With a regime as lawless as this one it’s hard to tell. The latest (as of writing) is that Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s Administration has effectively conceded the Citizenship Question after the unfavorable ruling by the Supremes by ordering the printing of a Question Free Questionnaire after earlier talk of seeking a delay to allow for a new filing that doesn’t lie as much.

Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio insists he is not defeated and Court action will proceed but unless there is a delay, a tough thing to get as the Census and its deadlines are not just Constitutionally mandated, the language is right in the Constitution itself, there will simply not be enough time to make any modifications. He has that ‘Bottomless Pinocchio’ for a reason, most speculation is that he’s ignorant and deluded (all the time and in every way) and/or simply lying to convince his base that he’s just as Bigoted and Racist as they are and will fight to the bitter end to make sure they can be as Bigoted and Racist as they want (which is ‘very’).

2020 Census Won’t Have Citizenship Question as Trump Administration Drops Effort
By Michael Wines, The New York Times
July 2, 2019

The Trump administration, in a dramatic about-face, abandoned its quest on Tuesday to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, a week after being blocked by the Supreme Court.

Faced with mounting deadlines and a protracted legal fight, officials ordered the Census Bureau to start printing forms for next year’s head count without the question.

The decision was a victory for critics who said the question was part of an administration effort to skew the census results in favor of Republicans. It was also a remarkable retreat for an administration that typically digs into such fights.

Just last week after the Supreme Court’s decision, President Trump said he was asking his lawyers to delay the census, “no matter how long,” in order to fight for the question in court. He reiterated his unwillingness to give up in a Twitter message posted late Tuesday, saying he had asked administration officials “to do whatever is necessary” to get a citizenship question on the census form.

Word of the administration’s decision to stop fighting came in a one-sentence email from the Justice Department to lawyers for plaintiffs in a New York lawsuit that sought to block the question’s inclusion in the head count.

The email offered no explanation, but the administration was confronting weeks or months of additional legal challenges to the question. Meanwhile, the Census Bureau had said it needed to begin printing questionnaires by July 1 to meet the April 2020 deadline for conducting the census.

The administration’s decision appeared to end a yearlong battle over the country’s all-important decennial head count. Census results are used to divvy up seats in the House of Representatives and to draw political maps at all levels of government. They are also used to allot federal funding for key social services.
…
On Tuesday, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents plaintiffs in that suit, indicated that it was unwilling to end the lawsuit without further assurances from the administration that the issue of the citizenship question had in fact been fully resolved.

Thomas A. Saenz, the organization’s president and general counsel, said his group wanted to make sure there was not any misinformation spread about there still being a citizenship question.

“No matter what happens, there’s still a lingering hardship from how long the administration had this hanging out there, and the publicity it got,” he said.

Opposition to the citizenship question was rooted among local governments and advocacy groups representing ethnic minorities, all of whom feared that the question’s mere presence on the census would deter noncitizens and even legal immigrants from filling out the form for fear of government retaliation.

The groups’ victory on Tuesday may have eased that threat, but hardly eliminated it. The public controversy over the issue has already stirred fears of retribution among many immigrants, who say they will avoid filling out the census form even if the question is not asked.

“Now is the time to shift gears and begin robust education and outreach campaigns to ensure each person in this country is counted,” said Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, which was also among the plaintiffs suing to block the question. “Everyone counts, therefore everyone must be counted.”

Coming up on the All-Star Game.

No Sport for old men.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Union forces win the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War; George Washington takes charge of the Continental Army; Algeria gains independence; Actor Tom Cruise born; Singer Jim Morrison dies.

We’ll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail.

Dave Barry

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By killing whales, is Japan trying to revive a dying industry?

Chinese border guards put secret surveillance app on tourists’ phones

Pictures, cartoons, memes – and now a movie: the afterlife of Alan Kurdi

‘Good Samaritans should not be prosecuted for helping people’

Libya migrants: Attack kills dozens at detention centre

That bad? Pretty much.

