Bill Maher finds ally in NBC News' Richard Engel in 'hoping' US economy slides to oust Trump

Who the hell?

NBC News correspondent Richard Engel was the lone voice to side with "Real Time" host Bill Maher on Friday night, after the comedian reiterated his "hopes" that a U.S. economic recession would help block President Trump's reelection in 2020.
"Short-term pain might be better than long-term destruction of the Constitution," Engel argued.
"Right!" Maher replied. "Thank you very much."

"Short-term pain might be better than long-term destruction of the Constitution."
— Richard Engel, NBC News

None of the other members of Maher's panel wanted to see the U.S. stumble.
"I'm not wishing for a recession," Tom Nichols, author of "The Death of Expertise," said.
"Neither am I," Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell agreed.
But Maher -- a multimillionaire whose investments include a stake in MLB's New York Mets -- tried to make the case that economic hardship for the nation might help him and other liberals realize their dream of preventing a second Trump term.
"You should wish for a recession because that would definitely get [Trump] unelected," Maher shot back, earning him a few claps from his Los Angeles studio audience.
Another guest, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, attempted to lower the temperature of the conversation.
"You don't really want a recession," Scaramucci tried to convince Maher.
"I really do," the host replied. "We have survived many recessions, we can't survive another Donald Trump term."
Last week, Maher had revived his stance that a recession would be "worth it"  because it would hurt Trump's reelection.

Plan for Straight Pride rally rejected – but California city offers alternative idea

GOOD OLD CALIFORNIA AT IT AGAIN.

GOOD OLD CALIFORNIA AT IT AGAIN.

Organizers of a planned Straight Pride rally received some bad news from city officials in Modesto, Calif., on Friday. They will not be permitted to hold their event in a city park as planned on Aug. 24.
However, the city has offered to allow the group to rally in a space near the city’s convention center – provided the organizers file a permit application by Tuesday, the Modesto Bee reported.
City officials said the original plan to use Graceada Park raised safety issues because the organizers’ liability insurance had been voided, according to FOX 40 in Sacramento.
“If you don’t have insurance, you can’t reserve one of our parks,” city spokesman Thomas Reeves told Sacramento’s KOVR-TV.
The latest development follows a contentious City Council meeting on Wednesday evening, at which critics contended the organizers didn’t wish to celebrate heterosexuality, as the event name suggests, but to instead communicate an anti-gay agenda.
Co-organizer Mylinda Mason of the National Straight Pride Coalition, however, insisted there was no hidden intent.
“Everyone is trying to sensationalize this event and it’s going to be much like a church service,” Mason told FOX 40. “I know everybody likes to go and celebrate sodomy but we actually want to celebrate heterosexuality.

"Everyone is trying to sensationalize this event and it’s going to be much like a church service. I know everybody likes to go and celebrate sodomy but we actually want to celebrate heterosexuality."
— Mylinda Mason, co-organizer of proposed Straight Pride event

“They’re looking to amp it up into something that it’s not,” Mason said of the critics. “It’s really going to be much more like on the purview of a church service, really. It really is just celebrating our beautiful country.”
But Mason’s 28-year-old son, Matthew Mason, who is openly gay, was among those opposing the plan for a Straight Pride event.
“This isn’t ‘straight pride,’ this is ‘hate pride,’” the son told FOX 40. “This is the woman who raised me, actively working against my rights as a human being, who I am as a person.”
In a Thursday interview, National Straight Pride Coalition organizer Don Grundmann told USA Today that his organization’s First Amendment rights should be respected.
He accused the Modesto City Council of “working overtime” to block his event.

"We're saying that it's OK to be a man. It's OK to be a woman," the organizer of a planned Straight Pride rally says. (iStock)

“We’re being viciously smeared and lied about that we’re racists,” he told the paper. (At the public meeting a night earlier, Grundmann drew laughter from his critics when he misspoke and described his organization as "a totally peaceful racist group," the Bee reported.)

