Robert Kelly spoke out about his viral BBC interview, saying the incident “was chaos for me” and “a comedy of errors.”
The professor and Korea expert spoke with The Wall Street Journal about the event, where his 4-year-old daughter and 8-month-old son unexpectedly entered his office as he was participating in a live interview with the BBC about the South Korean president’s resignation.
“I mean it was terribly cute,” Kelly told The Wall Street Journal. “I saw the video like everybody else. My wife did a great job cleaning up a really unanticipated situation as best she possibly could … It was funny. If you watch the tape I was sort of struggling to keep my own laughs down. They’re little kids and that’s how things are.”
Kelly and Kim told the newspaper they weren’t sure how to handle the massive media attention after clip of the interview went viral, receiving over 84 million views on the BBC Facebook page. “We stonewalled because we didn’t know what to do,” Kelly told the newspaper.
“Yes I was mortified, but I also want my kids to feel comfortable coming to me … I made this minor mistake that turned my family into YouTube stars. It’s pretty ridiculous.”
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/842104283768205312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/842021808983425028?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/StephLauren/status/842178674036219905
Kay from BJ brought up another good point:
The Medicaid costs in Trumpcare are 880 Billion.
880 BILLION in wages for work GONE from our economy. Nobody brings up those workers. is it because they are mostly female. And a large percentage is women of color?
Story after story about the phucking coal mining jobs that are dying and never coming back…
But nothing about these lost jobs in what have been growth industries
https://twitter.com/GIFs/status/841917831490998273?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Kushner’s Felon Father Back at Helm of New York Empire With Two Fellow Inmates
“It can’t hurt to be doing business with Jared Kushner’s family. It’s a road to the administration.”
by David Kocieniewski
and Caleb Melby
January 27, 2017, 4:00 AM CST
It’s hard to find work right out of prison. But Avram Lebor and Richard Goettlich walked from their Alabama penitentiary into top jobs at the real estate company then run by Jared Kushner, now President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. The two men, convicted in separate sprawling fraud schemes, were hired several years ago by his father, Charles Kushner, who had been locked up in the same federal prison with them.
As 36-year-old Jared Kushner settles into a White House role that includes personnel decisions and Middle East peace, the most extensive organizational experience he has to draw from is his lifetime at the closely held family real estate company, where his father is once again deeply involved. It’s a business where, like Trump’s, family and loyalty loom large. Management at Kushner Cos. has been mercurial, its feuds bruising and its political influence considerable. Recent joint ventures and investments expanded by Jared could lead to opportunities for unseen influence. Given the company’s history, ethics lawyers say, such opportunities merit close watching.
“It can’t hurt to be doing business with Jared Kushner’s family,” said Larry Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization focused on election laws. “It’s a road to the administration. At the very least they’re going to have an inside track.”
https://twitter.com/TerryGlavin/status/841782351126396928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Ivanka Trump’s Bitter Scent
MARCH 15, 2017
The next time you hear about the sway that Ivanka Trump holds over her father and what a powerful advocate for equal opportunity she is, I want you to remember these numbers:
Twenty. That’s how many men are in, or poised to join, the president’s cabinet.
Four. That’s how many women.
Barack Obama’s first cabinet included seven. Bill Clinton’s, six. George W. Bush’s, four, same as Trump’s, but that was 16 years ago, and he didn’t have an adult daughter who styled herself as both an influential adviser and a feminist hero. Where precisely is the Ivanka Effect?
She won’t be engaging this riddle in her new book, “Women Who Work,” due out in early May, and I say that not because I know what’s in it — I don’t — but because I know Ivanka, or at least I’ve been watching her closely for a while. She doesn’t take responsibility, not where dear old Dad is concerned. She takes advantage, all the while asking us to be grateful for her presence beside him.
When he behaves, word goes out that she or her husband, Jared Kushner, had his ear. When he doesn’t, word goes out that it wasn’t their fault, that they can do only so much and that if they hadn’t valiantly moved to Washington, well, think about how much worse off we’d all be.
