May 3, 2018

NRA Leader (Sandy Froman) Once Worked for Professor Who Claimed Blacks Were Genetically Inferior

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/05/nra-leader-once-worked-for-professor-who-claimed-blacks-were-genetically-inferior/

NRA Leader Once Worked for Professor Who Claimed Blacks Were Genetically Inferior
In the 1970s, Sandra Froman, now a board member of the gun group, helped William Shockley promote his racist theories.

In a hagiographic video series titled “Armed and Fabulous” on the National Rifle Association website, the gun group touts Sandy Froman, a current board member and past president, noting that “her illustrious career has established her as not just part of the American gun culture but as an integral thread in the fabric of firearms history.” The video, one of several sponsored by Smith & Wesson highlighting “NRA Women,” celebrates Froman’s career as a lawyer, her hobby of making chainmaille jewelry, and her years of advocating gun ownership for women. She once declared, “I love guns—never met one I didn’t like.” The video plays up what seems to be an anomaly, quoting Froman saying, “I am often asked how a Jewish woman, a native of San Francisco, and a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law became president of the NRA.” But the video leaves out an intriguing piece of her past: When she was at those prestigious schools, she helped controversial Stanford University professor William Shockley, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, as he promoted his theory that blacks were genetically inferior to whites.

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n an interview on Tuesday with Mother Jones, Froman said that while she was an undergraduate student at Stanford she worked as a part-time secretary for Shockley’s wife, who was his office manager, and that her duties included typing Shockley’s papers. “I didn’t really know anything about his theories,” she said. “I was just his secretary…and they gave me stuff to type. I typed it… Mostly, I typed what I was told to type.” When a Mother Jones reporter informed her of the tape recordings of her talks with Shockley and read her quotes from these conversations indicating she had done more than merely type his papers, she remarked, “I have no recollection of any of this. It’s just too long ago.” She then ended the interview, saying she had to board an airplane.

The NRA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In its promotional material hailing Froman as a gun rights champion, the NRA focuses on a piece of her history, citing the time she was nearly burglarized at home when she was a young woman decades earlier—an event that led her to become a fan of guns. Her long-ago connection to Shockley, though, has been left out of her story.

May 3, 2018

After Stunning Democratic Win, North Dakota Republicans suppress the Native American Vote w ID laws

https://www.thenation.com/article/after-stunning-democratic-win-north-dakota-republicans-suppressed-the-native-american-vote/

After Stunning Democratic Win, North Dakota Republicans Suppressed the Native American Vote
A district court ruled against the state’s voter-ID law in April—but with midterms looming, the fight for Native voting rights isn’t over yet.

Richard Brakebill voted in nearly every election of his adult life, a point of pride that began with his return from the Navy more than three decades ago. But in November 2014, when Brakebill drove through the open farmland of the North Dakota countryside to the Rolla City Hall, a poll worker refused to let him vote.

Elvis Norquay was another reliable presence at the polls, despite being a Vietnam War veteran who bounced between homeless shelters for years. Norquay often hitched a ride into town to vote at the local Knights of Columbus Hall, where poll workers would vouch for him—that is, until November 2014, when he, too, was turned away.

Lucille Vivier had no driver’s license, let alone a car, but she almost always found transportation to her nearby polling place. In November 2014, Vivier was denied a ballot, even though one of the poll workers was someone she knew since she was 5-years-old.

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Over the last six years, Republicans in North Dakota adopted a flurry of legislation that effectively revoked the right to vote for thousands of Native Americans and other Democratic voters, according to an investigation of court records, internal emails among state officials, as well as interviews with voters and lawmakers on both sides of the issue.

May 3, 2018

Enough. Send this swamp monster packing. Scott Pruitt

EVEN AT the time, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s trip to Morocco last December seemed odd. Between visiting solar installations and meeting with phosphate industry officials, the United States’ top environmental officer spent a substantial amount of time trying to sell American natural gas, a fossil fuel, to the Moroccans. Meanwhile, his business-class tickets, luxury hotel accommodations and round-the-clock security detail seemed like overkill for a not particularly productive trip.

