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Wednesday, October 31, 2018

This Is Us pays tribute to Pittsburgh shooting victims: 'We stand with out television hometown'


Much of the show takes place in the city source: https://ift.tt/2Qafpwq #Headlines by: Jack Shepherd Original Post: https://ift.tt/2qk8HbU https://ift.tt/2Qb5fMj
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/this-is-us-pays-tribute-to-pittsburgh.html

Biden: Republicans are either liars or 'really stupid' for claims about pre-existing conditions


Former Vice President Joe Biden pushed back Wednesday on claims by President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans that the GOP can protect patients with pre-existing conditions better than Democrats, saying Republicans are either lying or "really stupid." "They’re either not telling the truth or they’re really stupid," Biden said. "Because there's no way you can afford to cover pre-existing conditions without everybody being in on the deal." Trump has repeatedly claimed that Republicans would do a better job covering pre-existing conditions, even as his party has worked to dismantle Obamacare, which prioritized those protections as a cornerstone component. The president tweeted Wednesday morning: "Republicans will protect people with pre-existing conditions far better than the Dems!" Trump has made the claim a rallying cry to vote Republican in the upcoming midterm elections, but public health experts have said the president's comments are incorrect, citing the Trump administration's efforts to unwind Obamacare. Democrats have likewise portrayed the election as a battle to protect health care coverage expanded under President Barack Obama. Republicans in Congress unsuccessfully attempted to pass a bill to repeal Obamacare in 2017, with a handful of Republican senators, including the late Sen. John McCain, dramatically voting to kill the measure. Without the votes to nix the law, the Trump administration has taken various steps to undermine it, including actions that could erode protections for pre-existing conditions. Biden made his comments at a rally endorsing Illinois Democrat Lauren Underwood in her run for Congress. During his speech in St. Charles, Ill., Biden repeated his party's characterization of the election as a battle for basic social protections, adding that Republicans would dramatically cut spending on Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. "There’s so, so much at stake here," Biden said. "But the truth is we have such an enormous opportunity." The former vice president also warned against partisan fighting following a series of pipe bombs sent last week to high-profile Democrats and others, including Biden. He told the audience "our opponents are not our enemies. They are our opponents." "I'm sick and tired of the way we conduct our politics in this country," Biden said. "And it's on our leaders to set the tone, to dial the temperature down, to restore some dignity to our national dialogue." Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2JtIil0 #Headlines by: Matthew Choi Original Post: https://ift.tt/2JtIil0 https://ift.tt/2zkgnPB
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/biden-republicans-are-either-liars-or.html

Why a Satanic group 'is taking legal action' against Netflix's Sabrina reboot


The Satanic Temple, based in Salem, Massachusetts, claims the show ripped off the design of its statue of the deity Baphomet source: https://ift.tt/2OhQghG #Headlines by: Clémence Michallon Original Post: https://ift.tt/2yLtlq7 https://ift.tt/2OnfQCc
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/why-satanic-group-is-taking-legal.html

Trump's State Department eyes ban on terms like 'sexual health'


U.S. diplomats may soon be prohibited from using the phrases “sexual and reproductive health” and “comprehensive sexuality education” under a proposal being floated to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, four people familiar with the issue said. The proposal is being pushed by a handful of conservative political appointees at the State Department and other agencies, including Mari Stull, an adviser at State whose alleged mistreatment of career government staffers has already sparked multiple federal investigations. It was not immediately clear what sort of direct policy changes, if any, could result from eliminating such terms, which have been used for years in domestic and international communications. But changing the terms could lead to more contentious negotiations at the United Nations and other forums over language used for resolutions and agreements. It also could complicate matters for some non-governmental groups that receive U.S. funding and opt to stick with the traditional terms. At the very least, abandoning the use of the word “sex” would be a symbolic move that aligns with other Trump administration efforts to reduce funding for and focus on women’s reproductive issues — especially anything related to abortion. The proposal is contained in a memo that still needs Pompeo's approval to take effect, according to two of the people who talked to POLITICO. Foreign Policy on Tuesday reported some details of the memo. Instead of “sexual and reproductive health” and “comprehensive sexuality education,” U.S. officials would be instructed to use phrases like “reproduction and the related health services” in official communications, one of the people familiar with the issue said, while cautioning that could change. Alternate terms proposed for use are expected to be accompanied by definitions as to what sort of programs or treatments they cover, another one of the people said. The State Department did not reply to repeated requests for comment on the memo or whether Pompeo would sign it. The four sources who spoke to POLITICO were outside human rights and health advocates who are in touch with people inside the State Department. One of President Donald Trump’s first moves after taking office was to revive and expand the so-called Mexico City policy, which prior Republican presidents have implemented and which bars U.S. aid to groups that provide or promote abortion overseas. The State Department also has removed language about women’s access to contraception and abortion from its annual human rights reports. Stull and another political appointee, Bethany Kozma, are behind the push to restrict the terminology, three of the people familiar with the issue said. The pair tried to initially put the proposal in a diplomatic cable to all embassies. But they switched it to a memo for Pompeo after career staffers warned they were circumventing protocol. Cables are typically signed by the secretary or one of his top deputies, and Pompeo could still send a cable if he approves the memo, one source said. As a Kansas congressman between 2011 and 2017, Pompeo was known for his anti-abortion views and criticism of LGBTQ protections, co-sponsoring legislation that would have allowed states to subvert the Supreme Court’s protections for same-sex marriage. "When I was a politician, I had a very clear view on whether it was appropriate for two same-sex persons to marry," Pompeo said during his April 2018 confirmation hearings to run the State Department. "I stand by that." Stull is a former lobbyist and wine blogger serving as an adviser in the State Department’s International Organizations bureau. She’s under investigation after facing allegations that she tried to create a blacklist of career staffers whose loyalty to Trump she questioned. Kozma is an adviser at the U.S. Agency for International Development who reportedly agitated against transgender rights before joining the administration. Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2zlNt1M #Headlines by: ddiamond@politico.com (Dan Diamond) Original Post: https://ift.tt/2zlNt1M https://ift.tt/2Ju2XFm
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/trumps-state-department-eyes-ban-on.html

