles away, and probably all at the same time.

10 signs your relationship will or won't work, based on a study of 11,000 couples. Some are obvious: Do you fight a lot? Is your sex life good? Others are less so: Do you appreciate your partner?

Parents, teachers, and lawmakers are all debating whether or not schools should open their doors this fall for in-person instruction. We joined Insider Audio'sCharlie Hermanfor a discussion about what it will take to get students back in their seats amidst a pandemic, and what's at stake if they don't return.Click here to listen to the full conversation. HB & DP

Rachel Askinasi/Insider

She tried making scrambled eggs 10 different ways: Insider's Rachel Askinasi changed the level of heat, added different liquids, and compared results. Milk made them watery, cream made them fluffy.

Claudia Conway returned to Twitter. She criticized her mom's boss, Donald Trump, and joked that AOC should adopt her.

The best and worst things about living in a camper van. Pluses: the great views, the nature, the lack of schedule. Minuses: No showers, no WiFi, never getting to stay in the same place for more than a couple nights.

*The most popular stories on Insider today.

Read more from the original source:

It's time to take Trump seriously, figuratively, and literally - Business Insider - Business Insider

CHICAGO (TNS) We should thank Donald Trump for skipping Congressman John Lewis farewell ceremony.

While his absence from the memorial in the Capitol rotunda on Monday was glaring, Trump did us all a favor by leaving town. To pay respects to a man for whom he showed so little regard in life would be disingenuous.

Trump might be a liar, but at least he is no hypocrite.

Unlike Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Trump did not stand over Lewis casket as he lay in state and quote the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He did not try, as Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Dan Sullivan did, to pretend like he had a good relationship with Lewis by tweeting photos posing with Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Black congressman who died in October.

When it came to honoring the civil rights icon, Trump was perhaps more honest that he ever has been. He did not attempt to represent himself as anything other than what he is the antithesis of Lewis.

We should be truthful as well. No one wanted Trump there and he knew it.

So lets stop ranting about how he disrespected Lewis legacy by tweeting two generic sentences offering condolences to the family. No one is shocked that Trump had more to say about the passing of TV host Regis Philbin than the man who helped change the course of America.

The president would have been expected to say a few words at the event, attended by a small bipartisan group of Washington politicians and dignitaries. But anything he said would have been a lie.

As soon as he stepped away from the podium, we would have blasted him the way we did McConnell for acting as though he supported Lewis political positions. It was sickening to hear McConnell repeat Kings words, The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice, though he is actively blocking a bipartisan bill to restore voter protections the U.S. Supreme Court removed from the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The landmark bill came about as a result of the lifes work of King, Lewis and other civil rights champions.

There is no reason to believe that Trump would even sign the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act into law. He is convinced that millions of fraudulent voters are on the rolls. He supports strict voter ID requirements and less access to mail-in ballots, making it harder for minorities to vote.

Trump had nothing to gain politically by acting as though the loss of a congressional Democrat mattered to him. By no means does it suggest that he felt no sympathy for the 80-year-old congressman, who died from pancreatic cancer, and his family. It just shows that for Trump, politics transcends death.

This is the latest example of Trumps dangerous race-based reelection strategy putting him in a precarious position. Even if he had wanted to visit the Capitol over the two days Lewis body lay in state, he could not.

It is no secret that white nationalists have infiltrated Trumps base. Such a display of honor toward a man who devoted his life to fighting racism would not bode well with that part of Trumps constituency. If he has any chance of being reelected in November, he needs racists to turn out in force.

Shortly after Trumps election, Lewis said he believed that Trump could learn something by participating in his annual march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. But he would not invite him.

Anything Trump said about Lewis beyond those two short sentences he tweeted would have been fabricated. It would have been worse than saying nothing.

Consider what happened Tuesday when Attorney General William Barr paid tribute to Lewis in his opening statement to the House Judiciary Committee.

He called Lewis an indomitable champion of civil rights and the rule of law and then went on to defend Trumps deployment of federal officers into cities to bring law and order.

Lewis likened the use of troops on protesters to the fire hoses used on civil rights protesters in the 1960s.

Rep. Cedric Richmond, former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, called Barr out by pointing to the fact that neither Barr nor his two predecessors brought any African Americans in top staff positions with them.

That, sir, is systematic racism. That is exactly what John Lewis spent his life fighting, he said.

And so I would just suggest that actions speak louder than words, and you really should keep the name of the honorable John Lewis out of the Department of Justices mouth.

The same goes for Trump.

(Dahleen Glanton is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.)

2020 Chicago Tribune

Visit the Chicago Tribune at http://www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Here is the original post:

When it comes to honoring John Lewis, Donald Trump was no hypocrite - Olean Times Herald

To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

Its no longer interesting, or particularly newsworthy, to point out that Donald Trump lies. It stopped being interesting a long time ago. He lied en route to the presidency. He lied about the crowd at his inauguration. His speech itself was one big lie. And the falsehoods only metastasized from there.

Why? Weve covered that, too, most recently in all the chatter about Too Much and Never Enough, by Mary Trump, who is not only his niece but also a clinical psychologist. He lies because he grew up among liars. He lies because hyperbole and hooey buoy his fragile ego. He lies because he is practiced at it, is habituated to it and never seems to pay much of a price for it.

What intrigues me is that last part: the impunity. I want to understand how he has gotten away with all of the lying, because Im desperate to know whether hell continue to.

Thats the question at the heart of his re-election bid, because his strategy isnt really law and order or racism or a demonization of liberals as monument-phobic wackadoodles or a diminution of Joe Biden as a doddering wreck. All of those gambits are there, but they spring from and burble back to a larger, overarching scheme. His strategy is fiction. His strategy is lies.

Can he sell enough Americans on the make-believe that he really cares about the quality of life in cities and is dispatching federal officers as a constructive measure rather than a provocative one, in a flash of empathy versus a fit of vanity? He gave himself away a few days ago when he punctuated a mention of the wonderful people of Chicago with the needless notation that its a city I know very well. Everything Trump says is self-referential, and everything he does is self-reverential.

Can he feed voters the fantasy that his actions in the infancy of this pandemic saved lives and that our countrys world-leading death toll and un-flattened curve are more figment than fact or at least more fluke than indictment? Can he convincingly don the mask of a longtime evangelist for masks?

His recent interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News was a trial run of this and wow. Up was down. Black was white. A superficial check of his cognitive coherence was a profound spelunking of his cerebral glory.

He claimed that Joe Biden had pledged to defund no, abolish the police, when Biden had done nothing of the kind. He boasted that Americas management of this pandemic made us the envy of the world, when in fact were so densely diseased that were barred from entering most of Europe. Oh, and hes cruising toward four more years: All of those pollsters who predict otherwise are incompetent fabulists. (Talk about projection.)

Then there are the Trump campaigns ads, which are Veep-grade caricatures of the usual fakery, not to mention paragons of incompetence in their own regard. One that appeared on Facebook in early July said, WE WILL PROTECT THIS just like that, in URGENT CAPITAL LETTERS beneath a picture of a statue of Jesus. But Trump wont be protecting that statue, because, as eagle-eyed observers noticed, it was the Christ the Redeemer monument that looms over Rio de Janeiro.

