monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I don't recall parts of the federal government shutting down due to lack of appointments during Bill Clinton's term.

At the end of the email chain, officials confirmed that tuning the TVs to Fox would be standard operating procedure going forward.

The channel-flipping flap was the latest example of how Mr. Trump, at a pivotal moment in his presidency, is increasingly living in a world of selected information and bending the truth to his own narrative. As his aides work to keep him insulated from the outside world, Mr. Trump is doubling down in his efforts to tell supporters to trust him over the words of critics and news reports.

Federal judge allows emoluments case against Trump to proceed

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected President Trump’s latest effort to stop a lawsuit that alleges Trump is violating the Constitution by continuing to do business with foreign governments.

The ruling, from U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte in Greenbelt, Md., will allow the plaintiffs in the case — the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia — to proceed with their case, which says Trump has violated the Constitution’s little-used emoluments clause.

The plaintiffs now want to interview Trump Organization employees and search company records to determine which foreign countries have spent money at Trump’s hotel in downtown Washington.

That's some pretty hard spin in #14 characterizing looting half a trillion dollars from Medicare as an effort to save it.

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected President Trump’s latest effort to stop a lawsuit that alleges Trump is violating the Constitution by continuing to do business with foreign governments.

The ruling, from U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte in Greenbelt, Md., will allow the plaintiffs in the case — the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia — to proceed with their case, which says Trump has violated the Constitution’s little-used emoluments clause.

[...]
In Helsinki, Putin said for the first time that he had wanted Trump to win the 2016 U.S. presidential election and after the summit complained about political forces in the United States trying to undermine the meeting’s
outcome.

Sergei Markov, a longtime Putin supporter and former lawmaker for the ruling United Russia party, wrote on social media after the summit that the Russian president had outplayed Trump in Helsinki “by a big margin”, but added:

“... In doing so he created a problem because he exposed his partner to fierce criticism in the United States.”

Putin should have given Trump the chance to tell U.S. media that he had extracted concessions from him in a “giveaway game”, staying focused on the longer-term goal of stabilizing ties between Moscow and Washington, Markov said on his Facebook page.

US president Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has been destroyed by someone with a pick axe. It's not the first time that the president's star has been vandalised.

“The president believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year,” Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said in a statement.

Last week, Mr. Trump unexpectedly said he would invite Mr. Putin to Washington in the fall — a move that some interpreted as a show of defiance by Mr. Trump after a storm of criticism over his meeting with Mr. Putin in Helsinki, Finland.

Mr. Trump directed Mr. Bolton to deliver the invitation. But the Kremlin had not yet accepted the invitation, raising questions about whether Mr. Putin was interested.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday in Moscow, Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin aide, acknowledged receiving the invitation but declined to say whether Mr. Putin would visit Washington this year. Mr. Ushakov said that the leaders had not discussed the future meeting while in Helsinki, but that Mr. Bolton had later conveyed the invitation to Russian officials.

Mr. Ushakov said Russian and American officials had reached “an understanding that a meeting must take place,” but that “practical aspects will be discussed later.” He said that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin would, in any case, have an opportunity to meet at a Group of 20 gathering in November in Argentina, and that “maybe there will be other international events which Trump and Putin will take part in.”

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s gift of a soccer ball to U.S.

President Donald Trump last week set off a chorus of warnings -- some of them only half in jest -- that the World Cup souvenir could be bugged.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham even tweeted, “I’d check the soccer ball for listening devices and never allow it in the White House.”

It turns out they weren’t entirely wrong. Markings on the ball indicate that it contained a chip with a tiny antenna that transmits to nearby phones.

But rather than a spy device, the chip is an advertised feature of the Adidas AG ball. Photographs from the news conference in Helsinki, where Putin handed the ball to Trump, show it bore a logo for a near-field communication tag.

During manufacturing, the NFC chip is placed inside the ball under that logo, which resembles the icon for a WiFi signal, according to the Adidas website.

The chip allows fans to access player videos, competitions and other content by bringing their mobile devices close to the ball. The feature is included in the 2018 FIFA World Cup match ball that’s sold on the Adidas website for $165 (reduced to $83 in the past week).

I’m actively boycotting all American made products