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Demovictory9
Demovictory9's Journal
Demovictory9's Journal
December 8, 2018
Trump damages another WH tradition... might not hold the WH press corp holiday party
The holiday season may be about to get a bit less cheerful for the White House press corps.
The annual Christmas press party, a tradition at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for decades, apparently has melted away like a snowflake in May. The White House hasn’t said the event is off — but it hasn’t scheduled it, either.
White House reporters say they’re in the dark about its fate. The party is usually held in early- to mid-December.
While the reasons for the nonevent are unclear — the White House didn’t return requests for comment — it may have something to do with the fiasco that was last year’s party, the first under President Trump.
In 2017, Trump’s continued attacks on the press, and especially against CNN, prompted the network to announce that it wouldn’t be attending last year’s edition. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders responded to the snub with a snub of her own: “Christmas comes early!” she tweet-taunted in response. “Finally, good news from @CNN.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/party-on-the-white-houses-holiday-press-soiree-may-be-a-ghost-of-christmas-past/2018/12/08/b8c39b02-faa1-11e8-8d64-4e79db33382f_story.html?utm_term=.0be515db938f
December 8, 2018
A man in detention on unrelated charges has been arrested in the kidnapping and killing of 13-year-old Hania Aguilar, who was abducted last month outside her home in southeastern North Carolina.
The eighth-grader was kidnapped from her driveway on November 5 in Lumberton, about 95 miles from Raleigh. An abductor forced her into a relative's idling SUV and drove off, prompting an Amber Alert.
Michael Ray McLellan is charged in Hania Aguilar's kidnapping and death.
Michael Ray McLellan is charged in Hania Aguilar's kidnapping and death.
Hania's body was found last week in water off a rural road in Robeson County, while the stolen SUV was abandoned less than 10 miles from the home, authorities said.
Michael Ray McLellan, 34, has been charged with 10 felonies, including first-degree murder and statutory rape of a person under age 15, Shelley Lynch, public information for the FBI's Charlotte office, said in a statement.
update on NC teen abducted & killed when car was idling in yard.. man arrested
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/08/us/hania-aguilar-kidnapping-killing/index.htmlA man in detention on unrelated charges has been arrested in the kidnapping and killing of 13-year-old Hania Aguilar, who was abducted last month outside her home in southeastern North Carolina.
The eighth-grader was kidnapped from her driveway on November 5 in Lumberton, about 95 miles from Raleigh. An abductor forced her into a relative's idling SUV and drove off, prompting an Amber Alert.
Michael Ray McLellan is charged in Hania Aguilar's kidnapping and death.
Michael Ray McLellan is charged in Hania Aguilar's kidnapping and death.
Hania's body was found last week in water off a rural road in Robeson County, while the stolen SUV was abandoned less than 10 miles from the home, authorities said.
Michael Ray McLellan, 34, has been charged with 10 felonies, including first-degree murder and statutory rape of a person under age 15, Shelley Lynch, public information for the FBI's Charlotte office, said in a statement.
December 8, 2018
it's obvious that he cheated and lied his way into office, but do any of his actions get undone?
Hillary would have had those two Supreme court picks. We have to living under a rightwing SCOTUS for decades?
December 8, 2018
When Yvonne Mason first opened the letter, she read it all the way through. It did, after all, have the president’s seal at the top and his signature at the bottom.
But sometime around the third read, something began to irk the retired teacher, who had spent 17 years of her life refining the English skills of middle and high school students:
Look at all these unnecessarily capitalized letters, she thought.
“Federal” and “Nation” and “State” and “States” — common nouns capitalized as if they were proper nouns. And too many of the sentences began with the ninth letter of the alphabet: “I signed into law” and “I also directed.”
The letter, with her name on it, was written on heavy, official-feeling paper. Some would see such a letter from the president as suitable for framing. But for Mason, there was an itch that could not go unscratched.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/06/01/trump-sent-a-retired-teacher-a-letter-about-gun-policy-she-fixed-the-grammar-and-sent-it-back/?utm_term=.9a0310c00f3a
Trump sent a retired teacher a letter about gun policy. She fixed the grammar and sent it back.
When Yvonne Mason first opened the letter, she read it all the way through. It did, after all, have the president’s seal at the top and his signature at the bottom.
