January 23, 2020

pity party

https://twitter.com/MysterySolvent/status/1220065029170569220

January 22, 2020

Ivanka Trump Takes Spotlight at Davos, Ahead of Cabinet Members

Ivanka Trump Takes Spotlight at Davos, Ahead of Cabinet Members
Gatherings like the World Economic Forum give the president’s adviser and daughter a chance to meet the world’s power brokers, who have come to acknowledge her influence in the White House.


DAVOS, Switzerland — If the World Economic Forum gave President Trump a break from his political and legal troubles at home, for his eldest daughter it presented another opportunity to stride across the world stage.

Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser, was presented at this conference of global elites as a principal second only to her father, even as she traveled as part of a delegation that included all of the president’s most important economic advisers.

She shared top billing with Mr. Trump Wednesday morning at a breakfast for corporate executives, including the chief executive of Apple, Tim Cook, which she co-hosted with the president and helped organize. There, she took precedence over four cabinet members and the president’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, who were also in attendance.

She also organized Mr. Trump’s dinner meeting Tuesday night with global chief executives, and participated in a bilateral meeting with the prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan. She sat for an interview with the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, and she was the sole adviser Mr. Trump mentioned by name during his 30-minute speech on Tuesday.

“Under Ivanka’s leadership, our Pledge to America’s Workers has become a full-blown national movement,” Mr. Trump said, referring to an effort to get employers to expand worker retraining.

It was a ringing endorsement in front of a moneyed crowd for a program — a set of pledges that so far are more promised than realized — that Ms. Trump has been championing for the past year in lower-profile appearances across the country. After a difficult first year in Washington, during which Ms. Trump struggled to find her lane, the challenges faced by the American worker have given her what she describes as a passion project.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/world/europe/ivanka-trump-davos.html

January 22, 2020

Donald Trump dismisses injuries of US military troops, proves (again) there is no bottom

(CNN)Before leaving the internal gathering at Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, President Donald Trump held a hastily scheduled press conference. In it, he was asked about the clear discrepancy between his initial claim that no Americans had been harmed in Iran's retaliatory strikes against a US base in Iraq and reports of 11 military personnel diagnosed with concussions and an unnamed number of others also being treated in the wake of the attack.

"No, I heard that they had headaches, and a couple of other things, but I would say, and I can report, it's not very serious," Trump said dismissively. When pressed about the potential for traumatic brain injury among those concussed, Trump added: "They told me about it numerous days later, you'd have to ask Department of Defense. I don't consider it very serious relative to other injuries that I've seen. I've seen what Iran has done with their roadside bombs to our troops. I've seen people with no legs and with no arms. I've seen people that were horribly, horribly injured in that area, that war. No, I do not consider that to be bad injuries, no."

Which, well, yeah.

Let's start with what we know about the injured soldiers. We know that the 11 soldiers initially injured were evacuated from the base in Iraq -- eight to Germany and three more to Kuwait. In addition, the Pentagon announced Tuesday that an unspecified number of other troops had been injured in the attack and evacuated to Germany.

"As medical treatment and evaluations in theater continue, additional service members have been identified as having potential injuries," said CENTCOM spokesman Bill Urban. "These service members -- out of an abundance of caution -- have been transported to Landstuhl, Germany, for further evaluations and necessary treatment on an outpatient basis. Given the nature of injuries already noted, it is possible additional injuries may be identified in the future."

Given that the patients are still being evaluated, it's hard to imagine that Trump has deep insight into their conditions -- or prognosis. As CNN's Barbara Starr notes, the military has made a significant push in recent years to identify and treat traumatic brain injury associated with combat roles, making Trump's downplaying of the injuries suffered by the troops all the more problematic.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/22/politics/donald-trump-iran-attack-headaches/index.html

January 22, 2020

Trump made 81 false claims in the last week alone

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/21/politics/donald-trump-lying-fact-checker/index.html


And it's not like Trump didn't say any false or misleading things in his first two years in office! His record of prevarication -- in just those first two years -- is well beyond anything we have seen from a president (or any politician) in modern memory.
According to CNN's Daniel Dale, Trump made 81 false claims in the last week alone. That's above his average of 61 per week since Dale began tabulating Trump's falsehoods on July 8, 2019. In that time, Trump has made 1,636 false claims since July 8, an average of about nine per day.

