Demovictory9
Demovictory9's JournalTrump made 'suggestion' Pence stay at president's Irish golf club, VP's chief of staff says
Trump made 'suggestion' Pence stay at president's Irish golf club, VP's chief of staff says"I don't think it was a request, like a command," Pence's chief of staff Marc Short told reporters Tuesday. "I think that it was a suggestion."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-made-suggestion-pence-stay-president-s-irish-golf-club-n1049026
President Donald Trump suggested that Vice President Mike Pence stay at his Irish golf club on an official trip funded by taxpayer dollars, Pence's chief of staff Marc Short told reporters Tuesday.
Pence, who is traveling with his wife, sister, and mother, is staying at the president's golf club in Doonbeg, Ireland, during his visit to the country. Rather than stay in Dublin, where he is set for a day of meetings and events with Irish officials, Pence is making the back-and-forth trip from Doonbeg to Dublin, more than an hour flight each way.
Originally, Pence was scheduled to conclude his trip in Doonbeg, where he has familial ties, after attending World War II commemoration ceremonies in Poland.
On whether the president asked Pence to stay at his Irish golf club, Short said: "I don't think it was a request, like a command. ... I think that it was a suggestion."
"It's like when we went through the trip, it's like, well, he's going to Doonbeg because that's where the Pence family is from," Short said before describing the president's suggestion. "It's like, 'Well, you should stay at my place.'"
Founder of conversion therapy organization comes out as gay and apologizes
The founder of one of the largest conversion therapy organizations has come out as gay and has apologized for his role in pushing the practice.
McKrae Game, 51, the founder and leader of Hope for Wholeness in South Carolina, publicly revealed his sexuality back in June, more than two years after he was fired by the board of directors.
He opened up about the situation in a Facebook post last week, which began: "I WAS WRONG! Please forgive me!"
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/founder-of-conversion-therapy-organization-comes-out-as-gay-and-apologizes
Trump "does not see the presidency as a beacon of moral leadership (or leadership of any kind)."
The most common critique of Trump's decision to hit the links was focused on the obvious hypocrisy. And yes, there is that!
"President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf," tweeted Trump in October 2014. And this one from a few months later: "Obama has admitted that he spends his mornings watching @ESPN. Then he plays golf, fundraises & grants amnesty to illegals."
But at this point in his presidency -- and his life -- Trump's hypocrisy is so well-proven as to be almost mundane. He believes that he is governed by different rules than literally everyone else. That what's good for the goose is definitely not good for the gander. This is bad.
It is also not new.
What is more striking -- and damaging as it relates to the overall health of the country -- is that Trump's golfing weekend speaks to how he simply does not see the presidency as a beacon of moral leadership (or leadership of any kind).
It's Politics 101 that when the people you represent are struggling -- or fearful or anxious, etc. -- you do what you can, from a public standpoint, to make sure they know you are with them in spirit if not in body. It's why, you would think, Trump canceled his plans to go to Poland over the weekend. Better to stay stateside and monitor the storm -- making sure people know you are on top of things!
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The difference here is the context. Playing golf on a random weekend -- as Trump does virtually every weekend -- is fine, if hugely hypocritical! Doing so when tens of thousands of Americans are boarding up their homes and business and under mandatory evacuation orders is something very, very different.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/03/politics/donald-trump-golf-hurricane/index.html
wedding venue owner who rejected interracial couple, - claims she just learned Bible doesn't support
“To all of those offended, hurt or felt condemn by my statement I truly apologize to you for my ignorance in not knowing the truth about this,” the now-deleted apology read. “My intent was never of racism, but to stand firm on what I ‘assumed’ was right concerning marriage.”
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In her apology, the event hall’s owner attempted to explain why she believed the Bible supported her views on interracial marriages, describing how she only recently discovered that wasn’t the case. She began by writing that as “a child growing up in Mississippi” it was an unspoken understanding that people stayed “with your own race.” But then on Saturday, when her husband asked her to point to relevant sections of the Bible, she couldn’t. After spending hours scouring the text and sitting down with her pastor, the owner wrote that she finally concluded that the reasoning behind her decision to turn away Welch’s brother and his fiancee was “incorrect.”
