Friday News: Putin Coming To Washington for Summit Part Deux? Dan Coats Says “That’s Gonna Be Special”; “Contrasting Virginia campaigns could affect control of House”

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Friday, July 20.

• The Double Down From Hell: Trump Invites Putin to D.C. for Second Meeting (“Of all the advice the White House has heard about how the president can help his party going into a tough, crucial midterm election, I am reasonably sure no one came up with this idea”)
• “No Way to Run a Superpower”: The Trump-Putin Summit and the Death of American Foreign Policy
• Trump Feeds Summit Uproar With Plans for Another Putin Meeting
• Putin Tells Diplomats He Made Trump a New Offer on Ukraine at Their Summit (“Russian leader suggested referendum in rebel areas, people say” The answer by any patriotic American should be F*** YOU VLADMIR, HELL NO!)
• George Will charges that Trump colluded with Putin (Will “is battling to save America and conservatism from the twin dangers of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.”)
• Putin invite sends Washington into Russian twilight zone
• Coats learns live that Trump inviting Putin to White House: ‘Say that again?’
• John Kerry says Trump-Putin Helsinki news conference was “disgraceful” and “dangerous”
• A Theory of Trump Kompromat (“Why the President is so nice to Putin, even when Putin might not want him to be.”)
• ‘That’s going to be special’: Tensions rise as Trump invites Putin to Washington (“Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats was clearly surprised when he was told about the news.”)
• Trump staffers freaking out because DNI head Coats laughed at president’s invitation to Putin to visit White House: report
• White House staffers accelerate plans to bail after Trump’s Helsinki debacle: ‘People are just depressed’
• Interior Department Proposes a Vast Reworking of the Endangered Species Act (This is completely unacceptable and outrageous. This administration is evil.)
• Why I’m No Longer a Russiagate Skeptic (“Facts are piling up, and it’s getting harder to deny what’s staring us in the face.”)
• Trump’s Biggest Gift to Putin (“Qualifying and conditioning the notion of NATO’s defense guarantee is a major step on the path to abandoning it.”)
• Trump’s Steel Tariffs Already Have Dire Consequences for American Companies
• Trump Is Being Manipulated by Putin. What Should We Do? (“Lawmakers must keep the American people informed of the current danger, writes a Republican congressman from Texas.” Better yet, impeach Trump.)
• Jeff Flake Hints at the T-Word (“The retiring Arizona senator criticizes President Trump like no other Republican. On Thursday, he accused the commander in chief of ‘giving aid and comfort to an enemy of democracy.'”)
• Donald Trump Doesn’t Give a Damn About the Legitimacy of His Presidency* (“It’s the spin du jour from the West Wing, but the idea doesn’t hold up.”)
• Mueller releases list of more than 500 pieces of evidence against Manafort
• God bless the ‘deep state’ (“Trump ignores evidence of his own intelligence community on election hacking.”)
• Trump Slams Rate Increases By Independent Federal Reserve (“The remarks certainly aren’t an immediate threat to Fed independence, but they break with the tradition of respectful distance.”)
• The World Burns. Sarah Sanders Says This Is Fine. (“The White House press secretary has set a new precedent: Partisanship over patriotism. Victory over truth.” The question is why do journalists participate in this farce at all? Just walk out.)
• Fossil Fuel Industries Outspend Clean Energy Advocates on Climate Lobbying by 10 to 1 (“Public opinion is pretty much a minor factor in deciding what Congress is going to do.”)
• NFL suspends new anthem rules, working with players to find ‘solution to the anthem issue’ (“Hours after it was revealed that the Miami Dolphins threatened to punish players who protest.”)
• GOP’s only black senator just killed nomination of Trump judicial pick suspected of being racist
• McConnell issues Supreme Court ultimatum (“The Senate GOP leader is vowing to squeeze Democrats with a vote on Brett Kavanaugh right before the midterms if they don’t back down on their demand for documents.” McConnell, horrible as always.)
• ‘You Are Either With Trump or You Are Against Him,’ Says Bannon, as Putin Mayhem Tests President’s Grip on GOP (“For the most part, Trump’s outraged, aghast followers-turned-critics have all come home very quickly. It’s a play we’ve all seen before.”)