What Trump is doing, whether consciously or unconsciously, is continuing to stretch the idea of "truth" and "fact" in ways those two ideas have never been stretched before. And his very willingness to push and push and push beyond even the outer limits of what most people would consider being honest has -- and will have -- a profound effect on who we are as Americans.
The best way I can explain this is to take it out of a political context and put it in an athletic one.

Think of a basketball game in which one team, from the start, played such aggressive defense that -- by the rules -- they should be called for a foul on every play. In short: If the referees enforced the rules as written, every single player on the team would foul out of the game within minutes. But what is more likely to happen in such a scenario is that the refs hold their whistles somewhat, not wanting to make the game unwatchable or unplayable. The result? The team playing overly aggressive defense effectively changes the definition of a "foul" -- allowing themselves significantly more leeway in how they can guard the other team and likely giving them a competitive edge.

That's what Trump is doing. His assault on the very idea that truth and facts aren't partisan positions has effectively changed the rules by which he is judged by the public. One example: Trump's oft-repeated "fake news" mantra, which is beloved by his base, doesn't mean what it purports to mean. "Fake" news is news that Trump either doesn't like or is unfavorable to him. That he has co-opted the term "fake" for that sort of news, and that so many of his supporters believe it, tells you all you need to know about what Trump's lying has wrought.

But again, it's not just that Trump doesn't tell the truth. It's that -- to borrow the above basketball metaphor -- he keeps guarding the other team more and more aggressively, daring the refs to call him for a foul. Trump is not satisfied with just blurring the lines of what is fact and what is fiction; he wants to destroy the concept of "facts" entirely.

January 21, 2020

Steyer keeps trying to talk to Bernie

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1219326983298895884

January 21, 2020

GOP state lawmaker wants to let cops detain anyone they think might commit a crime

A Kentucky Republican lawmaker is proposing a controversial bill that would allow police to question anyone they "reasonably" believe has committed or may soon commit a crime and detain them for up to two hours.

SB 89, filed last week by state Sen. Stephen Meredith (R), would change state law to let any "peace officer" in a public place demand the name, address, date of birth, and government-issue ID from anyone they reasonably deem "has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime."

If the person does not provide the requested information and an explanation for their actions, the officer could detain, question, and investigate them for as long as two hours without officially recording any of the incident.

https://americanindependent.com/kentucky-gop-police-detention-bill-stephen-meredith-republicans/

Meredith did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the bill, but told the Lexington Herald-Leader, "If a man acts suspicious, then why wouldn’t you want to know what his name is?"

"I can’t imagine any legitimate reason in the world why a person would refuse to give their name and photo identification to a police officer if they were asked," he told the outlet.

While many states have laws permitting brief stops by cops and stop-and-frisk, civil rights advocates are raising concerns about the constitutionality of this particular bill and the disparate impact it could have on minority groups.

January 21, 2020

commercial airline pilot writes "#MAGA" and anti- Hispanic, anti-black slurs at Florida airport

A commercial airline pilot dealing with “anger issues” was arrested in Florida for allegedly scrawling racist graffiti in an airport bathroom.

James Ellis Dees, who was fired by Endeavor Air after his arrest, was busted for writing “NO S—S” and “NO N—S” — anti-Hispanic and anti-black slurs — in bathrooms and elevators at the Tallahassee Airport, CNN reported.

Dees also invoked the president’s campaign slogan with the graffiti, writing “#MAGA” in one of the tags, according to the report.