“As my bible reads, there are 2 requirements for marriage and race has nothing to do with either!” the Facebook post read. “All of my years I had ‘assumed’ in my mind that I was correct, but have never taken the opportunity to research and find whether this was correct or incorrect until now.”
She later added: “If I have learned anything from this it would be to know what you’re talking about before you open your mouth! Again … my sincerest apologies to all!"
At least one person said the woman’s “heartfelt apology” warranted forgiveness, but others, including Welch, remained unswayed.
“I am 24 and have been brought up my entire life in a Christian Family; my grandad being a reverend,” Welch wrote in the email to The Post. “If I know that the Bible doesn’t say anything about biracial marriages, she knows too.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/09/03/mississippi-wedding-venue-rejects-interracial-couple-christian-belief-apologized/
Pam Taylor, the woman who called Michelle Obama an ape, sentenced to 10 months for embezzlement
https://res.cloudinary.com/blavity/image/upload/c_fit,g_center,h_500,q_auto:best,g_south_east,x_0/v1559340501/l7oy7pqd2swtpe32pn4ihttps://twitter.com/Bill_Maxwell_/status/1168718675072798721
Pam Taylor, the woman who called Michelle Obama an ape, was convicted on Thursday of embezzling flood recovery fundsand making multiple false statements to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
https://blavity.com/woman-who-called-michelle-obama-an-ape-sentenced-to-prison-for-embezzling-funds
Woman Who Called Michelle Obama An Ape Sentenced To Prison For Embezzling Funds
Pamela Taylor was sentenced to 10 months in prison for stealing flood recovery funds.
Taylor, who was working as director of the Clay County Development Corporation, signed up for FEMA funds, although her home was not affected by the flood. She told FEMA her house had been damaged and she was forced to live in a condo while it was being renovated. Both of those claims were not true. FEMA gave her $18,000.
“Defrauding federal programs is always an egregious act. Disaster relief fraud is even more serious because of the limited nature of the funds intended to assist Americans in their time of greatest need,” said Special Agent in Charge Mark Tasky of DHS-OIG.
"DHS-OIG is pleased to...show the good people of West Virginia that justice has been served upon Taylor, who knowingly and willfully disregarded federal laws to personally enrich herself at a time when many people affected by this disaster were just trying to survive.”
Only a few months after falsely applying for the FEMA funds, Taylor wrote a post on Facebook where she made derogatory comments about Michelle Obama and was fired from her position. People were particularly livid because the Clay County Development Corporation, where she was in charge, received nearly $2 million in state and federal funding.
"It will be so refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady back in the White House," she wrote at the time.
"I'm tired of seeing an ape in heels."
The controversy grew even more complicated when the mayor of Clay, Beverly Whaling, replied to Taylor's Facebook post with, “Just made my day Pam.” She later resigned after being criticized heavily.
"go to sleep, grandpa, you're sundowning again. there will be plenty of time tomorrow for ..."
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
·
1h
“Brazil will allow more American Ethanol to enter the country without Tariffs, a decision that Brazilian mills are celebrating. The seemingly counter-intuitive reaction stems from the tone of ongoing negotiations between the South American nation and the U.S. for a...
Making great progress for our Farmers. Approved E-15, year round. Big additional list to be submitted & approved within two weeks. Will be even better for Ethanol, and we save our small refineries!
Jeff Tiedrich
@itsJeffTiedrich
Replying to
@realDonaldTrump
go to sleep, grandpa, you're sundowning again. there will be plenty of time tomorrow for imaginary trade deals and golf
7:40 PM · Sep 2, 2019·Twitter Web App
25
https://twitter.com/itsJeffTiedrich/status/1168715386482823168
Why Has Trump's Exceptional Corruption Gone Unchecked?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/opinion/trump-corruption-drain-the-swamp.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=HomepageConsider two scenarios about how Washington works. In one, a local activist decides to run for Congress. A friend hosts a fund-raiser for her at his law firm, where 10 partners each give the maximum legal individual donation, $2,800. After she wins, the host asks her to meet with a client, a constituent whose business would be affected by legislation her committee will soon vote on. She agrees to hear the company’s case against the bill. She never hears from anyone on the other side, which has no lobbyists, and she votes for an amendment that weakens the bill.