Now, following new details revealed by The Post’s Kevin Sullivan, Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, Mr. Pruitt’s December jaunt seems even sketchier. Portions of it were arranged by a former Comcast lobbyist who had become close to the administrator — and who shortly thereafter registered as an agent for the Moroccan government, promoting the kingdom in return for a whopping $40,000 a month. That lobbyist, Richard Smotkin, even accompanied Mr. Pruitt on some of his activities. It appears that either Mr. Pruitt knew that Mr. Smotkin might profit from the official trip he was taking, which an EPA spokesman denies, or he got played. Either way, these details illustrate an untoward coziness with lobbyists that had already made Mr. Pruitt the subject of multiple federal investigations.

The trip’s particulars also underscore Mr. Pruitt’s habit of wasting taxpayer money on private indulgences. His airline tickets — on Delta Air Lines, the carrier he regularly insisted on flying — cost $16,217. He stayed in luxury hotels in Paris and Morocco. He brought eight staffers and 24-hour security. The total cost came out to some $100,000, even though Mr. Pruitt appears not to have come close to accomplishing $100,000 worth of work in his brief visit.

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Mr. Pruitt has crammed a lifetime’s worth of ethical failings into less than a year and a half in office. How much longer will President Trump continue to tolerate this swamp creature in his administration?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-much-longer-will-trump-tolerate-this-swamp-creature-in-his-administration/2018/05/02/3d638e46-4e34-11e8-b725-92c89fe3ca4c_story.html?utm_term=.a38d2a215c4d

May 3, 2018

Kelly Finds Himself in a Familiar Place in the Trump White House: Eyeing the Exits

The president has come to believe that Mr. Kelly is hiding things from him, in the view of people who work in the White House and insist on anonymity to describe private conversations. He has complained that Mr. Kelly has not been forthcoming about the pasts of some staff members, who either opposed him during the 2016 presidential primaries or had connections to the Bush family. And he has taken to venting about Mr. Kelly to an array of friends and supporters, while expressing confidence that recent successes — such as the continued strength of the economy and progress toward nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea — are proof that he is his own best adviser.

Mr. Kelly complains aloud about Mr. Trump, telling colleagues, “I don’t need this” after dressing-downs from the president.

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Yet Mr. Trump, always averse to confrontation, has continued to keep Mr. Kelly in his role, while increasingly steering around him on matters large and small. One person close to the White House said that it will be up to Mr. Kelly to end his tenure, since Mr. Trump knows how damaging it would be to dismiss a four-star Marine general.

The result is that Mr. Kelly now finds himself in the position where several others who have worked for Mr. Trump have landed: aware that their jobs have become close to untenable, looking for ways to cauterize the wounds to their reputations and knowing that it is only a matter of when — not if — they will have to leave.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/us/politics/kelly-trump-relationship.html?mabReward=CBMG1&recid=144gdnZYYONRdIrq1thpCwSxZWK&recp=0&action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine

May 2, 2018

Most people, even in politics, are too decent to lie as he did. but he benefited from the health lie

If elected, he concluded, “Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

The statement triggered suspicion at the time. That isn’t how doctors speak. And how could any doctor accurately identify the healthiest person ever elected president? The letter sounded like the sort of thing that a hack propagandist would write. And Trump would go on to make Hillary Clinton’s health a campaign issue.


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During his rise, Trump put the press and the public in an impossible position by lying in a manner that was both flagrantly obvious to anyone paying close attention and often impossible for news organizations to prove as a settled matter of fact. Most people, even in politics, are too decent to lie as he did. They possess normal consciences and senses of shame. Trump was willing to exploit the fact that humans extend some general presumptions of trust to function in this world. Like a con man, he benefitted by betraying that trust more shamelessly than others.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/revisiting-a-brazen-effective-lie/559433/

May 2, 2018

recent Jim Carrey art

https://twitter.com/JimCarrey/status/990258024517271552

https://twitter.com/JimCarrey/status/989613688452628481

https://twitter.com/JimCarrey/status/989191369431203841

The one above refers to Trump trying to hold Melania's hand the other day.

Donald Trump really wanted to get Melania to hold his hand at a White House event honoring French President Emmanuel Macron ... but man, he had to work for it.

Trump was standing next to his wife in the Rose Garden when he tried to slickly coax her hand into his ... but what ensued was a painfully long battle of wills.

It's clear Melania was trying to avoid the hand-hold ... but Trump and his pinky finger were persistent ... eventually wearing down her defense until she submitted.

