Miscellaneous political debris

( Victoria )Woodhull is one of three women profiled in Fitzpatrick’s new book, “The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency”; the others are Margaret Chase Smith, who ran for the Republican nomination in 1964, and Shirley Chisholm, who ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972.
In mid-1972 I was hitch-hiking from San Francisco to Los Angeles on my weekly run. My thumb flagged the US-101 southbound on-ramp at SF International Airport. A middle-class rental station wagon driven by a middle-class suited white guy stopped for me. As we rolled through San Mateo and northern Santa Clara counties (early days of Silicon Valley) he waved at the landscape and said, "By the way, I'm the congressman for this district".

That was Rep Pete McCloskey (R), the only GOP challenging Nixon for the party nomination. Turns out Pete liked to talk to people, voters, see what they thought. Streetcorner crowds, shopping lines, hitchhikers -- he really wanted to know the vibe. He was bit disappointed but understanding when I said I was for Shirley Chisholm. Yeah, I took her seriously, and so did he, because he actually worked with her.

Our chat paused. He turned on the radio to KCBS (740 AM -- I had worked there briefly). News flash: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover died. Pete growled, "Finally! I'm glad the old bastard's dead!" Then we talked about Shirley Chisholm a bit more. He knew she had no chance but respected her move.

Later that day, south of San Jose, a purple-polka-dotted Rolls Royce limo stopped for me. Yes, Leon Russell gave me a ride. But that's another story.
 
John McCain Falls Apart And Predicts Doom For The Republican Party

Without Paul Ryan, all is lost, Republicans elites fear.

After Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced yesterday that he wouldn’t accept a nomination for president, Republican elites like Senator John McCain (R-AZ) fell apart.

“We’ve got so many problems—there are a myriad of problems. None of this is going to turn out well for the Republican Party,” a dismayed McCain told reporters.

“I am at a loss. OK? I do not know what’s going to happen. I just don’t see that a lot of it’s going to turn out well. Because there are too many divisions within our party.”

It’s ironic that it’s John McCain bemoaning the divisions within the Republican Party, because the VP nominee he tapped, Sarah Palin, is the person who incited and cheered on the Tea Party defiance of the establishment Republicans.

When Paul Ryan announced he would not accept his party’s nomination, it signaled one thing for sure — and that is not that he wouldn’t actually accept it and is not actually campaigning for it as he did for the Speakership he inherited from John Boehner, who got tired of wrestling with Tea Party extremists and wanted to go home to Ohio.

No, the sure thing is that the Republican Party is not going to let Donald Trump be their nominee. Bye-bye any semblance of “democracy” and letting the people choose.

Oops! Rethuglicans catered to the RWNJ's and are losing the rational base!
 
I thought about making a thread about "Companies Who Are Dicks" but decided to put it here.

NYC woman says Procter & Gamble fired her because pregnancy was not ‘perfect look

A former cosmetics saleswoman for Procter & Gamble Co is suing the company, claiming that she was fired after becoming pregnant and being told earlier by a supervisor that “pregnancy is not part of the uniform.”

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan on Friday by Tiffany Kantrowitz, who for two years worked at P&G’s Dolce and Gabbana makeup shop inside Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

P&G has a licensing agreement to make and sell Dolce and Gabbana products, according to a company representative who declined to comment on the lawsuit. Neither Dolce and Gabbana nor Saks was named in the lawsuit.

Kantrowitz says she was fired by P&G in February 2015 after asking to be allowed to sit down while dealing with customers because she was pregnant, in violation of the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act and a similar New York City law.

Instead of accommodating Kantrowitz’s request, the lawsuit said, P&G forced her to take breaks that were deducted from the leave time she was entitled to under the Family and Medical Leave Act. She says she planned to take leave only after her baby was born.
 
*reads and appreciates the article*

Procter and Gamble, were they one of the companies that decided their corporation almost equal to a human being, and had rights to free speech ? (Free speech consisting of spreading large amounts of cash around, to influence the drift of the conversation. Campaign funds...)


Watching my local PBS heroes and heroines talking about what has happened this week. Talia Buford's name popped up.

Talia Buford

Washington Post
April 15, 2016


"I'm an environmental reporter from Flint. Even I ignored the water crisis story."

"During these conversations, I’ve learned to do what I should have done the first time she told me about the bad water — and what the rest of America must do to prevent the next Flint. I listen."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...-flint-even-i-ignored-the-water-crisis-story/
 
People fed up with big money in politics hold protests in 30 cities

Conservative and independent protesters channeling themes from the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders dumped faux contributions into Boston Harbor on Friday, one of some 30 demonstrations planned across the country against big money in politics.