Watch this little robot transform to get the job done


Robots just want to get things done, but it’s frustrating when their rigid bodies simply don’t allow them to do so. Solution: bodies that can be reconfigured on the fly! Sure, it’s probably bad news for humanity in the long run, but in the meantime it makes for fascinating research. A team of graduate students from Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania made this idea their focus and produced both the modular, self-reconfiguring robot itself and the logic that drives it. Think about how you navigate the world: If you need to walk somewhere, you sort of initiate your “walk” function. But if you need to crawl through a smaller space, you need to switch functions and shapes. Similarly, if you need to pick something up off a table, you can just use your “grab” function, but if you need to reach around or over an obstacle you need to modify the shape of your arm and how it moves. Naturally you have a nearly limitless “library” of these functions that you switch between at will. That’s really not the case for robots, which are much more rigidly designed both in hardware and software. This research, however, aims to create a similar — if considerably smaller — library of actions and configurations that a robot can use on the fly to achieve its goals. In their paper published today in Science Robotics, the team documents the groundwork they undertook, and although it’s still extremely limited, it hints at how this type of versatility will be achieved in the future. The robot itself, called SMORES-EP, might be better described as a collection of robots: small cubes (it’s a popular form factor) equipped with wheels and magnets that can connect to each other and cooperate when one or all of them won’t do the job. The brains of the operation lie in a central unit equipped with a camera and depth sensor it uses to survey the surroundings and decide what to do. If it sounds a little familiar, that’s because the same team demonstrated a different aspect of this system earlier this year, namely the ability to identify spaces it can’t navigate and deploy items to remedy that. The current paper is focused on the underlying system that the robot uses to perceive its surroundings and interact with it. Watch a hard-working robot improvise to climb drawers and cross gaps Let’s put this in more concrete terms. Say a robot like this one is given the goal of collecting the shoes from around your apartment and putting them back in your closet. It gets around your apartment fine but ultimately identifies a target shoe that’s underneath your bed. It knows that it’s too big to fit under there because it can perceive dimensions and understands its own shape and size. But it also knows that it has functions for accessing enclosed areas, and it can tell that by arranging its parts in such and such a way it should be able to reach the shoe and bring it back out. The flexibility of this approach and the ability to make these decisions autonomously are where the paper identifies advances. This isn’t a narrow “shoe-under-bed-getter” function, it’s a general tool for accessing areas the robot itself can’t fit into, whether that means pushing a recessed button, lifting a cup sitting on its side, or reaching between condiments to grab one in the back. A visualization of how the robot perceives its environment. As with just about everything in robotics, this is harder than it sounds, and it doesn’t even sound easy. The “brain” needs to be able to recognize objects, accurately measure distances, and fundamentally understand physical relationships between objects. In the shoe grabbing situation above, what’s stopping a robot from trying to lift the bed and leave it in place floating above the ground while it drives underneath? Artificial intelligences have no inherent understanding of any basic concept and so many must be hard-coded or algorithms created that reliably make the right choice. Don’t worry, the robots aren’t quite at the “collect shoes” or “collect remaining humans” stage yet. The tests to which the team subjected their little robot were more like “get around these cardboard boxes and move any pink-labeled objects to the designated drop-off area.” Even this type of carefully delineated task is remarkably difficult, but the bot did just fine — though rather slowly, as lab-based bots tend to be. The authors of the paper have since finished their grad work and moved on to new (though surely related) things. Tarik Tosun, one of the authors whom I talked with for this article, explained that he’s now working on advancing the theoretical side of things as opposed to, say, building cube-modules with better torque. To that end he helped author VSPARC, a simulator environment for modular robots. Although it is tangential to the topic immediately at hand, the importance of this aspect of robotics research can’t be overestimated. You can find a pre-published version of the paper here in case you don’t have access to Science Robotics. source: https://ift.tt/2OjQAN0 #Headlines by: Devin Coldewey Original Post: https://ift.tt/2OjQAN0 https://ift.tt/2Sy913P
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/watch-this-little-robot-transform-to.html

Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect is indicted on 44 counts


