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NYT: Donald Trump Can’t Stop Binge Watching Fox News

Donald Trump

While Donald Trump likes to publicly announce what a great job newly installed Chief of Staff John Kelly is doing, behind the scenes there are already moments of friction between the president and his keeper.

Via the New York Times:

President Trump was in an especially ornery mood after staff members gently suggested he refrain from injecting politics into day-to-day issues of governing after last month’s raucous rally in Arizona, and he responded by lashing out at the most senior aide in his presence.

It happened to be his new chief of staff, John F. Kelly.

Mr. Kelly, the former Marine general brought in five weeks ago as the successor to Reince Priebus, reacted calmly, but he later told other White House staff members that he had never been spoken to like that during 35 years of serving his country. In the future, he said, he would not abide such treatment, according to three people familiar with the exchange.

The article goes on to note that Kelly did not take the position of Chief of Staff because he needed it, but more as an act of duty.

The Times article also mentions that Trump can’t stop binge watching Fox News, which is apparently his main source of information.

Among other things, Kelly has apparently “thinned out” the daily news packets Trump gets. And in doing so has stopped including the more inflammatory articles from far-right outlets like Breitbart and The Daily Caller. So much so that Trump has asked where those articles were.

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Paul Ryan Opposes Ending DACA Policy, Urges Legislative Fix

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan

House Speaker Paul Ryan on Friday gave hope to those who support DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), a program instituted by President Barack Obama that protects from deportation undocumented immigrants who were brought to America by their parents before their 16th birthday.

During a radio interview, Ryan urged Donald Trump to not rescind the policy.

Ryan offered his take while talking to his hometown radio station WCLO in Janesville, Wisconsin. Ryan said Congress is currently working on a legislative fix to preserve the program.

“I actually don’t think he should do that,” Ryan said of Trump’s consideration of terminating the program. “I believe that this is something that Congress has to fix.”

Trump told reporters Friday he was still mulling the decision. The White House press secretary said a decision would be announced Tuesday.

There are over 800,000 current enrollees. Folks are accepted based on whether they have a clean record, good grades in school and strong ties to the community.

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News Round-Up: September 1, 2017

(via Instagram)

Some news items you might have missed:

• Roberto Caccamo gets a jump start on the weekend. #ThisBeMeIn321

• Four-time Grammy Award winner/out singer-songwriter Sam Smith announces new music due out next week.

• L’Oréal fires transgender model Munroe Bergdorf for speaking out against racism.

• Hollywood is singing the blues as summer comes to an end and the LA Times reports the lowest number of movie tickets sold in the U.S. since 1992.

• Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers says society is getting better about accepting gays in the locker room, but players still have “a fear of job security” if they might come out.

• September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, a time to connect with those affected by suicide and to share resources to better support individuals to prevent suicide. According to a 2016 study by the Center for Disease Control, 43% of lesbian, gay and bisexual high school students seriously considered suicide in the previous 12 months, compared to 15 percent of their heterosexual peers. Find more info at the Human Rights Campaign.

• Dance into the weekend with these new remixes of “Carefully Taught” by Tony/Grammy Award winner Billy Porter and India.Arie. The first is by Quentin Harris, the second by John J-C Carr.

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Minor League Catcher Can’t Take His Eyes Off Of You

Taylor Davis of the Iowa Cubs

Ok, this is totally funny.

Minor league baseballer Taylor Davis, catcher for the Iowa Cubs, has had a decent season thus far batting .292 and has 101 hits, 59 RBI and 25 doubles.

But the 27-year-old is getting national attention for his super-power that alerts him to any random camera that might be lensing him.

Last weekend, the Iowa Cubs tweeted this video of Davis staring into the camera at random times during pre-game activities, in-game moments and post-game celebrations.

When asked about his newfound talent, the woofy Cub said, “The camera just found me and the camera loves me, what can I say?”

Hit play and laugh along 🙂

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Trump Drops To Record-Low Approval Numbers On Gallup Tracking Poll

The Gallup Daily Tracking poll shows Donald Trump has hit a milestone in his approval rating, but not the kind any president would like to have.

The poll shows the Trumpster returning to his record-low approval rating – 34% – and a record-high disapproval rating of 61%.

#MAGA

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Unemployment Inches Up In August As Job Growth Misses Expectations

Unemployment ticked up to 4.4% in August as the economy only added 156,000 jobs, missing the mark of an estimated 180,000 jobs.

Via CNBC:

Economists surveyed by Reuters had been expecting payrolls to grow by 180,000 in August and the unemployment rate to hold steady at 4.3 percent. A broader measure that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons also was unchanged at 8.6 percent.

In addition to missing estimates, previous months’ job totals also were cut. June was revised down from 231,000 to 210,000 while July fell from the initially reported 209,000 to 189,000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

Wage growth also was weak for the month, with average hourly earnings up 0.1 percent for an annualized rate of 2.5 percent. The average work week declined by 0.1 hour to 34.4 hours.

