csziggy
csziggy's JournalThe Democratic Party is pissing me off - email rant
I've been getting fundraising appeals from all kinds of Democratic candidates all over the country. I have never even heard of most of these people. I figure the only place they could have gotten my email is from the Democratic Party.
I have limited funds to donate to candidates and use it to support those in my area. While I understand the need for support for Democrats across the country, I live in a state that waivers back and forth between Republican and Democratic so I will spend my money where it will affect my state the most.
I have told this to the DSCC, DCCC, and every other national Democratic organization that has called me and I never gave them permission to share my email all over the country.
And the damned Unsubscribe link does not seem to work for most of these candidates, so I can't even get OFF their fucking email lists.
This is pissing me off so much today I called a campaign in South Florida and went off on the poor campaign worker. The campaign is for Annette Taddeo now running for a local office. She previously ran with Charlie Crist, who I did not like or support (though I did vote for him since he was the most viable option). Why the hell would I give money to someone who lives hundreds of miles away, who supported a DINO, and who has done nothing but spam me for the last three months with appeals for money?
I just got another email, this time from someone from New Mexico. 
Florida needs my help more than New Mexico, for fuck's sake!
White House Excludes Gay First Spouse of Luxembourg From Photo Caption
White House Excludes Gay First Spouse of Luxembourg From Photo Caption
By Chris Riotta On 5/27/17 at 6:08 PM
Updated | The White House Facebook page failed to acknowledge First Gentleman of Luxembourg Gauthier Destenay, married to Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, in a post featuring the spouses of world leaders attending this week’s G7 summit in Sicily. The photo caption included the names of every other spouse, all of them wives, beginning with: "First Lady Melania Trump poses with Belgium’s Queen Mathilde, center, and other spouses of NATO leaders."
The omission of Destenay's name in the official White House post remained for at least six hours on Saturday before Daily Beast editor Scott Bixby shared a screenshot on Twitter, writing: "Is there a reason the White House didn't include the First Gentleman of Luxembourg in this photo caption? Like, a non-homophobic one?"
Late Saturday night, nearly twelve hours after the uproar over the photo started, the caption was updated to include the first gentleman of Luxembourg, the only homosexual spouse included in the photo. The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The photo, taken by White House photographer Andrea Hanks, shows Melania Trump front and center with Queen Mathilde, surrounded by First Gentleman Gauthier Destnary of Luxembourg, First Lady Emine Erdoğan of Turkey, Iceland’s Thora Margret Baldvinsdottir, First Lady of France Brigitte Macron, Slovenia’s Mojca Stropnik, Bulgaria’s Desislava Radeva, Belgium’s Amélie Derbaudrenghien and Norway’s Ingrid Schulerud.
More: http://www.newsweek.com/white-house-facebook-omits-gay-first-gentleman-luxemborg-gauthier-destenay-616889
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ETA - This reminds me of when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was edited out of the photo when Ben Laden was killed.
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Bonus - Video: The Trumpshake: A Look into the President's Peculiar Handshake
Did Russia help elect Trump? - BBC Newsnight
Senate Intelligence Committee requests Trump campaign documents
Source: Washington Post
By Robert Costa May 26 at 7:03 PM
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race, has asked President Trump’s political organization to gather and produce all Russia-related documents, emails and phone records going back to his campaign’s launch in June 2015, according to two people briefed on the request.
The letter from the Senate arrived at Trump’s campaign committee last week and was addressed to the group’s treasurer. Since then, some former staffers have been notified and asked to cooperate, the people said. They were not authorized to speak publicly.
The demand follows a Senate request months earlier for the campaign committee to preserve documents.
Dozens of former staffers are expected to be contacted in the coming days to make sure they are aware of what they are required to produce and how to submit those documents, the people added.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/05/26/senate-intelligence-committee-requests-trump-campaign-documents/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_senateintel-720pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Macron and Trump shake hands
French President Emmanuel Macron seems to have gotten the better of Dolt45's aggressive handshake ploy - TWICE!
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Trump and French President Macron get to know each other with a fierce handshake
By Philip Rucker May 25 at 9:22 AM
BRUSSELS — If relationships were defined by how two people shake hands, then the one between the newly elected presidents of the United States and France is going to be rather fierce.
As President Trump met French President Emmanuel Macron for the first time, welcoming him to lunch Thursday at the residence here of the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, the two men shook hands for six long seconds. Their knuckles turned white, their jaws clenched and their faces tightened. Trump reached in first, but then he tried to release, twice, but Macron kept his grip until letting go.
The meeting was on Trump's turf, but Macron, 31 years his counterpart's junior, signaled with his tight hold that the American was not the only alpha in the room.
More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/25/trump-and-french-president-macron-get-to-know-each-other-with-a-fierce-handshake/
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In this clip, Macron made Trump wait to be acknowledged, then when Trump performed his signature arm yank, Macron yanked right back, getting the better of Trump.
Sinkhole forms in front of Mar-a-Lago; metaphors pour in
The Fix
Sinkhole forms in front of Mar-a-Lago; metaphors pour in
By Amy B Wang May 22
A large sinkhole has formed in front of Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach estate belonging to President Trump.
Town officials posted a run-of-the-mill advisory about the sinkhole Monday morning:
"A 4' x 4' sinkhole has formed on Southern Boulevard directly in front of Mar-a-Lago," the traffic alert read. "It appears to be in the vicinity of the newly installed water main. West Palm Beach Utilities distribution crews have secured the area and will most likely need to do some exploratory excavation today."
But where utility workers saw a repair project, the Internet saw a giant opening — for metaphors.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/22/sinkhole-forms-in-front-of-mar-a-lago-metaphors-pour-in/
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Worth reading the rest just for the Twitter reaction!