The suspect in the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre has been indicted by a federal grand jury. The indictment, which was expected, was announced Wednesday. It charges Robert Bowers with 44 counts, including hate crimes. Federal prosecutors have previously indicated they plan to seek the death penalty. U.S. Attorney Scott Brady says “today begins the process of seeking justice for the victims of these hateful acts.” Authorities say Bowers opened fire in the Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday, killing 11 and wounding six, including four police officers. Bowers is jailed without bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Thursday. The funerals for the victims began Tuesday and are continuing through the rest of the week. Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2DeV5an #Headlines by: (The Associated Press) Original Post: https://ift.tt/2DeV5an https://ift.tt/2ERiXm4
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-suspect.html

Italy storm kills at least 11 people and destroys luxury yachts as 10-foot waves smash into coastal cities


'Fifth worst flood in recorded history' hits Venice as regions across country count cost of devastation source: https://ift.tt/2P2MgXu #Headlines by: Harry Cockburn Original Post: https://ift.tt/2CQt8om https://ift.tt/2P2Mhuw
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/italy-storm-kills-at-least-11-people.html

Early midterm voting by young people up 500% in Texas and Georgia


Numbers suggest potential surge in enthusiasm for Democratic candidates source: https://ift.tt/2P0369C #Headlines by: Tom Embury-Dennis Original Post: https://ift.tt/2DeeKrd https://ift.tt/2Q6R1Mn
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/early-midterm-voting-by-young-people-up.html

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Gun injuries send 8,000 American children to the ER every year – study


It’s not only school shootings but also accidents, other assaults and even suicide attempts with firearms that send almost 8,000 American children every year to the emergency room, according to a new study. Read Full Article at RT.com source: https://ift.tt/2qkZDDY #Headlines by: RT Original Post: https://ift.tt/2qkZDDY https://ift.tt/2Jq5oJf
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/gun-injuries-send-8000-american.html

How to spot if someone is having a stroke and what to do


Strokes cause 38,000 deaths in the UK each year source: https://ift.tt/2Oivmiq #Headlines by: Olivia Petter Original Post: https://ift.tt/2DbnXR9 https://ift.tt/2OgBF62
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/how-to-spot-if-someone-is-having-stroke.html

Trump makes controversial visit to Pittsburgh as city starts to bury its dead from synagogue massacre


Top officials — including the governor of Pennsylvania and mayor of Pittsburgh — have refused to meet with the president during his visit source: https://ift.tt/2Syngpb #Headlines by: Andrew Buncombe, Clark Mindock Original Post: https://ift.tt/2Q6x48s https://ift.tt/2yGl86q
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/trump-makes-controversial-visit-to.html

Naomi Watts cast as the lead in upcoming Game of Thrones prequel


HBO's upcoming prequel takes place thousands of years before the events told in Game of Thrones source: https://ift.tt/2DegCQu #Headlines by: Clémence Michallon Original Post: https://ift.tt/2JqA1OH https://ift.tt/2DdSXzI
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/naomi-watts-cast-as-lead-in-upcoming.html

Can Trump revoke birthright citizenship? Nearly all on left and right say no.