Another Facebook ad a few weeks later comprised two side-by-side pictures. Under an image of Trump were the words Public Safety. Under a separate image, of a police officer crumpled on the ground amid protesters, were Chaos & Violence.

Scary! But, again, foreign. The scene wasnt Portland or Minneapolis or Washington or Chicago circa 2020, although that was the obvious suggestion. The picture, it turns out, was taken in Ukraine. Six years ago. For a more complete and very funny deconstruction of its infelicity, read Jonathan Lasts riff in The Bulwark.

The Trump campaigns television commercials, meanwhile, have painted a dystopia of rampant criminality in Democratic-controlled metropolises where the police no longer function or exist. One shows an elderly woman being attacked by a burglar as she listens to a 911 recording that tells her to leave a message.

If this is Trumps tenor in July, just imagine October. By the time hes done, Willie Horton will look like Peter Pan.

Its beyond ludicrous. But is it too much? I once would have answered an emphatic yes. Now I just dont know.

Every presidents election illuminates the moment in which it occurs, and Trumps told us something important and terrifying about our relationship with the truth. He relied like no candidate before him on a new infrastructure of misinformation and disinformation, tweeting toward Bethlehem while his allies made Mark Zuckerberg their stooge. If youre peddling fiction, Twitter and Facebook are the right bazaars.

But theyre hardly the only ones. The web (how aptly named) has fostered the proliferation of news sites with partisan and micro-partisan agendas. They amount to flourishing ecosystems for alternate realities. Many Americans believe that Trump is an underappreciated martyr because they marinate in selective, manipulated and outright fraudulent factoids. And Trump and his minions have really figured out how to slather on the marinade.

When Robert Mueller released the conclusions of his investigation into the Trump campaigns ties to Russia, everyone focused on its second section, about Trump, when the first was at least as important. It documented the extent and ingenuity of Russias attempts to pervert the election. But even many of the people who paid it heed missed the point, which wasnt Russias nefariousness. It was the processs corruptibility. It was the power of lies in a world gone digital.

As for the power of a liar, well, thats what Trump is testing. He got away with lies in his business career because he chose professional avenues paved with deception and crowded with con men. Plus he had and still has a special talent for treating drivel as gospel, as long as its tumbling from his lips. Thats the great advantage of the truly amoral: Theyre liberated from any tug of conscience, so theres no suspicious hesitancy in their words, no revelatory panic in their eyes. Damn the verities and full steam ahead.

He got away with lies in 2016 because of social media, because show business and politics had finally fused to the point where one was indistinguishable from the other, and because many Americans had grown so skeptical of traditional candidates that an utterly untraditional one seemed more trustworthy on some level. Trump was the diet that hadnt yet failed them. They were ready to believe.

But to believe now is to ignore the receipts. About 150,000 Americans have died from Covid-19. Tens of millions have tumbled into financial ruin or are on the precipice of it. Racial tensions are at a palpable boil. And Trump keeps having to double back to correct his predictions and retrace his missteps. Charlotte, Jacksonville, Charlotte: Ive lost track of where the Republicans are convening next month and of whos on board, though I remain primed for Trumps remarks. He alone can fictionalize it.

From now until Nov. 3, Trump will take the grand inventions that attend any presidential candidates campaign to a newly grandiose level, signaled by his insistence a few days ago that hed done more for Black Americans than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. I love that possible. Trump, Lincoln: Its a jump ball, really.

So while this election is indeed a contest between two men with two visions, its also something else. Its the tallest tale Trump has ever scaled, the greatest story ever told. Its a referendum on the reaches of his persuasion. Its a judgment of the depths of Americans gullibility.

Have we cut the cord to reality? Then Trump has a chance. And America hasnt a prayer.

I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).

Listen to The Argument podcast every Thursday morning, with Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and me.

View original post here:

Donald Trump Is the Best Ever President in the History of the Cosmos - The New York Times

As 2015 drew to a close, then-candidate Donald Trump made an appearance that was unprecedented in the history of modern presidential campaigns.

It was on InfoWars, the hard-right outlet run by extremist conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a trafficker in false information who had exploited national tragedies from 9/11 to Newtown. And it was brokered by Trumps longtime associate Roger Stone, a frequent InfoWars guest, in a bid to win over Jones millions of viewers.

Yourreputationisamazing.Iwill not let youdown,Trump told Jones, whofor years had been pushing a message that elites and globalists are part of a secret conspiracy that controls the world.You willbe very veryimpressed,Ihope.

A new FRONTLINE documentary traces how the alliance between Jones and Trump, facilitated by Stone, would help to bring conspiracy theorist thought into the political mainstream ushering in the current era, in which misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic has spread like the virus itself.

That documentary,United States of Conspiracy, includes a striking sequence that illustrates how Trump adopted Jonesclaims voicing thempublicly in a way that shocked even InfoWars staffers ashe ran for the highest office in the land.

I mean, sometimes it was, like, verbatim like, really Trump, really? Youre taking his word for it? former InfoWars staffer Rob Jacobson says.

Embedded at the top of this story, the sequence juxtaposes clips of Jones sharing false and conspiratorial claims about then-President Barack Obama, Senator Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton with Trump making strikingly similar claims at rallies and in interviews.

The presidential candidates echoing of Jones on the campaign trail was a significant development in the mainstreaming of conspiracy theorist thought. And it stunned author Jon Ronson, a renowned expert on extremism who has been following Jones for 20 years.

The big shock was Alex having the ear of a president-to-be, Ronson says in the excerpt. Of all the people Ive interviewed over 35 years, I can think of a lot of people I would rather have the presidency than Alex Jones. Its a bit of a shame that one of the most spiraling people Ive ever met is the one who is influencing Trump.

For the full story, watchUnited States of Conspiracy, which is now available to stream in full online and on-demand. From veteran FRONTLINE filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team, the documentary reveals how conspiracy theories have come to play an outsize role in American politics and what that means for American democracy as the coronavirus pandemic continues, the country reckons with racism, and the 2020 election looms.

Conspiracism has become a recognized and accepted way of exercising political power.It creates a polarization in the population thats much deeper than partisan polarization its a polarization about what it means to know something, Nancy Rosenblum, co-author ofA Lot of People Are Saying, says in the film.I think its likely to spread across the political spectrum. And whether it returns to the fringes or not I think will depend on whether people in office can resist using it.

Stream the full United States of Conspiracy documentary below, on the PBS Video App or on YouTube.

This story was updated to include an embed of the full documentary, and the fact that it is now streaming online and on-demand.

Link:

Alex Jones and Donald Trump: How the Candidate Echoed the Conspiracy Theorist on the Campaign Trail - FRONTLINE

Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

President Donald Trump sought to give a morale boost to the beleaguered Texas energy industry during a visit Wednesday to the Permian Basin, while also rallying oil and gas workers against Democrats ahead of the November election.

"We are telling the Washington politicians trying to abolish American energy: Don't mess with Texas," Trump said during an afternoon speech at Double Eagle Energy in Midland, after an oil rig tour and fundraiser in nearby Odessa.

