August 21, 2018

How One West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Gave Natural Gas a Big Victory and Shortchanged Resident

Justice Beth Walker voted to reopen an already decided case around the time her husband owned stock in a variety of energy companies. And that’s not even why she’s been impeached.

by Ken Ward Jr., The Charleston Gazette-Mail Aug. 20, 2 p.m. EDT

This article was produced in partnership with the Charleston Gazette-Mail, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

The Republican-led West Virginia House of Delegates received national attention last week for impeaching all four of the state’s sitting Supreme Court justices. Lawmakers cited a swirling scandal over court spending that ranged from using state cars for personal business to extravagant office renovations that included a $32,000 couch.

Among the targets was Beth Walker, who was impeached over allegations of irresponsible spending and poorly managing the court’s administrative affairs.

But left unmentioned in the impeachment and the debate around it has been a peculiar vote by Walker that benefited the natural gas industry. In one of her earliest votes, Walker made a highly unusual decision to reopen a case and then reverse a Supreme Court ruling that would have forced drillers to pay more in profits to residents. Walker voted to reopen the case around the time her husband owned stock in a variety of energy companies, including those participating in West Virginia’s growing gas boom.

The case focused on whether natural gas companies are allowed to deduct a variety of expenses — for the transportation and processing of gas, for example — when they calculate payments for West Virginia residents or companies that lease them drilling rights to their gas. Millions of dollars in gas royalty payments, the riches from the industry’s dramatic growth in West Virginia over the past decade, were at stake.

https://www.propublica.org/article/west-virginia-supreme-court-justice-beth-walker-gave-natural-gas-a-big-victory-and-shortchanged-residents


Absolutely amazing...................and this state keeps voting in a majority of "republicans"..............

August 20, 2018

Combative spy chiefs cause permanent damage in anti-Trump crusade

BY BUCK SEXTON — 08/20/18 08:15 AM EDT 275

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

There’s a lot to criticize in our intelligence community. Sometimes it gets very important things very wrong. It’s a vast and cumbersome bureaucracy with 17 agencies and hundreds of thousands of personnel (at least). But for all its mistakes and flaws, the underlying ethos of the intel rank and file has always been apolitical. Ultimately, all that mattered was the mission of protecting America, not political ideology or partisan affiliation.

Politicization among intelligence officers has traditionally been viewed with the kind of heightened professional disdain that authors and journalists feel for plagiarism. And the leadership of the intel agencies has long accepted that the American people pick their president, for better or worse. Once in office, the commander in chief shouldn’t have to engage in a partisan house cleaning for fear of partisan retribution from incumbent appointees or senior level civil servants.


In the era of Trump, this is no longer the case.


Former CIA directors John Brennan and Michael Hayden, along with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey (among many other officials) have deployed some of the most extreme rhetorical weapons imaginable to take down this president. They have capitalized on the public’s perception of their classified access to hammer Trump. In so doing, they’ve eradicated the long-held notion of intelligence agency chiefs as nonpartisan actors.

John Brennan has suggested — repeatedly — that the president of the United States is guilty of treason on behalf of Russia. Michael Hayden (whom I worked for years ago at the CIA) shared a photo of a Nazi concentration camp on Twitter and compared it to Trump’s border policy. James Clapper said that Russia likely “turned” the election for Trump. Comey said that “patriots need to stand up” to Trump.

None of these men have produced evidence to back up their most outrageous claims about Russia collusion, though each of them had access to the most sophisticated information collection systems on the planet in the run up to Trump’s election.

http://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/402589-washed-up-spy-chiefs-cause-permanent-damage-in-anti-trump-crusade


After reading your hit job, I just gotta ask, what do you think of this.....................

Who is more of a patriot for speaking out, than writing a piece saying that they don't know what they are saying and that they are washed up, that they have politicized the agencies......................No sir, the malignant narcissistic traitor in the white house has done that job....................what do you think of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck, they like to run around and put there brand of crap on the airwaves, and basically say that anyone that exercising there first amendment right to speak up against fascist republicans, are not patriots or for that matter not libertarians or right wing republicans.

One of the people mentioned, Limbaugh got busted for smuggling drugs, how respectable is that, since you like to co-host his show when he is not around, after all he goes on the air and vilifies people that get busted for drugs.

And as for Beck, he pretty much is in the same camp as Alex Jones, know matter how he tries to say "stuff" to show that he has seen the whatever light he sees he still does some of the rants he had on race and other issues like education and such.............he still looks to be in the deplorable camp.

And has for being a commentator on Fox...................that says everything, I can't remember the last time that anything was truthful, they are the feed of bull shit and enabling treason, just like the trump lawyer now running around and saying the "truth isn't the truth".................whatever the hell that means..................

Now since you have the point of entry to comment on the platform called the Hill, you feel that ex-spies, commenting on a person that has basically committed treason and they are saying that what he is doing is basically treasonous, are a disgrace and that they are politicizing the agencies, really......................