There’s a big problem with this spin: His behavior wouldn’t matter if he weren’t sitting on such a lofty throne, and they helped to put him there. They empowered the mad king.
Now they want credit for mitigating the madness.
https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/842145097370218498?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/842152925875060736?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/justin_kanew/status/842161257180495873?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/C_Stroop/status/842146723124371457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Black Boy Fly: St. Louis Pre-Teen Starts Club To Promote Literacy Among His Peers
Lifestyle Jessica McKinney | March 15, 2017 – 11:45 am
After growing tired of selecting books out of his school’s library that featured characters and authors that didn’t look like him, 11-year-old Sidney Keys III decided it was time for a new reading curriculum. So, the St. Louis pre-teen started Books N Bros, a reading club for boys that celebrates black books and promotes literacy.
Sidney first got the idea after visiting Missouri’s University City bookstore, EyeSeeMe, according to St. Louis Public Radio. The bookstore is known for its large collection of African-American children’s books. Upon his first visit, Sidney’s mother, Winnie Caldwell recorded a video of her son reading in the store, which garnered more than 62,000 views on Facebook. Almost immediately after the impressive video reception, Sidney came up with the idea to form the book club, using EyeSeeMee as the common meeting grounds.
Since September 2016, Books N Bros has met monthly to discuss one book with a black protagonist that the group votes on for an hour. In the past, the group has read and dissected Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, Ty Allan Jackson’s The Supadupa Kid, and A Song for Harlem: Scraps of Time by Patricia McKissack. After the hour-long conversation, the boys play video games for thirty minutes at the Microsoft Store nearby.
Trump declares end to non-existent ‘assault’ on US auto industry
03/15/17 04:15 PM—UPDATED 03/15/17 04:29 PM
By Steve Benen
One of President Obama’s most important economic successes was rescuing the American auto industry from collapse. It makes remarks like these, reported by TPM, that much more ridiculous.
The Republican president assured his audience that he’d help improve auto production through a new “task force” that would look for possible regulations to eliminate. Evidently, that includes Obama-era fuel-efficiency standards, which in Trump’s mind, represents an “assault.”
Even by this president’s standards, today’s boasts in Michigan were pretty odd. For example, for all the talk about Trump “keeping his word,” he didn’t actually do anything today in terms of substantive changes. As the Associated Press reported, today’s move, which has no immediate effect, requires the EPA “to determine no later than April 2018 whether the 2022-2025 standards established are appropriate. If the EPA determines they are not appropriate, the agency will submit a new proposal next year.”
Trump, Not Health Care, Imperiled His Own Agenda
by Martin Longman March 15, 2017 2:21 PM
It kind of makes me laugh when people pretend that the Republicans in Congress need their numbers to add up in order to pass legislation. Still, the CBO says that the House bill to repeal Obamacare would create substantial savings. And, even if most of those savings would immediately be squandered on giving rich people a tax cut, the GOP is relying on the extra money to pass tax reform that will—you guessed it—give rich people more tax cuts.
As a result, GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who sits on the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Committee on the Budget, and the Committee on Finance, says that if the health care bill fails, the Republicans “won’t be doing any tax revision.”
This is presumably because there are enough budget hawks in the Republican Party that they can’t pass deficit-driven trickle-down economic policies, but that’s really something that remains to be seen. If the hangup is nothing more than budgetary chicanery that is unconvincing even to post-factual Freedom Caucus members, I’m not so sure it’s a fatal obstacle. Or, at least, they’ll be more inclined to go deeply into debt to finance tax reform than they would be to finance Trump’s infrastructure plan or education reforms.
In any case, the narrative is going around that Trump’s entire agenda will be imperiled if the congressional GOP doesn’t stop squabbling and get on with stripping health insurance from 24 million people. But, consider how imperiled his agenda is right now, and pay special attention to who is to blame for that.