Some More News

Spaulding Gray was an actor, writer, and monologist. In perhaps his best known work, Swimming to Cambodia (an account of his time spent filming Apocalypse Now in which he had a minor role), he recounts swimming in the Gulf of Thailand during a break with a South African, part of the crew.

Spaulding’s friend was an Ocean Beach Certified Life Guard (a job I wouldn’t take on a dare, very dangerous and requiring a high degree of skill) so he felt very safe. The water was very warm with about a 2′ swell which doesn’t seem like much when you hear it on a TV Weather Report but is actually quite noticeable when you’re in it or on it. As Spaulding drifted his companion lost track of him in the waves (easy to do, can you lift your body 2′ out of the water?) and in an attempt to locate him his companion shouted “Spaulding. You’re too far out! I can’t see you. Turn back.”

Rather than focus on his peril (which was considerable, these are the kind of Death On The Highway scenarios they like to scare you with in Water Safety class) Spaulding floated a bit longer.

“Am I too far out?”

Jared Bernstein, while not the most Left guy (he was chief economist to Uncle Joe Carson), as I has seen enough headlines like “The Democrats are moving too far to the left!”, “Candidates are drifting to the far left”, and “There is Such a Thing as Too Far Left”.

Sorry, but there is no evidence that Democrats are moving too far left
By Jared Bernstein, Washington Post
July 2, 2019

It’s true that we can’t know whether the policy positions of the most progressive candidates are electoral winners, either in the primary or the general election. There’s just far too much political uncertainty in the air to make such calls, an uncertainty driven by the rise of economic challenges and market failures that rocked ordinary voters.

But the “too far left” answer is hardly a rigorous, scientific, reliable finding. It’s speculative, chin-stroking punditry, ungrounded impressions, free-floating nervousness and a failure to recognize and/or appreciate the evolving demands of the Democratic base. It should be ignored. The best way forward for the party, the candidates and the country is to shut out the scolds and allow the debate to take us wherever it goes.

Which was largely what occurred last week. No question, those four hours over two debates were a weird, cacophonous spectacle. But they were also the beginning of the political argument America needs to have.

Consider, for example, universal health coverage, which in the debates came under the rubric of Medicare-for-all (M4A). The tension was between candidates who want to go straight to a government-run, single-payer plan with no private insurance and those who seek a more incremental approach, often described as a “public option.” That is, build on the current system in a way that allows individuals and employers to buy into public coverage, what candidate and South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg succinctly called “Medicare for All who Want It.”

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m with the incrementalists, and by most polls, we’re in the majority. A fairly typical result such as this one from KFF’s tracking poll shows 56 percent support M4A, but 74 percent support the “public option” approach. But as this nuanced discussion of the issue from RealClearPolitics reveals, even with the caveat that “Medicare for All … is a system that will eliminate all private health insurance companies,” more than half (55 percent) of respondents supported the proposal (34 percent opposed).

In other words, most people want a health-care system that is fundamentally different from the one we have, with the government playing a larger role. How large that role is and how quickly we can get there are open questions, as they should be. Health-care policy is complex; every country has a different model (though, notably, other advanced economies spend one-half to two-thirds what we do on health care as a share of their GDP). But the broad public has signaled that something’s got to give, and voters want to hear politicians have an extensive debate about the options. Remarkably, that’s what they’re getting from the Democrats.

Immigration policy is an even more complex policy set, one that has long bedeviled politicians and electorates across the globe (e.g., anti-immigration sentiments were a key motivation for “leave” Brexit voters). But the Trump administration, not the Democratic candidates, is out of step with a public that is much less negative than is the Republican Party about legal immigration and asylum seekers. Regarding undocumented entries, Republicans, including the president, are apparently giddy at the chance to run against a candidate who supports making such crossings civil, not criminal offenses (Vox points that criminal prosecution “gave the Trump administration the power to separate thousands of families in 2018”), and it’s clear that Democrats are treading on tricky electoral ground, as there’s much less popular support for undocumented immigration. But the manufactured, humanitarian crisis at the border has turned fatal, and the wide-open debate among Democrats is how our nation can discern how to meet this challenge in a way that’s consistent with our history and values.

