July 10, 2016

NRA Breaks Silence on Philando Castile Death — After Nudge From TheWrap

Two days after the death of Philando Castile, the National Rifle Association addressed the shooting on Friday, following some prodding from TheWrap over the group’s stance on the killing by police of the reportedly legally-armed Minnesotan.

The gun-rights organization’s statement came via its Twitter account, little more than an hour after we left an unreturned voicemail for an NRA spokesman.
“As the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, the NRA proudly supports the right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms for defense of themselves and others regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation,” the statement reads. “The reports from Minnesota are troubling and must be thoroughly investigated.”

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Rest assured, the NRA will have more to say once all the facts are known,” the group added.

A mushy statement perhaps, but it’s more than the group’s Twitter feed has had to say on the topic since the shooting took place on Wednesday.


http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/the-wrap/article/NRA-Breaks-Silence-on-Philando-Castile-Death-8348836.php

July 10, 2016

Post FBI email announcement poll results - Clinton increases lead over Trump to 11%

Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll now includes data from July 5 and July 6, which is after the FBI announcement of the latest developments in the email affair that have dominated political headlines for most of the week. The polling shows that the FBI decision may have actually helped Hillary Clinton expand her lead over Donald Trump.

At the very least, the email story did not hurt Clinton in the poll, which on July 5 gave her a 10.2 percentage point lead over Trump; 40.2 percent to 30, with 29.8 percent saying that they were either undecided, intended to vote for another candidate or simply refused to answer the pollster’s questions.

But on July 6, the Hillary Clinton lead over Donald Trump had edged up to a full 11 points; 44 to 33, with just 23 percent falling into the third category.

In other words, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed gains for both Clinton and Trump in the immediate aftermath of the FBI email announcement, and a drop in voters who said they hadn’t made up their minds, or would vote for a different candidate altogether. But Clinton’s gain slightly outpaced the headway made by Donald Trump in the daily tracking poll.

http://www.inquisitr.com/3287325/hillary-clinton-polls-did-fbi-email-ruling-affect-her-numbers-vs-donald-trump-results-may-be-surprising/

July 9, 2016

Donald Trump’s Pledge to Defend (non existent) Article XII of Constitution Raises Eyebrows

To the list of eyebrow-raising moments at meetings between presumed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and congressional Republicans on Thursday add this: an exchange about the U.S. Constitution.

At a closed-door meeting with House Republicans, Mr. Trump took a question about the U.S. Constitution. House Republicans have been especially focused Article I, which spells out the powers granted to Congress, because of concern about overreach by the executive branch. This concern has been acute during President Barack Obama’s time in the Oval Office.

In attempting to demonstrate his reverence for the U.S. Constitution, Mr. Trump said that he supported not just Article I, but an Article XII as well. That caused some brows to furrow, because the U.S. Constitution has only seven articles.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/07/07/donald-trumps-pledge-to-defend-article-xii-of-constitution-raises-eyebrows/

July 9, 2016

College-educated whites put hole in Trump coalition

College-educated whites put hole in Trump coalition



ATLANTA — Wanda Melton has voted for every Republican presidential nominee since Ronald Reagan in 1980, but now the Georgia grandmother plans to cross over to support Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“I’m not a real fan of Hillary,” Melton says from her office in Atlanta. “But I think it would just be awful to have Donald Trump.” She adds: “I cannot in good conscience let that happen.”

Melton is among a particular group of voters, whites with college degrees, who are resistant to Trump. Their skepticism comes as an ominous warning as Trump struggles to rebuild even the losing coalition that Mitt Romney managed four years ago.

College-educated whites made up more than one-third of the electorate in 2012. Polls suggest Trump trails Clinton with those voters, especially women.

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Should Trump fail to even replicate Romney’s coalition, he has little hope of flipping many of the most contested states that Obama won twice, particularly Florida, Colorado and Virginia. Trump’s struggles among college whites have Democrats eyeing North Carolina, which Obama won in 2008 before it reverted back to Republicans, and even GOP-leaning Arizona and Georgia.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/college-educated-whites-put-hole-in-trump-coalition/2016/07/09/9a7d2f16-45ca-11e6-a76d-3550dba926ac_story.html

July 9, 2016

Hero woman writes perfect letter to the editor

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http://fusion.net/story/320620/heidi-hero-men-abortion/

July 9, 2016

In search of abortion, women are flocking to Illinois

But some of the toughest abortion regulations in the country are actually in Midwestern states. In Missouri, women must meet with a counselor, then wait up to 72 hours before getting the procedure. In Wisconsin, public money for abortions is limited to women whose health is in danger or who are victims of rape or incest. Then there's Indiana, led by Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican who this past spring signed a law that bans abortions for women whose babies have a fetal abnormality, such as Down syndrome. That law was just struck down by a federal judge.

As neighboring states clamp down on access to abortion, women are flocking across the border to one of Illinois' Planned Parenthood health centers or to private providers. Planned Parenthood of Illinois saw a 20 percent spike in medical visits overall last year. The state sending the most patients over? Indiana. In 2015, 44 percent of all visits from Indiana natives were for an abortion. This year, that jumped to 57 percent.

The Chicago-based nonprofit, which had $27.2 million in 2015 revenue, says business is up across all of its service lines, from birth control (the most popular offering), to STD testing and abortions. To handle the increasing demand, it has renovated clinics, hired more doctors and lengthened clinic hours. Planning is underway for its 18th health center, likely in southern Cook County.