As far as I can tell, the U.S. Senate isn’t inclined to enact Trump’s tariff plan and they don’t seem too keen on paying for the Mexican border wall since the Mexicans were supposed to pony up for that. The immigration crackdown is being done by executive order, and that’s tied up in court. And I haven’t heard a peep about a lobbying or ethics bill.
It’s not like the Senate Democrats are filibustering these bills. The bills don’t yet exist. And they’ll need 60 votes in the Senate, which means that at least 8 Democratic senators will have to support Trump’s plans. So far, though, the Democrats are showing no signs of cracking their resistance.
Making American Automobiles Unpopular Again. https://t.co/oYdc68faVE
— meta (@metaquest) March 15, 2017
Pres. Trump expected to announce rollback of Obama-era auto emission and fuel regulations during visit to Michigan. https://t.co/OmV6AVZAqQ pic.twitter.com/H4V00aaA37
— ABC News (@ABC) March 15, 2017
The Fear Sweeps Over the Trump Administration
by Martin Longman March 15, 2017 10:05 AM
The Department of Energy spends about $10 billion annually on research and development. Over the years, much of this R&D has had commercial applications. The DOE takes credit for spurring advances in “medical devices, manufacturing processes, water purification and digital recording,” as well as the development of “solid-state lighting, vehicle batteries and solar panels.” This is why in 2015, under the leadership of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, the DOE announced the launch of a new venture called the Office of Technology Transitions.
……………………………
We’re not talking about a huge budget here. The Office of Technology Transitions controls about $20 million that is earmarked to the Energy Technology Commercialization Fund. It amounts to “0.9 percent of the funding for the Department’s applied energy research, development, demonstration, and commercial application budget for each fiscal year.”
If you’re a new administration looking to reward folks who worked on your campaign, it’s a logical place to put someone with absolutely no background in applied science or energy-related issues. That’s why the Trump transition team hired Sid Bowdidge for the job.
They felt they owed Bowdidge some kind of job because he was an early supporter in New Hampshire. Bowdidge’s professional background, however, is less relevant than usual. He is reportedly a massage therapist. Obviously, the world needs massage therapists, but it should be self-evident that the same doesn’t apply to this office within the Department of Energy, which is focused on the commercial applications of cutting edge research at universities and national laboratories.
Mr. Bowdidge didn’t exactly fit in at his new job. An annoyed coworker decided to do a little investigation of him, probably to decide how in the hell he wound up working there. What they discovered was discouraging.
………………….
I actually learned about Mr. Bowdidge’s sad job loss in a different Politico article that focuses primarily on the absurd level of paranoia that is roiling the Trump administration. Apparently, when the news got out about Bowdidge and his Twitter account, it only made The Fear grow.
Ryan is eager to share credit (and blame) for GOP health care bill
03/15/17 10:50 AM
By Steve Benen
You’ve probably heard the expression, “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.” The point, obviously, is that when something goes right, many want to take credit, and when something goes wrong, many try to avoid blame. But what if failure can have many fathers, too?
The Republican health care plan is obviously struggling – opposition from within the GOP is, by every available metric, growing – and the discussion about who’s responsible for this fiasco is getting louder. With that in mind, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who unveiled the American Health Care Act just last week, talked to Fox Business this morning, where the Republican leader seemed eager to share credit/blame for his bill.
……………….
But let’s not miss the forest for the trees: Ryan is acutely aware of the fact that if/when this bill fails, the fingers will be pointed directly at him. It’s why the Wisconsin congressman is preemptively trying to spread the blame around – as if this weren’t the bill he and his team wrote in secret.
As for the idea that Republicans “all” ran on this legislation in 2016, this is plainly silly. Last June, Ryan unveiled what he described as his “Better Way” agenda, including an outline of some of his health care goals. Sure, the document existed, but it wasn’t legislation; it included no substantive details; he released no real data that could be scrutinized; and the outline amounted to “37 pages of talking points.”
Ryan’s reference to the election is apparently an attempt to claim a mandate, as if Americans consciously and deliberately endorsed the Republican health care plan that’s pending in Congress. It’s hard to imagine even the Speaker believing such a claim.