In the second, a man elected to high office directs a meeting of foreign leaders to be held at a resort he owns. He ignores subpoenas, dangles pardons to staff members to encourage them to violate the law and to former employees to discourage them from cooperating with investigations. He appoints industry lobbyists to positions where they reverse regulations affecting their former employers. (This list could go on.)
Both of these are stories of corruption. In both, the public interest is distorted by money. But are they aspects of the same story, just different corners of a single big swamp, one deeper than the other? Or are they different in kind, and not just degree?
Donald Trump’s 2016 chant “Drain the swamp,” which most often seemed to refer to the independent institutions of government, has been embraced as a metaphor across the political spectrum and in the media to refer to the pervasiveness of corruption. In this version, the undifferentiated “swamp” matters more than the gradations along the wide scale from the new member of Congress desperate for campaign funds to the raw plunder of Mr. Trump, his family and allies.
In a recent MSNBC series, “American Swamp,” for example, stories like the scenarios above are just consecutive segments. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders talk about a “rigged system” in which Trumpian corruption is only the most extreme manifestation of the distortion of democracy by wealth. Search for the phrase “Donald Trump promised to ‘drain the swamp’ but” and you’ll find dozens of mainstream articles that take seriously the idea that he actually set out to reform politics but, like naïve reformers before him, was dragged down into the fetid tide pool himself.
It’s certainly true that there’s corruption up and down American public life, and not just in campaign finance and lobbying. It also exists in think tanks, corporate governance, pharmaceutical marketing, higher education, the regulatory system, even philanthropy. The extraordinary concentration of wealth in this new Gilded Age, and the tilt of public policy in its favor, is itself evidence of corruption. It’s also true that Mr. Trump is not singular and that versions of his plunder can be found in more banal form across the spectrum of political vice — like the fact that two Republican members of Congress are under indictment.
But we shouldn’t lose sight of the profound differences between the two scenarios above, and all the little corruptions that look more like the first case than the case of President Trump. The compromised behavior of legislators who have limited choices about how to raise money is built into the way we’ve structured elections. “Good people trapped in a bad system,” my old boss, former Senator Bill Bradley, used to say, with perhaps more generosity than was merited.
The key distinction is between systems that invite or encourage corruption — such as by making legislators dependent on donors — and individual acts in which politicians or regulators choose to elevate private interests, or their own, over the public interest. Failing to acknowledge that distinction will make it difficult to build the case against the extreme and unprecedented corruption of Mr. Trump and his allies.
Catholic School Bans Harry Potter Books, Claiming Its Spells And Curses Are Real
Catholic School Bans Harry Potter Books, Claiming Its Spells And Curses Are Real
The Rev. Dan Reehil warned that reading the spells in the J.K. Rowling novels could conjure up actual evil spirits.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/catholic-school-harry-potter-books-tennessee_n_5d6d5be1e4b0cdfe05742e46
St. Edward School is no longer allowing its pre-K through eighth grade students to check out Harry Potter books from the school’s library.
The reason? Well, the Rev. Dan Reehil, one of the school’s pastors, says the spells and curses presented in the fictional children’s series are legit and could present problems for kids who read the books, according to the Tennessean.
Reehil fleshed out his point in an email sent to parents, per the Tennessean:
These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.
The pastor reportedly made the decision after consulting several exorcists in the U.S. and Rome who recommended removing the books.
HuffPost could not reach Reehil for comment, but Rebecca Hammel, the superintendent of schools for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nashville, told CBS News that the email is real.
Mickey Rourks new face
It is wrinkle free though. 
His plastic surgeon messed it up years ago and he's been trying to fix it every since.
/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/258?cb=20140310050100
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7418745/Viewers-left-baffled-Mickey-Rourkes-bizarre-toe-curling-awkward-appearance-GMB.html
sleeping quarters of the Conception Dive Boat - filmed a few years ago
I was wondering how 34 people could sleep below deck on a boat of that size... stacked bunk beds
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