Trump's comments doubled as part campaign speech, part policy announcement, as he repeatedly assailed Democrats' energy proposals and predicted their presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden, would not "do too well in Texas" as a result. Polls continue to show a close competition in the once-solidly red state.

As for policy, Trump announced an extension for liquified natural gas exporters, following through with the Department of Energys proposal earlier this year to extend export contracts through the year 2050. Trump also announced permits granting approval to vital pipeline and railway infrastructure along the U.S.-Mexico border, including two permits allowing the export of Texas crude to Mexico, which he signed, after speaking, alongside Texas Republicans who joined him in Midland.

For now, though, the industry continues to face severe headwinds from the coronavirus pandemic. Trump touted his administration's actions to help the reeling industry earlier this year, including a deal with Saudi Arabia and Russia to drastically cut production.

"We were very close to losing a very powerful, great industry," Trump said, "and now we're back and we're just gonna keep expanding."

Among the permits that Trump signed was one that granted the company NuStar Energy permission to operate and maintain existing pipelines underneath the Rio Grande that transport hydrocarbons and petroleum products through a 46-mile pipeline from Hidalgo County into northern Mexico. Another permit Trump signed allows for Kansas City Southern Railway Co. to build and operate a new international railway bridge in Laredo, the type of cross-border project on the international boundary that requires a presidential permit.

Still, politics consumed a considerable amount of Trump's speech, as he warned that the "radical left ... is fighting to abolish American energy, destroy the oil and gas industries, and wipe out your jobs."

Trump sought to tie Biden to the Green New Deal, the ambitious plan to combat climate change championed by freshman U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Trump said the Green New Deal would "ban oil and gas leasing on all federal lands and by the way, there'd be no fracking." Biden has said he wants to end all oil and gas drilling on federal lands but that he does not support a total fracking ban.

While Texas officials welcomed Trump to the state by endorsing his "support of Texas energy producers, the industry across the state has been harshly disrupted in 2020. At least 46,000 people working in the Texas energy sector have lost their jobs during the pandemic, and some workers in West Texas have said they dont plan to return to the industry.

In the early months of the pandemic, energy job losses accounted for the highest number of jobless claims filed in dozens of Texas counties, and those workers could have serious trouble finding new jobs in the oil and gas sector for at least the rest of 2020, according to analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

The state budget also depends heavily on oil and gas taxes, and Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar said recently that the budget will face a $4.6 billion deficit in part due to the major decline across the oil and gas sector. Hegar said the industry will not bounce back soon.

Most people really focus on price, but an equally important component is what is production volume, Hegar told The Texas Tribune earlier this month. Texas has lost a large number of rigs.

The state typically makes up 50% of all the rigs in North America, but that has dropped to 40%, the lowest number recorded since the data first began to be tracked in the 1960s, he said.

Trump spoke at Double Eagle Energy after attending a fundraiser in nearby Odessa for his reelection campaign. The event was expected to raise $7 million, according to the Republican National Committee. Proceeds went to Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee between Trump's campaign and the RNC.

The luncheon was at the Odessa Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, and tickets started at $2,800. Supporters who gave $100,000 got to participate in a roundtable discussion with Trump beforehand.

The trip was Trump's 16th visit to Texas as president but his first to the Midland-Odessa area, a Republican stronghold.

Poll after poll in recent months has shown Trump and Biden in a dead heat in Texas, which he carried by 9 percentage points in 2016, the smallest margin for a GOP presidential nominee here in two decades. Still, Trump said Wednesday it was a "great victory" and that he is now "leading what we had even four years ago," even though surveys show the contrary.

Biden released a statement ahead of Trump's arrival in Texas that focused on his response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has been on the rise in recent weeks across the state. Biden noted that Hurricane Hanna, which hit the Texas coast over the weekend, has made the situation in Texas "far more precarious."

"Mr. President, now isnt the time for politicking or photo ops," Biden said. "Texans need a President with the experience and vision to fight for families no matter how many catastrophes reach our shores."

The Democratic National Committee also denounced Trump's handling of the virus with a daylong digital advertising campaign on the Odessa American's homepage. The Texas Democratic Party held a news conference ahead of Trump's visit to highlight how the pandemic has disproportionately impacted Latino Texans.

Afterward, the party noted in a statement that America surpassed 150,000 deaths Wednesday and said it "never had to be this bad" under Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott.

The coronavirus loomed large even before Air Force One touched down in Midland. U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, who was expected to travel with the president, announced he had tested positive for the virus. Once Trump arrived, a Houston congressional candidate who was set to greet the president at the airport, Wesley Hunt, announced he had tested positive on his way there and returned home.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled Permian Basin.

Kansas City Southern Railway and the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Read the original:

President Donald Trump's Texas visit focuses on oil and gas workers - The Texas Tribune

BANGOR, Maine A mostly masked group of volunteers gathered at a Dunkin on Saturday to get last-minute coaching before heading out to knock on doors for President Donald Trump and down-ballot local Republican candidates in the November election.

Republicans have touted their ground game and constant presence in battleground areas including Maine as their main advantage in defending Trump in Novembers election. Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is just beginning here, but he has opened up a wide polling lead nationally and is winning in many swing states.

Trump prioritized Maine more than any recent Republican candidate four years ago, visiting five times ahead of an election in which he won the 2nd Congressional District. When he made an official visit here last month, he said he plans to win the state in 2020. His campaign recently placed it on a short list of states that Trump thinks he can flip this year.

That is unlikely. Trump trailed Biden 50 percent to 38 percent statewide in a Colby College poll released on Tuesday showing Democrats leading all of Maines key races, including in the crucial U.S. Senate race. Biden was 3 percentage points ahead in the 2nd District. No Republican presidential candidate has won Democratic-leaning Maine since 1988.

Trumps rough polling and massive campaign apparatus raise chicken-or-egg questions about the 2020 race. His ground game is likely to matter most in Maine if the race for the one electoral vote for the 2nd District remains close and winnable as he looks to protect areas he won.

From my perspective, as long as he remains competitive and I believe he will remain competitive, at least in the 2nd Congressional District, I think the grassroots activism is important, said Michael Leavitt, a Republican strategist who ran President George W. Bushs 2004 re-election campaign in Maine.

Republican organizers told volunteers on Saturday in Bangor they made 16,000 knocks on doors the past weekend and over 600,000 voter contacts during the campaign. The national party, outspent nearly 10 to 1 here by Democrats in the 2016 cycle, has spent $805,000 in Maine from January 2019 to June 2020, four times more than their Democratic counterpart.

Former Gov. Paul LePage, who chairs Trumps Maine campaign, said in an interview earlier this month that the party only knocked on 11,000 doors in 2016 and this campaign is something weve not seen for a long time in Maine. He thought Trump may visit twice more, questioned polls and expected Trumps standing to improve as people learn more about Bidens history.

He has enthusiasm on his side, he said of Trump. The Democrats are hunkered down and I dont know if thats going to help them in the long haul.

Democrats are playing catch-up, as is typical while facing an incumbent. Biden recently hired two key Maine employees former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee staffer James Stretch as state director and Portland City Councilor Spencer Thibodeau as a senior advisor. National Republicans have 24 staffers here.