In Washington, about a dozen members of a more liberal group called Democracy Spring cuffed themselves inside the Capitol rotunda in a protest of the influence of special interests in U.S. politics and to denounce laws making it more difficult to vote.

The Democracy Spring demonstration followed the arrest of hundreds at events all week including a sit-in protest on the steps of the Capitol, the seat of the U.S. Congress.

Both the weeklong protests in Washington and Friday’s nationwide demonstrations led by the activist group Represent.Us have tapped into some of the voter frustration seen on the presidential campaign trail.

“From super PACs (political action committees) to lucrative job offers and campaign contributions, there are tons of perfectly legal ways to bribe a politician,” said Charlotte Hill, communications director for Represent.Us.

The group, which has promoted anti-corruption resolutions in American cities, says it neither endorses nor opposes any presidential candidate. Represent.Us said it would stage events in 33 cities.

“We the people demand a democracy free from the corruption influence of big money and voter suppression,” the protesters said in unison. “We demand a democracy where every vote is counted and every voice is heard.”

Do you hear that Chief Justice Roberts!
 
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: Wall Street and Big Oil donors can still be ‘big tent’ Democrats

“Both political parties through time immemorial have had a range of views across a spectrum, but we’re a big tent party,” she responded. “We have the ability to absorb and be unified with people on the far left and center right and still have the same people calling themselves Democrats.”

Yes, anyone can call themselves a Democrat, if they have the money, principles, of course, are optional.
 
What ancient Roman history and ‘elite overproduction’ tell us about near-future doom

The Roman Republic was decaying long before Julius Caesar marched on the city in 49 B.C. and toppled it for good. One of the pivotal moments in that decay came just three decades earlier, during the brief dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix.

Comparisons between 21st century America and the late republic are a bit of a cliché, and frequently overwrought. But there's one choice Sulla made that has a direct parallel in modern politics.

Trump also has implemented what Turchin described as a winning strategy for other "frustrated elite aspirants" throughout history: mass mobilization of economically struggling people across the country.

In Turchin's cliodynamics model, "absolute immiseration" is the flip side to elite overproduction. As nations become more unequal, it's not just the upper class that gets bigger. More and more people also fall to the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, where they become angry and disaffected with the political process. Frustrated elite aspirants are well placed to harness that anger.
 
Delivering a broadside!

Broadside TV series PBS

The GOP delivers a broadside to President Obama's plan to place Merrick Garland (Republican) on the Supreme Court bench.

" Pick up the 5-CD Broadside box set, and the strum of the acoustic will haunt your dreams. A staple on the underground folk scene, New York City's Broadside rag published topical songs and accompanying editorials from 1962-1988, running on a shoestring budget and giving first exposure to such classics as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Ballad of Ira Hayes."

There's conviction all over this box, a heart on every sleeve; hell is raised on Broadside, in spades, both with a grin and without. From civil rights to Vietnam to labor laws to women's rights, it's a virtual almanac of the American left. It's nothing less than recorded history, a testament to populists, agitators, and all those who called bullshit on the status quo.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2000-12-15/79812/

Left Wing newspaper devoted to folk music

Broadside of Boston
January 6, 1965.
"Judy Collins, Eric Andersen, Dick and Mimi Farina To Do Benefit."
The complete article:

A Benefit concert will be presented at Memorial Hall (Sanders Theatre) in Harvard Square on Saturday night, January 16th. Money collected will be used to pay legal fees facing the eleven students under indictment by the State Department for defying the travel ban which has been placed on the visiting of certain countries. The students involved and their supporters demand the freedom to be able to travel anywhere they desire as long as they are allowed to enter by that country. Judy Collins, whose last Boston concert was sold out, Eric Andersen, and Dick and Mimi Farina will be the artists who donate their talent to the cause.


http://www.richardandmimi.com/articles.html


Once, again, the Extreme Right Wing Republicans subvert something that prompts associations with the Left Wing Democrats.
Add another deception, to the list of their deceptions.

Former selectman Lonnie Brennan launched a newspaper.
He supports the articles written by Michelle Malkin and
Betsy McCauhey.


First issue released on Boston Broadside website, in 2014

"Topics, according to Brennan, include: illegal immigration, EBT card abuse, the probation department jobs scandal, parental rights, worker rights, the horror of automatic tax increases, illegal use of government resources, Second Amendment rights, and many more."

Pro Trump!