"We're saying that it's OK to be a man. It's OK to be a woman. It's OK to have a natural family, a man, woman and children.”
— Don Grundmann, co-organizer of proposed Straight Pride event

"Our culture is under attack on multiple fronts, such as just being men. There's so-called toxic masculinity. There's actually college courses being taught that men are an inherent problem, there's something wrong with them," he said. "We're saying that it's OK to be a man. It's OK to be a woman. It's OK to have a natural family, a man, woman and children.”

Biden once saw diversity as 'poppycock,' lamented US lack of unifying ethnicity

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is facing new scrutiny over his past comments that diversity in the U.S. was “a bunch of poppycock.”
Biden, who has established himself as the front runner in the race for the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential nomination, has more recently stressed the importance of America’s diversity and criticized President Trump over his immigration policies.
“This is America, and we are strong and great because of this diversity, Mr. President, not in spite of it,” Biden said on the Democratic debate stage last month.
“America’s strength is and has always been rooted in our diversity,” Biden wrote in a tweet last month.
But Biden took an opposite view back in 1976, during his days as a U.S. senator from Delaware, and bemoaned in that bicentennial year that there was no single ethnicity that united the country, the Washington Examiner reported.
“I told you [in a previous speech] about my view that the uniqueness of America didn’t lie in the fact that we’re a great melting pot,” Biden said during an annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Boise, Idaho, in February 1976.

“We hear that all the time, about it being black and white, rich and poor, Christian and Jew — therefore we’re strong. I told you then, I thought that was a bunch of poppycock.”
— Joe Biden

“We hear that all the time, about it being black and white, rich and poor, Christian and Jew — therefore we’re strong. I told you then, I thought that was a bunch of poppycock,” he continued.
“The fact we are black and white doesn’t bring us together as a nation. The fact that we’re Christian and Jew doesn’t send us running into one another's embrace to herald our differences. The fact is that people fear differences. The fact that the reason this nation is able to be the most heterogeneous nation in the history of mankind is not because it’s a melting pot. It’s because unlike any other nation in the world, we are uniquely a product of our political institutions.
“If France tomorrow, for example, were to turn in [sic] a monarchy, I told you, I did not believe that France would substantively change. Because in France there’s an ethnicity that binds them together, a cultural tie. You don’t have that in America,” he concluded.

"In France there’s an ethnicity that binds them together, a cultural tie. You don’t have that in America."
— Joe Biden

The remarks are sure to give ammunition to progressive Democrats running for president. They have criticized the former vice president over his previous opposition to federal desegregation efforts and his past touting of his ability to work with segregationists in the Senate.
Biden has been stumbling on the campaign trail over the issue of race relations. Back in a June he was criticized after saying in a Chicago speech, “That kid wearing a hoodie may very well be the next poet laureate and not a gang banger.”
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who’s also running for president, criticized Biden, saying, “This isn’t about a hoodie. It’s about a culture that sees a problem with a kid wearing a hoodie in the first place. Our nominee needs to have the language to talk about race in a far more constructive way.”
This week, Biden told a crowd in Iowa that “poor kids are just as bright and talented as white kids.” After a very brief pause, Biden quickly continued speaking, adding: “Wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids.”
In response, President Trump told reporters Friday that Biden "is not playing with a full deck," adding, “He made that comment and I said, 'Whoa.'"

Jerry Nadler Cartoons

Ocasio-Cortez says her ex-chief of staff's attacks on moderate Dems were 'divisive'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continues to shun responsibility for heightened tensions among House Democrats, distancing herself from her former chief of staff Saikrat Chakrabarti whose attacks on moderates she called “divisive.”
Her comments came soon after Chakrabarti’s surprise resignation earlier this month following a series of controversies that contributed to public divisions within the House Democratic Caucus.
“I think it was divisive,” Ocasio-Cortez said during an interview with the New York Daily News, though she insisted the resignation had nothing to do with Chakrabarti’s attack on moderates. “I believe in criticizing stances, but I don't believe in specifically targeting members.”