Thibodeau touted Democrats registration edge. As of May, they passed independents as Maines largest voting bloc, with 90,000 more registered voters than Republicans, according to state data. He said that edge is significant, but the hard work is still to be done.

Republicans have reintroduced in-person events after shutting them down in March due to the coronavirus. In Maine, 80 percent of events are in person and and 20 percent are virtual with the party following state gathering limits, a Trump spokeswoman said. On Saturday, organizers split volunteers into pairs for canvassing, which they did not allow reporters to observe.

Democrats are focused on electronic forms of stumping. Texting and phone campaigns are key parts of the campaigns strategy, as well as virtual events, like Bidens wife, Jill, taking a virtual tour of a University of Maine engineering lab. A Saturday kickoff event streamed on Facebook by the state party was policy focused, with Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, discussing labor issues with U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio.

Toby McGrath, a Democratic operative who managed the 2008 and 2012 campaigns in Maine for President Barack Obama, was confident that Democrats could catch up organizationally. He said campaigns will often tout high numbers of voter contacts to get attention but should focus more on quality over quantity. But while he said Biden is in a good spot, things can change.

I would rather be Biden, but 99 days is a long time in a political campaign, McGrath said.

More here:

Donald Trump's campaign has head start on Joe Biden but hard road to win in Maine - Bangor Daily News

As host country of the U.N. headquarters during the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. has a unique opportunity to hold center-stage at an organization Trump has consistently derided, and which at times has returned the favor.

Other world leaders have openly laughed at his speeches and been witness to awkward moments, ranging from Trump announcing to leaders that he could totally destroy North Korea, to a spat with teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Nevertheless, the U.N. depends on American money to continue many of its operations: The U.S. provides 22 percent of the bodys regular funding, annually. Trump recently made waves by formally beginning U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization, the U.N. health agency, criticizing its Covid-19 response and labeling it a mouthpiece for China. The U.S. is one of 88 countries that has not yet paid its 2020 U.N. dues in full.

Craft said that Americas priorities during the 2020 General Assembly would be human rights and transparency and that in the absence of world leaders, hundreds of UNGA side events will either move online or take place later in 2020.

U.N. General Assembly President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande and U.N. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres have been extremely careful at mitigating this virus within the U.N. system, Craft said.

Craft has been taking her diplomacy beyond the confines of the U.N. Security Council the highest level U.N. decision-making body at which the U.S. has a permanent seat during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since we have been sheltering in place, I used that time to start calling 185 of the ambassadors, just to check on people, Craft said. Crafts advisers had originally wanted her to conduct her diplomacy speed-dating tour during the first weeks of her tenure in mid-2019.

Craft said ambassadors from smaller countries were shocked to receive her call, but said they were very responsive, helping to create a special bond that the U.S. would find useful in its efforts to reform the U.N.

See the original post here:

Trump plans to address United Nations General Assembly in person - POLITICO

Pending home sales rebounded strongly in May and June amid declining mortgage rates. Existing home sales also rose sharply in June. Soaring jobless claims began declining in March as states started to reopen and the unemployment rate declined from a high of 14.7 percent in April. But the increase last week suggested the fresh wave of virus cases and a return to stricter lockdown orders in some states has dented the labor market comeback.

Economists say a great deal has to go right for this rosiest of scenarios to play out including swift passage of further enhanced jobless benefits, rapid progress in vaccine development and the survival of thousands of businesses that are unlikely to make it through further lockdowns.

Not many are confident that all of this will come together.

To me it seems like a pipe dream. I cannot image a V-shaped recovery in the offing any time soon, said Beth Ann Bovino, chief U.S. economist at Standard & Poors Ratings Services. Aside from the fact that Covid-19 doesnt seem to be under control, this is a $22 trillion economy. You cant turn it off and on like a light bulb.

The most likely scenario painted by economists is that a significant bounce back does arrive in the third quarter given the depth of the drop in the second. But the persistence of the virus, reluctance of Americans to go back to their offices or go out to shop and eat and spend money keeps a lid on the scale of the recovery.

Under this scenario, the unemployment rate could stagnate or even rise again before the election as fresh lockdowns cause more businesses to lay off workers and widespread uncertainty over the future keeps a lid on business investment.

Any significant lapse in expanded jobless benefits, which officially expire July 31 but have already run out for many, could also put a major dent in spending and lead to increases in defaults on mortgages, credit cards, automobiles and other loans.

We still have a large part of the population that still depend on these benefits, Moya said. And its not easy to be optimistic about large swaths of the labor market. I once thought we might see the unemployment rate drop to around 8 percent this year but now it looks like it will probably be higher.

Moya added that good vaccine news probably wont arrive until October or November with the completion of the first Phase III trials. And that means Americans will probably remain hesitant to engage in a lot of normal economic activity. The work-from-home economy will remain resilient but you arent going to see a widespread return to normalcy very quickly.

View original post here:

U.S. suffered worst quarterly contraction on record as virus ravages economy - POLITICO

Former President Barack Obama reportedly revealed to supporters this week whats keeping him awake at night.

Obama, during a virtual fundraiser for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Tuesday, said he feared the prospect of President Donald Trump questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election,The New York Times reportedon Thursday.

In the online event with actor George Clooney, Obama also reportedly expressed grave concern about Republican voter suppression efforts.

In public, Obamas criticism of his successor has mostly been muted, and he rarely mentions Trump by name. In private fundraising appearances, however, Obama has explicitly called out Trump multiple times,according to the Times.

ASSOCIATED PRESSFormer President Barack Obama reportedly revealed to supporters this week whats keeping him up at night.

In an online exchange with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), Obama reportedly said Trump tries to redirect the fears and anger and resentment of people who, in some cases, really are having a tough time and have seen their prospects, or communities where they left, declining in nativist, racist, sexist ways.

During another with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Obama said Trumps use of racist terms to describe the coronavirus still shocks and pisses me off.

A spokesperson for Obama did not immediately respond to HuffPosts request for comment. His office did not dispute the remarks attributed to him in the Times, the newspaper reported.

Obama officially endorsed Biden in April with a 12-minute video in which he hailed his former vice president for having the character and the experience to guide us through one of our darkest times and heal us through a long recovery.

In a video that the Biden campaign released last week, Obama called out Trump for failing to take responsibility for his administrations disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Can you imagine standing up when you were president and saying its not my responsibility, I take no responsibility, Biden asked Obama in the clip. I mean literally. Literally.

Obama agreed. Those words didnt come out of our mouths when we were in office.

Calling all HuffPost superfans!

Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter

Originally posted here:

Barack Obama Reveals The Thing About Donald Trump That Keeps Him Up At Night - HuffPost

On Monday, Donald Trump, president of these United States, told reporters attending a briefing that he had been invited to throw out the first pitch for the Yankees in their series against the Nationals on August 15.

It would have been a momentous occasion. A chance to see the strength of our leadership on full display for the world. A stable genius on the mound, undoubtedly throwing a 100 mph fastball right down the middle of the strike zone. A pitch so incredible that the greatest hitters of our generation would say that is the most incredible pitch Ive ever seen in baseball history, and there is no way in hell any professional athlete could ever make contact with that thing.