Pro Gun and Anti- Undocumented Immigrant.

http://m.georgetown.wickedlocal.com/article/20140822/news/140829390

Oct 31
2008

Everything went to direct voter contact. I didn't pay consultants, and I had no staff. This is all volunteer," Brennan said. "The support has been tremendous. We'll either break even or have a small surplus for a pizza party — win, lose or draw."

This is Brennan's second attempt at taking L'Italien's seat. He lost by more than 2,500 votes in 2006. L'Italien has held the seat since 2002.

"Brennan, a former Georgetown (Massachusetts) selectman"

http://www.newburyportnews.com/news...cle_9f94a361-a0b7-5b38-95d9-51a59c7616e5.html


Feb 28, 2016

To be sure, GOP conservatives are also challenging moderate incumbents backed by Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito.

"The battle lines are simple," said Lawrence "Lonnie" Brennan, a conservative from Georgetown and candidate for the First Essex and Middlesex District, in a post on his website.

"Baker has endorsed a slate of candidates in an attempt to gain absolute control of the party apparatus and to drive out any conservatives on the existing state committee," he said.

Brennan is challenging Lucus Noble, a Gloucester financial advisor who currently holds the seat for the district, which encompasses 17 communities including Gloucester, Ipswich, Hamilton, Wenham, North Reading and Wilmington.

Noble is backed by Baker and Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, a Gloucester Republican who represents the district.

http://www.salemnews.com/news/state...cle_33ffed5a-700c-5100-88cf-048bd2d5ab9d.html

March 3, 2016

Noble, a certified financial planner, defeated Lawrence "Lonnie" Brennan of Georgetown. Noble, who has said this will be his second and final 4-year term on the state committee, received 11,826 votes to Brennan's 9,689.


http://www.eagletribune.com/news/to...cle_d0ebbc4d-bd18-500d-af46-7b109232d4e1.html


In about two weeks, the Free State Project expects its 20,000th signer to agree to move to New Hampshire. Then, a five-year countdown begins for its libertarian participants to hold up their end of the bargain.

The milestone will come nearly 15 years after the first signature was penned, following a 2001 manifesto written by founder Jason Sorens, a political theorist who has a doctorate in political science from Yale and lectures at Dartmouth College.

The nonprofit group envisions relocating thousands of people to the state who would become active in various ways to severely limit the government’s scope. Nearly 2,000 signers who have already moved are playing out the idea.

Sorens said in a phone interview Friday that 18 Free Staters serve in the State House. Put another way, Free State movers, who represent 0.15 percent of the total population, comprise nearly 5 percent of the House.

Free Staters are also targeting laws through other means: by bringing a religious property tax exemption case to the Supreme Court, by challenging a state order to stop using public money to send kids to private schools, and by rallying to eliminate city restrictions on Uber.

Sorens acknowledges that most signers won’t follow through with their nonbinding commitment. Five years from now, he estimated, there will be 6,000 to 8,000 Free Staters living in New Hampshire, but he still believes that’s enough to effect change.


http://www.concordmonitor.com/Archive/2016/01/freestate-cm-011616

Maine governor refuses to swear-in newly elected state senator

APRIL 01, 2016


Maine Gov. Paul LePage is so angry at Democrats for rejecting one of his nominees that he canceled the swearing-in ceremony for a newly elected senator.

The Republican governor on Friday refused to sign a proclamation certifying the result of Tuesday’s special election.


Phil Bartlett, chairman of the Maine Democratic Party, said LePage is disregarding the will of voters.

‘‘Once again, the governor decides to throw a temper tantrum and refuse to do his job because he did not get his way,’’ Bartlett said.

The election was won by Democrat Susan Deschambault, of Biddeford.

It was not a tight race. Deschambault beat her Republican opponent Stephen Martin by a margin of 16 percentage points.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/po...ate-senator/cfIA4uTo1iMv183wwnE93O/story.html


It happened in Maine. Could it happen to Boston ?
 
Livia was born almost 60 years before Jesus the Christ was born.

She was noted by historians because she was married to a man
who would be honored as a God/god, after his death.
Her husband had reached the pinnacle.
He was Emperor of Rome.

Who knows the truth of her life, and what she had done, or not done ?
She took that to her grave.

How strange it is for us, as people, to be animals with minds built on symbols.
We walk with our figurative backs to the future, using the past as a guide.
But, the past has been recorded by human beings.
Except for some of the sciences that can be proven,
all has been recorded with some kind of slant.

Jesus the Christ has become a powerful mythical creation.
Livia has become a powerful mythical creation.
They both lived their lives, dominated by myths.