Excellent Twitter thread from Al about why Trumpcare is in the bad spot that it’s in
https://mobile.twitter.com/AlGiordano/status/842031482071879681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Noticing my Beloved President’s attire in this gif, did you see a recent photo of chimp trying to dress like him? What a buzzard.
‘Mortally wounded’ Republican health plan starts moving backwards
03/15/17 09:20 AM—UPDATED 03/15/17 09:46 AM
By Steve Benen
The Republican health care bill isn’t just struggling; in the wake of a brutal Congressional Budget Office report, “Trumpcare” is actually losing ground when its proponents expected to be making progress.
The CBO score was released last Monday afternoon, and yesterday, three House Republicans announced their position on their party’s bill: they’re now all opposed. The trio included Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), an influential moderate from Miami.
The picture in the Senate, where it only takes three GOP senators to vote with Democrats to kill important legislation, is almost certainly worse for the party’s leaders. Vox counted 12 Republicans senators who’ve publicly denounced and/or expressed serious concerns about the House bill, and that total doesn’t include Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who also criticized it yesterday. (Even South Dakota’s John Thune, a member of the Senate GOP leadership, suggested he’d like to see key changes to his party’s existing proposal.)
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who isn’t yet included in the group of intra-party skeptics, told NBC News’ Matt Lauer this morning that the existing House plan is “mortally wounded.”
Perhaps Republican leaders – in Congress and the White House – can find greater support outside the Beltway? The evidence points in the opposite direction: Politico reports that “at least 15 Republican governors have raised concerns about the House GOP’s health care bill.” The number of GOP governors who’ve publicly endorsed the American Health Care Act, meanwhile, stands at zero.
Paul Ryan, Donald Trump, and their allies aren’t just struggling at this point to move their bill forward; they’re actually moving backwards, gradually pushing their goal further away.
Uh huh
Uh huh
Republicans consider the subtle nuances of the word ‘everybody’
03/14/17 04:33 PM—UPDATED 03/14/17 05:09 PM
By Steve Benen
Two months ago, Donald Trump made a seemingly unambiguous commitment on the issue of health care: “We’re going to have insurance for everybody.” Soon after, BuzzFeed reported that congressional Republicans were working under the assumption that the president didn’t actually mean what he said, and were working on a plan that did not, in fact, cover all Americans.
And as it turns out, GOP lawmakers were correct; Trump didn’t mean a word of it. But this creates a political challenge for the White House: if the president guaranteed “insurance for everybody,” and the Republican plan Trump supports would increase the ranks of the uninsured by tens of millions of Americans, how in the world is the president’s team supposed to spin the obvious contradiction?
The answer is, by pointing to the invisible fine print. Today, for example, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the administration supports coverage for “everybody who wants to get it.”
See the difference?
This came up a bit yesterday, when the Congressional Budget Office’s report on “Trumpcare” was first unveiled, and news accounts noted that 14 million Americans would lose their coverage next year, and that number would expand to 24 million by 2026.
Not so, Republicans said. Sure, an additional 14 million Americans may no longer have health security next year, and that total may grow to 24 million in a decade, but it’s wrong to say they’ve “lost” their coverage. Rather, Republicans argue, it’s correct to say these millions of people simply won’t buy it.
THE EVERLOVING PHUCK?!?!?!?!?
Ok…calm down….
This is only confirmation folks. NEVER EVER TALK ABOUT TRUMPCARE WITHOUT MENTIONING THE 24 MILLION.
They can try this bullshyt, but people understand in their GUT – 24 million. They aren’t talking about libertarians who won’t buy it on principle…everybody knows one of the 24 million.
By firing Preet Bharara, Trump may have screwed himself even further. Now, AG Schneiderman (D) NY has control.https://t.co/G32rRjAJMq
— Adam B. Bear (@democraticbear) March 15, 2017
New from Gallup: Trump’s approval rate TANKING from 55 to 39. Dem opposition should be emboldened; resistance is working.