“I think it was divisive. I believe in criticizing stances, but I don't believe in specifically targeting members.”
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

She added that her office then spoke with Chakrabarti, prompting him to “immediately [take] the tweet down.”
Chakrabarti, who helped manage Ocasio-Cortez’s upstart 2018 campaign, drew the ire of Democrats last month when he publicly criticized party moderates during policy spats between progressive members and party leadership.
In June, he tweeted that Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, one of the first two Native American women to serve in Congress, enabled a racist system after she voted in favor of a Senate border bill not backed by progressives.
“Who is this guy and why is he explicitly singling out a Native American woman of color?” the House Democratic Caucus' official account tweeted last month. "Her name is Congresswoman Davids, not Sharice," the House Democrats added. "She is a phenomenal new member who flipped a red seat blue."
"Keep Her Name Out Of Your Mouth," the tweet concluded -- with interspersed emojis of clapping hands.
In July, Chakrabarti described centrist Democrats who blocked a liberal-backed emergency border bill as the "new Southern Democrats."

They “certainly seem hell bent [sic] to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s.”
— Saikat Chakrabarti

They “certainly seem hell bent [sic] to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s,” he tweeted in a now-deleted post.  
Chakrabarti’s comments contributed to the combative relationship between the progressive freshmen Democrats and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who took a swipe at Ocasio-Cortez along with Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts – whom she called "four people" who don't have any following.
Ocasio-Cortez said they were singled out because they are newly elected women of color, further deepening divisions within the party.
Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, asked Ocasio-Cortez to fire Chakrabarti in an attempt to start over. His resignation came shortly after Ocasio-Cortez met with Pelosi in an effort to ease the tensions in the caucus.
Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.

Nadler: Committee has launched 'formal impeachment proceedings' against Trump

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., confirmed on Thursday evening that his committee has officially launched "formal impeachment proceedings" into the alleged misconduct of President Trump.
Appearing on CNN, Nadler said people shouldn't be "hung up on the semantics" since his committee is "investigating" the facts and evidence.
He said that he "wasn't waiting" for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has been publicly reluctant to support impeachment, but added that she's been "very cooperative" with his investigation.
But after being pressed as to whether his investigation was considered "formal impeachment proceedings," Nadler insisted that's what it is.
“This is formal impeachment proceedings,” Nadler said. “We are investigating all the evidence, we’re gathering the evidence and we will at the conclusion of this, hopefully by the end of the year, vote to, vote articles of impeachment to the House floor or we won’t. That’s a decision that we’ll have to make. But that -- that’s exactly the process we’re in right now.”
"All right, so when you say formal impeachment proceedings, have you started drafting or preparing articles of impeachment should you need them?" host Erin Burnett asked.
“There are articles of impeachment introduced a number of months ago and referred to the committee,” Nadler responded. “As the investigation proceeds, we may want to draft our own articles of impeachment that may more closely fit the evidence. We’ll see.”

Biden says ‘poor kids’ just as bright as ‘white kids’ in latest gaffe

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic primary frontrunner, made another gaffe Thursday when he told a crowd in Iowa that “poor kids are just as bright and talented as white kids.”
Biden, who famously directed supporters to a wrong number during last month’s debate -- and recently misidentified the sites of recent mass shootings -- quickly corrected himself after some applause from the crowd at the Asian & Latino Coalition PAC, and finished, “wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids.”
Biden, who in 2006 drew criticism with a comment about Indian-Americans moving to Delaware, the state that Biden represented when he served in the U.S. Senate, also told a crowd at the Iowa State Fair that “we choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts.”
Biden, like all of the Democratic candidates, has put blame on President Trump’s rhetoric for playing a role in the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. He said Trump is “using the language of “ white nationalists. He told CNN earlier this week that Trump talks about Muslims  and people of color in “almost subhuman terms.”
Trump on Monday called on the nation to condemn white nationalism, but he didn’t apologize for his incendiary rhetoric on race, from referring to illegal immigration as an “invasion” to his recent Twitter attacks on black members of Congress.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Graham: New Bruce Ohr docs show FISA warrant against ex-Trump campaign aide a 'fraud'