Here in 2016, we stand.
What does our civilisation stand, upon ?
Everything that came before us.

America chose not to follow Britain.
We broke the thread that tied us to monarchy.

We do not have a long line of leaders tied to a mythical figure of antiquity.
But, we cling to ties to antiquity.

Washington, D.C. is brimming with architectural references to the past.
Why do we have a recreation of a Greek Doric temple, as the Lincoln Memorial ?

"In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever."

We honor Abraham Lincoln as if he were a God/god.
175 tons of marble were carved into a statue meant to represent his likeness.

Today, President Obama sits in the seat of the pinnacle of power.
The circumstances and times are not the same as in Lincoln's time.

We have come to a split in the road.

We will be pulled forward by the symbolic, or we will be pulled backwards.

Intended, or not, Lincoln's election pulled our nation forward.

We, as a nation, were broken free from the old Roman horror.

You cannot buy and own a human being.

You cannot deny human rights to an American citizen.

The people of America have been striving for equality for all citizens, since Lincoln.
Along comes Donald Trump, who is pitting himself against Hillary Clinton.
Presidents have a chance to put forward people who might become Supreme Court Justices.
Hillary Clinton will chose a Supreme Court Justice that will pull us forward.

My hope is that Hillary Clinton will be our President, and that Bernie Sanders will be our Vice President.

I can hope for the same measured, calm, sensible choices that were made by President Obama.
Bernie Sanders has lived long enough to have a sense of what is appropriate, and has a vision of what is possible.

What if Trump achieves the seat of power ?

Would a monument equal to President Lincoln's, be large enough for Trump's ego ?

If political theatre is a war of words, who is part of Trump's alliance ?

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/how...irthed-a-potential-president-trump-nightmare/


We have film footage of the event, but the meaning of what we are seeing, needs a long explanation.

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,89450,00.html
 
22 April 2016

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, has claimed that shortly after becoming president, Barack Obama removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office.

Boris Johnson attacked “the part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British empire” in an article urging Britons to leave the European Union when given the choice in a referendum to be held in June.


So, has Boris Johnson got his facts wrong? The answer is a little more complicated.

The bust in question, by British sculptor Jacob Epstein, was given to President George W Bush by the British government in 2001 and was placed in the Oval Office. But the statue was not donated, it was simply on loan for Bush’s term in office (a loan which the British government decided to extend when Bush was re-elected in 2004). Churchill disappeared from the White House in 2009, when the loan ended at the same time that Obama moved in.

Dan Pfeiffer simply neglected to mention the fact that there are two Churchill busts – the one on loan to Bush from 2001 to 2009, and a second bust which the White House has had since the 1960s and still has to this day – a fact which Pfeiffer later had to clarify in an update at the end of the post.


Speaking at his joint press conference with David Cameron in London, President Obama confirmed that there was a bust of Churchill in the White House residence outside of his office, which he saw every day.


As the first African-American president, he thought it right to have a bust of Rev Martin Luther King Jr in the Oval Office “to remind him of the people who helped get him there”.



http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ma-winston-churchill-bust-oval-office-britain


Three Churchills ?

1 August 2012


As the British Embassy explained in 2009, the bust “was lent for the first term of office of President Bush. When the President was elected for his second and final term, the loan was extended until January 2009. The new President has decided not to continue this loan and the bust has now been returned.”


The Churchill sculpture shown in the photograph is a different copy — given to President Lyndon Johnson, kept in the White House collection for half a century and displayed in the White House residence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...blog/2012/07/29/gJQA8M46IX_story.html?hpid=z8

Which Churchill was absent, because it was being repaired ?


Obama, In London, Encourages Britain To Stay In The European Union

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/22/47522...ourages-britain-to-stay-in-the-european-union


gsgs comment-

Oh, dear...
 
22 April 2016

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, has claimed that shortly after becoming president, Barack Obama removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office.

Boris Johnson attacked “the part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British empire” in an article urging Britons to leave the European Union when given the choice in a referendum to be held in June.


So, has Boris Johnson got his facts wrong? The answer is a little more complicated.

The bust in question, by British sculptor Jacob Epstein, was given to President George W Bush by the British government in 2001 and was placed in the Oval Office. But the statue was not donated, it was simply on loan for Bush’s term in office (a loan which the British government decided to extend when Bush was re-elected in 2004). Churchill disappeared from the White House in 2009, when the loan ended at the same time that Obama moved in.