Donald Trump likes to tout his “job-creating” ability. But, just for giggles, let’s compare the number of jobs added to the economy this year and last year during the same time period when Barack Obama was prez:

• 1st 8 months of 2016: 1,548,000

• 1st 8 months of 2017: 1,405,000

Now, if math serves me correctly, there were 148,000 more jobs created in the first 8 months of 2016 than 2017.

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Utah: Police Officer Under Investigation After Roughing Up Hospital Nurse

Whoa.

The Washington Post is reporting the story of a police officer who assaulted a nurse because she refused to allow the officer to draw a patient’s blood without a warrant.

By all accounts, the head nurse at the University of Utah Hospital’s burn unit was professional and restrained when she told a Salt Lake City police detective he wasn’t allowed to draw blood from a badly injured patient.

The detective didn’t have a warrant, first off. And the patient wasn’t conscious, so he couldn’t give consent. Without that, the detective was barred from collecting blood samples — not just by hospital policy, but by basic constitutional law.

Still, Detective Jeff Payne insisted that he be let in to take the blood, saying the nurse would be arrested and charged if she refused. Nurse Alex Wubbels politely stood her ground. She got her supervisor on the phone so Payne could hear the decision loud and clear. “Sir,” said the supervisor, “you’re making a huge mistake because you’re threatening a nurse.”

Payne snapped. He seized hold of the nurse, shoved her out of the building and cuffed her hands behind her back. A bewildered Wubbels screamed “help me” and “you’re assaulting me” as the detective forced her into an unmarked car and accused her of interfering with an investigation.

According to additional reports, present at the time were University of Utah police & Department of Public Safety officers, who did not intervene.

Watch below.

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Sen. John McCain: We Don’t Answer To Donald Trump

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, in an op-ed for the Washington Post, makes it clear he is DONE with Donald Trump.

An excerpt:

Our entire system of government — with its checks and balances, its bicameral Congress, its protections of the rights of the minority — was designed for compromise. It seldom works smoothly or speedily. It was never expected to.

It requires pragmatic problem-solving from even the most passionate partisans. It relies on compromise between opposing sides to protect the interests we share. We can fight like hell for our ideas to prevail. But we have to respect each other or at least respect the fact that we need each other.

That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct.

We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don’t answer to him. We answer to the American people. We must be diligent in discharging our responsibility to serve as a check on his power. And we should value our identity as members of Congress more than our partisan affiliation.

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Richard Anderson, ‘Six Million Dollar Man’ & ‘The Bionic Woman’ Actor, Passes Away At 91

Lee Majors (L), Richard Anderson (C), Lindsay Wagner (R)

Ah, man. I can’t tell you how much I loved both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman.

Richard Anderson, who brought to life “Oscar Goldman,” the head of the fictional Office of Scientific Intelligence and eventual boss of Six Million Dollar Man “Steve Austin” and The Bionic Woman “Jaime Sommers,” has passed away at the age of 91.

Via Hollywood Reporter:

In the highly rated, two-part episode that brought a thrilling end to the 1960s ABC series The Fugitive, Anderson portrayed the brother-in-law of Richard Kimble (David Janssen). He also was Police Lt. Steve Drumm on the final season of CBS’ Perry Mason and Santa Luisa Police Chief George Untermeyer on ABC’s Dan August, starring Burt Reynolds.

After three popular Six Million Dollar Man telefilms in 1973, the Universal TV property was given steady life as an ABC series in January 1974. On the show, Anderson played the chief of the fictional Office of Scientific Intelligence and the boss of Steve Austin (Lee Majors), a NASA astronaut who is injured in a crash and “rebuilt” (at a cost of about $29 million in today’s dollars), becoming a secret agent.

Anderson also is heard in the show’s action-packed introduction: “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, we have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man.”

The series then spawned The Bionic Woman — starring Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers, a tennis player who’s infused with machinery and brought back to life after a parachuting accident, and Anderson played Goldman on that show (which went from ABC to NBC) as well.

He was the first actor to portray the same character on two TV series running concurrently on two networks.

Both shows ended in 1978, but Universal, prodded by Anderson, made three more bionic telefilms through 1994. As an executive producer, he was instrumental in the casting of Sandra Bullock as a supercharged woman in 1989’s Bionic Showdown.

In a statement, Majors said that he first met Anderson in 1966 when he guest-starred on one of Majors’ earlier shows, The Big Valley.

“Richard became a dear and loyal friend, and I have never met a man like him,” he recalled. “I called him ‘Old Money.’ His always stylish attire, his class, calmness and knowledge never faltered in his 91 years. He loved his daughters, tennis and his work as an actor. He was still the sweet, charming man when I spoke to him a few weeks ago.”

Added Wagner: “I can’t begin to say how much I have always admired and have been grateful for the elegance and loving friendship I was blessed to have with Richard Anderson.”