President Donald Trump’s proposal to use an executive order to deny birthright citizenship to babies born in the U.S. to non-citizens and undocumented immigrants has virtually no support from legal experts across the political spectrum. The 14th Amendment of the Constitution states: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." A small group of mostly conservative legal scholars argue that Congress could revoke so-called birthright citizenship for undocumented immigrants. But Trump argued in an interview with Axios that he could revoke it by executive order. Court decisions dating back to the late 1800s affirm the citizenship rights of children born to immigrants, which would make it even harder to enforce such an executive order. Nearly all legal experts accept that the amendment applies to nearly all children born on U.S. soil, according to Josh Blackman, a conservative constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. “This is not an issue where there’s a lot of disagreement,” Blackman said. If Trump issues an executive order, he said, “someone will challenge it in five seconds.” A small contingent of legal scholars contend that the 14th amendment phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” allows Congress to pass a law to rescind or restrict birthright citizenship, or allows courts to clarify the amendment’s scope. According to one argument — which most legal experts reject — the “jurisdiction” phrase excludes noncitizens because they can’t vote, serve on juries, or be tried for treason. But even backers of these approaches typically dismiss the idea that birthright citizenship can be eliminated by presidential fiat. Rogers Smith, a left-leaning University of Pennsylvania political science professor who specializes in constitutional law, has argued that the Constitution doesn't require that birthright citizenship be extended to undocumented individuals, and that Congress could pass a law denying it to them. But “I know of no remotely plausible legal theory," Smith said, "under which the president has the power to decide birthright citizenship rules by executive order." “No one except the Trump White House thinks it’s a matter of executive discretion,” Smith told POLITICO in an email. “Trump’s announcement of this position a week before the election is clearly playing politics with people’s civic status and lives in the worst possible way.” The White House considered action on birthright citizenship a priority from the start of the administration, according to Jessica Vaughan, a policy director with the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies, but first it needed to explore whether an executive order was feasible or preferable to legislation. The executive-order idea surfaced publicly in July in an op-ed by Michael Anton, a former spokesman for the National Security Council who left the Trump administration three months earlier. "An executive order could specify to federal agencies that the children of noncitizens are not citizens," Anton wrote in July. "Such an order would, of course, immediately be challenged in the courts. But officers in all three branches of government — the president no less than judges — take similar oaths to defend the Constitution. Why shouldn’t the president act to defend the clear meaning of the 14th Amendment?" Anton, who doesn’t have a law degree, is a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, an institution with strong ties to the conservative movement. His op-ed was widely criticized from both left and right — a rebuke that he wrote about in a subsequent blog post that blasted anti-Trump conservatives. "I did not expect self-described 'conservatives' to be just as hysterical as the Left," Anton wrote in the blog post, "and to use precisely the same terms. 'Nativist.' 'Xenophobe.' 'Bigot.' 'Racist.' 'White nationalist.' 'White supremacist.' ... It’s an ugly thing to hear and read the worst of these epithets from ostensible allies." The bipartisan legal consensus in favor of the current understanding of birthright citizenship would make a Trump challenge unlikely to succeed, according to Gerard Magliocca, a professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. “If this ever did reach the Supreme Court, you would get probably eight or nine votes to say it’s unconstitutional,” he said. “The liberal wing of the court won’t like it because they’re not going to like something like this generally. But the conservative wing of the court that believes in following the original meaning of the Constitution cannot possibly look at that and say anything other than, ‘Everyone born here is a citizen.’” The high court tackled birthright citizenship in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which addressed whether a child born to Chinese parents now living in the U.S. would automatically be a citizen. Aside from Native Americans born on tribal lands, the Supreme Court excluded only two groups: children of foreign diplomats and children of enemy occupiers, according to Stephen Legomsky, former chief counsel for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Obama administration. “I expect that even the current Supreme Court will find this to be too great a stretch,” he said in a written statement. The case dealt with legal immigration — at the time, there were no federal immigration laws to designate someone an undocumented immigrant — but the justices ruled the San Francisco-born Wong Kim Ark was a citizen. A 2011 poll by the Pew Research Center found Republicans split on whether to bar children of undocumented immigrants from obtaining citizenship. And Trump’s proposal — at least as it was reported this week — could apply to non-citizens in the country legally, too. “I don’t see this going anywhere,” said Blackman, the professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. “I see this mostly a way to rally support with the election coming up in a few days.” Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2CPzMeO #Headlines by: thesson@politico.com (Ted Hesson) Original Post: https://ift.tt/2CPzMeO https://ift.tt/2ESwDxo
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/can-trump-revoke-birthright-citizenship.html

Mueller asks FBI to probe scheme seeking sexual assault dirt on him


Special counsel Robert Mueller has asked the FBI to investigate an alleged scheme to manufacture sexual assault stories about him. At issue is an email widely circulated this month among journalists from a woman who claimed she’d been approached with an offer to pay her tens of thousands of dollars if she’d answer questions about Mueller and then sign a sworn affidavit accusing him of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment. “When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the Special Counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation,” Mueller spokesman Peter Carr said in an email. The woman, who identified herself to POLITICO and other news organizations as Lorraine D. Parsons of Fort Myers, Fla., said she worked with Mueller in 1974 when she was a paralegal at the law firm Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro. In her email, which POLITICO could not independently confirm, Parsons said a man named Bill Christensen contacted her by phone to inquire about Mueller. “I'm not sure how he knew that I ever worked there or worked with Robert Mueller. I reluctantly told Mr. Christensen that I had only worked with Mr. Mueller for a short period of time, before leaving that firm to have my first son,” she wrote in her email. Parsons said Christensen “then changed his tone, and mentioned that he might be able to help me pay off some debt. He knew exactly how much credit card debt I had, right down to the dollar, which sort of freaked me out.” The woman said she told Christensen she wasn’t interested in his offer and hung up on him. But she said he called back two days later offering to pay off $34,000 in credit card debt and also write her a $20,000 check if she made the allegations against Mueller. In addition, Parsons said that Christen offered her another $10,000 bonus from his client, the Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman. Parsons in an email declined to speak by phone with POLITICO about her interaction with Christensen but she did forward a screen shot from a text message she said came from a person with a Northern Virginia area code that said, “Lorraine, we need to get this done. Last chance.” Three days later, Parsons wrote to POLITICO that she working with the New Yorker “to expose these hucksters.” A representative from the New Yorker did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether it had been in touch with Parsons. Burkman said in a Facebook video posted Tuesday that he is planning a press conference at “high noon” on Thursday in Arlington, Va., to “unveil the first of the sexual assault victims of Robert Mueller." But in a phone interview, Burkman insisted he had nothing to do with Parsons’ story. “We never paid anyone. This woman named Lorraine Parsons, I don’t know who it is. I’ve never heard of her,” he said. “I’m not sure a Lorraine Parsons exists.” Burkman is a Virginia-based Republican lobbyist with ties to the Mueller probe and other aspects of the 2016 presidential election. Last year, he organized a legal defense fund for Rick Gates after Mueller indicted the former Trump campaign deputy on charges of money laundering and failing to register as an agent of a foreign government. A federal judge rebuked Gates for violating a gag order after he appeared in a video thanking donors who gave to the fund. Burkman earlier this year also said he was shot and run over by a car while conducting his own investigation into the murder of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer who is at the center of a conspiracy theory that he played a role in the release of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign that WikiLeaks posted online during the 2016 presidential election. Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2qhKkf4 #Headlines by: dsamuelsohn@politico.com (Darren Samuelsohn) Original Post: https://ift.tt/2qhKkf4 https://ift.tt/2CSF5Kb
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/mueller-asks-fbi-to-probe-scheme.html