Of course, liberal bias and fake news is trying to ruin what would have been an inspirational moment for the millions of Americans affected by coronavirus or lost loved ones to the virus.

On Tuesday the New York Times published a salacious article alleging that the Yankees never asked Trump to throw out the first pitch. That our president, bastion of truth and paragon of virtue, made the whole thing up. Frankly, its disgusting. They say its because the president was jealous of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who threw out the first pitch for the Nationals at their home opener. As if Donald J. Trump would ever be jealous of some nerd in a lab coat. Fauci doesnt even own any hotels.

The unassailable truth is that our president, who fights every day for us, isnt able to throw with his cannon-like arm, which people have called stronger than a howitzer and twice as deadly because hes addressing the biggest crises this country has every seen.

If we have any hope of remaining the world leader in Covid-19 deaths we need the steady leadership of the president at this critical time. Hes far too busy to throw out a first pitch right now.

Not to mention, the real issue here is that every president throws out a first pitch. Its boring, its passe, its old hat. Donald Trump is not any president, hes the president. Which is why he shouldnt throw out the first pitch for the Yankees ... HE SHOULD BE THE STARTING PITCHER FOR THE YANKEES. I dont care how many millions of dollars a baseball team pays for an arm, there is absolutely nobody who has the kind of giant, throbbing brain that Trump has. Pair those smarts with that arm, which has been compared to an elephants trunk, and theres no telling what he could do.

Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV all of them shocked and awed by the velocity of his perfect pitches. Entire sides struck out in minutes. Towels being thrown from the dugout with opponents saying we quit, this is just impossible, but no, theres no quitting in baseball so you need to endure your beat down for the entire 16 minutes it takes, but youll get to go home early for supper, because Trump will hit 15 home runs and embarrass you in the process.

Advancements in science will need to take place just to capture Trumps pitching on TV. It will be impossible for modern cameras to track the ball. People will turn their heads and say did he throw it yet? because the ball will leave his hand with such velocity and force that it will break the sound barrier, and instead of the signature crack of Mach-1 being shattered, instead it will sound like an eagle screeching the word FREEDOM at the end of a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.

I, for one, am ready.

Link:

Donald Trump shouldnt throw out the first pitch for the Yankees, he should be their starting pitcher. - SB Nation

Anti-racism protesters have repeatedly clashed with federal officers in the US city of Portland, Oregon in recent days. They have continued nightly protests ever since the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in May.

The Guardians Chris McGreal is in Portland and tells Anushka Asthana that to understand what is happening in the city you have to look back at Oregons history and at the politics of the present. Portland is one of the least diverse cities in the US and has a history of segregation and racially divisive policies. But it is also home to thousands of young people incensed by racial inequality and the politics of Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, in the White House, Trump is eyeing the worsening election polls and is desperate to live up to his claim of being a law and order president. As he sanctions the highly unusual deployment of federal troops to the Democrat-run city against the wishes of its mayor, protesters in other cities are taking to their own streets in solidarity.

Support The Guardian

The Guardian is editorially independent.And we want to keep our journalism open and accessible to all.But we increasingly need our readers to fund our work.

See the original post here:

Is Donald Trump playing politics with the Portland protests? - The Guardian

Twenty percent of Donald Trumps own voters four years ago held an unfavorable opinion of the man as they cast their ballot for him on Election Day, according to exit polls. Sixteen percent said they would feel concerned or scared if he won, and 29 percent viewed him as dishonest. A recent Gallup survey found the GOP shrinking dramatically in size this year alone: 47 percent of respondents identified as Republicans or Republican-leaners in January; just 39 percent did in July. The Gary Johnson-led Libertarian ticket received a record 4.5 million votes in 20163.2 million more than Johnson won in 2012in large part due to the unpopularity of both Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

These are the voters being targeted by two super PACs launched this yearRepublican Voters Against Trump (RVAT) and the Lincoln Projectin the hopes of making Donald Trump a one-term president. And with Trumps margin of victory in 2016 coming down to about 80,000 votes in three states, it just might work.

This is a massive group, said Tim Miller, political director for RVAT and longtime GOP operative who most recently worked for Jeb Bushs 2016 presidential campaign. You cant win primaries with that group, thats true. But in a general election like this, youre talking about 15 to 20 million voters. And that is the difference between Trump winning a narrow electoral college victory and losing in a Reaganesque landslide.

The Trump campaign proclaims not to be fazed. This is the swampyet againtrying to take down the duly elected President of the United States, spokeswoman Erin Perrine told The Dispatch. President Trump is the leader of a united Republican Party where he has earned 94 percent of Republican votes during the primariessomething any former president of any party could only dream of. (Trump did win 94 percent of the vote in his primary against former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, but several state GOPs canceled their contests entirely, citing precedent established under previous incumbent presidents.)

Miller and Perrine both have vested interests in the outcome of the race, of course, but other GOP consultants seem to agree with Millers assessment. Nationally, probably close to 20 percent of the Republican vote is available to Biden or to be sidelined, California-based strategist Rob Stutzman told The Dispatch. Thats just a substantially weakened base and absolutely can throw the election against Trump.

There are data models showing Biden/GOP Senate leaners that far exceed the numbers required to flip a number of swing states, a Republican operative working on Senate races this cycle said. Were only talking about fewer than 80,000 Republicans across three Great Lakes states.

Republican Voters Against Trump

The videos are not high quality. Most appear to be shot on a laptop or front-facing phone camera. But there are a lot of them.

I cannot fuckin, I cant take this anymore, says Jeffrey Farmer, a 50-something-year-old man with neck tattoos whose accent makes sense once he reveals hes from Mendon, Massachusetts. He voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because he couldnt stand Hillary Clinton, but hes throwing his support behind Joe Biden this November. Him and his goddamn Twitter, all he does is watch the goddamn news. Why dont you do your frickin job, Donald Trump, instead of frickin whining and complaining about everything. Everyones out to get you? You know what dude? Walk a mile in my shoes.

Lori sent her video in from a small town in southwestern Wisconsin. She voted for Trump in 2016 because she wanted someone to do something about all of the illegal immigrants from Mexico. But she regrets it. I find myself everyday, almost in tears with my fear of what this man has already done to our country, and what hes going to do if he gets four more years.

Charles became a conservative after listening to William F. Buckley and reading Barry Goldwaters Conscience of a Conservative, and he prayed in 2016 that Trump would rise to a moral leadership. But the veteran (he retired a lieutenant colonel) and longtime Southern Baptist pastor from central Texas has seen enough. I have devoted my lifetime, proud to be an American, to be a conservative, to be a Republican, as a lawyer, as a serviceman, as an Evangelical Christian, he starts. Mr. Trump has tarnished all the good that I have stood for. And it saddens me to say that I cannotI will notvote for that man.