What were part(s) of a scheme to defraud an election, with the help of foreign state actor, to help his team trump, and that the record shows this, that member(s) of his team met with RUSSIAN spies at a "republican convention and in a tower in down town Manhattan NY, and they didn't call the FBI, that this is just fine a dandy, and they shouldn't be called out...................I Have a question are you mentioned in the book Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Steve Coll.........................?

I really am glad that I still have the first amendment right to speak out, after all the accused sexual predator wants to shut down news organizations that don't tow his line of crap..................and he wants to shut me down also..................

August 19, 2018

Trudeau shuts down heckler: 'Racism has no place' in Canada, note it has subtitles............

August 19, 2018

Local official uses government billboard to hit newspaper as 'fake news'

BY MORGAN GSTALTER - 08/19/18 06:41 PM EDT

A local official in northern Illinois received criticism after using a government billboard to attack a newspaper as “fake news.”

Algonquin Township Highway Commissioner Andrew Gasser posted the message on the billboard on Friday, taking aim at local newspaper Northwest Herald, the newspaper itself reported.

“THE NORTHWORST HERALD IS FAKE NEWS,” the sign read, according to the report.

When a reporter from the newspaper asked Gasser why he used government property to criticize the free press, he reportedly responded with “because you’re fake news.”

“I just don’t want to talk to fake news,” he said as he walked away.

By Saturday, the message had been removed from the billboard, according to the Northwest Herald.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/402576-local-official-uses-government-billboard-to-attack-newspaper-as


Hey asshole in my state 5 journalists were killed, because some "guy" had a beef with the newspaper, do you know asshole how many journalist have been killed around the world.................


https://cpj.org/data/killed/2018/?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&start_year=2018&end_year=2018&group_by=location

August 18, 2018

Why is San Francisco ... covered in human feces?

Nathan Robinson
People aren’t pooping on the streets because they unlearned basic hygiene. Rather, the incidents reflect shameful levels of inequality in the city


It’s an empirical fact: San Francisco is a crappier place to live these days. Sightings of human feces on the sidewalks are now a regular occurrence; over the past 10 years, complaints about human waste have increased 400%. People now call the city 65 times a day to report poop, and there have been 14,597 calls in 2018 alone. Last year, software engineer Jenn Wong even created a poop map of San Francisco, showing the concentration of incidents across the city. New mayor London Breed said: “There is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here.” In a revolting recent incident, a 20lb bag of fecal waste showed up on a street in the city’s Tenderloin district.

A city covered in poop is so disgusting it has to be almost comical. But the uptick in street defecation is the symbol of a human tragedy. People aren’t pooping on the streets because they have suddenly forgotten what a bathroom is, or unlearned basic hygiene. The incidents are part of a broader failure of the city to provide for the basic needs of its citizens, and show the catastrophic, socially destructive effects of unchecked inequality.

It’s impossible to talk about street feces without talking about homelessness and housing. While there aren’t actually more homeless people than there have been in the past, the gentrification of San Francisco has had a severe effect on the homeless. Development has pushed homeless residents out of secluded spaces, and there is less and less space for them to inhabit as “places where homeless people used to sleep becoming offices and housing”, in the words of a city official. The city routinely clears away encampments, causing people to wander around the city in search of a new temporary space.

Poop on the streets has another obvious cause: a lack of restroom access. Many businesses restrict their bathrooms to customers only, precisely because they don’t want their facilities to be frequented by the homeless. But the “privatization of bathrooms” means people are left without obvious places to go. There are even websites offering tips on how to go to the bathroom in San Francisco, such as by pretending to be interested in furniture at Crate & Barrel or finding the “hidden gem” of a bathroom on the second floor of a Banana Republic. The city has installed 25 small self-cleaning public toilets and recently commissioned a set of futuristic-looking new bathrooms, but a few dozen toilets for a city of 870,000 is woefully insufficient. Bathroom access should be considered a basic right, and it’s worth considering the idea of banning “customers only” toilets. In a city with generous public spaces and a commitment to equal access, no one would ever have to use the street.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/18/san-francisco-poop-problem-inequality-homelessness

-snip-

But there are “solutions” that simply put the problem out of mind – like Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to give every homeless person a one-way bus ticket out of the city.


Michael Bloomberg can go fuck himself........................Cholera and typhoid fever is caused by unsanitary conditions.....................shipping the inequality issue out on train or bus just shows how one person thinks .............no empathy, its all about fucking greed...............

August 18, 2018

Kim Wehle , Former Federal Prosecutor on Chris Hayes................is kicking butt

and taking names on the dereliction of the "republican" majority in Congress...................violating the Constitution to preserve and protect the Constitution and this republic from a traitorous asshole(s) that is not giving former officials due process.................


November 2018 cannot get here fast enough................vote...........80 days to go


https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/election?p0=263&iso=20181106T12&msg=2018%20Midterm%20Elections

August 17, 2018

Kevin 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

August 17, 2018

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....................

August 17, 2018

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.”

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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/