Divernan
Divernan's JournalNow that Scaife is dead, Tribune Review is pushing Webb, not Clinton
When uber-conservative, multi-millionaire Richard Scaife was alive, (very old and a bit senile, but still alive) Hill & Bill sucked up to him so hard that Bill got contributions to his boutique, family owned "non-profit" which subsidizes the Clintons' 5 star life style and Hillary got Scaife's endorsement in the 2008 primary in the newspaper Scaife owned and published, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. One had to wonder what on earth quid pro quo Hillary offered to win over the extremely conservative Scaife. Now Scaife is gone (with a lovely eulogy by Bill at the memorial service) and also gone with the wind is any endorsement of HRC by the paper formerly owned by Scaife.
It was delightful to see in today's Trib-Review a very long, detailed and glowing article about Jim Webb. They like him - they really like him! And that's because he's pretty conservative for a Democrat. What I'm delighted about is that he and other Dems, including Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, are expressing interest in making our primary a horse race and not a coronation.
Former Senator Webb explores presidential bid, tests populist message
WASHINGTON — Jim Webb's parents taught him early what it means to be a leader. “Different families have different discussions at the dinner table,” he said. “Ours was how you lead people; how do you take care of people?” Those talks typically culminated in this question: “What kind of leader do you want — a leader who will make you do something, or make you want to do something?” he told the Tribune-Review in an interview on Capitol Hill. He knew then that his life's calling was “this alternating cycle of public service and independent entrepreneurship.”
Webb, 69, the former senator from Virginia, is pondering whether he can gain the support necessary to make a successful run in 2016 for the Democratic nomination for president.
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Then Webb became the first potential 2016 presidential candidate to form an exploratory committee, in November. His populist style differs from other Democrats who might seek the party's nomination by putting forth sharp anti-Wall Street, anti-Koch brothers rhetoric. “This is not ‘anti-Wall Street' for me,” he said. “We have to grow our economy for people to have successful lives, but at the same time, we have to be fair.”
He is clear that he would never vote to increase taxes on “ordinary earned salary income, no matter what the level is, that is fairly earned.” But he questions income such as capital gains, “where you can be making millions of dollars off of stock sales and pay a lower tax rate than the firefighters putting their lives on the line.”
Read more: http://triblive.com/politics/politicalheadlines/7948450-74/webb-former-populist#ixzz3UUDMTifL
Follow us: @triblive on Twitter | triblive on Facebook
How conservative was Scaife? His was the money behind that "vast right-wing conspiracy" HRC was once so upset about. Here are just a few examples from a lengthy Washington Post article:
Mr. Scaife donated millions to such tea party-friendly groups as FreedomWorks, known for its anti-union campaigns and calls for reducing government regulation of business, privatizing Social Security and establishing English as the official language of the United States.
He was a major underwriter of the American Spectator magazine’s Arkansas Project to find evidence of financial and personal misdeeds by the Clintons in the 1990s. The effort included David Brock’s magazine story containing allegations from four Arkansas state troopers that they helped procure women for then-Gov. Bill Clinton.
Most notably, Mr. Scaife personally hired a freelance writer to try to establish that either President Clinton or then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was instrumental in the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr. in 1993. Foster, a former law-firm partner of the first lady, was found dead from a gunshot wound to the mouth in Fort Marcy Park in Fairfax County.
Three investigations, including one in 1997 by Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr, a luminary in the conservative firmament, ruled the death a suicide. Mr. Scaife was unpersuaded. In 1998, he told George magazine editor in chief John F. Kennedy Jr. that the Foster death was “the Rosetta stone to the Clinton administration,” referring to the ancient Egyptian stone used to decipher hieroglyphics, and that Bill Clinton “can order people done away with at his will. He’s got the entire federal government behind him.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/richard-mellon-scaife-billionaire-famous-for-attacks-against-bill-clinton-has-died/2014/07/04/9e2fcace-458c-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html
Diane Rehm & her distinguished guests back you up 100%, whereisjustice
I refer everyone to this video of this past week's Friday News Roundup on NPR/Diane Rehm, with her distinguished guests
(1) John Dickerson chief political correspondent for Slate magazine and political director for CBS. Author of "On Her Trail: My Mother, Nancy Dickerson, TV News' First Woman Star."
(2) John Prideaux washington correspondent, The Economist.
(3) Karen Tumulty national political reporter, The Washington Post.
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2015-03-13/friday-news-roundup-domestic
They start discussing HRC and her ineffectual and inept handling of whole email debacle at 24:20 on the video.
What's a poor Hill Fan to do? Desperately shriek that Diane Rehm, the Washington Post, The Economist and Slate are all right wing sources?
