turbinetree
turbinetree's Journal'That's a lie': NYT reporter absolutely obliterates Trump's latest claim that her reporting is 'fake
Robert Reich schools ousted GOP lawmaker after she freaks out over 'socialist Democrats'
This MLB power couple is fighting to save 200 union jobs
"Those caps in Cooperstown? They were made in Derby. It’s an iconic symbol."
LINDSAY GIBBS
FEB 20, 2019, 8:00 AM
It all started so innocently.
On Sunday night, Eireann Dolan — the wife of Washington Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle — was in the car with her husband doing some research on official MLB hats, because her friend was interested in buying one for his son.
But when she searched for New Era — the official manufacturer of baseball caps for Major League Baseball for nearly 60 years — articles immediately popped up about the company closing its unionized shop in Derby, New York, and moving to a non-union shop in Flordia. More than 200 workers are scheduled to lose their jobs as a result.
“It’s basically union busting, plain and simple,” Dolan told ThinkProgress in a phone interview on Tuesday afternoon. “The only people wearing [the New Era caps made in Derby] are the players, and these are the players in the union, so we want to make sure they’re wearing caps that are made by people earning a union wage.”
MLB has an exclusive contract with New Era for its caps. Most of the caps New Era makes for the MLB — the ones that fans buy — are made overseas. But the contract stipulates that hats worn by players during games must be made in America.
https://thinkprogress.org/baseball-couple-union-campaign-003ec8963027/
“It’s basically union busting, plain and simple,” Dolan told ThinkProgress in a phone interview on Tuesday afternoon. “The only people wearing [the New Era caps made in Derby] are the players, and these are the players in the union, so we want to make sure they’re wearing caps that are made by people earning a union wage.”
Now if the public stands behind this and demands that the hats be made in this country......................
House Panel Probes Trump Advisers' Push for Saudi Nuclear Deal
The administration is pursuing a plan championed by Tom Barrack, Mike Flynn and outside business interests to share nuclear power technology with Saudi Arabia despite security concerns.
by Isaac Arnsdorf Feb. 19, 12:47 p.m. EST
The Trump administration has continued pursuing a proposed nuclear power deal with Saudi Arabia despite warnings from ethics lawyers and security experts, according to a congressional oversight committee.
The proposal gained traction in the early days of the administration because of then-national security adviser Michael Flynn and presidential confidant Tom Barrack, who had potential financial stakes in the plan, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said in initial findings released on Tuesday.
“Further investigation is needed to determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump Administration are in the national security interest of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy,” the oversight committee said in its report on Tuesday.
The committee’s report confirms details in a ProPublica article from November 2017 and cites another article from earlier this month.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-house-panel-trump-advisers-saudi-nuclear-deal-michael-flynn-tom-barrack
Everyone of these assholes should be charged with violating the: Atomic Energy Act of 1954..............seriously
Republicans refuse to pay the workers hurt most by Trump's shutdown
By Emily Singer - February 19, 2019
Republicans are refusing to authorize back pay for hundreds of thousands of federal contractors, many of them in the lowest paid jobs.
Republicans already inflicted pain on hundreds of thousands of federal workers when they recklessly allowed Trump to shut down the government for 35 days over Trump’s demand for an unpopular border wall that experts agree won’t do anything to keep Americans safe.
But now, they’re inflicting even more pain on federal contractors by refusing to offer them back pay for the weeks of work they missed through no fault of their own.
Those federal contractors — many of them lower-paid cafeteria workers or security guards — were excluded from the provisions that offered back pay to furloughed federal workers who worked directly for the U.S. government.
“I don’t think we can pay people who didn’t work, even through no fault of their own,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told Vox.
https://shareblue.com/republicans-refuse-back-pay-contract-workers/
John Cornyn should be voted out of office........................
Hey asshole, your fucking leader in the senate and the white house should not be paid, right along with you...........................you really are fucking dick, they were cleaning your shit stain out of the toilet bowl that you use .........................asshole .........................
HUD official gets stuck in elevator during public housing PR stunt
By Emily Singer - February 19, 2019
New York City firefighters had to rescue Housing and Urban Development official Lynne Patton from a broken down elevator at a public housing project in Manhattan.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Lynne Patton, the New York and New Jersey regional director of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, got trapped in an elevator at a public housing project on Tuesday, and needed to be rescued from the car by the New York City Fire Department.
Patton has been living in NYC Housing Authority properties — which receive funding from HUD — since Feb. 11, part of a monthlong stay in public housing projects to get a feel for how the properties were being maintained.