Dan Pfeiffer simply neglected to mention the fact that there are two Churchill busts – the one on loan to Bush from 2001 to 2009, and a second bust which the White House has had since the 1960s and still has to this day – a fact which Pfeiffer later had to clarify in an update at the end of the post.


Speaking at his joint press conference with David Cameron in London, President Obama confirmed that there was a bust of Churchill in the White House residence outside of his office, which he saw every day.


As the first African-American president, he thought it right to have a bust of Rev Martin Luther King Jr in the Oval Office “to remind him of the people who helped get him there”.



http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ma-winston-churchill-bust-oval-office-britain


Three Churchills ?

1 August 2012


As the British Embassy explained in 2009, the bust “was lent for the first term of office of President Bush. When the President was elected for his second and final term, the loan was extended until January 2009. The new President has decided not to continue this loan and the bust has now been returned.”


The Churchill sculpture shown in the photograph is a different copy — given to President Lyndon Johnson, kept in the White House collection for half a century and displayed in the White House residence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...blog/2012/07/29/gJQA8M46IX_story.html?hpid=z8

Which Churchill was absent, because it was being repaired ?


Obama, In London, Encourages Britain To Stay In The European Union

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/22/47522...ourages-britain-to-stay-in-the-european-union


gsgs comment-

Oh, dear...
It's not like the guy was easy to look at.
 
It's not like the guy was easy to look at.

No. His mother was American, and he was given honorary US Citizenship as well.

But that doesn't mean his portrait or representation needs to be in the Oval Office.
 
What President Obama had to say about it , recently-

"The Treaty Room is my private study."

"My private office is called the Treaty Room. And right outside the door of the Treaty Room, so that I see it every day, including on weekends when I’m going into that office to watch a basketball game, I see a bust of Winston Churchill,” the president said."

New York Post

gsgs comment-

I agree with President Obama's decision to talk to people in the UK about the EU.

I agree with President Obama's decision to keep a bust of MLK in the office.

President Obama is there, in that office, because MLK stepped forward.

Racism may be a powerful force, but America's push for equality succeeded.

President Obama was given the chance to become President.

Having information straight from the "horse's mouth", is valuable, if a decision is being made.

President Obama is the best choice for ambassador, to inform people of how things stand, currently.

I cannot think of a decision more imortant to the people of the UK, than a decision about membership in the EU.

The United States has an alliance with the UK.
The UK and the United States are interdependent.

Only the people of the UK can decide what is the best choice for the UK.
But, which people are in a position to decide for the UK ?
The wealthy are in a position to push their influence.
The wealthy have made many decisions that benefited them,
and denied a voice to the people who would suffer from the loss.

The equal balance has been lost.
The needs of the common people are going by the wayside.
The United States is having the same problem.
The balance has been lost, in the United States, too.
It may not be possible for the people of the United States
to fight against corporate interests, in the near future.

Key events
17h ago Leave campaign seeks to limit Obama damage
19h ago Obama/Cameron press conference - Snap summary
20h ago Obama says special relationship 'will continue - hopefully eternally' even if UK leaves EU
20h ago Obama says UK will go to "the back of the queue' for trade deals with US if it leave EU
20h ago Obama says Americans 'want Britain's influence to grow' by staying in EU
20h ago Obama says Queen is a 'jewel to the world' and one of his favourite people
20h ago Cameron says EU membership is a 'powerful tool' for prosperity and
security.
 
13076688_1675547819372362_875128342824038497_n.jpg
 
No. His mother was American, and he was given honorary US Citizenship as well.
Under USA current law he would be a natural-born citizen and eligible for the presidency. BTW I used to live down the block from Jennie. Well, she had left her birthplace in little Palmyra NY (also the birthplace of the Mormons) somewhat over a century before, but still... that house down the road had her name on a plaque, so I count her as a former neighbor.
 
Well....by modern Right Wing standards that makes ol' Ike commie scum......

I saw Bernie said that if taxes were like in that old socialist Ronnie Raygun's time we could pay off the National Debt and have free Universities!
 
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2016

Lobby Watch: Socialized Medicine for GOP Functionary

The top Paxton aide who secretly arranged to stay on the state payroll while running a Cruz PAC spent recent years fighting the twin evils of Obamacare and his own cancer. It takes a special kind of person to simultaneously struggle to secure taxpayer-funded health benefits for himself while fighting to deny such benefits to millions of others.

http://www.tpj.org/

April 15, 2016

Attorney General Ken Paxton’s top lieutenant resigned for a second time on Friday.