On the economy, the widely accepted narrative from the debates was that the system is far too rigged in favor of the powerful. The facts support the claim: Recent Federal Reserve data reveals that 70 percent of net wealth is held by the top 10 percent of households, while the bottom half holds but 1 percent. The net worth of the top group is 25 times that of the bottom. And the wealth concentration is reflected in the increasingly concentrated power of the largest multinational firms. More so than any other advanced democracy, such wealth and industrial concentration interacts toxically with the extremely permeable barrier between money and politics in our system. In the face of all this inequality, the signature achievement of the Trump administration was a tax cut that is distributing even more income up the scale. Moreover, as we speak, the administration is trying to pass more regressive cuts (this time, for capital gains) through executive order.

There are also examples about climate change, reproductive rights, globalization and racial injustice. In fact, it should surprise no one that the extent of unchecked economic and racial imbalances, alongside truly existential environmental threats, has given rise to a set of policy solutions that establishment figures will view as immoderate.

But this is what democracy looks like. This debate is occurring because there are enough of us who believe that when it comes to all these challenges, conservative policy is unresponsive at best and exacerbating at worst. Moreover, we are open to the possibility that traditional, establishment, left-of-center solutions will be inadequate.

And we are, at this stage, thoroughly uninterested in overheated, speculative punditry about the dangers of having this very debate.

I too, at this point, am thoroughly uninterested in overheated, speculative punditry about the dangers of having this debate. The reason it’s called Populism is because it’s popular. Shut your Neo Liberal “I got mine Jack therefore the system that called me meritorious is flawless and perfect, screw you you filthy, lazy Grasshopper ‘Takers'” gobs you deluded narcissistic morons.

Late Night

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Continental Congress votes to break away from Britain; Civil Rights Act signed; Amelia Earhart disappears; President James Garfield shot; Author Ernest Hemingway commits suicide; Actor Jimmy Stewart dies

Instead of building walls, we should be building bridges.

Vicente Fox

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Hong Kong protests: China says protesters ‘trample rule of law’

China has accused protesters who vandalised Hong Kong’s parliament on Monday of “serious illegal actions” that “trample on the rule of law”.

A group of activists occupied the Legislative Council (LegCo) building for several hours after breaking away from a peaceful protest.

Hundreds of police used tear gas to clear the building.

Beijing urged the city to investigate what it called the “criminal responsibility of violent offenders”.

Hong Kong is part of China but is run under a “one country, two systems” arrangement that guarantees it a level of autonomy, and rights not seen on the mainland.

Jakarta residents to sue government over severe air pollution

The Indonesian capital topped the charts for the world’s most polluted city a dozen times in June

Kate Lamb in Jakarta

Tue 2 Jul 2019 01.57 BST

Tired of breathing in some of the world’s filthiest air, a group of activists and environmentalists in Jakarta has decided to sue the Indonesian government to take action.

Air quality in the south-east Asian metropolis has plunged dramatically in the past month and recorded worse conditions than notoriously polluted cities such as Delhi and Beijing.

Social media users have uploaded photographs of the Indonesian capital blanketed in smog under the hashtag, #SetorFotoPolusi.

Iraqi PM orders Iran-backed militias into army command

Baghdad has ordered militias to join the army and their leaders to choose between paramilitary or political activity. The move comes amid concern that Iraq could become a battleground as US-Iran tensions spike.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi issued has issued a decree seeking to bring mostly Iran-backed militias under the command of the armed forces.

The mostly Shiite militias fall under an umbrella grouping known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), powerful paramilitary and political forces that fought against the “Islamic State” alongside the US-backed Iraqi army.

In all there are about 140,000 battle-hardened armed men in militias in Iraq.