But sometime around the third read, something began to irk the retired teacher, who had spent 17 years of her life refining the English skills of middle and high school students:
Look at all these unnecessarily capitalized letters, she thought.
“Federal” and “Nation” and “State” and “States” — common nouns capitalized as if they were proper nouns. And too many of the sentences began with the ninth letter of the alphabet: “I signed into law” and “I also directed.”
The letter, with her name on it, was written on heavy, official-feeling paper. Some would see such a letter from the president as suitable for framing. But for Mason, there was an itch that could not go unscratched.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/06/01/trump-sent-a-retired-teacher-a-letter-about-gun-policy-she-fixed-the-grammar-and-sent-it-back/?utm_term=.9a0310c00f3a
December 7, 2018
https://www.nydailynews.com/resizer/LQpwP0jzfSDpegMkIVjft1QN5KA=/800x0/www.trbimg.com/img-5c09a97b/turbine/ny-1544137077-7o94pt6sab-snap-image
Fidel Del Valle, chief judge and commissioner of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, was caught on video dropping dozens of obscenities on a uniformed cop working City Hall’s West Gate security booth on Nov. 13.
His f-bomb barrage was followed by a failed attempt to keep the cop from complaining about his less-than-judicial behavior, the Daily News has learned.
Fidel Del Valle, chief judge and commissioner of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, was caught on video dropping dozens of obscenities on a uniformed cop working City Hall’s West Gate security booth on Nov. 13.
His f-bomb barrage was followed by a failed attempt to keep the cop from complaining about his less-than-judicial behavior, the Daily News has learned.
Top city judge hurls dozens of f-bombs at cop working City Hall security
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-metro-manhattan-city-hall-judge-hurls-curse-words-at-cop-20181206-story.htmlhttps://www.nydailynews.com/resizer/LQpwP0jzfSDpegMkIVjft1QN5KA=/800x0/www.trbimg.com/img-5c09a97b/turbine/ny-1544137077-7o94pt6sab-snap-image
Fidel Del Valle, chief judge and commissioner of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, was caught on video dropping dozens of obscenities on a uniformed cop working City Hall’s West Gate security booth on Nov. 13.
His f-bomb barrage was followed by a failed attempt to keep the cop from complaining about his less-than-judicial behavior, the Daily News has learned.
Fidel Del Valle, chief judge and commissioner of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, was caught on video dropping dozens of obscenities on a uniformed cop working City Hall’s West Gate security booth on Nov. 13.
His f-bomb barrage was followed by a failed attempt to keep the cop from complaining about his less-than-judicial behavior, the Daily News has learned.
December 7, 2018
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/photos-Anchorage-Alaska-rebuild-roads-repair-13442875.php#prev
Alaska road crews are the envy of folks in the Lower 48 because of their quick repair of a road that was ripped apart by Friday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake.
An off-ramp connecting International Airport Road and Minnesota Drive in Anchorage collapsed in the quake, creating a huge hole that made the unfortunate SUV that fell in look like a toy.
Before and after photos shared on Facebook on Tuesday showed how quickly the repairs were completed. The jagged chucks of broken road are gone, the hole is filled, the road has been repaved and fresh lines have been painted.
On Friday this Alaska road collapsed in an earthquake. It's already been fixed
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/05/us/alaska-earthquake-road-repair-trnd/index.htmlhttps://www.sfgate.com/news/article/photos-Anchorage-Alaska-rebuild-roads-repair-13442875.php#prev
Alaska road crews are the envy of folks in the Lower 48 because of their quick repair of a road that was ripped apart by Friday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake.
An off-ramp connecting International Airport Road and Minnesota Drive in Anchorage collapsed in the quake, creating a huge hole that made the unfortunate SUV that fell in look like a toy.
Before and after photos shared on Facebook on Tuesday showed how quickly the repairs were completed. The jagged chucks of broken road are gone, the hole is filled, the road has been repaved and fresh lines have been painted.
December 7, 2018
new detroit bus benches double as libraries, courtesy of volunteers
New Detroit bus stop benches double as little free libraries
?width=577
?width=534&height=401&fit=crop
DETROIT (FOX 2) - Waiting for the bus is about to get much more enjoyable with a local nonprofit providing commuters with a comfy place to kick back with a book.