Paxton’s office announced First Assistant Attorney General Chip Roy’s resignation in March. His second resignation came the day after The Dallas Morning News reported that Roy and at least one other top Paxton staffer had remained on the state’s payroll for more than a month after they’d stopped working.


In a statement to The News, Roy said he was using up his remaining vacation and leave time. But Roy — in remission for Stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma — added that he had struck a deal with Paxton’s agency to stay on the payroll longer, if need be, to take advantage of his healthcare benefits as a state employee.


Paxton’s office first announced Roy’s resignation on March 9, replacing him the same day with a Plano-based lawyer the attorney general handpicked for the position. The next day, Roy had taken a job with a super PAC supporting the presidential campaign of his former boss, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

More than a month later, however, Roy remained on the payroll. On April 1, he received a full month’s paycheck, $16,220.62, and was on track to receive a total of $48,660 through June.

His original resignation letter, dated March 9, stated he would be on “administrative leave” through June 10. This week, Paxton spokeswoman Cynthia Meyer said Roy was mistaken about the nature of his employment status, stating he was actually on “emergency leave.”

Asked whether the office felt it appropriate to pay someone a full salary and benefits while they were also employed elsewhere, Meyer said, “Our human resources department, in serving our employees, keeps us in compliance with applicable laws governing emergency leave.”

Paxton is embroiled in multiple legal battles over allegations that he repeatedly broke Texas securities laws during his time as a state lawmaker. This week, federal officials levied civil fraud charges against him, adding to the three state criminal indictments he was already facing.


http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.c...confirms.html/

Paxton is facing a three felony indictments for allegedly breaking state securities laws, as well as federal fraud charges, related with a North Texas tech start-up called Servergy, Inc.

Paxton has maintained his innocence since he was first indicted for securities fraud last summer; he will appeal these charges before a Dallas court next month. Earlier this month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought civil fraud charges against Paxton, targeting the same behavior he’s charged with in his criminal indictments.

Paxton has also refused to answer questions about how he is paying his team of high-profile attorneys, including Mateja, since he’s barred from using campaign donations to fund his legal defense.

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.c...itchhunt.html/

Oct. 22, 2015


Texas' latest salvo against Obamacare, Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed suit over a fee states must help cover to pay for the sweeping federal health reform law.

Texas joins Louisiana and Kansas in suing the Obama administration over the Health Insurance Providers Fee, which Paxton says cost Texas $86 million in 2013 and about $120 million per year since. Texas feels the effect of the fee, levied on health insurers, because it reimburses the companies that operate with public funds in the state’s privatized Medicaid program.

https://www.texastribune.org/2015/10/22/texas-files-new-obamacare-suit-over-health-insurer/
 
Pre-Holocaust film depicts a happy Jewish community

May 5, 2016

Glenn Kurtz discovered the film in his parents’ closet in 2009 in their Florida home. Kurtz said he was looking for the old film because he was writing a novel at the time about somebody who discovered an old home movie at a flea market and then became obsessed with the people in the film.

“The plot of the novel turned into the plot of my life,” Kurtz said. “I became obsessed with trying to discover the identity of the people in the film.”

Kurtz said the film captures a joyful community living normally just a year before the Germans invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. The Nazis occupied Nasielsk by Sept. 4 that year, and on Dec. 3, they began deporting the entire Jewish community from the town.


(More information, and more of the story at the link)

Glenn Kurtz said he was fortunate to have been able to have interviewed seven survivors of the Holocaust because some of the subjects have since died.

“The question I started asking is, ‘Was it still possible to learn about life in this town after all this time and after all the violence this town had suffered?’ That was the question I had all along,” Kurtz said. “How much detail was it possible to recover?

“The poignant thing of the story is that this is the last moment when it was going to be possible to speak with people who experienced this first-hand … I talked to them at the last moment in which they could have talked about it.

(Glenn Kurtz became the author of “Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film")

http://courier.mainelymediallc.com/...st_film_depicts_a_happy_Jewish_community.html

gsgs comment-

What will we do, when all of the eyewitnesses have all left this plane of Earthly existence ?

As it is, some of the survivors, the liberators, the rescuers, and the soldiers, are living in poverty, and dying of lack of food and care.

Hopefully, these very elderly people will get help, soon.

"Nearly five years after it expired, legislation to reauthorize the Act was passed by Congress with unanimous, bipartisan support. Read about the Senate reauthorization bill and the House amendments. The bill was signed into law by the President on April 19, 2016."

The Older Americans Act (OAA) funds critical services that keep older adults healthy and independent—services like meals, job training, senior centers, caregiver support, transportation, health promotion, benefits enrollment, and more.

https://www.ncoa.org/public-policy-action/older-americans-act/
 
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What a strange thing it is, to have the hope, fear, and dread of magic, to rule my country, in 2016.

