Snarkoleptic
Snarkoleptic's JournalBudget impasse could have 'accreditation consequences' for Illinois colleges and universities
Alternate headline "Republican Gov. Bruce 'Ruiner' Rauner's stubbornness on full display during manufactured crisis."
http://thesouthern.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/budget-impasse-could-have-accreditation-consequences-for-illinois-colleges-and/article_25e3ba6d-f97f-5b52-a37d-cbd06bfc4421.html
The Higher Learning Commission is the regional accrediting agency responsible for ensuring universities and colleges are making the grade, so to speak, in 19 states, including Illinois.
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About 40,000 gallons of crude oil leak after derailment
https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20170630/about-40000-gallons-of-crude-oil-leak-after-derailmentThe derailment disrupted traffic, as the rest of the train continues to block several crossings, Plainfield Police Sgt. Mike Fisher said.
No one was hurt, he said, and firefighters managed to keep the oil from flowing in to the DuPage River, he said.
"It is quite a distance away from the river, but it is still too close for comfort," Fisher said.
Trump allies push White House to consider regime change in Tehran
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/25/trump-iran-foreign-policy-regime-change-239930Cotton advocated a combination of economic, diplomatic and covert actions to pressure Tehran’s government and “support internal domestic dissent” in the country. He noted that Iran has numerous minority ethnic groups, including Arabs, Turkmen and Balochs who “aren’t enthusiastic about living in a Persian Shiite despotism.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared to endorse subverting the Iranian regime during recent testimony about the State Department’s budget when Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) asked the diplomat whether the Trump administration supports “a philosophy of regime change” in Iran.
Eugene V. Debs delivered the speech that landed him in jail 99 years ago.
Reprinted here in it's entirety at the link-
https://jacobinmag.com/2017/06/eugene-debs-world-war-i-jail-canton
Speaking from a gazebo in a city park, the Socialist Party leader denounced the “Junkers of Wall Street” for enslaving workers in industrial despotism; confidently heralded the coming of the cooperative commonwealth (“it is as vain to resist it as it would be to arrest the sunrise on the morrow”); and exhorted listeners to join the Socialist Party, “the builders of the beautiful world that is to be.”
As one historian notes, Debs “said nothing he had not said many times before and had referred to the war but once.”
But federal authorities, gripped by World War I hysteria, had heard enough. They arrested him for intending to “cause and incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny and refusal of duty in the military,” as well as for trying “to obstruct the recruiting and enlistment service of the United States.” Debs was stripped of his citizenship and incarcerated until December 1921, when he received a presidential commutation.
However pedestrian for Debs, the offending speech is a study in socialist oration, with memorable lines like “The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.” In honor of its ninety-ninth anniversary, we reprint it here in full.
Vox- We asked 8 Senate Republicans to explain what their health bill is trying to do
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/16/15810524/senate-ahca-explain-please“All of them,” Sen. John McCain said in an interview, not an uncharacteristic response of his Republican Senate colleagues.
Over the course of the past week, Vox asked eight different Republican senators to explain the affirmative case for the bill. They rarely answered directly, at least not on the bill’s policy merits.
Sometimes, a senator could identify a desired outcome, like “lowering premiums” or “stabilizing marketplaces.” But they rarely could explain the mechanism through which they planned on achieving that outcome.
Some screwball interview excerpt at the link. Twisting themselves into pretzels to avoid the reality that it's about tax cuts and undoing the Obama legacy.
Trump disapproval hits 64 percent in AP poll
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/338092-trump-disapproval-hits-64-percent-in-ap-pollSixty-four percent of respondents said that they don't like how the president's handling his office, while just over a third – 35 percent – approved of Trump.
The poll also found that 65 percent of Americans believe Trump has little or no respect for the country's democratic institutions and traditions. By comparison, only about 34 percent said they believe he has a great deal or even a fair amount of respect for such institutions.
Righteous rant by Dan Rather on Facebook - THIS IS NOT NORMAL.
No link as it's just a comment posted...
As with many of my fellow Americans, I don't consider myself partisan politically - never have. I am a registered independent voter and have been for most of my life. With that in mind, I submit the following:
Can we please get this out of the way? None of what is happening at the top of government now is normal. None of it. And no one should normalize it. No one.
We have a President who lies without a second thought. Big bold lies that are easily disproven. That is not normal.
We have serious allegations around obstruction of justice by that President. That is not normal.
We have an FBI director fired for insisting to continue pursuing a serious investigation into the sanctify of our republic. It has never happened before in our history. That is not normal.
We have a hostile foreign power attacking and undermining our electoral process. That is not normal.
We have an Attorney General under a serious shadow of association with said foreign power, with indications that there is much more to this story than we yet know. That is not normal.
We have Federal judges, our closest foreign allies, and the free press under scurrilous attack from the President and his enablers. At the same time we have despots praised. That is not normal.
We have an Administration fanning the flames of division over race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and gender. That is not normal.
We have an overhaul of our entire health care system being written in secret on a rapid time frame. That is not normal.
We have a sordid confluence of the President's business interests and his political power. That is not normal.
The list could go on and on. And feel free to add your own to the comments section.
What concerns me even more than any of these items is the fact that they are largely being met by a shrug or excuses from most Republican elected officials. Even many Democrats seem overwhelmed and are inclined to let some of this just ride. That may be how politics works. But this is bigger. It's about our nation.
We are shifting the goalposts for our democracy. We are failing to be outraged by the outrageous because there is something even more outrageous that always seems to hit the news cycle. And that is dangerous.
What gives me hope is we have had waves of abnormality in our country's history. And we've had times when what we would consider now to be not normal, like segregation, was considered normal. What has centered and saved our country time and again is civic engagement. I believe that most people in this nation don't think any of this is normal. And they could very well vote out those elected officials in both parties who are normalizing these outrages.
Database of Trump administration officials' personal finances grows (Follow The Money)
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/06/07/20910/database-trump-administration-officials-personal-finances-growsThe database allows anyone to easily understand the wealth, assets and business interests of many of the people working for President Donald Trump. These include Senate-confirmed appointees, White House aides and members of so-called “beachhead teams” sent to prepare executive agencies for the new administration.
Among the prominent Trump allies included in the database update: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Transportation Secretary Eliane Chao and White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
You wish you were being f*cked by me: NJ Republican launches obscene rant at local organizer
Another Trumpster-fire with no filter to keep his every waking thought from flying out his mouth.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/you-wish-you-were-being-fcked-by-me-nj-republican-launches-obscene-rant-at-local-organizer/
GOP Councilman Richard Jassterzbski has been accused of harassment after yelling at and berating Susan Enderly-Peracchio, a Passaic County Regular Republican Organization employee.
“You wish you were being f*cked by me,” Jasterzbski said, according to a video filmed by Enderly-Peracchio’s daughter. “You don’t have to worry about me penetrating you at all. You wanted fair and square and you should have been satisfied with that, but you stood there and you let them corrupt the system of political process.”
Jassterzbski said he will not apologize to Enderly-Peracchio.
“I give the same amount of respect to anyone and I deserve the same amount of respect back,” he said. “I will defend myself and defend the voters and residents of the 1st Ward, as I have for the last 3-and-a-half years.”
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