It's an excellent discussion of all the ways HRC is in trouble with her blundering attempts to spin her self-regulated document dump, SIX YEARS AFTER THE FACT, as complying with the regulations in place while she was SOS - AND the fact that this matter will take months to get sorted. And that her paranoid insecurity is her own worst enemy and the reason she seems incapable of transparency.
Anyone else reminded of the attempted early spin on the Watergate breakin? Nothing here - just move along. But then along came Martha Mitchell. A grateful nation thanks you, Martha.
When the Watergate scandal broke, it was Martha Mitchell, wife of Attorney General, John Mitchell and who was often self-medicated with martinis, who started calling up reporters about her fears that Mitchell was being set up as a scapegoat. The Mitchells lived at the Watergate at that time. Among those reporters were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. She didn’t know how much John was really involved.
When it became apparent to Nixon and Mitchell that she couldn’t be shut up, they had her kidnapped and medicated. She still managed to call a reporter in the middle of the night about the incident. Well, the rest as they say is history.
Is there anyone involved in Hillary's document dump who will step forward? What about senders or recipients of incendiary or politically sensitive emails to her personal account? Just because Hillary "disappeared" incriminating emails from her server in no way guarantees they won't be revealed by others. As many have speculated, the GOP will hold on to any they discover until the election campaign. Perhaps save them to spring on her in the midst of a nationally televised presidential debate. Now, more than ever, her candidacy would be a train wreck waiting to happen.
What will you be doing on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53?
If you’re a math enthusiast, maybe you’ll be celebrating the once-a-century day when the calendar and the clock align to represent the first 10 digits of pi (3.141592653).
As you remember from middle school geometry, pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, and is always the same, no matter what circle you use to compute it. It is an irrational number that never repeats, with an infinite number of decimal places — though in 2013 a researcher took it to eight quadrillion places right of the decimal.
This year, the “Pi Day of the Century” will be marked in all kinds of creative ways. At the San Francisco Exploratorium, where the official celebration first began, you can participate in a pi procession and pizza pie dough tossing.
If you’re an applicant to the M.I.T. class of 2019, you’ll find out at exactly 9:26 whether or not you were admitted.
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/throwback-thursday-the-pi-day-of-the-century/?_r=0
My childhood friend lived in a Wright house.
http://livability.com/il/kankakee/attractions/frank-lloyd-wright-homes-side-side-kankakee-ilThe above link is to the Warren-Hickox house in Kankakee, Il. It is located next door to and was built at the same time as the larger Bradley House (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._Harley_Bradley_House).
There's a photo of my friend's home at the first link:
Kankakee is the only city in the world where you'll find two Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes side-by-side. Both homes have been privately owned and off limits to tourists – until now.
The nonprofit group Wright in Kankakee recently acquired the title of one of the homes, known as the Harley Bradley House, and will open it as a museum. The group is collecting donations and furniture for the house, which is perched on the bank of the Kankakee River. News of the home being opened to the public caught the attention of the New York Times and news outlets in nearby Chicago. The Bradley House is Wright's first Prairie-style home, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, based in Chicago.
The two homes embody Wright’s renowned Prairie-style architecture, which emphasizes low, earth-hugging buildings that include gable roofs with wide overhangs and features long, horizontal lines that mimic the flat horizon of the Midwest prairie. The Prairie style departs from the traditional European styles that dominated American architecture throughout the 1800s.
The Warren-Hickox House has undergone little change over the years. The Bradley House, however, has seen many changes. It has had several owners over its 105-year history, including Audubon Society president Joseph Dodson. It also served as a restaurant for 30 years and then as an office building. Eventually, it was fully restored to Frank Lloyd Wright’s house design plan from June 1900.
My childhood home, a classic Four Square, was a block away, and designed by one of Wright's apprentices when Wright came to Kankakee to build the 2 Wright houses.
My parents actually considered buying the smaller of the 2 Wright homes (the one my friend's family eventually bought), but chose our home because it was riverfront and my Dad could have a dock and his beloved Chris Craft boat. The apprentice architect had greatly enhanced the classic design by adding sunrooms opening through french doors from both the dining room and the master bedroom - each with three walls of windows overlooking a beautiful river; multiple bay windows with window seats; a "hidden" servants' staircase; a 12 foot long hall/butler's pantry connecting the kitchen and dining room; several leaded glass windows and an integral garage. I live in a far more modest home today, but wow! what a childhood!