Those are three of the hundreds of testimonials RVAT has collected in recent months from GOPers and onetime supporters of the president who now want him booted from the White House. Soliciting the first 100 videos was hard, Sarah Longwell, RVATs strategic director, admitted. The group relied on the email list of its parent organization, Defending Democracy Together (DDT), which was stood up in 2018 by Longwell and Bill Kristol to understand and confront Trumpism within the conservative movement. But since that initial batch went live at the end of May, momentum carried the day.

Its been overwhelming, honestly, the deluge of videos weve gotten in, Miller told The Dispatch. Were over 500 now, its been almost all organic. Just people whove seen them online or seen the news coverage of them, and decided they wanted to tell their story.

Longwell and DDT have been conducting focus groups since 2018 in an attempt to figure out what makes Trump voters tick and where the presidents weak spots with his base are. These Republican voters did not trust Democrats. They do not trust the media. They dont trust political ads, Longwell said. When you show people the stuff with the scary voiceovers, or the stuff that's attacking Trump, people immediately doubt the source of it. They dont believe the facts that are contained in there. They know that youre trying to persuade them.

Enter: Testimonial videos.

When it comes to the real voices, Longwell added, theyre just so interested in the peoples stories and they really feel like it speaks to the same anxieties that they have about Trump.

Politics is very tribal, and so were trying to create kind of a new tribe, she continued. People who identify as Republicans, who are lifelong conservatives, but who either left the Republican Party because of Trump, or people who voted third party in 2016 because of Trump but this year are going to vote for Biden, in 2016 voted for Trump but in this year are going to vote for Biden.

Its a tried and true tactic in the political campaign world. Stutzman described the videos as classic Advertising 101 permission structures.

Its not so much the persuasion at this point, he said, as much as I think [its] that permission structure for Republicans to go, Yeah, okay. I dont have to vote for him again. I can feel okay about that.

Its okay to change your mind, an RVAT video with 1.5 million YouTube views concludes. We did.

The clips themselves routinely go gangbusters online, racking up millions of views and thousands of retweets, many of which undoubtedly come from liberals desperate to find validation from the other side of the political aisle. But RVAT is working to make sure its intended audience sees them, too.

The group already has $10 million from donors 100 percent committed, per Longwell, and is hoping to raise an additional $5 million between now and Election Day. Miller says 80 percent to 90 percent of that money will be going toward Facebook and YouTube advertising in states like Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, with the remaining 10 to 20 percent going toward TV spots on shows with more gettable Trump voters like Chris Wallaces Fox News Sunday and Bret Baiers Special Report.

Officially, Republican Voters Against Trump is not advocating for anything other than whats in the name. Theyre agnostic as to whether the people theyre targeting pull the lever for Biden, stay home, vote third party, or write in their dogs name. From a strategic standpoint, taking somebody that last time voted for Donald Trump but just can never get there on the Democratsmaybe its because of abortion, maybe its just a mental blockjust moving them from Trump to write-in, lets say, has the same value as moving a [Evan] McMullin voter to Biden, Miller said. Either way, thats a plus one for Biden. So while the broader effort of our group is to elect Joe Bidenwere not hiding the ball on thatwe want people that maybe might not vote for him to be part of this effort.

RVAT is also not campaigning against downballot Republicans. Were trying to attract voters who might be Biden-Tillis voters Biden-McSally voters, Miller added, referencing the North Carolina and Arizona Republican senators fighting to retain their seats. This is not going to be a huge segment of the electorate. But it is a segment. In a close election, that could be the difference.

The Lincoln Project

It is on this point where RVAT diverges from its more notorious counterpart. The Lincoln Projectannounced in December 2019 by political operatives Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, and John Weaver, as well as conservative lawyer George Conwaywas founded, according to its website, with a singular mission in mind: To defeat Donald Trump and Trumpism.

That second partand Trumpismis what has gotten the Lincoln Project so much flak from the right while RVAT has flown largely under the radar. The group is focusing its tens of millions of dollars not just on helping Joe Bidens odds in the presidential election, but defeating vulnerable Republican senatorslike Thom Tillis, Martha McSally, Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Joni Ernst, Lindsey Graham, Steve Daines, and Mitch McConnellas well. Weaverwho has worked for Sen. John McCain and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich but also the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committeerecently told the Washington Post he thinks the Lincoln Project will remain active in a hypothetical Biden presidency, working against GOP lawmakers who oppose Democratss agenda.

Schmidtan alum of campaigns for George Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and McCainexplained the organizations rationale. The Republican Party has been a collaborationist party with regard to Trumpism, he told The Dispatch in an interview earlier this week. Trumpism is an illiberal, undemocratic, authoritarian-fetishizing movement. And we need two liberal parties in this country debating each other. If theres only going to be one liberal party, and that partys policies are going to be progressive, then so be it. We cant have an authoritarian party in this country, and there has to be a political price to pay for the senators who have let Trump run amok. Its the nuttiness of the Republican Party, more than anything else, thats going to achieve the implementation of a progressive agenda in this country.

Asked about the argumentadvanced by The Dispatchs David French among othersthat burning down the GOP indiscriminately will leave nothing but the Trumpiest members, Schmidt didnt necessarily see that as a problem.

The Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, lunatic fringe of the party is a specific type of metastasis of the cancer thats in our politics. These guys are nuts and fools, he said. In some degree, the [Sen.] Susan Collinses and the [Sen.] Cory Gardners are worse than all of them because they know better. And their issue is cowardice. Nobody is asking any of these people to have stormed Omaha Beach, right? Theyre senators, theyre not victims.

Schmidt referenced The Wavea 1981 made-for-TV movie about a group of students unknowingly descending into fascismto explain present-day American politics. Could it happen here? he asked. It is happening here.

Porn for MSNBC viewers is how Stutzman referred to the Lincoln Project and its political advertising. Current Republican operatives have taken to calling the group a Democratic super PAC, citing its donor rolls, which, as of June 30, feature scores of prominent large-dollar Democratic donors in addition to its more grassroots fundraising. Its offerings are wildly popular in Democrat Twitter, in places like MSNBC, Stutzman continued, because its so cathartic and satisfying. But I dont know that its particularly persuasive to Republicans.

The groups ads buck nearly all the insights gleaned from DDTs focus groups. They feature scary voice-overs, include plenty ofTrump mocking, and focus on inside-the-Beltway stories that dont matter to voters. But RVAT staffers think their more aggressive peer is complementary to their own efforts, targeting a different slice of the electorateand one person in particular.

The Lincoln Project characterizes itself as having an audience of one, trying to get in Trumps head, Longwell said. Thats what theyre doing. What were doing is we are narrowly focused on deep persuasion of our target audience.

Schmidt did not reject the notion that his group engages in what Miller referred to as PSYOPS (psychological operations) against the president. We were the first people to point out [Trumps] stumbling down the ramp at West Point and drinking water. Fast forward to [his] Tulsa [rally], for 45 minutes he goes up and talks about drinking water and walking down the ramp, which makes him look deranged, Schmidt said. His taking of the dementia test is all rooted out of our advertising, right? Making fun of him and that stuff.

Stutzman concedes that this portion of the Lincoln Projects efforts has been more productive. The PSYOPs aspect of it against the president, what Lincoln does, is obviously incredibly effective and has consequences probably, if you ask Brad Parscale, he said, referencing Trumps demoting of his campaign manager a few weeks after the Lincoln Project ran an ad highlighting Parscales lavish lifestyle. I think thats an effective thing to do against Trump, is to screw with his head.