— David Brock (@davidbrockdc) March 14, 2017
James Comey expected to reveal whether FBI is investigating Trump campaign for Russia ties https://t.co/olWFpB4pYn pic.twitter.com/iuLIWxXvRP
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) March 15, 2017
I hate to say it but Comey could say there’s been no investigation
If that’s the case then we have a bigger problem#trumprussia #resist
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) March 15, 2017
Trump claims “nobody ever heard of” reporter who has covered him for decades and says Trump has called him at home: https://t.co/oaRZy2pw1b
— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) March 15, 2017
ask me if I care…..
Trump’s Trade Policies Could Crush Mike Pence’s Hometown
In export-heavy Columbus, Indiana, anxiety is high about the administration’s trade priorities.
by Saahil Desai
March 14, 2017
Indiana, like much of the Midwest, is littered with nondescript towns that blend together between the oceans of corn and soybean fields lining its arterial interstates.
Columbus, Indiana, nestled between Indianapolis and Louisville, isn’t one of them. The town of 45,000 is known for its impressive collection of modernist architecture. It also features a gleaming new sign visible when you drive east into town from nearby Bloomington: “Hometown of Michael R. Pence: Vice President of the United States.”
Columbus is where Pence was born and raised. It’s also the American city most vulnerable to protectionist trade policies that could be imposed by his administration. That’s the result of a report from Mark Muro and Joseph Parilla of the Brookings Institution, who ranked metro areas by the share of their economic output generated by exports, a metric they call “export intensity.”
While the country’s largest cities generate the most exports in absolute terms, it’s generally smaller towns with less diversified economies that are most reliant on exports. During the campaign, Trump promised to impose tariffs on foreign manufacturers. If he follows through, it could spark a trade war, as the affected countries respond by raising tariffs on American goods. Towns with high export intensity would be at the greatest risk because they tend to rely on a single large manufacturer or a single industry to sustain their economies. A trade war affecting that industry could bring an entire town to its knees.
For Columbus, the industry is auto manufacturing. A staggering 50.6 percent of the town’s GDP is generated from exports, mainly of vehicle engines, by far the most nationwide. (The next highest-ranked city, Beaumont, Texas, comes in at 40 percent.) Columbus has a remarkable concentration of auto manufacturing for a city of its size; one in six American jobs in engine equipment manufacturing is located there. Two other Indiana cities appear on Brookings’ list of export-intensive towns: Elkhart and Lafayette, reflecting the strong manufacturing presence in this corner of the Rust Belt. The most export-intensive cities in fact resemble a coalition of the downtrodden places across Middle America that Trump rode to victory last November
Congress Wants to Block States’ Efforts to Improve Retirement Security
by Ida Rademacher, Jeremy Smith, and David Mitchell
March 14, 2017
More than 30 states across the country are contemplating new ways to help workers save for retirement. Five states — California, Oregon, Connecticut, Maryland and Illinois — are already implementing new programs aimed at providing better access to retirement savings for the 55 million workers in America whose employers do not offer a retirement plan.
These innovations have strong bipartisan support, from Republican and Democratic state treasurers and other officials, and from small business owners and labor unions. In Maryland, for example, the state’s new “Secure Choice” plan won the approval of a Democrat-controlled legislature and a Republican governor.
Yet these promising experiments to improve the retirement security of America’s workers and their families could come to a screeching halt, if Congress acts to roll back Obama-era rules that gave states a green light to experiment with new ways of promoting retirement savings access.
The legislation, which has passed the House and is now pending in the Senate, would rescind a legal ruling the Department of Labor published last year confirming that employers who participate in the program would not run afoul of a federal statute called the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA. But easing the regulatory burdens that today make it hard for busy small business owners to offer a retirement plan to their workers was the whole point of these state programs.
From Paul Krugman about so-called “populism.” and health care
* It is important to note what the CBO said about the Republican plan to de-fund Planned Parenthood as part of their health care bill.
