turbinetree
turbinetree's JournalKevin Williamson's unhinged attack on Elizabeth Warren's corporate accountability bill, explained
I’m not sure he actually read it.
By Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com Updated Aug 17, 2018, 10:27am EDT
As someone who tries to follow progressive policy development trends pretty closely, I was struck to see Thursday morning that Kevin Williamson had an article in National Review describing “Elizabeth Warren’s Batty Plan to Nationalize . . . Everything.”
Williamson turns out to be referring to Warren’s proposed Accountable Capitalism Act, which I wrote about on Wednesday and which does not involve nationalizing anything at all.
Her proposal would, in fact, be a large change in how the American economy works. And the impact of the change would almost certainly be negative for the 10 percent of the population that owns 80 percent of the value of the American stock market. So it’s natural that the plan will provoke intense opposition, and very much worth considering the possibility that it’s a bad idea.
But Williamson, whom every conservative I know regards as one of the movement’s top minds, reaches his conclusion based almost entirely on mischaracterizing Warren’s program.
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/17/17698502/kevin-williamson-elizabeth-warren-corporate-accountability
He didn't read it, he just wants to listen to the voices in his head...................he likes fascism 101...............and he hates workers..................just like most if not all right wingers............
November 2018 cannot get here fast enough........vote
The Awesome Beauty of Jupiter Captured by Juno, in 13 photos
For the past two years, the spacecraft has been taking photos of Jupiter. Here are the best shots
By Brian Resnick@B_resnickbrian@vox.com Updated Aug 17, 2018, 10:37am EDT
On July 4, 2016, NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrived at Jupiter traveling at a blistering 130,000 mph. Its mission — to orbit the gas giant closer than any craft had done before — was not easy.
Like Earth, Jupiter is surrounded by a field of magnetic radiation. But Jupiter’s is much, much stronger. If Juno didn’t hit a precise region at the poles where the magnetic field is the weakest in its entry, it wouldn’t have survived; the radiation would have fried the craft.
Juno hit its mark, and Scott Bolton, who leads Mission Juno, called it “the hardest thing NASA has ever done.” Since then, Juno has been completing an orbit of Jupiter once every 53 days.
In June, Juno’s mission was approved to continue through at least July 2021. After that, NASA can choose to extend the mission — or it could end it, plunging the craft into Jupiter’s gauzy atmosphere, where it would burn up. If this dramatic ending sounds familiar, it’s because last year NASA crashed Cassini, the spacecraft that orbited Saturn, into that gas giant. It was awesome.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/21/17353110/jupiter-photos-juno-high-res-clouds-great-red-spot
-snip-
Astronomers discovered 10 new moons of Jupiter. Where have they been hiding?
Jupiter now has 79 moons, including a new weird one that may explain why there are so many.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/7/17/17576408/jupiter-moons-carnegie-blanco-telescope-astronomy-iau
This is just plain cool....................
Trump Can't Even Honor Aretha Franklin Properly
The president described the deceased soul legend first as a person who “worked for me,” a telling remark in his ongoing disparagement of black women.
VANN R. NEWKIRK II
AUG 16, 2018
Donald Trump isn’t particularly nice to anyone. His standard demeanor and language in disagreement or debate resemble the union of a road-rage incident and a bad game of the dozens. Even in agreement, he’s not a person for whom respect—of others or of the office he holds—is necessarily a guiding light. He does not run out of venom for opponents, and rarely has a word of unqualified praise for people who haven’t praised him first.
But if one pattern in his remarks about other people has crystallized in the past few months, it’s that the president employs a particular species of dismissive language when he’s talking about black women. After spending a good chunk of his first year in office attacking black men, his sophomore year has involved high-profile verbal attacks against high-profile black women. And, as evidenced by his recent remarks on the death of the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, his need to subordinate black women, even without enmity, is a primary drive.
“I want to begin today by expressing my condolences to the family of a person I knew well,” Trump said Thursday during a Cabinet meeting. “She worked for me on numerous occasions. She was terrific—Aretha Franklin—on her passing. She brought joy to millions of lives and her extraordinary legacy will thrive and inspire many generations to come.”