Dees was questioned by police after security footage from the elevator showed him writing on the wall, and admitted to being the racist vandal.

He told police that he’d been going through a “really tough time” and that he had “anger issues.”

Police released him after questioning, and Dees left to fly a plane, but eventually got off after determining he was “not in the right state of mind to fly a plane,” according to CNN.

Dees pleaded not guilty in a court appearance after being hit with criminal mischief

https://nypost.com/2020/01/20/pilot-with-anger-issues-busted-for-racist-graffiti-in-airport-bathroom/

January 21, 2020

United Church of Christ wipes out medical debt for over 11K St. Louisans

https://fox2now.com/2020/01/18/united-church-of-christ-wipes-out-medical-debt-for-over-11k-st-louisans/


Local, regional and national leaders of the United Church of Christ announced on Saturday that church donations, matched by a generous gift from the Deaconess Foundation, have wiped out $12.9 million in medical debt for 11,108 families in St. Louis and St. Louis County. A news conference was held at Christ the King UCC, which begins the celebration of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. The group talked about why the campaign got started and how it is bringing debt relief to scores of local neighborhoods.

“This endeavor is the intent of the United Church of Christ to make this tangible ministry of debt abolishment in our denominational regions another expression of the ways we seek to live out our commitment to Three Great Loves: Love of Neighbor, Love of Children, Love of Creation, and to call attention to the impact of the failure to expand Medicaid in Missouri on poor families,” said the Rev. Traci Blackmon, senior pastor, Christ the King UCC, and UCC associate general minister of Justice and Local Church Ministries.

Church bodies raised more than $60,000, matched by a $40,000 donation from the Deaconess Foundation. Working with the New York-based nonprofit RIP Medical Debt, the group bought medical debt in December at pennies on the dollar. Families will receive letters on MLK weekend telling them that their medical debt has been forgiven.

“We recognize access to health care is a persistent challenge for the 1 in 5 children living in poverty in the St. Louis region,” said the Rev. Starsky Wilson, president, and C.E.O., Deaconess Foundation, St. Louis. “Furthermore, medical debt is a drag on family stability and economic mobility for these families.”

----
-----
----

The United Church of Christ, a mainline Protestant denomination, has nearly 900,000 members and 5,000 congregations nationwide. Headquartered in Cleveland, it is a church of many firsts: the first mainline denomination to ordain a woman, the first to ordain an openly gay man and the first predominantly white denomination to ordain an African-American.

January 21, 2020

Donald Trump, a Racist, Sends Awful Tweet About MLK Jr. Day

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/donald-trump-a-racist-sends-awful-tweet-about-mlk-jr-day/

Donald Trump is a racist. This has been true since long before he became president. It was true when he called for the Central Park Five to get the death penalty. It was true when he was called out for not hiring black people. It was true when he said he would be more successful if he were black. It was true when he said Obama was born in Kenya. It has been true throughout his presidency. It will be true long after his presidency is over. Time and time again he has shown it every step of the way.

Donald Trump, today:

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
It was exactly three years ago today, January 20, 2017, that I was sworn into office. So appropriate that today is also MLK jr DAY. African-American Unemployment is the LOWEST in the history of our Country, by far. Also, best Poverty, Youth, and Employment numbers, ever. Great!

116K
11:59 AM - Jan 20, 2020

January 20, 2020

7 shot, two dead - San Antonio

https://news4sanantonio.com/news/local/two-people-dead-from-gunshot-in-downtown-club

According to McManus, police responded to a call for shots fired at about 8:30 P.M.

"There was some type of concert going on in there," McManus said.

All of a sudden, McManus said, there was an an argument inside, when one person pulled out a gun and began shooting.

"Seven people were shot, two dead, five are in local hospitals," McManus said.

One of the people reportedly died inside in the club said, while another person died from their injuries on the way to the hospital.

At this time, the victims have not been positively identified. One of the victims, who died in the club, is reported to be a 21-year-old male.