BBC has video of the sinkhole: http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-40013480/aerial-footage-of-sinkhole-at-trump-s-mar-a-lago-resort
The Onion Leaks a Trove of Trump Docs
The Trump Documents (from The Onion) - http://www.theonion.com/trumpdocuments
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For the story behind The Trump Documents:
The Onion Leaks a Trove of Trump Docs
By Charles Bethea May 22, 2017
The staff of the Onion, a satirical online newspaper that’s been a reliable antidote to reality for nearly three decades, was not thrilled by the prospect of a Trump Presidency. The paper’s longtime writer Chad Nackers told me in March that the thought of having to frequently satirize Trump and the bit players in his Administration for four years—or more—filled many of the publication’s staffers with “comedic dread.” The Onion has been tormenting Trump for close to twenty years, beginning back when he was a mere citizen-object of scorn, with headlines like 2012’s “Donald Trump Stares Forlornly at Tiny, Aged Penis in Mirror Before Putting On Clothes, Beginning Day” and, from 2013, “When You’re Feeling Low, Just Remember I’ll Be Dead in About 15 or 20 Years.” (The latter provoked Trump’s general counsel, Michael Cohen, to demand an apology to his client. The Onion ignored this request.) But, for a President Trump, Cole Bolton, the Onion’s editor-in-chief, told me last week, “We needed something much bigger, much broader, which can hit all the themes we want to hit in a single stroke.”
More than a dozen writers and eight graphics editors have been assembling that something over the past four months: seven hundred pages of Trump-related documents that have been “leaked” to the Onion. The first batch was revealed at noon on Monday on the Onion’s Facebook page, as well as on a special Web site. “Document dumps,” Bolton said, “are the vogue way to talk about major breaking news in the world, whether it’s WikiLeaks or the Panama Papers. Leaks seemed like the perfect means to get at Trump and his inner circle, as well as his decision-making.”
Among the leaked Trump documents: a string of e-mails between the President and Boeing’s C.E.O., about Trump’s desired upgrades—marble everything—to Air Force One; some of the Vice-President’s handwritten notes, with helpful illustrations, describing puritanical inventions of his, like a “nose harness” to prevent the smelling of “sinful smells,” like a woman’s skin, and a “blouse that cannot flutter in the wind”; and three of the President’s idiosyncratic daily briefings, written on children’s placemats. “Like you get at Denny’s,” Bolton said. “They say things like, ‘These are the security issues today. Find them in the word box!’ ” There are Mad Libs-style executive orders (“fill-in a ‘fear-inducing noun,’ ” one instructs, then an “adjective that implies ‘sub-human’ without actually stating it”), a note from Obama to Trump that was left in the Oval Office, as well as handwritten letters between Melania Trump and her concerned relatives back in Slovenia. All the documents appear to have originated between Trump’s Inauguration and the current day, with the exception of a few e-mails between the press secretary, Sean Spicer, and Trump, exchanged prior to the election. Trump’s voice is limited in the documents. “His voice is so over-mocked,” Bolton said. “Everyone throws the word ‘huge’ in there and says they’re an orange-so-and-so with small hands. Those jokes are done to death. We wanted to not fall in those traps.”
Riffing on the minutiae of the news cycle is generally not the Onion’s goal, and these documents are no different. There are a few items related to the recent James Comey chaos, like a series of very simplistically encrypted e-mails that Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, sent to Trump. (“Flynn has device Moscow is pleased,” one decoded missive reads. Another says, simply, “Focus Donald.”) A few other specific events are mentioned, such as Spicer suggesting that Bashar al-Assad is worse than Hitler. But the documents mostly play on broad themes of the Trump Administration: stupidity, duplicity, and the strategic use of fear.
More: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-onion-leaks-a-trove-of-trump-docs
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This Girl Just Explained White Privilege In A Way Anyone Can Understand
written by Justin Luke on May 15th, 2017
She is aware of her white privilege, and how it has affected her life. So, in an attempt to help other white individuals see their privilege more clearly, Lundt wrote a Facebook post that has since gone viral. In the post, she describes a specific instance in her college life at Colgate.
Colgate recently made headlines when the school shut down for several hours after a black student was seen with a glue gun.
In her post, Lundt says that she has walked around campus many times holding a sword, and nobody has ever called the cops on her. This is something she attributed to her whiteness, saying, “People thought it was funny. People laughed – ‘oh, look at that harmless, silly white girl with a giant sword!!'”
The fact that the glue gun incident could happen is due to institutionalized racialism, Lundt said.
“If you think for even a second this wasn’t profiling, ask yourself why this sword is still in my room and has not ONCE made anyone uncomfortable,” she stated. “No one has EVER called the police on me. Understand that there are larger forces at play than this one night, and this one instance of racism. This is engrained in our university and our larger society. White Colgate students, we need to do better. #BlackLivesMatter.”
More: http://shareably.net/this-girl-just-explained-white/?utm_content=inf_10_3000_2&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=TSE&utm_source=TSE1&tse_id=INF_3f7c88e0398111e78b099bd9c6581d40
How are IRAs being changed?
My husband has a traditional IRA (rolled over from his 401k) and we each have Roth IRAs. Recently we received letters from our financial advisor telling us that there are changes coming to IRAs. Ours are grandfathered in, but if we still wanted to make contributions to them, we had to set that up by June 8 of this year. There are some other details that we did not discuss since they don't apply to us but I started wondering.
What changes are being made to IRAs this year? Are they going to make it harder to contribute? What is going on with these changes?
Happy Mother's Day to my Mom!
Here she is on her 96th birthday with her first great grandson.