True love, huh?

http://www.tmz.com/2018/04/24/donald-trump-fights-hold-hands-melania/


https://twitter.com/JimCarrey/status/988948498241355776

May 2, 2018

cartoon

May 2, 2018

Begala: Donald Trump is no 'idiot.' He's something worse

I think Donald J. Trump is plenty bright. Not in the intellectual, Mensa-meeting sense, but he has, I think, an undeniable intelligence. He is street smart, savvy, clever. No one can be that conniving and be an idiot.

So why the disconnect? Why do I as an outside analyst see an intelligence that those closest to the President do not? Because there are different kinds of intelligence that are useful for different purposes. The kind of intelligence I believe Trump has is enormously useful if you want to, say, be a politician -- even better if you want to be a demagogue.

He has a cynical, innate intelligence for what his base wants to hear. It's like a divining rod for division, prejudice and stereotyping. His relentless rhetorical repetition ("No collusion, no collusion, no collusion" is brilliantly designed to tell folks who are predisposed to like him what they want to hear. Forget the objective reality that his campaign chairman, his son and his son-in-law all met with Russians who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government, helping make the case for why Robert Mueller should be investigating potential collusion.

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The problem is, Trump's idiosyncratic intelligence, while enough to propel him to the White House, does not serve him well for the job of President. He lacks, by most accounts, the broad curiosity, the policy depth, the healthy skepticism of his own positions, the attention span, the appreciation of nuance, and most of all, the intellectual humility that successful presidents must have.



https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/opinions/donald-trump-is-not-an-idiot-begala/index.html

May 2, 2018

"Pac man effect" keeps people from falling off flat earth

One long-held theory is that the Arctic is the center of flat Earth with Antarctica, a 150-foot-tall wall of ice forming the rim. Supposedly NASA guards the wall to keep people from climbing it and falling off the edge. Yes, the space agency is protecting Earth edge explorers from themselves.

But the frozen rim wall theory does not account for how someone traveling east from say, New York, could eventually wind up back in the city without changing direction.

At the conference, Flat-Earther Darren Nesbit suggested another explanation, The Age reported.

"We know that continuous east-west travel is a reality," Nesbit said.

Instead of running into a wall or walking off the edge, Nesbit theorized that when you reach the end of the Earth, space-time is distorted.

"One logical possibility for those who are truly free thinkers is that space-time wraps around and we get a Pac-Man effect," he said.

Encountering this phenomenon at the end of the world, a traveler would immediately be whisked — teleported, worm-holed or whatever — to the opposite end of of the map, just as Pac-Man or Pac-Man's ghosts arrive on the right-hand side of the screen as they exit on the left-hand side in the old-school video game.

https://www.sfgate.com/weird/article/Flat-Earth-conspiracy-Pac-Man-Kyrie-Irving-12879164.php#photo-15486018

May 2, 2018

A black former White House staffer was moving into a new apartment. Someone reported a burglary.

A black former White House staffer was moving into a new apartment. Someone reported a burglary.

But about a half-hour into his move Friday night, police greeted him in his building’s lobby. A neighbor had called to report a potential break-in by someone who may have had a weapon, and about a half-dozen police officers stopped and questioned him as part of an investigation.

Martin said he felt like he had been racially profiled by whoever had made the original call.

“I don’t know if they watched me or saw me, through a peephole and decided to call the police and if they were in fact watching me,” Martin told The Washington Post. “What I do know is true is that they made a call, a very egregious call that I think was based on profiling.”

he New York City Police Department said officers arrived around 11:26 p.m. after receiving a 911 call about a burglary in progress on the building’s fifth floor. The 911 caller had complained about someone opening and banging doors on the floor who was in possession of a weapon or a large tool, the police said. After investigating, officers determined there was no burglary.

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He let a trio of officers into the lobby and the three began to question him about what he was doing in the building, he said. He told them that he was a resident but said that he didn’t have his ID on him. The officers wouldn’t let him get it from his apartment upstairs on the fifth floor. Instead, about three more officers went up in and let themselves into his apartment, which was unlocked, he said. They found his friend, who had another engagement that evening, taking a shower, and eventually were satisfied that the two were telling the truth.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/05/01/a-black-former-white-house-staffer-was-moving-into-a-new-apartment-someone-reported-a-burglary/?utm_term=.2edebeb580e5