Stephen Colbert on synagogue shooting: 'Hate is not what America stands for'


A very sombre Stephen Colbert responded to Pittsburgh's synagogue shooting on The Late Show Monday. After declaring that "hate is not what America stands for," and praising the Muslim group which raised more than $140,000 for the shooting's victims, Colbert turned his attention to Trump's indefensible response to the tragic event. "Naturally, in times like these our nation looks to its president for comfort and guidance. That's our first mistake," he said. Of particular annoyance to the late show host was Trump continuing with a rally hours after the attack, where he claimed that he did so because the New York Stock Exchange opened the day after 9/11That claim was in fact, false. Read more... More about Entertainment, Tv, Donald Trump, Stephen Colbert, and Trump source: https://ift.tt/2zczyLm #Headlines by: Johnny Lieu Original Post: https://ift.tt/2zczyLm https://ift.tt/2Sww3rJ
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/stephen-colbert-on-synagogue-shooting.html

Tom Steyer: 'The president's words matter dramatically'


Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer on Tuesday said that “of course” President Donald Trump’s words have played a role in dampening civility in public discourse. Steyer, who has poured millions of dollars into Democratic causes and has campaigned hard for impeaching the president, was one of the targets of more than a dozen pipe bombs mailed to prominent critics of the president last week. Trump, in an interview with Fox News that aired Monday, complained that accusations his brash rhetoric emboldened the mail bomb suspect were overblown. He also complained that Sen. Bernie Sanders was not similarly blamed when one of his supporters allegedly shot up a Republican baseball practice last summer that injured House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. Steyer rejected that assertion on Tuesday. “Listen, this is a president who has created an atmosphere of hate,” he said on CNN. “He has continued to demonize people after these events, who has created an atmosphere of extreme lawlessness. I think it doesn't really matter what he says because what he does is so obviously wrong and what he does has led to this breakdown in terms of civil society.” Despite condemning the mail bombs and calling for the country to come together, Trump has continued to attack some of the mail bomb targets, including Steyer. On Twitter on Sunday, Trump called Steyer “wacky” and wrote that Steyer came off in a recently aired interview “as a crazed & stumbling lunatic who should be running out of money pretty soon.” Steyer implored Trump to “do your job, man” instead of attacking rivals on Twitter, adding, “I don't think there is any point in getting into the gutter with a guttersnipe. The only thing we can do at a very tough time is tell the truth and try to stand up for the American people, two things that he is unable to do.” Asked on Tuesday whether he thought that, despite pushback from the White House, the president bore any responsibility for a recent wave of violence that appears to be rooted in political motives, Steyer responded in the affirmative. “Look, he's part of an entire system. He's the leading part. The idea that the words of the president don't matter is on its face silly. … Of course, the president's words matter dramatically. Any other suggestion, honestly, that's just silly.” Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2JoL0bc #Headlines by: coprysko@politico.com (Caitlin Oprysko) Original Post: https://ift.tt/2JoL0bc https://ift.tt/2DaC60I
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/tom-steyer-presidents-words-matter.html

Trump wants to use an executive order to override the 14th Amendment. Here's why that won’t work


Executive orders must work within the parameters of the US Constitution source: https://ift.tt/2yFNii2 #Headlines by: Chris Riotta Original Post: https://ift.tt/2qiX8Sk https://ift.tt/2ES4IO8
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/trump-wants-to-use-executive-order-to.html

6.2 quake strikes New Zealand’s North Island, disrupts parliament session


A 6.2 earthquake has struck New Zealand, 64 kilometers east of the town of Waitara, and was felt all across the nation, including the capital city of Wellington. The tremor has even halted a session of parliament. Read Full Article at RT.com source: https://ift.tt/2EQqJgb #Headlines by: RT Original Post: https://ift.tt/2EQqJgb https://ift.tt/2EPJKzi
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/62-quake-strikes-new-zealands-north.html

China scraps ban on using rhinoceros horns and tiger bones in medicine


Chinese cabinet rule that the items can now be obtained from farmed animals source: https://ift.tt/2PzMIfG #Headlines by: Shehab Khan Original Post: https://ift.tt/2yOCcrl https://ift.tt/2Of82lS
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/china-scraps-ban-on-using-rhinoceros.html

China’s Xi tells military to prepare for war as US Navy warns of high seas encounters


Chinese President Xi Jinping told military officials responsible for the disputed South China Sea to be better “prepared for war” as tensions with the US are rising. Beijing may be bracing for a worst-case scenario with the US. Read Full Article at RT.com source: https://ift.tt/2F3U1Z1 #Headlines by: RT Original Post: https://ift.tt/2F3U1Z1 https://ift.tt/2yBTwj5
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/chinas-xi-tells-military-to-prepare-for.html

Monday, October 29, 2018

Why do we insist on believing in ghosts?