• Fox News spends most of the day harping on meaningless ICE resolution (What a joke.)
• House vote to denounce carbon taxes puts climate caucus’ futility on display (“Almost every Republican member of Climate Solutions Caucus voted for anti-carbon tax resolution.” I’d abolish the group, as it’s pure “greenwashing” for anti-environmental Republicans.)
• Trump’s interpreter: Should she be compelled to tell what she heard during private meeting with Putin? (Hmmm…not sure that’s a good idea at all.)
• Between Maria Butina and Sacha Baron Cohen, Conservatives Look Like the World’s Biggest Suckers
• Congratulations, Mr. President: Zuckerberg Secretly Called Trump After The Election (Mark Zuckerberg is rapidly becoming one of my least favorite people.)
• Mark Zuckerberg’s latest comment shows he has no idea how Facebook works (“Zuckerberg wants fairness. The far-right wants power. That imbalance means the fringe will always win”)
• A New Talking Point From the Pro-Trump Fringe (“A new line of punditry is bubbling up among the president’s followers online: It was a positive thing that the Russians hacked the 2016 election.”)
• Trump is a real-world political science experiment (“How far will Republicans follow their leader?”)
• Kirstjen Nielsen on Charlottesville and white supremacist violence: “It’s not that one side is right, one side is wrong” (“DHS secretary echoes Trump’s ‘both sides’ defense of white supremacists in Charlottesville, which Fox & Friends and white nationalist media loved”)
• Whoopi Goldberg and Jeanine Pirro get into explosive argument backstage at ‘The View’ (Go Whoopi!)
• Contrasting Virginia campaigns could affect control of House (“While 136,000 primary voters have made Stewart his party’s de facto state standard bearer, Stewart’s in-your-face style is too politically toxic for much of the state’s congressional GOP caucus.”)
• Senator Tim Kaine reacts to U.S. and Russian president exchange
• Corey Stewart campaign attacks media, refuses to address staffer’s possible ties to Jason Kessler chat group
• Senate candidate Corey Stewart says New York Times reporter broke into aide’s apartment in Virginia (Corey is Cuckoo.)
• Va. attorney general declines to appeal federal finding of racial gerrymandering (“Herring urges courts to ignore GOP request in redistricting case; control of House of Delegates at stake”)
• Wexton talks about ‘reasonable Republicans’ joining Democrats in today’s political climate (Yep, we’re going to find out how many reasonable Republicans there are out there.)
• Virginia resident dies after coming into contact with a flesh-eating bacteria (“The person came into contact with Vibrio, a waterborne, flesh-eating bacteria.”)
• Northam creates separate school safety work group that could look at gun control (“Northam on Thursday announced the Work Group on Student Safety, a 20-person panel made up of state, local and school officials, along with some community members, that will consider ways to improve school safety.”)
• Pipeline explosion in W.Va. cited by opponents of Mountain Valley Pipeline
• Loudoun County vice chairman files candidate termination report; Buona not expected to seek re-election (“An executive with cybersecurity firm Telos, Buona won his 2015 contest by 4 percentage points over Democrat Mike Turner.”)
• Oh, that frosh class! (In the House of Delegates, that is) (“All 100 House members collected $2 million during the six months, so the 16 percent who are first time Democrats collected nearly 33 percent of the grand total.”)
• Rocking on in effort to add oyster reefs in the Piankatank River, and elsewhere (“The Nature Conservancy and VMRC are using the granite to build 15 acres of new oyster reefs in the lower Piankatank. That’s just upstream from 25 acres of reef built by the Army Corp of Engineers, VMRC, and The Nature Conservancy last year. The new reefs will contribute to the 428-acre restoration goal in the Piankatank, which is one of five Virginia tributaries to the Chesapeake Bay designated for restoration by 2025.”)
• Panel: Confederate flag along Virginia highway can’t stay
• Northam to visit free health clinic in Southwest Virginia
• Enjoy today, as our weather is about to deteriorate for a while