Photo: Mr Trump is accused of offering $US391 million in military aid in exchange for dirt on a political rival. (Reuters: Carlo Allegri)
Author: peterimrich
Tuesday evening, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) affirmed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to launch a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, saying “what he has already admitted to is an impeachable offense.”
Surrounded by a flurry of reporters, the New York Democrat was asked if the caucus had been too slow to move on impeachment. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t take the bait: “We can’t ask ourselves about whether we move too slow or too quickly. We have to ask ourselves what we’re doing right now.”
Advertise with Mother Jones
Advertise with Mother JonesMere days after the Democratic firebrand called out her own party for abetting the president’s continued behavior, Ocasio-Cortez lent her support to the Speaker’s decision: “I think we have to hold this president accountable and we have to protect our democracy.”
via Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says Trump Has Already Admitted Impeachable Acts – Mother Jones
Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies director Chen Xiaochen said Shanghai, where life expectancy reaches 82, is “probably the only developed city” in China, while rural areas remain far behind.
via China claims Australia the ‘pioneer’ of a global anti-China campaign
When the Liberals suggest that the best form of welfare is a job, they are using the word “welfare” in a way that suggests that the health and happiness of someone unemployed would be better if they were to have a job, rather than “welfare” meaning financial support given to someone in need. While this is obvious enough, it’s only when we stop and use the word “welfare” in the question and replace the ambiguous word with something else that we get the full subtext.
“Will you be increasing welfare payments to the unemployed?”
“We believe that the best way of improving their situation would be to get them a job.”
“So how will you be getting them a job?”
“By telling them that if they have a go, they’ll get a go.”
“But what about the ones who still don’t get a job? Will you increase welfare payments to them?”
“No, because only a job will help them. Giving people financial support when they’re out of work is no substitute for that.”
“But what if they don’t still don’t get a job?”
“Look, unemployment support is only meant to be a temporary thing, so if people don’t get a job, it’s their problem.”
via The Best Form Of Charity Is To Be A Billionaire… – » The Australian Independent Media Network
via In international circles, Australia is unashamedly promoting the use of its coal, writes Michael Mazengarb.
If history is a fair judge (and if humankind even has a history after Trump and his minions finish destroying the environment), Barr will be remembered as the most corrupt, treacherous, mendacious, and treasonous attorney general in American history.
And when I say treasonous, I mean treasonous. Ever since he obtained the attorney general’s office, Barr has used it for one purpose: To cover up the criminality of Trump.
Читайте больше на http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/142765-trump_treason/
There are plenty of reasons the White House might not want the whistleblower complaint to come out. It could have more details that go beyond what’s in a transcript. It might have other instances of impropriety by the president.
The whistleblower complaint absolutely has to come out. It’s very clear that Congress not only has a right but has a responsibility to this material.
We, Australia, now have a legion of Veterans from the growing list of America’s wars. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. With the exception of the Vietnam War, which had the overlay of the National Service Draft Lottery attached to it, most of the military folk that we sent to that steady treadmill of USA war-making, were volunteers.
While only our Veterans can speak for themselves, I very much doubt that they joined up to fight for America.
We should not have been in Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan. We should decline the invitation (order) to involve ourselves with Iran.
The lives of our service personnel are precious, and those lives should not be wasted in yet another possible war that has nothing to do with us.
It is our children and grandchildren of military age who always pay the price. Politicians like ScoMo or Trump and their historical predecessors, never do.
via From Vietnam to Iran: Australian Cannon Fodder? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Such statements would have been accommodated in the Europe of the 1930s, whose obsession with matters of ethnic cleansing did lead to an experiment of mass murder as yet unequalled in the annals of human bestiality.
Such views as those expressed at the Third Demographic Summit in Budapest betray the understanding of men in retreat, desperate figures whose ideas are running out of steam and, in due course, a pulse. Let us hope that their end is not as calamitous as the conditions they are proposing.
BUSTED
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that in the course of his conversation in July with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump pressed him on eight separate occasions to investigate Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden.
Biden when vice president is known to have pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor whom the International Monetary Fund and the Obama administration felt to be ineffective in dealing with corruption.. The prosecutor had once upon a time investigated a company on the board of which Biden’s son Hunter served. But by the time Biden exerted his pressure, that investigation was dormant and there were never any Ukrainian findings of corruption on the part of Hunter Biden.
via Bribery & High Crimes and Misdemeanors: Did Trump finally go Full Impeachable in Ukraine Calls?
“There’s three issues here, and they’re all really big deals,” Wittes said to host Chris Matthews on “Hardball.”
“So the first is: shaking down a foreign leader for his own personal political gain,” he continued. “It’s not for some U.S. policy objective.”
The second issue is something the whole country is already deeply familiar with: “inviting or asking or demanding that foreign country to improperly engage in the U.S. political process.”
“Collusion!” Matthews declared. Wittes agreed.
“And the third,” Wittes said, “which is, from my point of view, by far the worst, asking, demanding a foreign leader to investigate your political opponents.”
Wittes noted that Trump has previously asked U.S. law enforcement to go after political rivals — and now he’s taking that abuse abroad.
Watch the clip below:
Ali al-Ashqar had just thrown one stone when he was shot. The 17-year-old immediately fell to the ground.
Nabil Masoud had been standing nearby. Along with two medics, he rushed to try and help Ali.