You can't ask me that! Continuing her series tackling socially unacceptable questions, Christine Manby asks whether it's time we stopped blaming the unexplained for the perfectly explicable source: https://ift.tt/2Q5avAS #Headlines by: Christine Manby Original Post: https://ift.tt/2qjLqak https://ift.tt/2Q368pX
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/why-do-we-insist-on-believing-in-ghosts.html

Lawsuit accuses Trump family of peddling phony get-rich schemes


A new lawsuit filed in federal court Monday accuses President Donald Trump and his children of convincing consumers to invest in get-rich-quick schemes, while also accepting “large, secret payments” from the companies they were pitching. The complaint landed a week before a congressional midterm election that Trump has called a referendum on his presidency. It was filed on behalf of four unnamed plaintiffs by lawyers Roberta Kaplan and Andrew Celli, both donors to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and is being funded by Tesseract Research Center, a progressive group led by Morris Pearl, former managing director of investment giant BlackRock. “This case is about four working-class Americans, and thousands more just like them, who were deliberately defrauded by Donald J. Trump, his family, and the corporation that bears their name," the legal filing states. A spokesman for Kaplan confirmed Tesseract’s involvement but gave no additional comment. The suit names Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump and the Trump Corporation as defendants. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Alan Garten, a lawyer for the president's business. According to the lawsuit, which was first reported by the New York Times, the Trumps were paid to pitch prospective investors on behalf of three companies that they said would likely offer commercial success. "The Message was materially false. The Investments did not — and could not — offer a reasonable probability of success," the lawsuit states. In one example, between 2005 and at least 2015, Trump claimed that an investment in a multi-level-marketing company called American Communications Network, or ACN, was “without any of the risks most entrepreneurs have to take” and that its flagship product was doing $500 million in annual sales, even though those claims were false, the lawsuit states. At the same time Trump was endorsing ACN, he also secretly received “millions of dollars in secret payments” from the company in the form of speaking fees and appearances, according to the complaint. Trump featured prominently in the company’s magazine and blog and attended at least 14 events in the U.S. and overseas, the lawsuit states. “Trump spent years cultivating a brand for himself based on the impression that he was a successful entrepreneur,” the suit claims. “Defendants conducted the affairs of their enterprise as a fraudulent scheme to leverage that brand, and use a series of false and misleading statements and omissions, to ensnare vulnerable consumers.” Plaintiffs include the pseudonymous Jane Doe, a hospice caregiver from California who the lawsuit says invested in ACN after seeing clips of Trump praising the company on his reality television show. The complaint says she paid $499 to register with ACN and spent thousands of dollars to attend events and motivational rallies, but she earned a total of $38 after two years. The other three plaintiffs saw no return from their investments, according to the complaint. Trump and his companies have been accused of fraud in the past. In November 2016, he agreed to pay $25 million to settle lawsuits against Trump University. The new case, Jane Doe v. The Trump Corp., was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2AAgyYW #Headlines by: lwoellert@politico.com (Lorraine Woellert) Original Post: https://ift.tt/2AAgyYW https://ift.tt/2Jo8k97
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/lawsuit-accuses-trump-family-of.html

Democrats hold 17-point lead against Republicans ahead of November midterms in latest poll


Donald Trump is attacking Democrats via Twitter and campaigning for conservatives across the country source: https://ift.tt/2zdvVVq #Headlines by: Chris Riotta Original Post: https://ift.tt/2qiXUz0 https://ift.tt/2OewZh0
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/democrats-hold-17-point-lead-against.html

75% of Venice under water after unusually high tide strikes famed city (WATCH LIVE)


Three-quarters of the Italian city of Venice is currently under water after a storm system brought strong winds which rose water levels and toppled trees. Four people have been killed. Read Full Article at RT.com source: https://ift.tt/2zeXgX0 #Headlines by: RT Original Post: https://ift.tt/2zeXgX0 https://ift.tt/2ERJdwI
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/75-of-venice-under-water-after.html

Young Americans more likely to vote this year than past two midterm elections, new poll finds


Two out of three 18 to 29-year-olds said they want Democrats to control Congress, according to research by Institute of Politics at Harvard University source: https://ift.tt/2EPNC3f #Headlines by: Amy Gardner Original Post: https://ift.tt/2JmbI4e https://ift.tt/2RjT5kc
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/young-americans-more-likely-to-vote.html

Brazil's new far-right president has been dubbed the 'Trump of the Tropics'


Election winner has a long history of extreme views source: https://ift.tt/2z9docT #Headlines by: Adam Forrest Original Post: https://ift.tt/2DaTH8K https://ift.tt/2CNGW32
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/brazils-new-far-right-president-has.html

Sniffer dogs able to detect malaria in people by smelling socks, study finds


Hopes animals could be used to provide fast, non-invasive tests to prevent spread of disease source: https://ift.tt/2Rh63PQ #Headlines by: Tom Barnes Original Post: https://ift.tt/2CO5WXP https://ift.tt/2qiG670
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/sniffer-dogs-able-to-detect-malaria-in.html