Venezuelan deputy faces trial for drone ‘hit’ attempt on Maduro

A Venezuelan politician accused of an attempt to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro using explosing drones will face trial after a court on Monday accepted charges against him, his lawyer said.

Opposition lawmaker Juan Requesens faces 30 years in prison if found guilty of the brazen attempt to kill Maduro as he attended a military parade in downtown Caracas on August 4, 2018.

Two drones packed with explosives flew towards President Maduro, causing panic among soldiers and civilians when they detonated during his speech.

Destination trouble: Can overtourism be stopped in its tracks?

Joe Minihane, CNN • Updated 2nd July 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Other Democrats Reject “Staged” Tour of Migrant Detention Facilities

July 2 2019

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ resisted the efforts of Customs and Border Protection officials to prevent her from speaking directly to migrants detained in El Paso, Texas on Monday, forcing her way into a cell filled with women during a visit by a Congressional delegation.

Emerging from the facility, Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter that one of the detained women “described their treatment at the hands of officers as ‘psychological warfare’ — waking them at odd hours for no reason, calling them wh*res, etc.”

Ocasio-Cortez told reporters, in Spanish and English, that conditions at the facility were unacceptable, and condemned the behavior of the officers she encountered there. The detained women were held without access to running water, Ocasio-Cortez said, and were “told by CBP officers to drink out of the toilet.”

I guess there are some good ones but it seems to me if you’re attracted to that type of work you might possibly have some Jackbooted Stormtrooper/Bully issues to work out.

Yeah yeah yeah, a few bad apples, WITH MILITARY WEAPONS AND NO ACCOUNTABILITY backed by the State Monopoly on Violence. I know good Cops, people who actually believed in Law and Public Service and some adrenaline junkies (normally they gravitate to high risk assignments like Harbor Patrol, much more dangerous than you think and that’s just to stay alive on the Water Day In, Day Out).

But I’ve been professionally paired (I’ve done Traffic Research) with a bunch of Closet Fascists and have been hard pressed to maintain an image suitable to the dignity of my employer, spending up to 8 hours trapped in a Cruiser with someone gloriously boneheaded and ignorant about the Law and the Constitution WHO WILL NOT SHUT UP.

Inside the Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group Where Agents Joke About Migrant Deaths and Post Sexist Memes
by A.C. Thompson, Pro Publica
July 1, 2019

Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings.

In one exchange, group members responded with indifference and wisecracks to the post of a news story about a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who died in May while in custody at a Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas. One member posted a GIF of Elmo with the quote, “Oh well.” Another responded with an image and the words “If he dies, he dies.”

Created in August 2016, the Facebook group is called “I’m 10-15” and boasts roughly 9,500 members from across the country. (10-15 is Border Patrol code for “aliens in custody.”) The group described itself, in an online introduction, as a forum for “funny” and “serious” discussion about work with the patrol. “Remember you are never alone in this family,” the introduction said.
…
ProPublica received images of several recent discussions in the 10-15 Facebook group and was able to link the participants in those online conversations to apparently legitimate Facebook profiles belonging to Border Patrol agents, including a supervisor based in El Paso, Texas, and an agent in Eagle Pass, Texas. ProPublica has so far been unable to reach the group members who made the postings.

ProPublica contacted three spokespeople for CBP in regard to the Facebook group and provided the names of three agents who appear to have participated in the online chats. CBP hasn’t yet responded.

“These comments and memes are extremely troubling,” said Daniel Martinez, a sociologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who studies the border. “They’re clearly xenophobic and sexist.”

The postings, in his view, reflect what “seems to be a pervasive culture of cruelty aimed at immigrants within CBP. This isn’t just a few rogue agents or ‘bad apples.’”

The Border Patrol Facebook group is the most recent example of some law enforcement personnel behaving badly in public and private digital spaces. An investigation by Reveal uncovered hundreds of active-duty and retired law enforcement officers who moved in extremist Facebook circles, including white supremacist and anti-government groups. A team of researchers calling themselves the Plain View Project recently released a hefty database of offensive Facebook posts made by current and ex-law enforcement officers.