Trump is certainly aware of the Lincoln Project, in part because the group tends to air its ads during his favorite Fox News shows at night. One spot in particular set off an 11:46 p.m. tweetstorm on a Monday in May. A group of RINO Republicans who failed badly 12 years ago, then again 8 years ago, and then got BADLY beaten by me, a political first timer, 4 years ago, have copied (no imagination) the concept of an ad from Ronald Reagan, Trump tweeted. Their so-called Lincoln Project is a disgrace to Honest Abe Theyre all LOSERS.

We try to communicate things that Trump will see, for sure, Schmidt said. To be inside his head and to fight him asymmetrically like that. Yes, absolutely. Its intentional and deliberate.

But he believes their ads accomplish more than just that, boasting that the spots received more than 1 billion views online in the month of June. Have we persuaded undecided voters? Sure. Have we persuaded people to be more intense in their support of Biden? Definitely. Have we persuaded people to volunteer and get engaged? Have we persuaded people about what the stakes of the election are?

The Lincoln Project had raised just less than $20 million through the end of June, but Schmidt expects the group to spend between $50 million and $60 million by November, expanding its operations (currently about 30 staffers) to include coordinating volunteers on the ground in key states across the country. Critics have pointed to opaqueness in the groups finances to question how much money is going toward electoral efforts and how much is going to the founders themselves. Defending against these charges in an interview with CBSs animated news show, Tooning Out the News, Rick Wilson chalked the uncharacteristically high operating expenditures in Q1 up to startup, acquisition, and data costs. We have a massive amount of money escrowed in the bank for media and for voter contact this fall, Wilson promised. Our numbers are competitive with any other PAC, and in fact much better than most.

What Comes Next?

If current trends holdBiden is leading Trump in FiveThirtyEights national polling average by nearly 8.5 pointsboth RVAT and the Lincoln Project will very likely get what theyre working toward. Will the dog know what to do once it finally catches the car?

If Joe Biden wins in a landslide and the Republican Party decides to do some actual reevaluation of whether this nationalist populist direction is the right one, Longwell said, speaking for herself, [I] very much want to be a part of trying to chart a path for a center-right party that can build a big enough political coalition to govern.

She mentioned Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan as someone around whom that center-right party could be built, but admitted she has fears about what Trump has exposed about the party, adding that the GOP could very well lean even harder into nationalism in the coming years, not retrench from it.

Weve seen how fragile some of our norms and institutions are during the last three years, she said. Im interested in the fundamental project of rebuilding those.

Schmidt hopes that NeverTrump Republicans like himself are seen as strong allies in promoting a recovery agenda for this country.

We want to be strong allies in fixing a totally broken Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, election security issues, foreign interference issues, he said. There are so many enormous problems that demand pragmatic solutions, and we look forward to being a partner.

But he foresees a long future in the political wilderness with respect to the GOP. Fire purifies the forest, right? he said. The forest burns, and is regenerated.

But at this point, he continued, theres no interest in being in a coalition with Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan and the noxious, racist, authoritarian elements of this.

Gaetz and Jordan are not trailblazersthe GOP has long had its fair share of bombastic individuals over the years whose defining characteristics have been not being a Democrat, and loudly. Many figures on the leftJoe Biden rather famously excludedview Trump not as an aberration, but a natural outgrowth of the last several decades of Republican politics. Does Schmidt regret his years inside the machine?

Well look, he shot back. I ran Arnold Schwarzeneggers campaign. We got 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, we got 27 percent of the black vote. I was one of the top strategists for George W. Bush, we got 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. Worked for John McCainimmigration reform.

I was always, We need to reach out, we need to take our message everywhere, he continued, labeling himself a northerner and a Jack Kemp Republican, as opposed to a Jerry Falwell Republican. I was really nave about the degree of racial animus that just teems below the surface, that you saw bubbling up at Palin rallies, and in response to Obama, and certainly with Trump.

He paused for nearly 10 seconds, perhaps thinking about the role he played in selecting Sarah Palin as McCains running mate in 2008. I reflect on that. I reflect on that a lot.

Follow this link:

Donald Trump Stole Their Republican Party. They Want to Take It Back. - The Dispatch

Pending home sales rebounded strongly in May and June amid declining mortgage rates. Existing home sales also rose sharply in June. Soaring jobless claims began declining in March as states started to reopen and the unemployment rate declined from a high of 14.7 percent in April. But the increase last week suggested the fresh wave of virus cases and a return to stricter lockdown orders in some states has dented the labor market comeback.

Economists say a great deal has to go right for this rosiest of scenarios to play out including swift passage of further enhanced jobless benefits, rapid progress in vaccine development and the survival of thousands of businesses that are unlikely to make it through further lockdowns.

Not many are confident that all of this will come together.

To me it seems like a pipe dream. I cannot image a V-shaped recovery in the offing any time soon, said Beth Ann Bovino, chief U.S. economist at Standard & Poors Ratings Services. Aside from the fact that Covid-19 doesnt seem to be under control, this is a $22 trillion economy. You cant turn it off and on like a light bulb.

The most likely scenario painted by economists is that a significant bounce back does arrive in the third quarter given the depth of the drop in the second. But the persistence of the virus, reluctance of Americans to go back to their offices or go out to shop and eat and spend money keeps a lid on the scale of the recovery.

Under this scenario, the unemployment rate could stagnate or even rise again before the election as fresh lockdowns cause more businesses to lay off workers and widespread uncertainty over the future keeps a lid on business investment.

Any significant lapse in expanded jobless benefits, which officially expire July 31 but have already run out for many, could also put a major dent in spending and lead to increases in defaults on mortgages, credit cards, automobiles and other loans.

We still have a large part of the population that still depend on these benefits, Moya said. And its not easy to be optimistic about large swaths of the labor market. I once thought we might see the unemployment rate drop to around 8 percent this year but now it looks like it will probably be higher.

Moya added that good vaccine news probably wont arrive until October or November with the completion of the first Phase III trials. And that means Americans will probably remain hesitant to engage in a lot of normal economic activity. The work-from-home economy will remain resilient but you arent going to see a widespread return to normalcy very quickly.

Evidence of a slowing recovery pace is also piling up. Consumer confidence sank to 92.6 in July from 98.3, according to the Conference Board, amid mounting fears of rising virus cases. The index hit a near 20-year high of 132.6 in February before the virus slammed the U.S.. Retail sales bounced in July but could fade again as virus cases mount. Further virus-driven declines in consumer activity are likely, Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a recent note. We estimate that if all states currently tightening policy imposed stricter measures similar to those just imposed in California, this would reduce U.S. consumption back to the June level.

The doomsday scenario would feature Covid-19 raging out of control again without enough good news from Phase III vaccine trials coming this fall. It would also feature Congress failing to extend jobless benefits and pump enough streams of cash into the economy through direct payments and more aid to individuals, small businesses and state and local governments. In essence this would be a return to fiscal austerity at a time when over 30 million are receiving jobless aid and the virus remains unchecked.