As children, we had no knowledge of the architectural provenance of these homes in which we played hide-and-seek, had sleepovers, slumber parties, birthday parties, scout meetings, pre-prom parties, baked brownies after school, and just generally hung out. The Wright house was terrific for big parties because of the way the large rooms opened into each other. I know every nook and cranny of Wright's Warren-Hickox house, and remember them some 60 years later. But the best thing about those memories is that they are peopled with my family and my friend and her family (high school jock big brother, bratty younger brother, adorable baby sister and very kind parents) and my high school friends in their senior prom finery at our first "grown-up" party in that house.
Lovely memories - thanks for your post which triggered them!
SNP wants to block military action as price of Labour deal
Source: The London Times
Britain should “not pretend to be a world power” and curbing interventionism would be a key plank of any post-election deal between Labour and the SNP, the head of the nationalists in the UK parliament declared yesterday.
The collaboration between the SNP and Labour to block military action in Syria in 2013 provides a template for future foreign policy co-operation between the two parties, according to Angus Robertson, the SNP leader in Westminster.
His move comes as new Times poll by You Gov shows that Labour has made no progress in clawing back votes in Scotland.
Read more: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/scotland/article4380715.ece
SNP refers to the Scottish National Party. Westminster refers to the seat of the UK Parliament in London. The UK has "devolved" varying degrees of governmental powers to some of its member states, i.e., Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but not England.
For example, Wales and Scotland have each approved an indefinite ban on future fracking, so Big Fracking is trying to bribe the UK government to pass a law forbidding fracking bans or moratoriums by any member states/countries of the UK.
One of the ways the recent Scottish vote on declaring independence from the UK was defeated, was by the UK promising additional devolved powers to Scotland.
The question of military interventionism abroad is an evolving one in the UK. Just last September, the head of the Labour Party rose in the House of Commons to speak in favor of air strikes against ISIL in Iraq. http://press.labour.org.uk/post/98458975484/ed-miliband-statement-on-military-action-against
Ed Miliband statement on military action against ISIL in Iraq
(NOTE: I carefully considered whether this announcement was recent enough to qualify for LBN, and respectfully request that the time difference between the UK and the US be allowed for. The press release was midnight our time.)
Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Labour Party, in a statement to the House of Commons, said:
Mr Speaker, I rise to support the government motion concerning military action against ISIL in Iraq. Let us be clear at the outset what is the proposition: air strikes against ISIL in Iraq. Not about ground troops.
Nor about UK military action elsewhere. And it is a mission specifically aimed at ISIL.
I think this push toward NON interventionism by the military is an extremely interesting and encouraging development. Must have the Military Industrial Complex in a real panic. Likewise for the pro-endless-war politicians and their owners/I mean lobbyists in the U.S. It appears members of the British Parliament and even entire political parties in the UK are not as whorishly for sale as their U.S. counterparts!
My rant about useless, dysfunctional Democratic committee people.
I put this post together in response to a comment in another thread, but decided to post it on its own thread.
12. Pleased to note that Erin McClelland is gearing up to challenge Rothfus
I heard her speak and field tough, unscreened questions in the last election, and she is most impressive, and ready for Washington. I'm thankful she has the drive & commitment to challenge Rothfus again. If our Democratic committee people - many of whom have no interest except going to parties and conventions - would bother to spend more time contacting registered Democrats in their wards, and making sure potential Democrats are registered, AND MOTIVATING PEOPLE TO GET TO THE POLLS, Rothfus never would have been elected in the first place.
You're absolutely right about Citizens United. The GOP/Big Businesses/corps., pour millions into Rothfus' campaigns because the Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District is NOT a sure win for the GOP. The only way we can overcome their money is to get people registered and to the polls.
My area Dem. committee people don't do door-to-door to collect signatures for petitions or hand out campaign literature; get yard signs out along the roadways or into yards; don't campaign for individual candidates; don't provide Democratic candidates with addresses and locations for yard signs; don't volunteer to be poll watchers, and don't show up at the polls to hand out literature, ask people for their votes or thank them for their votes. In other words, they're pretty much good for shit. Sounds like the same types with which Sestak became disgusted. If they're not physically fit enough (usually because of age) to do anything but sit around socializing and guzzling booze at their official gatherings, then they should get the hell out of the way. We have a huge contingent in the Pittsburgh area who are in their 60's & 70's, and they have blocked several generations of younger Democrats from getting involved as committee people.
Re their "Let's Party" attitude:
Bagpipers, street food vendors, and green shamrock T-shirts. Passers-by might have mistaken today's festivities at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local union headquarters in the South Side for an early St. Patrick's Day celebration.
But the event was the Allegheny County Democratic Committee's annual election endorsements where committee members cast their votes to decide which candidates the party should endorse in the upcoming May primary election.