New documents highlighting top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr's contact with ex-British spy Christopher Steele are the latest troubling development for the DOJ in 2016.
That's the claim from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who said Thursday on "Hannity" that he believes there was deep corruption in the department during that year's U.S. presidential election.
"Here's what we're looking at: Systematic corruption at the highest level of the Department of Justice and the FBI against President Trump and in favor of Hillary Clinton," Graham said.
Host Sean Hannity then asked Graham whether officials "lied purposefully" on a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
"The best you could say is that they were incompetent," Graham responded. "The most likely outcome is that they wanted a result."
"I think the insurance policy is what we're seeing here, getting into the Trump campaign," Graham continued. "The FISA warrant against Carter Page was a fraud, I believe. The counter-intelligence investigation is something we have to look at very closely."
On Thursday evening, newly released records obtained by Fox News showed the FBI formally documented the bias of Steele shortly after the November 2016 presidential election, yet continued to use his unverified dossier in multiple FISA court warrant application renewals.
The documents, first obtained by Judicial Watch, also reveal that top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr maintained contact with Steele for at least six months after Steele was fired by the FBI for unauthorized media contacts in November 2016.
The summaries of FBI interviews with Ohr, known as 302s, show that Ohr knew by September 2016 -- a month before the initial application to surveil the Trump campaign -- that Steele was "desperate" that Donald Trump not be elected president.
A source close to the matter told Fox News "this had the effect of putting a senior DOJ official on notice that a witness/source had an extreme bias" -- yet the FISA warrant application went through in October 2016 with multiple renewals.
In his interview with Hannity, Graham claimed if a Republican operative acted in a way similar to Steele, the news would receive wall-to-wall media coverage.
"You could not turn on your television," he said.
Fox News' Gregg Re and Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.

Democrat Gun Control Cartoons

El Paso and Dayton shootings stir gun debate, will DC react or is cycle repeating?

 Strategists made sure that initiatives prohibiting gay marriage were on the ballot in key states heading into the 2004 presidential election. Support for those measures coaxed Republicans to the polls to help re-elect President George. W

