Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links below for the full articles.

You asked for a trade war, you got it!

China is moving forward with its plan to counter President Donald Trump's new tariffs on steel and aluminum, levying duties that will take effect Monday on more than $3 billion in U.S. exports to the country. 

In a statement Sunday, the Chinese government said it would impose the retaliatory tariffs on 128 products, according to an informal translation. 

China will impose a 15 percent tariff increase on goods including American fruit and nuts and add a 25 percent tariff on pork, recycled aluminum and other goods, the government said.

Supporters of nitwit bull(shitter)- in- a- China- shop Donald "Rump" Trump (a.k.a. President Spanky) in central valley California (fruit and nuts) and Iowa (pork) will soon be learning a hard lesson, one on which we're hard pressed to sympathize.

Rump to Putin:  Come see what you've bought!

President Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the two leaders could meet in the White House, a Kremlin aide told Russian media Monday, Russian news agencies said.

But, he heard sumpin' sumpin' on "Fox & Friends," so it must be true!

With a trio of temperamental tweets on Easter Sunday and three follow-ups this morning, Trump announced there will be no deal to save the 700,000 “dreamers” whose futures he put in peril by ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. He also called on Republicans to change the rules of the Senate to pass anti-immigration legislation with a simple majority and threatened to kill the North American Free Trade Agreement if Mexico does not step up border security. 

The president then falsely claimed that there are “big flows of people” who are sneaking into the United States “because they want to take advantage of DACA.” 

In truth, to be eligible for the program created by Barack Obama, immigrants must have lived in the United States since 2007, have arrived in the country before they turned 16 and have been younger than 31 on June 15, 2012. Anyone who came after does not qualify. 

It was Rump's way of saying "Happy Easter!"

From mindless to "a beautiful mind."

The life of renowned physicist and author Stephen Hawking was celebrated Saturday in English city of Cambridge, with hundreds of well-wishers lining the streets for a glimpse of the hearse carrying his remains to a private funeral.

Hawking will be interred in Westminster Abbey, near the remains of Sir Isaac Newton.

Last but never least, check out Infidel's link round-up, where you can get links to rabbits in the movies, the on- going failings of "Christians," innovative transport (hilarious), and how creative people see the world (among many, many interesting links).

Washington Post Pulls No Punches In Reporting On Trump's Dreamer Sabotage

This is how journalism is supposed to work: tell the truth about what you see.

On the front page of The Washington Post today, there's no "both sides" CYA in this lead news story by reporters David Nakamura and Mike DeBonis:

Trump administration assault on bipartisan immigration plan ensured its demise

As much of the country was gripped Wednesday by horrific images from the mass shooting at a Florida high school, two dozen senior Trump administration officials worked frantically into the night to thwart what they considered a different national security threat. 

The looming danger on the minds of the officials was a piece of legislation scheduled for a vote the next day in the Senate. It was designed to spare hundreds of thousands of young immigrants known as “dreamers” from deportation — but to the men and women huddled in a makeshift war room in a Department of Homeland Security facility, the measure would blow open U.S. borders to lawless intruders. 

“We’re going to bury it,” one senior administration official told a reporter about 10:30  that evening. 

The assault was relentless — a flurry of attacks on the bill from DHS officials and the Justice Department, and a veto threat from the White House — and hours later, the measure died on the Senate floor. 

The Trump administration’s extraordinary 11th-hour strategy to sabotage the bill showed how, after weeks of intense bipartisan negotiations on Capitol Hill, it was the White House that emerged as a key obstacle preventing a deal to help the dreamers.

Bravo, and thank you!  This has to continue because there are so many lies and so much disinformation pouring out of the Trump/ Republican firehose of falsehood, that we need a continual, factual pushback and record. Here, those facts point to a vile White (Supremacist) House that's determined to resist any attempt to provide a humane solution for Dreamers, as part of their overall campaign to "Make America Great White Again."  Now (very belatedly) perhaps we're seeing an emerging sense that journalists bear a great responsibility in our system for telling the truth and holding people and institutions accountable.  Perhaps.