Under this scenario, the jobless rate would begin rising again by August and September and the fourth quarter would see a much smaller GDP gain and perhaps even a return to contraction.

Several things could turn this already slow recovery into a nosedive including bad health outcomes and a premature return to fiscal austerity, said Bovino. Her teams worst-case scenario with the virus going out of control would show a GDP drop of 8.7 percent for 2020 and 14.6 overall from the peak of the economic cycle to the trough.

A rising jobless rate, widespread new lockdowns and increased Covid-19 deaths could make Trumps reelection prospects close to impossible. The president once enjoyed a solid lead on the economy over Biden. But recent polls show that lead has essentially evaporated. Its likely to go negative if the economy goes in the tank again. And while not the most likely scenario, it could certainly happen.

The worst case is we reverse all the job gains and any progress in terms of economic activity, said Farooqi. And that sort of spreads from the service side of the economy to manufacturing. And then instead of a strong rebound we get a slower pace of growth or even a return to contraction.

View post:

Trumps dream of a V-shape rebound slowly slips away - POLITICO

Trump's explanation to reporters about the withdrawal, announced Wednesday morning by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, misrepresented how NATO works and contradicted his own military officials, raising questions about what strategy -- if any -- drove the decision.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah described Trump's move as "a gift to Russia" and a "slap in the face at a friend and ally." Romney added that the "consequences will be lasting and harmful to American interests."

Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said aspects of the move, including the cap on US personnel in Germany, were "troubling."

Rachel Rizzo, director of programs at the Truman National Security Project, who specializes in European security, said, "It's hard, if not impossible, to see any benefit."

Counterproductive

The former commanding general of US Army Europe, retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, said in a tweet that he was "sickened by this decision and explanation. It is not tied to any strategic advantage and in fact is counterproductive to showing strength in Europe."

And retired US Navy Adm. Jim Stravidis, the former top military commander in Europe and NATO, said in a tweet that "abruptly pulling 12,500 troops out of Germany (to put half of them in countries who spend LESS on defense) doesn't make sense financially, hurts NATO solidarity overall, and is a gift to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin."

Removing US troops from Germany pulls them from a central location with a sophisticated transport and logistical network that speeds the movement of troops and equipment in Europe and beyond -- allowing for a powerful counterweight to Russia, analysts say.

Reducing the American footprint in Germany could waste billions spent on recent upgrades to US military facilities there and require spending billions more to replicate those resources elsewhere. Among other issues, military analysts also say that replacing permanent troops with rotational forces can make training with host countries more challenging and create morale issues.

Trump himself seemed to underscore that thinking Wednesday, saying the troop reductions had to do with Berlin's failure to meet defense spending targets and not the strategic reasons Esper laid out when he announced the move, which included countering Moscow.

The President most recently spoke to Putin last Friday, the latest in a series of phone calls that CNN's Marshall Cohen has documented as the most sustained publicly disclosed period of contact between the two leaders. In an interview released Wednesday, Trump told Axios that in that conversation, he did not raise US intelligence that alleges Moscow offered bounties to Taliban fighters to kill US troops in Afghanistan.

It's not clear if the two leaders discussed Trump's plan to reduce the US military presence in Germany, meant to be a bulwark against potential Russian aggression. But after Esper announced the troop drawdown, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the "champagne must be flowing freely this evening at the Kremlin."

Esper explained the current plan is to move approximately 11,900 military personnel from Germany, reducing numbers from roughly 36,000 to 24,000. Of the troops leaving Germany some 5,400 will be "staying in Europe," a senior US defense official said. The remaining 6,400 forces and their families will be returned to the US and will, in time, redeploy to Europe.

While Esper said the move was intended to help deter Russia, it did not appear that any US troops are being permanently repositioned to countries closest to NATO's eastern frontier with Russia, despite those countries' long-standing requests for such forces.

Italy and Belgium

The President of one of those countries, Lithuania, posted on Twitter, "We are ready to accept more US troops."

But the vast majority of the troops permanently remaining in Europe will instead be relocated to Italy or Belgium, not posted in countries most concerned about the Russian threat.

"There are or may be other opportunities as well to move additional forces into Poland and the Baltics," Esper said, without offering much in the way of specifics.

Removing US troops from Germany takes them from what Jeff Rathke, president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University, calls "the best place from which they can operate. The German logistical network, which the US is able to access, is very sophisticated -- airfields and bases, the rail network, which allows the US to move equipment."

Germany is also "a central location from which the United States can move," Rathke said. Pointing to the combination of Germany's location along with its transportation and logistics, Rathke said, "You can't replicate that in other places. They don't exist in Poland or farther east."

Menendez noted in a statement that Germany doesn't just allow for "an enhanced forward presence effort in Eastern Europe to counter Russia," but also "for US security interests across the Middle East and Africa."

"That platform is not easily replicated elsewhere," Menendez said.

There's also the question of how much this will cost American taxpayers at a time of record-setting US budget deficits. The military move will potentially cost "several billion dollars," Esper said Wednesday.

The Pentagon would be walking away from billions spent between 2004 and 2011 on upgrades to secure and consolidate key US military locations in Germany, Hertling said, only to have to replicate facilities such as housing, schools, HQs and barracks in new locations.

Rathke points out that there also are costs to bringing troops back to the US. "If you're going to bring people back from Germany, where are you going to put them and has it been budgeted for, whether it's housing or the base infrastructure for these people returning from Europe."

NATO said in a statement that the announcement "underlines the continued commitment by the United States to NATO and to European security."

But Hertling said that "what is obvious to me -- having served 12 years in Germany and having participated in the last force structure change from 2004-2011, this is not a 'strategic' move." Instead, he said, "it is disruptive, and affects readiness ... especially when this is all happening without a previous plan."

'Punishing Merkel'

Moreover, Hertling was among many who argued that the President's decision is about "punishing Merkel" and "is specifically a directed personal insult from Trump to our great & very supportive ally Germany."

Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director at The Economist Intelligence Unit, said the move is part of a broader story of disintegration in US-German relations that "is partly because of a mutual enmity between the political leaders of the two countries." Merkel and Trump "are different characters and have failed to build any sort of rapport since Trump came to power in 2016."

Germans themselves pointed out that in moving US troops, the Trump administration seems to be working against some of its stated goals.

"In withdrawing 12.000 soldiers from Germany, the USA achieve the exact opposite from what Esper outlined," the head of the German Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, Norbert Roettgen, who is a staunch Merkel ally, tweeted on Wednesday. "Instead of strengthening #NATO it is going to weaken the alliance," Roettgen said. "The US's military clout will not increase, but decrease in relation to Russia and the Near & Middle East."

In Bavaria, which hosts several US bases, the state governor, a member of Merkel's conservative block, said, "We very much regret the decision of the US government."

"Unfortunately, this seriously damages German-American relations," Markus Soeder said. "A military benefit cannot be seen. It weakens NATO and the USA itself."

CNN's Fred Pleitgen in Berlin contributed to this report.

See the original post here:

Trump's decision to move troops from Germany slammed as 'a gift to Putin' - CNN