• Causing trouble: As Mitt Romney wraps up his ill-fated trip to London and prepares to move on to Israel, there’s something subtle worth noting. The Romney campaign had at time of writing on Friday sent out two separate e-mail press releases chiding the Obama administration for its “refusal to say whether Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.” One quoted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and another, former Minnesota Senator and Romney surrogate Norm Coleman.
• The presumptive GOP nominee has pledged to keep with diplomatic tradition by not criticizing President Obama or his foreign policy while on foreign soil, but in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Hayom (owned by conservative mega-donor Sheldon Adelson), Romney ripped the president for various elements of his policy toward Israel, including the president’s call for the Israel to consider returning to its pre-1967 borders, including land swaps with the Palestinians to compensate for disputed territory.
A chuckle from the Olympics:
• Jeremy Hunt’s bell breaks during HMS Belfast’s London 2012 Olympics celebration
Racist Asshattery:
• In a wide-ranging deposition that spanned two days in late May, former Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer denounced some party officials as liars and “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” as he described turmoil in the months before his resignation. Greer said some GOP leaders were meeting to discuss ways they could suppress black votes while others were constantly scheming against each other. …”I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting. It had been one of those days,” he said.
• White Baptist church in Crystal Springs, Mississippi bans black wedding – Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson told WLBT that the day before they were to be married, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs informed them the ceremony would have to be moved due to the reaction of some white church members — even though the couple had attended the church regularly.
• Off The Cliff: House and Senate leadership Thursday approached a deal to fund the government for six months — a move that would avert a Sept. 30 shutdown, and keep the federal government operating through March. The deal would keep the government funded at the same levels of last year’s debt limit law, a spending level Republicans have consistently dismissed as too high. But it would also avert a messy pre-election showdown over shutting down the government, something neither party wants.
• Fact Check: The Bust of Winston Churchill is still in the White House. In the Residence. Outside the Treaty Room. The White House has had a bust of Winston Churchill since the 1960’s. At the start of the Bush administration Prime Minister Blair lent President Bush a bust that matched the one in the White House, which was being worked on at the time and was later returned to the residence. The version lent by Prime Minister Blair was displayed by President Bush until the end of his Presidency. On January 20, 2009 — Inauguration Day — all of the art lent specifically for President Bush’s Oval Office was removed by the curator’s office, as is common practice at the end of every presidency. The original Churchill bust remained on display in the residence. The idea put forward by Charles Krauthammer and others that President Obama returned the Churchill bust or refused to display the bust because of antipathy towards the British is completely false and an urban legend that continues to circulate to this day.
• Federally funded organization provides job training to male veterans, teaches female veterans to knit – The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a sex-discrimination complaint on Wednesday against the Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry (ABCCM) for excluding female veterans from the job training services offered to men. The women were offered training in such things as knitting, art therapy, yoga, meditation, how to de-clutter your room, self-esteem and Bible study.
New York’s private army:
• The caller, Salil Sheth, had stumbled upon one of the NYPD’s biggest secrets: a safe house, a place where undercover officers working well outside the department’s jurisdiction could lie low and coordinate surveillance. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the NYPD, with training and guidance from the CIA, has monitored the activities of Muslims in New York and far beyond. Detectives infiltrated mosques, eavesdropped in cafes and kept tabs on Muslim student groups, including at Rutgers. …New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has defended the police department’s right to go anywhere in the country in search of terrorists without telling local police.
Military Industrial Complex:
• Pakistan has temporarily stopped NATO supply trucks crossing its northwestern border into Afghanistan over security concerns due to fears of Islamist attacks, officials said Thursday.
• During a rare public interview on Wednesday, Adm. Bill McRaven, head of the U.S. Special Operations command, portrayed as bold and brave Obama’s decision to order the raid despite significant doubts about whether bin Laden was at the Abbottabad, Pakistan compound. “At the end of the day, make no mistake about it, it was the president of the United States that shouldered the burden of this operation, that made the hard decision,” McRaven said during an on-stage interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that served as the kickoff session of the Aspen Security Forum. …”The president of the United States is fantastic,” the admiral said. …”I’m not a political guy, but I’ll tell you as an interested observer of this, they were magnfiicent how they handled the start-to-finish,” McRaven said. “The president asked all the right questions…The president gave me ample time to prepare once the conversations were through.”
F.D.Brightly
Now, onto Israel! [Shorter Question Everything]
What could possibly go wrong?