MORE STORIES
Aretha Franklin at a news conference on March 26, 1973
Aretha Franklin’s Revolution
VANN R. NEWKIRK II
An Asteroid Named Aretha
MARINA KOREN
Remembering the Incomparable Aretha Franklin
SPENCER KORNHABER
Donald Trump’s Eternal Feud With Blackness
VANN R. NEWKIRK II
It’s hard not to find effusive praise for a woman who managed so much in three-quarters of a century, and Trump’s comments indicate he has some sense of the scope of what she did. But with four simple words—she worked for me—he ruined most of that. With that clause, he turned the stunning career achievements of a woman who was nominated for at least one Grammy Award in 24 of the 27 years from 1968 to 1995 into supporting evidence. The most important thing, the thing he just had to point out, was that she’d worked for him.
To be sure, it’s as yet unclear how well the president actually knew Franklin, and in what capacity, if any, she ever worked directly for him. But assuming that she had—perhaps as a musician at the opening of a hotel or casino sometime in the past—it’s still telling that Trump’s first impulse was to claim a black woman as labor for his cause. It seems almost an instinct for the president to emphasize or exaggerate personal relationships with prominent individuals, as he did when the hip-hop artist Kanye West made a visit to Trump Tower. But here his first instinct is to turn one of the greatest icons in American musical history into the help. It’s the only way he seems to be able to recognize and process black women who aren’t adversaries: by fealty.
As Trump has also demonstrated recently, black women elicit the most bellicose and vulgar insults from him when they cross the line from associate to adversary. On Tuesday, he took to Twitter to call his former staffer Omarosa Manigault-Newman a “dog,” after she claimed, on a press tour for her new book, that he’d been caught on tape using a six-letter word referring to black people that’s not people. He’s similarly engaged in a long-running series of racist and sexist attacks against Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, repeatedly denigrating her as a “low IQ” individual. Trump has also insulted Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, Oprah Winfrey, the ESPN journalist Jemele Hill, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and former National-Security Adviser Susan Rice.
As with many of the black men Trump continually berates—from the NBA superstar LeBron James to the NBA superdad LaVar Ball—many of his most charged attacks denigrate black intelligence. But with black women, there’s the additional dimension of subordination and vicious critiques of appearance that he also tends to levy against women generally.
Perhaps those attacks against black women are so vicious because Trump can evidently find no greater achievement than working for him, in service of his goals. In this, black women are to be the help, loved and praised until they decide to do something else. But the truth is most likely that Trump was little more than a footnote in Franklin’s life. Her arc was greater and grander than whole strings of presidents, let alone just this one.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/aretha-franklin-trump/567760/
In A Fit Of Pique, Trump Takes Us Down Another Rabbit Hole
He Revokes a Persistent Critic’s Security Clearance, Lists Others
Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport New York Editor
Leave it to the master disrupter to invent a new way to publicly undercut a persistent critic, even while trying to distract attention from other bad publicity.
To counter continuing criticism by former CIA director John Brennan, Trump yesterday revoked Brennan’s security clearance.
While he was at it, Trump said he is reviewing security clearances for several other frequent critics, including former Deputy Atty. Gen. Sally Yates, former CIA director Michael Hayden, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, former FBI director James Comey Jr. and the newly fired FBI agent Peter Strzok.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced the decision at a White House briefing, reading a statement from Trump that accused Brennan of making “a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations — wild outbursts on the internet and television — about this administration.”
Forget the fact that such moves are “not done” in Washington – the government might need seasoned intelligence figures for inclusion on some real problem (not unlike Russia, say, trying to meddle in U.S. elections). Concentrate instead on the fact that these were all people who have annoyed Trump with public criticism. So, the president just flicked away their security clearance – just for personal pique. And he relied on his expansive view of presidential power alone to do so; he did not even tell his own Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and may not have told National Security Adviser John Bolton.
That action won’t silence anyone, of course, but it will keep them from any inclusion in government business or even work for government contractors.
What makes it remarkable, however, is not the mere fact of the revocation, but the idea that Trump did it by dismissing any of the usual procedures for such a move. Those usual procedures involve having a substantive reason, and holding a hearing, even allowing for an appeal. None of the previous government administrations had revoked security clearances for their predecessors’ advisers, regardless of public criticisms.
For those of us now on edge about Trump’s steps towards authoritarianism, this move stands out.
If Trump can do this based on eliminating anyone who offers personal criticisms of him, why can’t he remove Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, or Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III? Why can’t he just reach out to order revocation of security clearances for all Democratic senators? How far does Trump think this new power can take him?