Since then, the furor over same-sex marriage faded from the public consciousness. It simply dissolved as a political issue. Ohio state representative Candice Keller (R) seems to be in the minority on the issue. Keller attributed the recent string of mass shootings to “transgender, homosexual marriage, and drag queen advocates,” among other things.
Bottom line: the divisiveness of same-sex marriage eroded quickly in America. Things “changed” on a dime.
It was popular in the early 1990s to pillory the Central Intelligence Agency for failing to forecast the fall of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. But it’s a misnomer to assert that CIA analysts “missed the call.”
U.S. intelligence officials started seeing signs of a possible shift if not the outright collapse of Eastern European governments and the Soviet Union as early as 1985. However, those not dialed-in to intelligence dispatches stumbled on this front because, well, the Berlin Wall and Soviet Union “had always been there.” The existence of the Berlin Wall, the thermonuclear threat posed by the U.S.S.R. and the Cold War defined global paradigms for decades. Then when things went poof, the metamorphosis appeared abrupt. Those not paying close attention didn’t anticipate the shift.
And so, people wonder if the dual mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton are a turning point.
Observers anticipated a shift after Columbine. After Virginia Tech. After Sandy Hook. After former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) was shot. After the baseball practice shooting which nearly killed House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA). After Orlando. After Las Vegas. After Parkland.
People often predict a shift in the immediate aftermath of each melee. But after a few weeks, things revert to where they stood before. There’s no Congressional action. Things calm down. Then the massacres start again and the cycle repeats.
Why would anyone possibly think things would change this time?  If things didn’t change after someone shot up a kindergarten…if things didn’t change after individuals shot not one but two Members of Congress….
So do El Paso and Dayton change things? Are there palpable if subtle changes on the firearms issue? Or this like the CIA and the Soviet Union? Are the rest of us blind to changes gurgling below the surface? Are people inured to potential political changes with mass shootings, because, like with the Berlin Wall and the U.S.S.R., they’ve “always been there?” Is the pattern inculcated so deeply into our psyches that changes are imperceptible because the sequence just repeats after each shooting?
Unclear.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) put Republicans on notice this week. The New York Democrat accused Republicans of a “cop out” if they attempt to pass “a tepid version” of “red flag” legislation. “Red flag” bills allow authorities to intercede with mentally disturbed or threatening persons if they attempt to access weapons. Schumer demanded Senate Republicans pair red flag language with “House-passed universal background checks legislation.”
President Trump said Wednesday he hoped to “do something on background checks like we’ve never done before.” But after the Parkland shooting in February, 2018, Mr. Trump also said, “we’re going to be doing very strong background checks.”
This is why people suspect El Paso and Dayton are no different than Charleston or Columbine or Aurora. There’s always talk. And yet…
“They’re going to make all of these glorious statements,” predicted Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) speaking at the National Press Club. “After Sandy Hook, remember that? And nothing happened.”
But let’s be clear why things don’t appear to change.
The first problem deals with pragmatism. Lawmakers aren’t certain what exactly would change if they passed new laws. Enhanced background checks would definitely avert tragedy in some instances but not in others. The same with red flag laws. That said, lawmakers may argue that passing legislation could be worth it if it makes a dent in the slaughter scourge.
The second problem is mathematical. The House and Senate generally lacked the votes to advance gun-related legislation. There’s a reason the prohibition on “assault weapons” expired 15 years ago. Congress lacked the votes to renew it. By the same token, there’s also a reason why the Democratically-controlled House approved two bills on background checks last winter. The House had the votes.
Many argue that the issue is with the raw availability of firearms in the U.S., and, to some degree, “assault weapons.”
When asked about barring military-style, high-capacity guns, President Trump said “there is no political appetite for that at this moment.”
He’s right. Such legislation can’t make it through the House – even in this environment. It certainly isn’t ripe in the Senate. The universe of possibilities to “change things” is limited in the current political climate.
But here’s something which deserves attention:
President Trump has made broad use of executive power when Congress can’t or won’t go along with something he likes. Many Congressional Republicans utterly howled when President Obama used executive orders for “DACA” and other issues when Congress was paralyzed to act. Yet, some of the same Republicans who were apoplectic about what they interpreted as extra-Constitutional action by Mr. Obama, were silent when President Trump used the same maneuvers. Some Democrats warned that Mr. Trump abused his executive powers to bypass Congress and redirect money to his border wall against the wishes of Congress. The same with the administration hawking arms to Saudi Arabia.
These ploys could establish new precedents for executive powers – whether its President Trump or someone else.
It’s possible that Mr. Trump’s liberal use of executive authority could open the door for a potential Democratic president to make dramatic changes on firearms if Congressional paralysis persists: A ban on assault weapons. Deeper background checks. Prohibitions on high-capacity magazines. Pick ‘em. Such gambits would definitely render the “change” which so many predicted after each mass shooting since Columbine.
But, no one knows whether Mr. Trump or someone else will win the 2020 presidential race. It’s far from certain that a hypothetical Democratic president would burn political capital on this issue.
So, some are still trying to discern a “moment” or an “event” when things may shift on mass shootings.
Perhaps things just kind of change overnight like they did with same-sex marriage. Maybe the tectonic plates are already in motion, but it’s indecipherable, - ala the crumbling of the Eastern Bloc. Or maybe, just maybe, everything on this issue is in stasis. And nothing ever, ever, ever changes.