93% of world's children breathing toxic air which 'stunts brains' and causes deadly disease


Exhaust fumes and pollution 'uniquely damaging' to children and causing deaths of half a million under-fives each year source: https://ift.tt/2AzcBnk #Headlines by: Alex Matthews-King Original Post: https://ift.tt/2P0dNJd https://ift.tt/2JmmU0H
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/93-of-worlds-children-breathing-toxic.html

Channel Zero's Creepy Contortionist is All Good Acting, No Special Effects


When you see a character move in ways that seem impossible, it’s natural to assume, no, that’s a special effect, right? CGI or something. No one can do that. Turns out, Pretzel Jack, or at least the actor who plays him, definitely can. Read more... source: https://ift.tt/2JkcRtj #Headlines by: Julie Muncy on io9, shared by Tom McKay to Gizmodo Original Post: https://ift.tt/2JkcRtj https://ift.tt/2Q4fpOw
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/channel-zeros-creepy-contortionist-is.html

Red Sox overwhelm Dodgers to win World Series


The consensus best team in baseball overwhelmed the Dodgers 4-1 in the best-of-seven series source: https://ift.tt/2EYcJ4e #Headlines by: Sports Staff Original Post: https://ift.tt/2Aygj0s https://ift.tt/2EPnkOB
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/red-sox-overwhelm-dodgers-to-win-world.html

How we can keep our food system from the brink of apocalypse


The Earth can't cope with more pressure from our agricultural practices, but it's not too late to start respecting our planet's limits source: https://ift.tt/2q6syLQ #Headlines by: Marco Springmann Original Post: https://ift.tt/2Ay5ZWh https://ift.tt/2EZ8EfM
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/how-we-can-keep-our-food-system-from.html

Sunday, October 28, 2018

18 American volcanoes get a 'very high' threat rating from the USGS


Of the 161 volcanoes found in the United States, 18 of them are considered a "very high" threat in any eruption scenario. That's a stat from the "2018 update to the U.S. Geological Survey national volcanic threat assessment." As the mouthful of a title suggests, the report lays out which volcanoes in the U.S. have the greatest chance of erupting. The last such report from the USGS was issued in 2005. SEE ALSO: Volcanoes, ranked At the top of the list, unsurprisingly, is Hawaii's Kilauea, which caused so much damage and devastation over the summer. The next two after that, both found in Washington state, are Mt. Saint Helens and Mt. Ranier, respectively. Read more... More about Science, Volcano, Usgs, Us Geological Survey, and Science source: https://ift.tt/2SqWe3i #Headlines by: Adam Rosenberg Original Post: https://ift.tt/2SqWe3i https://ift.tt/2D8Qw1u
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/18-american-volcanoes-get-very-high.html