Is that not, what keeps homophobia, and phobia of all sexual preferences that are not heterosexual, on the forefront of the battle between Democrats and Republicans ?

Fear of the loss of favor of a chosen God/god, and the benefit of His magical powers.
Fear of punishment, at the hands of their chosen God/god, in the Afterlife, and the fear of being delivered into the hands of another entity that has magical powers, for eternity.

The humanist centered Democratic party seeks to keep their alliance alive, and care for our nation and the human beings that live inside the borders of our nation.

The GOP seeks to keep their alliance alive, and it is anyone's guess, as to what they are centered on. Those who join the GOP alliance, use issues as weapons to weaken the Democratic party's alliance.

FEBRUARY 22 2016

Charlotte OK's LGBT-Inclusive Ordinance

But the state legislature could override it, as opponents object especially to a provision for trans people's access to public facilities matching their gender identity.

The Charlotte, N.C., City Council voted 7-4 Monday night to add sexual orientation and gender identity to its antidiscrimination ordinance, a year after a similar measure failed.

But the state legislature, which has the power to overrule municipal decisions, is likely to take action against this one, The Charlotte Observer reports.

The ordinance applies to places of public accommodation — shops, restaurants, taxis — but not to employment, and its most controversial section would allow transgender people to use the restrooms matching their gender identity rather than the gender they were assigned at birth. Gov. Pat McCrory had said inclusion of this provision would likely prompt “immediate” action by legislators.

That provision sparked impassioned debate at Monday night’s meeting, with some Charlotte residents saying it would enable predatory behavior by men pretending to be women to gain access to women’s restrooms — a scenario that has not played out in any city with a similar ordinance.

A change in the makeup of the council helped the ordinance pass after last year’s failure, the Observer reports, as two new members supported it. Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina, becomes the first in the state with such a law, according to the paper.

http://www.advocate.com/politics/2016/2/22/charlotte-oks-lgbt-inclusive-accommodations-ordinance

gsgs comment-

A battle began. The battle comes at a time, when children are seeking to declare their internal identification, and have asked for the choice of changing what is declared on paper.

Why force a girl to live as a boy ?
Why force a boy to live as a girl ?

Simple fact, the child was born with the body, that has male, female, or intersex characteristics. It is declared on the birth certificate.

A simple fact, is that sometimes, a child is born with a body that does not match what the child is.

In the modern world of 2016 America, children are allowed to speak, and are heard.

The intersex child is not mutilated at birth by a surgeon, so that male or female can be declared on the birth certificate.

The sciences have agreed that the true sex of the child will be discovered when the child can speak their mind.

(I am running into the concept held by Christians, that the fetus is afflicted inside the womb as a punishment, because the fetus committed sin while inside the womb. WTF ?)

The answer to a child born with differences, is that the child is an abomination and must be shunned, according to Christians ?

It is strange, to think that modern day Christians have the same response, as someone born before their Jesus the Christ was born.

Fear of magic that stems from evil, fear of magic that stems from.their God/ God ?
Their God/ God used magic, and punished them with afflictions.
To give them comfort and assistance would be opposing the will of their God/ God, and their God/god would punish them for their opposition by magical means ?

This is confusing to me, because from what I have heard during my long lifetime, is that Jesus the Christ healed people all during his lifetime, with magic.
 
American Police Paramilitary is nothing new
Ferguson protests against systematic racism and the nationwide protests stemming from Occupy Wall Street, exposed the build up of para military within police departments.

Major news outlets made people aware of the government funding of military grade weapons and vehicles to police stations.

Militarized attacks by police on American citizens is nothing new.

2015 was the 30th anniversary of the bombing attack on MOVE, in Philadelphia.

Anniversary of May 13, 1985 attack on MOVE

500 police gathered enough military weapons, vehicles, and airpower to destroy a town. They killed six adults and five children.

10,000 rounds of ammunition used in 90 minutes.

They set a peaceful, happy, productive neighborhood on fire.

Because a small group of people formed a cult, and the cult members had guns.

One of the survivors of the attack died a strange death.

He was a boy when he survived one fifth of his body getting burned by the attack.

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswit...e-move-bombing

What is said, on this day, this year ?