They build benches for bus stops - that double as little free libraries
Volunteers from AT&T are taking time for community service Friday at Sit On It Detroit - building benches for bus stops that double as little free libraries.
"People have a place to sit and something to read while they're waiting for the bus," said Charles Molnar.
http://www.fox2detroit.com/news/local-news/new-detroit-bus-stop-benches-double-as-little-free-libraries
Molnar's Sit On It initiative has put about 200 benches at bus stops over the past six years - but they couldn't do it without companies and organizations coming in to help.
?width=700
https://patch.com/michigan/detroit/detroit-has-new-bus-stop-benches-thanks-these-volunteers
December 6, 2018
The GOP’s turn against democracy may be a greater threat to the American experiment than President Trump.
Why the state power grabs are so scary
The specifics of the power-stripping efforts vary from state to state — my colleague Tara Golshan has a great explanation of the details in each case — but share a fundamentally similar structure. Each one curtails the governor’s ability to make changes to Republican-backed policies like welfare work requirements, and political rules like campaign finance regulation. Republican-controlled legislatures are given enhanced powers to block governors’ moves through measures such as handing them control over state bureaucracies. And these bills all happen during lame-duck sessions, specifically subverting the results of elections that just happened.
Republican legislators sometimes bill the laws as high-minded protections of the separation of powers, but no one is fooled. The goal is to prevent Democrats from overturning Republican policy initiatives and electoral rules that help Republicans win statewide elections.
---
Democracy is premised on the idea that political power is only legitimate when exercised with the consent of the governed. But in reality, people disagree about fundamental political and moral issues; no elected government will ever have 100 percent support of the population, or anything close to it. The purpose of a democratic political system is to bridge that gap: to create a system for resolving these disagreements that everyone thinks is fair. That way, everyone will accept the outcome of the election as basically legitimate even when their side loses.
The post-election power grabs amount to Republicans declaring that they no longer accept that fundamental bargain. They do not believe it’s legitimate when they lose, or that they are obligated to hand over power to Democrats because that’s what’s required in a fair system. Political power, to the state legislators in question, matters more than the core bargain of democracy.
-------
“I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map in a way to help foster what I think is better for the country,” North Carolina state Rep. David Lewis, chair of the legislature’s redistricting effort, once said in defense of his gerrymander.
And there is simply no parallel on the other side. While state Democrats have certainly gerrymandered — Maryland being a particularly egregious case — it’s not nearly as nationally systematic as it has been on the Republican side. And Democrats certainly have not engaged in large-scale efforts to suppress Republican voters or strip powers from Republican officials after they win office. Republican officials don’t seem to feel constrained by the basic, principled norms of democracy the way that Democrats are.
“There’s really an assault on electoral fairness, I would say, in Republican-governed states,” Daniel Ziblatt, a Harvard professor and author of How Democracies Die, tells me. “It’s really only in Republican-governed states where this has taken place.”
------------
There has not been a hint of hand-wringing from President Trump or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan (who happens to be from Wisconsin). They do not object because they do not object: The past few years have shown that the national Republican leadership is perfectly fine with power grabs, and at times willing to back them.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/6/18127332/wisconsin-state-republican-power-grab-democracy
The Wisconsin power grab is part of a bigger Republican attack on democracy
The Wisconsin power grab is part of a bigger Republican attack on democracyThe GOP’s turn against democracy may be a greater threat to the American experiment than President Trump.
Why the state power grabs are so scary
The specifics of the power-stripping efforts vary from state to state — my colleague Tara Golshan has a great explanation of the details in each case — but share a fundamentally similar structure. Each one curtails the governor’s ability to make changes to Republican-backed policies like welfare work requirements, and political rules like campaign finance regulation. Republican-controlled legislatures are given enhanced powers to block governors’ moves through measures such as handing them control over state bureaucracies. And these bills all happen during lame-duck sessions, specifically subverting the results of elections that just happened.
Republican legislators sometimes bill the laws as high-minded protections of the separation of powers, but no one is fooled. The goal is to prevent Democrats from overturning Republican policy initiatives and electoral rules that help Republicans win statewide elections.
---
Democracy is premised on the idea that political power is only legitimate when exercised with the consent of the governed. But in reality, people disagree about fundamental political and moral issues; no elected government will ever have 100 percent support of the population, or anything close to it. The purpose of a democratic political system is to bridge that gap: to create a system for resolving these disagreements that everyone thinks is fair. That way, everyone will accept the outcome of the election as basically legitimate even when their side loses.