“My God, this is amazing and so messed up at the same time,” a reporter can be heard saying as cameras rolled and captured Patton’s ill-fated ride on the elevator, according to the New York Daily News.
https://shareblue.com/hud-official-lynne-patton-elevator-pr-stunt/
-snip-
“Who the hell is Lynne Patton?” Carline Campbell, a resident of one of the housing projects Patton is slated to stay in, told the NYDN ahead of Patton’s stunt. “Anything from Trump I don’t trust. I don’t think she wants to help.”
North Korea defector: Trump fell into 'trap' set by Kim Jong Un
By Oliver Willis - February 19, 2019
North Korea keeps playing Trump, and he keeps falling for it.
Trump has been duped by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, says a high-profile defector familiar with the regime’s inner workings.
Despite North Korea’s loud threats about harming South Korea and other U.S. allies, Trump is treating the rogue nation as an equal and negotiating — and even praising — the country’s dictator.
“They are trying to tip the extremely uneven scale when it comes to conventional weapons compared with the United States and South Korea,” said Thae Yong Ho, was North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom until he fled his post in 2016 and is the highest ranking official to defect from the country.
“I believe, unfortunately President Trump fell into this trap,” Thae said.
https://shareblue.com/north-korea-defector-trump-fell-into-trap-set-by-kim-jong-un/
Trump v California: administration wants to get billions in rail funding back
Source: The Guardian
US transportation department also announced plans to cancel $929m in grant funds that were yet to be paid, in latest point of friction
One week after Donald Trump called California’s high-speed rail project a “‘green’ disaster”, the US Department of Transportation announced plans to cancel $929m in federal grant funds that were yet to be paid toward the $77bn endeavor.
The department also “is actively exploring every legal option to seek the return from California of $2.5bn in federal funds FRA (Federal Railroad Administration) previously granted,” according to the statement released Tuesday.
The moves come a week after California Governor Gavin Newsom said during his state of the state address, that the high-speed railway project as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long”. Opponents of the ambitious project interpreted his comments as a declaration that “the train to nowhere has finally stopped” and that Newsom was canceling the leg of the plan that extended the railway from San Francisco to Los Angeles. But Newsom’s office later clarified that he meant only that “we have to be realistic about the project”.
In response to Newsom’s remarks, Trump sent out a tweet asking for the return of “three and a half billion dollars”. Newsom responded by tweeting that the money was “allocated by Congress for this project. We’re not giving it back”.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/19/high-speed-rail-california-trump-funds
Hey Trump did you read between the lines, Newsom basically told you to pound sand............................
Brexit backstop: Theresa May to put new proposals to EU
Source: The Guardian
PM heads to Brussels as Philip Hammond declares ‘Malthouse compromise’ unviable
Theresa May will present the EU with new legal proposals to solve the Irish backstop issue on Wednesday, which Downing Street hopes will be enough to convince Eurosceptics to back her Brexit deal.
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, confirmed late on Tuesday that the government no longer intended to pursue alternative arrangements for the backstop in the withdrawal agreement, which had been championed by cross-factional MPs including Eurosceptic Steve Baker and soft Brexiter Nicky Morgan.
Instead, the prime minister is travelling to Brussels to meet Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, with a plan to secure legal assurances that the backstop would not permanently bind the UK into a customs union.
She was forced to admit to Conservative MPs who met her on Tuesday night that the Irish backstop could not be replaced by the “Malthouse compromise” – proposals for a free trade agreement with as-yet-unknown technology to avoid customs checks on the Irish border.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/19/brexit-backstop-may-rules-out-malthouse-compromise
.........................and the clusterfuck continues...............
And now for the weather on Mars, courtesy of new NASA lander
By MARCIA DUNN
36 minutes ago
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — And now for the weather on Mars: NASA’s newest lander is offering daily reports on the red planet’s frigid winter.
Starting Tuesday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is posting the highs and lows online , along with wind speed and atmospheric pressure from the InSight lander.
On Sunday, InSight recorded a high of 2 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 17 Celsius) and a low of minus 138 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 95 Celsius). Compare that with Sunday’s coldest U.S. temperature: minus 27 degrees (minus 3 Celsius) in Taylor Park, Colorado.
Scientists need to know the local Mars weather to determine if InSight’s seismometer is registering real marsquakes or simply wind or pressure changes.
InSight landed near the Mars equator in November. NASA’s Curiosity rover also gives weather updates, while roaming around Mars about 340 miles (550 kilometers) away.
https://apnews.com/bfef5fa0821442be87dc6171da509e8a
I love science........................
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