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160705/NEWS/307059984

July 9, 2016

Newt Gingrich: 'If you are a normal white American ... you don’t understand being black in America'

It took me a long time, and a number of people talking to me through the years to get a sense of this," said Gingrich, who served as speaker from 1990 until 1995 and who represented an Atlanta-area congressional district for two decades.

"If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America," he said.

White Americans "instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-trailguide-updates-1468001199-htmlstory.html

July 9, 2016

We’re struggling to survive’: student debt still weighing down people over 30

I pay $700 a month in student loans and I didn’t go to a fancy school,” explained Deanna Fox, 30, a writer who lives in Delanson, to a table full of people in their 30s and 40s gathered at the Riverfront Bar and Grille in Albany. “But there really wasn’t any opportunity as far as scholarships go: because I came from a very middle-class family, I was too wealthy – even though we didn’t have much – to get a lot of state-funded grants or scholarships, and wasn’t wealthy enough for my parents to pay for me to go to college out of their own pockets.

“So I had to take out probably 75% of my funding for college as a loan, and most of it was private loans.”

“I also pay $700 in student loans a month,” said Emily Lemieux, a 34-year-old museum professional living in Albany, “and I also didn’t go to fancy schools.”

Young millennials get more attention for their student loan burdens, but students faced such hefty burdens nearly 15 years earlier. Most college-educated people in their 30s and early 40s went to college just as tuition rates began their meteoric climbs, and at or around the time when the federal government got out of the student loan game and turned over the origination of federally subsidized loans to private companies like Sallie Mae. These students entered the working world at either the end of the first tech bubble, shortly after 9/11, in the middle of two wars or at the start of the Great Recession.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/07/student-debt-30s-40s-election-issues

July 9, 2016

The US? We're in bad shape': squeezed middle class tell tales of struggle

Life comes in threes for Latonia Best. She has three bachelor’s degrees, is raising three children on her own and has been working for three years as a special needs teacher.


Once upon a time, this middle-aged professional, who is putting her daughters through university too, would have been considered solidly middle class. Yet that full-time teaching job pays just $3,333.33 a month, a household salary that is now below official definitions of middle income – even when adjusted for the relatively low cost of living in a town such as Goldsboro, North Carolina, where she works.

When tax and medical insurance are deducted, her take-home figure drops by more than a third, after which money for food, housing, a car and college tuition has to be found. To make the numbers add up, she has to work three other jobs a week.

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On the 3rd of the month, you can’t walk in the door downstairs for people with benefit checks,” Parr says. “One large employer locally estimates it processes $300,000 to $400,000 a month in garnishments from employee paychecks.”

A county-wide hotline number to offer emergency advice saw 31,000 calls between March and June, with 35% looking for help with utility bills, 27% seeking housing assistance and a growing minority looking for food banks.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/07/middle-class-squeeze-money-household

July 9, 2016

Now video emerges showing off-duty NYPD cop shoot black man within seconds of road rage row breaking

Now video emerges showing off-duty NYPD cop shoot black man within seconds of road rage row breaking out - CONTRADICTING witness who said father 'beat the s***' out of officer


Small can be seen reeling back before staggering across the road and falling down between two cars
In the footage, taken from a surveillance camera overlooking the scene, Small can be seen climbing out of his car and walking toward Isaac, who is sitting in his car.
A split second after bending down to look in the window, Small stumbles backward, staggering across the road before collapsing between two parked vehicles.
Another car, sitting parallel to Isaac, speeds off across the junction while pedestrians on the sidewalk run up the street.


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Roger Wareham, lawyer for the Small family, said the footage 'clearly demonstrates the cop lied', adding that Isaac looks down at Small's body 'as if he had just stepped on a roach.'
Wareham told the New York Daily News: 'If the cop's story is obviously false, why haven't they arrested him?'
Isaacs had just finished his shift and was on his way home in his own car when the attack happened.
Small was pronounced dead at the scene but his body remained on the street covered in a plastic sheet for around four hours after the shooting.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3681712/Video-shows-duty-cop-shot-black-man-seconds-road-rage-row-breaking-contradicting-witness-said-father-beat-s-officer.html#ixzz4Ds1FYgW8


http://nypost.com/2016/07/04/road-rage-incident-leads-off-duty-cop-to-fatally-shoot-man/


An off-duty NYPD cop waited exactly one second before gunning down another driver in a Brooklyn road rage incident on Monday.

Exclusive video obtained by The Post shows the moment that Officer Wayne Isaacs fired two shots through his car window at Delrawn Small, who collapsed and died in the street.

The NYPD and the Attorney General’s office are investigating the shooting, which the victim’s family said is a clear case of excessive force.


The footage, captured at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Bradford Street just after midnight, shows Small, 37, cross two lanes of traffic to reach Isaacs’ car.

He barely has time to look the cop in the eye or even utter a word before Isaacs opens fire, causing him to stagger backward.

He stumbles to the ground, gets up for a moment — and then collapses again for good.

Isaacs, meanwhile, lurches his car forward a few feet before slamming on the brakes and getting out. He appears to tuck the gun into his waistband as he walks over toward Small.

Isaacs looks in the direction of the dying man, pausing for a few moments near his body, before returning to his vehicle.

He is then seen pacing around and talking on the phone. Sources have said he called 911.