“I never, ever thought I’d see it here in the United States,” Brennan said on MSNBC. “I believe all Americans need to take stock of what is happening right now in our government — how abnormal and how irresponsible and how dangerous these actions are. If Mr. Trump believes this is going to lead me to just go away and be quiet, he is very badly mistaken.”
Admittedly, Brennan has been pretty outspoken, particularly about the president’s response to the all-things-Russia investigation, but more broadly about how Trump has handled himself in office. Brennan criticized Trump for the language he used to attack Omarosa Manigault Newman, his former top aide, whom Trump called a “dog.” Wrote Brennan: “It’s astounding how often you fail to live up to minimum standards of decency, civility, & probity. Seems like you will never understand what it means to be president, nor what it takes to be a good, decent, & honest person. So disheartening, so dangerous for our Nation.”
The New York Times reported that the list of possible revocations also includes Bruce Ohr, a high-ranking Justice Department official, whom Trump has criticized because of his association with Christopher Steele, who compiled a dossier containing damaging information about Trump. Ohr was friends with Mr. Steele, and Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS, the research firm that commissioned the dossier.
Press Secretary Sanders sidestepped a question about why Trump did not simply fire Ohr, rather than threaten to revoke his security clearance, which would render him unable to do his job. She said she had no personnel changes to announce.
The Washington Post quoted a presidential historian as saying “The public outcry of Brennan being stripped will echo long and far in the annals of American history. It will be seen like McCarthyism — a dark stain on our democracy.”
The revocation drew hurrahs from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) but darts from Senators Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine).
For myself, I am less concerned with “distraction” or even with next steps for Brennan himself. I see this as one of those steps that we will look back on as a maniacal step towards authoritarian rule using this unique view of powers for the president. It must be challenged.
https://www.dcreport.org/2018/08/16/in-a-fit-of-pique-trumps-takes-us-down-another-rabbit-hole/
Collins and Corker can throw darts but they will still corrupt the judicial bench...................even though they have the means to invoke their Constitutional duties to stop this traitor..............
The Lock-Him-Up Campaign
Progressive favorite Zephyr Teachout promises to retool the powerful New York prosecutor’s office to go straight after Donald Trump. She’s not the only one. Is this the road Democrats want to go down?
By DAVID FREEDLANDER August 17, 2018
NEW YORK—Zephyr Teachout, the would-be next attorney general of New York, sits tight against the desk in the former doctor’s office she’s using for her campaign headquarters, her very pregnant belly barely visible above the desk’s metal top. She runs her hands through her hair like a law professor lecturing on a particularly thorny constitutional question. She lays out precisely how she could, if elected, use her office put Donald Trump in prison.
Teachout’s headquarters is in East Harlem, just a few miles northeast of Trump Tower, but a world away from its pink white-veined marble, mirrors and brass. Until earlier this year, this was a husband-and-wife urology and ophthalmology practice. Her press team operates out of an erstwhile exam room. Teachout takes the former urologist’s office for herself, empty except for her cellphone and laptop, and piece of poster paper sitting on the floor on which is written “SIGN THE CLIMATE PLEDGE.”
Teachout is a 46-year-old professor of law at Fordham University, where she teaches classes on antitrust and the Constitution. As a young lawyer from Vermont, Teachout joined the Howard Dean campaign as director of internet organizing; a magazine story from the time described her as “a slight, freckled lawyer” who “darts around the office in a pair of silver shoes with the balletic, boyish energy of Peter Pan.” The shoes are gone now, but the energy is unchanged, even with Teachout due to give birth to her first child in October.
If all goes according to plan, the baby will be born just after the primary and just before the general election, and will be just beginning to babble when Teachout takes office and turns the full force of the nation’s most prestigious and powerful state legal office against the president of the United States. “This is war time. This is a total crisis moment,” Teachout says. “It calls for Churchill. It calls for bringing out new ideas.”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/17/lock-him-up-donald-trump-zephyr-teachout-219367
It would be a very good start....................
November 2018 cannot get here fast enough....................vote
Georgia election board plots Jim Crow-like assault on black voting
And if Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed, they could get away with it.
IAN MILLHISER AUG 17, 2018, 12:28 PM
A Georgia election board proposed shutting down seven of the nine polling locations in an overwhelmingly black rural county. It’s the sort of blatantly illegal idea that would have been swiftly dismissed by federal courts in an age when an openly racist president was not appointing judges to the federal bench.