• Causing trouble: As Mitt Romney wraps up his ill-fated trip to London and prepares to move on to Israel, there’s something subtle worth noting. The Romney campaign had at time of writing on Friday sent out two separate e-mail press releases chiding the Obama administration for its “refusal to say whether Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.” One quoted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and another, former Minnesota Senator and Romney surrogate Norm Coleman.
• Netanyahu: Romney Lying About Their Friendship – “I remember him [Romney] for sure, but I don’t think we had any particular connections, I knew him and he knew me, I suppose.” ~Bibi Netanyahu, July 2012 in Vanity Fair Interview, (middle of Page 4)
• The presumptive GOP nominee has pledged to keep with diplomatic tradition by not criticizing President Obama or his foreign policy while on foreign soil, but in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Hayom (owned by conservative mega-donor Sheldon Adelson), Romney ripped the president for various elements of his policy toward Israel, including the president’s call for the Israel to consider returning to its pre-1967 borders, including land swaps with the Palestinians to compensate for disputed territory.
A chuckle from the Olympics:
• Jeremy Hunt’s bell breaks during HMS Belfast’s London 2012 Olympics celebration
Racist Asshattery:
• In a wide-ranging deposition that spanned two days in late May, former Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer denounced some party officials as liars and “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” as he described turmoil in the months before his resignation. Greer said some GOP leaders were meeting to discuss ways they could suppress black votes while others were constantly scheming against each other. …”I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting. It had been one of those days,” he said.
• White Baptist church in Crystal Springs, Mississippi bans black wedding – Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson told WLBT that the day before they were to be married, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs informed them the ceremony would have to be moved due to the reaction of some white church members — even though the couple had attended the church regularly.
• 12 Bigoted Taunts Peddled By Romney Camp and Allies
Right Wing Silliness:
• Off The Cliff: House and Senate leadership Thursday approached a deal to fund the government for six months — a move that would avert a Sept. 30 shutdown, and keep the federal government operating through March. The deal would keep the government funded at the same levels of last year’s debt limit law, a spending level Republicans have consistently dismissed as too high. But it would also avert a messy pre-election showdown over shutting down the government, something neither party wants.
• Fact Check: The Bust of Winston Churchill is still in the White House. In the Residence. Outside the Treaty Room. The White House has had a bust of Winston Churchill since the 1960’s. At the start of the Bush administration Prime Minister Blair lent President Bush a bust that matched the one in the White House, which was being worked on at the time and was later returned to the residence. The version lent by Prime Minister Blair was displayed by President Bush until the end of his Presidency. On January 20, 2009 — Inauguration Day — all of the art lent specifically for President Bush’s Oval Office was removed by the curator’s office, as is common practice at the end of every presidency. The original Churchill bust remained on display in the residence. The idea put forward by Charles Krauthammer and others that President Obama returned the Churchill bust or refused to display the bust because of antipathy towards the British is completely false and an urban legend that continues to circulate to this day.
• Federally funded organization provides job training to male veterans, teaches female veterans to knit – The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a sex-discrimination complaint on Wednesday against the Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry (ABCCM) for excluding female veterans from the job training services offered to men. The women were offered training in such things as knitting, art therapy, yoga, meditation, how to de-clutter your room, self-esteem and Bible study.
New York’s private army:
• The caller, Salil Sheth, had stumbled upon one of the NYPD’s biggest secrets: a safe house, a place where undercover officers working well outside the department’s jurisdiction could lie low and coordinate surveillance. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the NYPD, with training and guidance from the CIA, has monitored the activities of Muslims in New York and far beyond. Detectives infiltrated mosques, eavesdropped in cafes and kept tabs on Muslim student groups, including at Rutgers. …New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has defended the police department’s right to go anywhere in the country in search of terrorists without telling local police.
Military Industrial Complex:
• Pakistan has temporarily stopped NATO supply trucks crossing its northwestern border into Afghanistan over security concerns due to fears of Islamist attacks, officials said Thursday.
• During a rare public interview on Wednesday, Adm. Bill McRaven, head of the U.S. Special Operations command, portrayed as bold and brave Obama’s decision to order the raid despite significant doubts about whether bin Laden was at the Abbottabad, Pakistan compound. “At the end of the day, make no mistake about it, it was the president of the United States that shouldered the burden of this operation, that made the hard decision,” McRaven said during an on-stage interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that served as the kickoff session of the Aspen Security Forum. …”The president of the United States is fantastic,” the admiral said. …”I’m not a political guy, but I’ll tell you as an interested observer of this, they were magnfiicent how they handled the start-to-finish,” McRaven said. “The president asked all the right questions…The president gave me ample time to prepare once the conversations were through.”