It's Gotten A Lot Harder To Act Like Whiteness Doesn't Shape Our Politics

May 13, 2016


There have been outlets and pundits this election cycle who've shown they're willing and able to dig into the role that racial grievance plays in How Trump Happened. Others haven't, and continue not to. And that's a problem. When we don't grapple with whiteness in our politics directly and explicitly — to talk about the fact that not-insignificant numbers of white voters are motivated more by identity politics than by ideology or faith — we're essentially agreeing to misidentify some of the most important dynamics of this cycle.


http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswit...e-our-politics

gsgs comment-

2016

Para military cult of white men occupies Malheur National Wildlife Refuge with weapons, in Oregon for months. One cult member is not peacefully arrested and allowed full due course of law. He died with his gun in his hands, and became a martyr for his cult.

The weapons and instruments of torture used against Ferguson protesters and Occupy protesters were not used against the cult that took over the wildlife refuge.
The city based protesters were peaceful and unarmed. Malheur was an armed camp and the cult has a national following. An attack by law enforcement may have ignited a nation wide crisis. Before the cult was discouraged, there were small amounts of women and children included in the Malheure occupation. The police did not risk making martyrs of them. The more unhinged members of the cult has been committing mass murders, without provocation.

/ end gsgs comment

Philly 2016

Philadelphia police officers attached a large Google Maps logo to a surveillance van in an apparent attempt to disguise it as one of the company's street-filming cars.

Police spokesman Lt. John Stanford said Friday that no one was authorized by the department to place the decal on the van. He says it appeared officers were ``being creative.''

The department was made aware of the decal by a news outlet Wednesday and it was removed the same day.

A Google spokeswoman confirms the van was not part of its Street View fleet and says it's looking into the report.


http://www.witf.org/news/2016/05/phi...ps-vehicle.php
 
Arrggghhh!

MAY 24, 2016

Bank of America does not have to pay a $1.3 billion penalty assessed years ago, an appeals court ruled Monday.

A jury found the megabank guilty of fraud in 2013, after Department of Justice (DOJ) officials decided not to settle a case involving a program run by its subsidiary Countrywide.

Countrywide employees created a program known as “Hustle,” a bastardization of an acronym for “High-Speed Swim Lane,” and used it to knowingly sell substandard loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Staffers packaged up low-quality mortgage securities and sold them to government-backed housing finance companies that later had to be bailed out by taxpayers.


http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/05/24/3781364/hustle-verdict-voided-wall-street-prosecutions/

A jury verdict and $1.3 billion penalty stood as evidence that prosecutors could win cases like this, and achieve the greater deterrent effect that Warren, Brown, Black, and others have demanded.

But now, with the verdict rescinded and the penalty unpaid, the momentum swings back to the Let's Make A Deal crowd. The odds of ending the "too big to jail" mindset among regulators and prosecutors were never all that good -- the government was still cutting weak deals this spring, months after that partial reversal to the DOJ's policy on white-collar cases -- but they probably just got a lot worse.
 
Wisconsin county clerk objects to weekend voting because it gives urban areas ‘too much access’

A Wisconsin county clerk testified in federal court this week that weekend voting should be eliminated because it gave urban areas “too much access” to the polls.

In a hearing on Tuesday, Republican Waukesha County clerk Kathleen Novack spoke in favor of voting restrictions signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker (R) between 2011 and 2015, which opponents argue suppress the votes of non-whites.

According to The Cap Times, Novack said that voter ID restrictions and reduced early voting had caused “virtually no problems at all” in Waukesha County, which is about 95 percent white.

When she was asked if some voters had too much access, Novack replied that there was “too much access to the voters as far as opportunities.”

The county clerk added that long lines in urban areas were actually a sign that voters had enough access to polls.

“Apparently access is an easy thing or they wouldn’t have long lines,” she opined.

Rethuglican Logic?:eek:
 
Maine woman exposes Tea Party Gov. Paul LePage’s ignorance on expanding Medicaid

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) was scolded during a radio interview on Wednesday regarding the issue of expanding Medicaid in his state, the Maine People’s Alliance Beacon reported.

LePage has vetoed five bills that would have done so, each of which would have allowed the state to take part in the Affordable Care Act’s state exchange program and be eligible for federal reimbursement.

He argued to Maine Calling host Jennifer Rooks that the state would not qualify for that reimbursement. LePage also expressed skepticism that doing so has cut off around 24,000 residents from health insurance they would get under the ACA, commonly known as Obamacare.

Maine Public Broadcasting, which carries the show, later reported that LePage’s administration released a statement admitting that LePage misspoke regarding the state’s eligibility for reimbursement, which would allow for 60,000 residents to receive health care under the law.

Teahadddist are stupid. ;)
 
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