The annual event draws some of the region's most powerful committee powerhouses and longest reigning political families. But though the event is steeped in tradition, some have begun to wonder if the endorsement process should be changed." I think we should get rid of endorsements," said Sam Hens-Greco, 14th Ward Democratic Committee chair. "We spend a tremendous amount of money and time on them, and there's more the party could be doing." Attitudes like this are part of the reason the ACDC plans to hold a convention this summer to re-examine the committees bylaws and endorsement process.
"We may make some adjustments, but we won't be eliminating them," said Mills. "You can see the committee people love it. Everyone's having a ball."
http://www.pghcitypaper.com/Blogh/archives/2015/03/08/allegheny-county-democratic-committee-endorses-candidates-for-2015-election
Look at the Pennsylvania Congressional Delegation - 100% males; 17 of 18 Congressmen are white; 5Ds 13Rs; 2 white male senators, 1 D and 1 R. Then look at the statistics for party registration in the Keystone State:
As of December 31, 2014:
Registered Democrats - 4,047,193
Registered Republicans - 3,000,090
No Affiliation - 668,025
Libertarians - 47,357
For the primaries, only the Ds and Rs can vote, but come November we outnumber them by a goddamn ONE MILLION+ VOTES! There's no excuse for the fact that we don't have TWO Democratic U.S. senators representing our state.
As to the Independents, an ever increasing proportion of the electorate, this is where we desperately need committee people in each and every ward and district, pounding the pavements and knocking on doors to hand out literature and ask people for their votes. My aged knees no longer permit me to climb up and down my community's hills or trudge along it's sidewalk-less streets and roads. But I did do that for several decades for individual Democratic candidates, and it was my experience that many, many voters of whatever party affiliation, appreciated having someone politely ask them for their vote, answer questions for them, tell them the location and hours of their polling place; perhaps help them change their registration if they had just moved into the area, arrange for them to get absentee ballots or a ride to the polls.
On edit: And while I can no longer campaign door-to-door, I do arrange voter registration sessions at the senior community in my ward and district - people are constantly moving in and need to update their registrations, and they do turn out to vote. And I serve as a Judge of Elections and make damn sure no voters are intimidated by the local tea party jerks. Get out the vote, everyone!
No.Dak. fracking fields crime so high, FBI is stepping in
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/06/3630643/fbi-comes-to-the-oil-fields/North Dakota’s oil production began growing in the mid-2000s, when companies figured out how to extract oil from the state’s Bakken region. Around 2010, production in the state skyrocketed, and that boom brought in throngs of workers from around the county — a population increase that, as Thornton said, also brought with it an increase in crime. According to the Washington Post, violent crime in the state’s oil-rich Williston Basin region increased by 121 percent between 2005 and 2011. Drug use and prostitution are also prevalent.
“It’s not Mayberry anymore,” North Dakota U.S. Attorney Tim Purdon told the AP earlier this year. “Our police and prosecutors are going to have to adapt to keep pace. We have organized criminal gangs selling drugs, sex trafficking, and out-of-state flim-flam men coming in. And the cases have become more and more complicated.”
One town in North Dakota — Watford City — has grown its police force from just four policemen in 2010 to 19 this year. The town experienced just 41 calls for police service in 2006, while in 2014, it experienced 7,414.
“There used to be a saying that 40 below keeps out the riff-raff,” said Steve Kukowski, a sheriff in Ward County, North Dakota. “That’s not true anymore.”
Ah, that alerter wasn't offended by the word, but by criticism of a 3rd wayer.
Talk about faux outrage! And as the judge says in trial court, when overruling an objection, the objector "opened the door" to a comment. Specifically, when Rahm described fellow Dems as "fucking retarded", his supporters cannot be heard to object to Dems calling Rahm a bastard.
Hope Obama sits this one out and doesn't make another bogus trip to Chicago for an opportunity to boost Rahm's campaign. Perhaps someone can remind him that Hispanics and teachers and unions are valued members of the Democratic party and deserve a level playing field when running in a primary.
An interesting question to me is what will Rahm do if he loses, i.e,. next career step. Certainly if he is available, Hillary would snap him up for her campaign staff. Hell, he could end up back in the White House as her chief of staff. That could happen even if he wins the run-off - resigning from elected office to get back to DC where all the real action is, baby! Or he could follow the Clintons' example of starting a boutique "charity" to launder corporate "donations" while simultaneously lobbying his political connections AND skimming off a healthy chunk of said "donations" to fund a five star life style.
Manny makes the point it would be best if Rahm were out of politics forever. That is so true. But Rahm is like the legendary rattle-snake, which keeps snapping lethally even after it's head has been cut off. He will always be a source of hubris, arrogance and self-interest wherever he ends up.
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