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brooklynite

brooklynite's Journal
brooklynite's Journal
August 27, 2020

Some of the immigrants Trump naturalized on Tuesday didn't know they were being broadcast.

Source: New York Times

In one of the most striking moments of the second night of the Republican convention on Tuesday — both for its content and for its blatant disregard of the separation between the White House and the campaign trail — President Trump held a naturalization ceremony for five immigrants.

It was an obvious effort by Mr. Trump’s campaign to cast him as pro-immigrant after three and a half years of anti-immigrant policies. But at least two of the five new citizens were not told it was being broadcast at the convention.

The decision by Mr. Trump’s campaign to feature the naturalization ceremony angered some senior officials with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Some asylum officers confronted senior agency officials during a virtual town hall on Wednesday about whether Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, had violated rules prohibiting political activity by presiding over the ceremony.

“It’s one of the things that shouldn’t be politicized, and you can hardly get more political than your partisan political convention,” said Barbara Strack, a former chief of the refugee affairs division at Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Bush and Obama administrations.

— Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Michael D. Shear

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/08/26/us/rnc-convention-election/some-of-the-immigrants-trump-naturalized-on-tuesday-didnt-know-they-were-being-broadcast

August 26, 2020

Hurricane Laura is now a Category 4 storm

Source: CNN

Hurricane Laura has strengthened into an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center. It now has maximum sustained winds of up to 140 mph.


Read more: https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/hurricane-laura-updates/h_a0575d1ed70e9977fc1f0fb3104b260c



BULLETIN
Hurricane Laura Intermediate Advisory Number 27A
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL AL132020
100 PM CDT Wed Aug 26 2020

...AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT REPORTS LAURA HAS BECOME AN
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE...
...CATASTROPHIC STORM SURGE, EXTREME WINDS, AND FLASH FLOODING
EXPECTED ALONG THE NORTHWEST GULF COAST TONIGHT...
...LITTLE TIME REMAINS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY...


SUMMARY OF 100 PM CDT...1800 UTC...INFORMATION
----------------------------------------------
LOCATION...27.3N 92.5W
ABOUT 200 MI...320 KM SSE OF LAKE CHARLES LOUISIANA
ABOUT 200 MI...320 KM SSE OF PORT ARTHUR TEXAS
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...140 MPH...220 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...NW OR 315 DEGREES AT 16 MPH...26 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...952 MB...28.11 INCHES


WATCHES AND WARNINGS
--------------------
CHANGES WITH THIS ADVISORY:

None

SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT:

A Storm Surge Warning is in effect for...
* Freeport Texas to the Mouth of the Mississippi River

A Hurricane Warning is in effect for...
* San Luis Pass Texas to Intracoastal City Louisiana

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for...
* Sargent Texas to San Luis Pass
* East of Intracoastal City Louisiana to the Mouth of the
Mississippi River

A Storm Surge Watch is in effect for...
* Mouth of the Mississippi River to Ocean Springs Mississippi
* Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Maurepas, and Lake Borgne

A Hurricane Watch is in effect for...
* East of Intracoastal City to west of Morgan City Louisiana
August 26, 2020

DOSE OF JOE -- Aug 26

Friends -- see below for today's Dose of Joe.

On Wednesday, August 26, Kamala Harris will attend a virtual “Sister to Sister: Mobilization in Action Program” roundtable in Michigan to launch a nationwide voter engagement program for Black women, which will be open press. You can watch HERE.

In a strong rebuke to the current administration, former Republican Presidential Appointees and legal experts came out in support of Joe Biden and against President Trump in light of the corruption and abuse of power that has pervaded the current administration.

Biden for President released a new ad in North Carolina to highlight the Trump administration’s failures in uplifting, supporting, and empowering Black communities across the United States.

Yesterday, Biden for President announced new Spanish language and bilingual ads demonstrating the negative impact Trump's failed response to the pandemic has had in Latino families across the country. The ads: "No Escucha", “Si Se Puede, Hope Again”, "Un Buen Plan" showcase how a Biden-Harris Administration will take clear steps to get the virus under control and bring back jobs to help working families.

In recent polls conducted by Public Policy Polling Biden leads Trump in Delaware, Florida, and New York.

JOE’S TWEETS TO AMPLIFY

@JoeBiden: I believe the American people are ready for something better. This is our moment to prove hope is more powerful than fear, love is more powerful than hate, and light is more powerful than darkness.

@JoeBiden: When they say “the best is yet to come,” that’s a threat.

@JoeBiden: It's time for us, for We the People, to come together. Because united, we can — and will — overcome this season of darkness in America.

August 26, 2020

Social Mobility Explains Populism, Not Inequality or Culture

Brookings Institution

What is driving contemporary populism, for example Brexit, Trump, the Gilets Jaunes, and Five-Star? Commonly-accepted answers are divided into two schools of thought, one economic and one cultural. The main explanation in the former camp is income inequality; those in the latter are social media-induced ideological polarization, unprecedented levels of immigration, and older generations reacting against millennial values. This paper exploits geographic variation in the incidence of populism to apply cross-sectional regression analysis to these arguments, and concludes that they are highly unconvincing. Instead, the thus-largely overlooked factor of social mobility is found to have far greater explanatory power. Four settings are analyzed: the 2016 US Presidential Election, the 2017 French Presidential Election, the 2019 European Parliament Elections, and the political stability of developed countries in 2018. The article contends that the decisiveness of social mobility as an explanatory variable for populism is plausibly rooted in universal human conceptions of fairness.

Download Report
August 26, 2020

New reports on the 2019 election show Labour's conflicts aren't over

The Guardian

Since the devastating 2019 general election result, few Labour members would disagree that their party’s campaign was chaotic. Confused messaging, panicky policy announcements and a forgettable slogan (“It’s time for real change”) all pointed towards that conclusion. But the messy details of the campaign are now emerging in a series of Times extracts from Left Out, a new book by two reporters from the paper, Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire.

By the time of the December election, mistrust between party colleagues had already undermined Labour’s chances. Just two weeks before polling day, a new strategist was brought in to work up ideas for winning back leave voters, an alternative slogan was introduced (“We’re on your side”), and a defensive approach to targeting seats began.

Brexit was a central factor in the election result, of course. It created a deep rift within the Labour left and split longtime friends and allies Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Those closest to the Labour leader felt that the shadow chancellor repeatedly overstepped the mark by siding with backbenchers in favour of a fresh EU referendum. Karie Murphy, Corbyn’s chief of staff, even told the authors that McDonnell “moved against both of us” and “it f****d our project”.

Phew, Keir Starmer might be tempted to think. That Brexit is now being done means Labour is no longer struggling with an existential issue that calls for bold answers on national identity (at least not in England – the Scottish constitutional question still looms). That’s one intractable problem out of the way. Of course, there is still much to be done to address the lingering crisis over antisemitism in the Labour party – but one member of Labour’s ruling body has reported that, with the help of frequent online meetings, the party is clearing its backlog of disciplinary cases.

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Name: Chris Bastian
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Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
Home country: USA
Member since: 2002
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