To the extent that there would be reductions in access to care under the legislation, they would affect services that help women avert pregnancies. The people most likely to experience reduced access to care would probably reside in areas without other health care clinics or medical practitioners who serve low-income populations. CBO projects that about 15 percent of those people would lose access to care.
The government would incur some costs for Medicaid beneficiaries currently served by affected entities because the costs of about 45 percent of all births are paid for by the Medicaid program. CBO estimates that the additional births stemming from the reduced access under the legislation would add to federal spending for Medicaid. In addition, some of those children would themselves qualify for Medicaid and possibly for other federal programs.
Quick Takes: Republicans Are All Over the Map on Health Care
by Nancy LeTourneau March 14, 2017 6:15 PM
* While conservatives suggest that the Republican health care bill is Obamacare Lite, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) is working on an amendment that would make it a tiny bit more like the original version.
The CBO Destroyed the Entire GOP Argument for Repealing Obamacare
by Nancy LeTourneau
March 15, 2017 7:00 AM
The report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was meant to outline what would happen if the American Health Care Act put forward by Republicans was passed. Because of that, the references to Obamacare were primarily about comparing the differences between the two approaches. But with one sentence, CBO destroyed the entire GOP argument for repealing Obamacare. Here’s the sentence:
They go on to explain why the nongroup market is stable under Obamacare:
That is the exact opposite of what Republicans are saying in order to justify the need to repeal Obamacare. For example, here is the kind of thing that Trump has been tweeting regularly:
…………………………..
After extolling the fact that their plan decimates Medicare, provides tax cuts and reduces the deficit, Ryan suggests that — contrary to what CBO actually said — their plan stabilizes the nongroup market while it is collapsing under Obamacare.
What is actually happening is that seven years ago Republicans decided that they would try to make health care reform “Obama’s Waterloo” and did all they could to obstruct its passage. That included lying about things like death panels and socialized medicine. When their obstruction failed to prevent Obamacare from becoming law, they switched to other lies and exaggerations about things like job losses and pretending that millions of people had lost their health insurance. None of that turned out to be true either.
Now that Republicans have the possibility of actually repealing the law, they are in need of a rationale for why it is important to do so. They’ve pretty much settled on this idea that the nongroup market is just about to implode and they are the ones to stop that from happening with their repeal/replace bill. CBO completely undermined that argument.
Remember:
1. It’s Trumpcare
2. 24 MILLION will lose their insurance
3. Those 24 MILLION will lose their insurance so that rich people can get a tax cut
4. This is an AGE TAX
Don’t forget to highlight these points, no matter where you are discussing Trumpcare.
Kevonstage did a parody of this
https://youtu.be/HOe7jY2X6WU
Somehow LeBron James found it, and retweeted it. It went viral…So, here’s Kevonstage about that
https://youtu.be/PAvWSy4zBxg
bwa ha ha ha ha ha
HOLLERING
Ha ha. Love this.
Good Morning, Everyone 😐😐😐
Good Morning, Rikyrah & Everyone.
HUMP DAY!!!
So (DINO)Senator Joe Manchin was just asked if he BELIEVED President Obama wiretapped #45, and he replied with:
I’m waiting for the result of the investigation or some such fuckery.
News FLASH , MOFO, you can believe inn something or someone without having an investigation.
He also said his constituents didn’t know the health insurance their are currently getting is linked to PBO, but they certainly will know who took it from them. These Pols are so complicit in keeping the poor, ignorant, racist, sick folks spiraling inn the STATUS QUO.
In other words they don’t want to give any credit to the BLACK PRESIDENT who led the most weeping legislation for healthcare since Roosevelt.
But they will scream & cry & beg the white #45 to not take it away, and kiss his orange ass if it doesn’t happen, and give him all the credit for saving their sorry, miserable, asses.
They are the 211st century slaves, and the congressmen & women who represent them are the SLAVE MASTERS.
DENIAL & WHITE SUPREMACY, HELLUVA DRUG, white folk!
I LOATHE THIS SNAKE IN THE GRASS.
tell that truth