And in early 2018, federal investigators found a raft of disturbing and racist text messages sent by Border Patrol agents in southern Arizona after searching the phone of Matthew Bowen, an agent charged with running down a Guatemalan migrant with a Ford F-150 pickup truck. The texts, which were revealed in a court filing in federal court in Tucson, described migrants as “guats,” “wild ass shitbags,” “beaners” and “subhuman.” The messages included repeated discussions about burning the migrants up.

Several of the postings reviewed by ProPublica refer to the planned visit by members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, including Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Veronica Escobar, to a troubled Border Patrol facility outside of El Paso. Agents at the compound in Clint, Texas, have been accused of holding children in neglectful, inhumane conditions.

Members of the Border Patrol Facebook group were not enthused about the tour, noting that Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from Queens, had compared Border Patrol facilities to Nazi concentration camps. Escobar is a freshman Democrat representing El Paso.

One member encouraged Border Patrol agents to hurl a “burrito at these bitches.” Another, apparently a patrol supervisor, wrote, “Fuck the hoes.” “There should be no photo ops for these scum buckets,” posted a third member.

Perhaps the most disturbing posts target Ocasio-Cortez. One includes a photo illustration of her engaged in oral sex at an immigrant detention center. Text accompanying the image reads, “Lucky Illegal Immigrant Glory Hole Special Starring AOC.”

Another is a photo illustration of a smiling President Donald Trump forcing Ocasio-Cortez’s head toward his crotch. The agent who posted the image commented: “That’s right bitches. The masses have spoken and today democracy won.”

The posts about Escobar and Ocasio-Cortez are “vile and sexist,” said a staffer for Escobar. “Furthermore, the comments made by Border Patrol agents towards immigrants, especially those that have lost their lives, are disgusting and show a complete disregard for human life and dignity.”

The head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Joaquin Castro, reviewed the Facebook discussions and was incensed. “It confirms some of the worst criticisms of Customs and Border Protection,” said Castro, a Democrat who represents San Antonio. “These are clearly agents who are desensitized to the point of being dangerous to migrants and their co-workers.” He added that the agents who made the vulgar comments “don’t deserve to wear any uniform representing the United States of America.”

Vicki Gaubeca, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, said the postings are more evidence of the sexism and misogyny that has long plagued the Border Patrol. “That’s why they’re the worst at recruiting women,” said Gaubeca, whose group works to reform the agency. “They have the lowest percentage of female agents or officers of any federal law enforcement agency.”

In another thread, a group member posted a photo of father and his 23-month-old daughter lying face down in the Rio Grande. The pair drowned while trying to ford the river and cross into the U.S.; pictures of the two have circulated widely online in recent days, generating an outcry.

The member asked if the photo could have been faked because the bodies were so “clean.” (The picture was taken by an Associated Press photographer, and there is no indication that it was staged or manipulated.) “I HAVE NEVER SEEN FLOATERS LIKE THIS,” the person wrote, adding, “could this be another edited photo. We’ve all seen the dems and liberal parties do some pretty sick things…”

Really? Something that compares to sexually abusing women with unnecessary Pelvic Exams? Something equivalent to locking up 10s of Thousands of people in Concentration Camps to rot and die including over 10 Thousand innocent children forcibly separated from their families? Something like lying us into a Criminal War of Aggression that killed Hundreds of Thousands of Iraqi Men, Women, and Children and over 4800 of our troops?

Oh, we make you angry because we think you’re a bunch of bigoted morons.

You are.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez–

Just left the 1st CBP facility.

I see why CBP officers were being so physically &sexually threatening towards me.

Officers were keeping women in cells w/ no water & had told them to drink out of the toilets.

This was them on their GOOD behavior in front of members of Congress.

(h/t Atrios)