“But the Israeli sniper started shooting toward anyone who got close to the child,” said Masoud. “For around 17 minutes, no one was able to reach Ali. It was clear that the Israeli soldier wanted the child to bleed until he died. And that is what actually happened.”
Eventually, the medics gained access to Ali. But it was too late.
An autopsy confirmed that he had been struck by a bullet in the chest, which had existed his neck. He had also been hit by fragments of bullets fired in his direction.
Ali was killed during the Great March of Return on 6 September. He was approximately 80 meters from the fence separating Gaza and Israel.
via Israel shoots children, lets them bleed to death | The Electronic Intifada
Despite a record three years of surging exports, Australia’s economy is the stand-out failure in the developed world. Alan Austin reports.
via Morrison flukes greatest export boom in history, but still can’t increase pensions
via 
The day after Mueller’s testimony, Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pressured Zelensky to help him win the 2020 election by investigating former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. In the weeks that followed, Trump refused to grant Zelensky a meeting at the White House and halted $250 million of congressionally authorized military aid to the country, raising the possibility that the president was, as The Washington Post put it in an unsigned editorial, “not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign” but using U.S. military aid to “extort it.”
via Donald Trump Is Asking A Foreign Country To Help Him Win. Again. | HuffPost Australia
Michael Atkinson, the US government’s intelligence inspector general, has described the whistleblower’s August 12 complaint as “serious” and “urgent,” but he has not been allowed to turn over the complaint to Congress, a move that he created a fresh clash between the government’s executive and legislative branches.
It also has raised questions about whether Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence and Atkinson’s superior, is working with the Justice Department to protect the President.
Maguire has refused to discuss details of the whistleblower complaint, but he has been subpoenaed by Schiff’s committee and is expected to testify publicly on Thursday. Maguire and Atkinson also are expected to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee this week.
Democrats say the administration is legally required to give Congress access to the complaint. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, has said he will go to court in an effort to get it if necessary.
Schiff argued on Sunday that Trump is pushing Democrats closer to seeking his removal from office if the newest allegations are proven.
via Trump: ‘I discussed people like Biden with Ukraine’s President’
But no politician should believe his or her own propaganda. And no politician should believe Donald Trump’s.
via Sugar and smiles can’t dissolve the risks in getting too close to Trump
And how right the PM was, a man of undoubted perception, seeing in Craig Kelly something that had eluded the rest of us. Namely his grasp on climate science and his ability to understand and explain to the uninformed the vagaries of climate change.
I give you the honourable member’s speech to our parliament as recorded by Hansard :
Mr CRAIG KELLY (Hughes) (13:55): I understand how persuasive peer group pressure can be for teenagers, with their desire to conform and fit in with the crowd. However, I would say to any student considering joining the so-called climate protest: don’t be a sheep; think for yourself. You are being used and manipulated, and everything you are told is a lie. The facts are: there is no link between climate change and drought. Polar bears are increasing in number. Today’s generation is safer from extreme weather than at any time in human history. There is no 97 per cent consensus. Such claims are a fraud. Crop yields have increased remarkably. Wildfires have declined 25 per cent over the past two decades. We are seeing fewer cyclones, not more. Cold weather kills many times more people than hot weather, including here in Australia. The sea ice is not melting away; in fact, where the ill-fated Franklin expedition sailed in the year 1845 is blocked by thick sea ice this year. Renewables ain’t renewables, and they certainly don’t make electricity cheaper.
On Thursday night, the Post reported that the complaint “centers on Ukraine,” fueling speculation it is related to the Trump team’s public efforts to compel that nation’s government to reopen an investigation with the intention of damaging the 2020 presidential campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden. In a combative CNN interview later that night, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani confirmed that he had “ask[ed] Ukraine to look into Joe Biden.”
It’s early in the life of this story and while the reporting thus far seems ominous, there are a host of unanswered questions.
Before Trump became president, 654 miles of the nearly 2,000-mile U.S. Mexico border had primary barriers. As of today, that hasn’t increased.
To date, the administration has replaced about 60 miles of dilapidated barriers with new fencing. And a major component of Trump’s pledge — that Mexico would pay for the wall — hasn’t been part of the equation. U.S. taxpayers have paid the cost.
As Media Matters also noted, the Trump campaign amplified the lie:
via ‘Straight News’ At Fox: Ed Henry Lies About Border Wall | Crooks and Liars
The event comes at a dramatic crossroads for climate action. Young Americans are more worried about climate change than ever, but federal action to address the phenomenon has only been rolled back since the ascendency of President Donald Trump. Over the past two years, the White House has rolled back or eliminated dozens of the country’s key environmental laws and withdrawn the U.S. from the landmark Paris climate agreement.
At the same time, scientists have been tolling warning bells loudly. Global carbon emissions — the main driver of climate change — rose to a record high in 2018, which was also the fourth hottest year on record.
via From Sydney To San Francisco, Millions Are Striking For Global Climate Action | HuffPost Australia
I’d understood the dilemma of normalising Trump’s ideas and policies – the racism, misogyny and demonisation of the free press. But watching just one press conference from Otay Mesa helped me understand how the process of reporting about this president can mask and normalise his full and alarming incoherence.
As a foreign reporter visiting the US I was stunned by Trump’s press conference | Lenore Taylor | Opinion | The Guardian
and
olddogthoughts 
Trump is a walking, talking national security liability