Nevertheless, there is a very real risk this plot could succeed if Judge Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court.
According to a letter from the ACLU of Georgia to the Randolph County Board of Elections, over 60 percent of the voters in this county are African American — and one of the polling places the board may close “serves a 96.7% black population.”
Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of Randolph County residents do not own cars, meaning that many of these voters could have to walk more than 3 hours to get to a polling place. Even voters with car could have to drive 10 to 20 minutes to reach a polling place under the board’s proposal.
The board also released this proposal not long after Democrats nominated Stacey Abrams, an African American woman, as their gubernatorial candidate.
https://thinkprogress.org/georgia-election-board-plots-jim-crow-like-assault-on-black-voting-cf7c30ac7809/
Solution:
https://staceyabrams.com/
Florida candidate claims his Facebook account was hacked to place ad calling his opponent's breast
milk defective
TOM BOGGIONI 17 AUG 2018 AT 12:13 ET
A candidate for a spot on the New Smyrna Beach City Commission claims his campaign Facebook account was hacked and that person spent $100 on an offensive ad accusing his female opponent of having genetically inferior breast milk.
According to the Palm Beach Post, retired businessman John Redmond said he had nothing to do with the ad that attacked his opponent, Jessica Realin, that appeared on Facebook on Tuesday.
The offensive ad, stated, “Possibly due to genetic defects in her family donating her breast milk may pass on her inferior genes to unsuspecting families.”
The ad continued by naming both her son and her daughter — both of whom were born prematurely — before adding the disclaimer: “This is an editorial comment.”
In 2015 candidate Realin, it should be noted, co-founded the Florida Mothers’ Milk Bank, which provides human milk to 33 neonatal intensive care units in Florida.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/08/florida-candidate-claims-facebook-account-hacked-place-ad-calling-opponents-breast-milk-defective/
I don't believe him......................
Alaska candidate faces charges over food stamp benefits
By Becky Bohrer, Associated PressAugust 15, 2018
JUNEAU, Alaska — An Alaska legislative candidate and her husband have been accused of misleading the state in applying for food stamps.
Candidate Rebecca Halat says the last year has been hard on her family, with her husband being laid off. She says she’s not scared by “false allegations from those trying to steal this election.”
Halat, who goes by Bekah, is a Republican running against state Rep. Chris Birch in next week’s GOP primary for an Anchorage Senate seat.
A charging document filed by the state alleges that Halat and her husband, Jarek Halat, did not disclose several bank accounts. The document says they were above the resource limit for food stamps during the time they received benefits this year.
Arraignment for Rebecca Halat is scheduled for Aug. 24.
So Miss Halat........................can you explain this.......................
Bekah is a damn mess.
Halat and her husband, Jarek Halat, were charged last week with one count of felony theft for allegedly collecting more than $10,000 in food stamps that they shouldn’t have qualified for. They also face one misdemeanor charge for misleading a public servant.
Yeah, they were both working, living in a $280,000 house and paying a $2,000 a month mortgage, but they really needed that extra $662. a month for food. So, they lied about their income.
I expect Republicans to steal. Hell, that’s almost something they list with pride on their campaign materials for the primary.
But the Republican behavior is what I find amusing. Halat blamed her opponent for her theft. She claimed the criminal charges (which say she admitted to being dishonest and asked to repay the food stamps) were “false allegations from those trying to steal the election.”
“People have learned a lot about me, but there’s a lot more they have to learn if they think I’m going to just curl up in a ball and let someone else represent me and my district through attacking my family.”
Shuddup. Just shuddup.
https://crooksandliars.com/2018/08/and-maybe-reason-5432-why-i-hate
and this is what is being reported by the AP
https://apnews.com/a9d4e6db07b34bcea02d927eb262ee1c
And the Primary is...................
www.elections.alaska.gov/Core/primaryelectioninformation.php
'He likes to be begged': DC insider tells Morning Joe what Trump likes best about pardon power
The continuing saga of a sick psychopathic narcissistic megalomaniac asshole traitor....................
Lock him up........................enough is enough...........
November 2018 cannot get here fast enough.....................vote
Its Friday and Tucker Carlson "claims" that Tacos are an "American Food"
This is not from the Onion.................
Making 16 million a year.................for being a racists, who are his advertisers, time for a boycott..............
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