The post-election power grabs amount to Republicans declaring that they no longer accept that fundamental bargain. They do not believe it’s legitimate when they lose, or that they are obligated to hand over power to Democrats because that’s what’s required in a fair system. Political power, to the state legislators in question, matters more than the core bargain of democracy.
-------
“I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map in a way to help foster what I think is better for the country,” North Carolina state Rep. David Lewis, chair of the legislature’s redistricting effort, once said in defense of his gerrymander.
And there is simply no parallel on the other side. While state Democrats have certainly gerrymandered — Maryland being a particularly egregious case — it’s not nearly as nationally systematic as it has been on the Republican side. And Democrats certainly have not engaged in large-scale efforts to suppress Republican voters or strip powers from Republican officials after they win office. Republican officials don’t seem to feel constrained by the basic, principled norms of democracy the way that Democrats are.
“There’s really an assault on electoral fairness, I would say, in Republican-governed states,” Daniel Ziblatt, a Harvard professor and author of How Democracies Die, tells me. “It’s really only in Republican-governed states where this has taken place.”
------------
There has not been a hint of hand-wringing from President Trump or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan (who happens to be from Wisconsin). They do not object because they do not object: The past few years have shown that the national Republican leadership is perfectly fine with power grabs, and at times willing to back them.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/6/18127332/wisconsin-state-republican-power-grab-democracy
December 6, 2018
The Apostles' Creed is one of the prayers most core to Christianity. It states in a few lines the basic narrative of Jesus' life, is the statement of faith in one God, and is said daily by Christians across the globe.
On Wednesday, one Christian didn't say it. And Twitter noticed.
Video from the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush showed a front row of presidents at the Washington National Cathedral, standing and reciting it along with the program, as the voice of Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry boomed through the speakers to the thousands of mourners. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and their wives glanced up and down from the programs they held in front of them and spoke the prayer, along with everyone else visible in the video. The program, as is typical, calls for the prayer to be said in unison.
President Donald Trump stood, with his hands folded in front of him, waist-high, the program in his left hand, his lips not moving. Melania Trump also did not speak, nor did she hold a program.
Social media, left to right, pounced. The faith and values of Trump have been a source of debate, division, anger and mystery since his run for the presidency began - and especially since many religious conservatives embraced him, despite what critics say is his dishonesty, philandering, crudeness and policies many see as anti-Christian.
Theories (primarily of the snarky variety) poured forth on Twitter.
But mixed in within disgust was a small voice raising a controversial question: Maybe Trump doesn't believe the Creed, and therefore shouldn't say it? This was quickly answered by others noting that Trump says he is a Christian, often praises faith in God and characterizes himself as a friend of the faithful.
All the presidents at the Bush funeral service together recited this core prayer. Except one.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/All-the-presidents-at-the-Bush-funeral-service-13445686.phpThe Apostles' Creed is one of the prayers most core to Christianity. It states in a few lines the basic narrative of Jesus' life, is the statement of faith in one God, and is said daily by Christians across the globe.
On Wednesday, one Christian didn't say it. And Twitter noticed.
Video from the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush showed a front row of presidents at the Washington National Cathedral, standing and reciting it along with the program, as the voice of Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry boomed through the speakers to the thousands of mourners. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and their wives glanced up and down from the programs they held in front of them and spoke the prayer, along with everyone else visible in the video. The program, as is typical, calls for the prayer to be said in unison.
President Donald Trump stood, with his hands folded in front of him, waist-high, the program in his left hand, his lips not moving. Melania Trump also did not speak, nor did she hold a program.
Social media, left to right, pounced. The faith and values of Trump have been a source of debate, division, anger and mystery since his run for the presidency began - and especially since many religious conservatives embraced him, despite what critics say is his dishonesty, philandering, crudeness and policies many see as anti-Christian.
Theories (primarily of the snarky variety) poured forth on Twitter.
But mixed in within disgust was a small voice raising a controversial question: Maybe Trump doesn't believe the Creed, and therefore shouldn't say it? This was quickly answered by others noting that Trump says he is a Christian, often praises faith in God and characterizes himself as a friend of the faithful.
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Member since: Tue Feb 27, 2018, 10:32 PM
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