How a Democratic majority could undermine the Mueller probe


Democrats have religiously deferred to special counsel Robert Mueller over the last 17 months, hamstrung by their lack of congressional power and expressing faith that the respected investigator will get the job done if left alone. That could all change after November. If Democrats retake the House in the midterm elections, they’re prepared to use their newfound subpoena power to aggressively open probes into President Donald Trump’s finances and connections to Russia. But doing so — just as Mueller appears to be entering the final laps of his own probe — would create tensions between the special counsel and a newly crowned majority party replenished by scores of freshman lawmakers who rode into Capitol Hill on an anti-Trump wave. House Democratic aides have been meeting informally in recent months to discuss ways to do their jobs while avoiding stepping on Mueller’s toes in 2019, even toying with the idea of calling the special counsel in for a private bipartisan briefing. “The House may want to start their oversight by bringing in special counsel Mueller to hear from him,” said former California Rep. Henry Waxman, who chaired the House Oversight Committee during the final two years of the George W. Bush administration and has been meeting informally with House Democrats to discuss investigation strategies. Potential conflicts could come on many fronts. For starters, Democrats will be eager to see Mueller’s findings and hard-pressed to give him space if he’s not finished yet. If Mueller’s Justice Department supervisors resist making the special counsel’s work public, a clash could emerge. Perhaps most potentially disruptive: Democrats could cause Mueller problems if they start granting immunity to witnesses whom the special counsel still wants to question or prosecute. “It’s something that I think we have to handle with great care,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) conceded last week during an event at Harvard University. “We won’t interfere,” the potential next House speaker added. “We shouldn’t. We won’t. But we do have to have one thing that we should all agree on: the truth for the American people and where the truth leads us is another thing.” Pelosi’s pledge is easier said than done, though, with early signs that the two sides could overlap just as Democrats gear up for an open 2020 presidential primary season. Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year released a “partial list” of more than 70 people, organizations and companies they said Republicans refused to fully pursue as part of their Russia investigation. California Rep. Adam Schiff, the likely new chairman of the panel if Democrats win power in November, has signaled plans to focus on that unfinished business, including hearings on suspected money laundering at the Trump Organization and issuing a subpoena for communications between the president and his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., surrounding a 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney who was promising to deliver dirt on Hillary Clinton. On the House Judiciary Committee, Democrats poised to begin impeachment proceedings have offered up an oversight road map that signals potential conflicts with Mueller. In August, they called for a Justice Department briefing to glean more details about former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s guilty plea and the allegations that Trump directed him to break campaign finance laws. They’ve also called for an examination into Trump potentially abusing his pardon power, as well as his associates implicated in crimes from the Mueller investigation. It’s not known to what extent Mueller is probing these areas, but Democrats concede that poking around could inadvertently draw out the special counsel’s own investigative interests far sooner than the special counsel might like. “It’s a problem I’d like to have one day,” said a senior House Democratic aide. Come January, Democrats say they will reassess their oversight plans based on the election outcome and to take into account whatever stage Mueller is at in his investigation. They’ll also need to consider whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein remain in their jobs. Trump has signaled interest in changing up his DOJ leadership, a move that would mean new oversight of the special counsel’s investigation. If history is any guide, an aggressive Congress and the Justice Department don’t always get along, especially when there’s an independent counsel involved. Already, there are ongoing disputes between Trump-allied Republicans on Capitol Hill and the Justice Department over documents and briefings tied to the origins of the government’s Trump-Russia investigation. Further back, in 2008, Democrats — led by Waxman — argued that President George W. Bush thwarted their investigations into the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity by invoking executive privilege in response to a subpoena for Vice President Dick Cheney’s testimony to the FBI. And during the investigations into the Reagan administration’s secret sale of arms to Iran, Congress’ decision to offer immunity in exchange for testimony from retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North and Reagan national security adviser John Poindexter drove a federal appeals court to vacate the two officials’ convictions. The Watergate scandal was a rare example of the judicial and congressional branches working in tandem. Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski in 1974 even sent a road map of his work with a federal grand jury to the House Judiciary Committee, which helped pave the way for impeachment proceedings and President Richard Nixon’s resignation. Not all legal experts believe having Congress put its stamp on work that’s simultaneously part of an active law enforcement probe is a bad thing. “Being supportive of an investigation doesn’t in the end mean deferring to the criminal investigators,” said John Q. Barrett, a former associate counsel who worked under independent counsel Lawrence Walsh during the Reagan-era investigation into secret U.S. arms sales to Iran. “When you’re the minority and powerless to do the investigation, then it’s easy to be cheering for the Justice Department investigation. But when you’re the majority and doing your own House investigation, you may well butt heads.” Douglas Letter, a recently retired DOJ senior attorney who teaches at Georgetown University Law Center, noted that Congress and Mueller have “totally different goals.” The congressional investigation is designed to give the American public a report on what happened in the 2016 election and “whether there’s anything political that can be made of it,” he said. Mueller, in the meantime, is a criminal investigator whose job is to identify crimes and prosecute the perpetrators. But Republicans will be quick to pounce on the earliest whiff of oversight overreach. They’re primed to point out changes in tone from lawmakers who have been deferential to the Justice Department. Schiff, for example, has been insistent that DOJ shouldn’t give up information about core parts of the Mueller investigation. “If the shoe is on the other foot in a month and a half, let’s see if he stays consistent,” said William Moschella, the former head of Justice Department legislative affairs office during the George W. Bush administration. Trump allies slammed Pelosi earlier this week after she said during a CNN event that subpoena power was “a great arrow to have in your quiver in terms of negotiating on other subjects.” “This is what they do in Third World countries. Disgusting concept and a slippery slope that America wants no part of,” Eric Trump wrote on Twitter. “It’s about politics for them,” Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for the Trump personal legal team and the Bush DOJ, told POLITICO. “If they think there’s political advantage to stepping on the special counsel’s toes, they’ll do it.” Most observers believe, though, that the Democrats will hold back from causing problems for Mueller, at least for a few months, if they take the majority. Some predicted that Democrats could even try to strike an arrangement with the special counsel to let his team operate for six months or so without significant congressional pressure. For Democrats, though, that’s a narrow window before other demands start taking over, said Paul McNulty, a former George W. Bush deputy attorney general. “There won’t be any purchase of a long-term peace,” he said. Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2qfpYTH #Headlines by: dsamuelsohn@politico.com (Darren Samuelsohn) Original Post: https://ift.tt/2qfpYTH https://ift.tt/2Jl75re
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/how-democratic-majority-could-undermine.html

The A-Z of Believing: J is for Jokes


Faith always involves a degree of absurdity... Ed Kessler, head of the Woolf Institute, presents the 10th part in a series on belief and scepticism source: https://ift.tt/2qeaFun #Headlines by: Ed Kessler Original Post: https://ift.tt/2CLc8Qq https://ift.tt/2qdqyBr
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-z-of-believing-j-is-for-jokes.html

What to do if you see someone being racially abused in public


Charities advise assessing whether it's safe to take action when standing up to racial harassment source: https://ift.tt/2z8DigS #Headlines by: Sabrina Barr Original Post: https://ift.tt/2yZBVAN https://ift.tt/2za5Wy3
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/what-to-do-if-you-see-someone-being.html

The Time a President Stoked a Protest So He Could Play the ‘Law and Order’ Card


The throngs of protesters who stormed Capitol Hill late last month didn’t succeed in keeping Brett Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court. But they did furnish Donald Trump and the Republicans with an election-season message to energize their base. Ever since Americans saw the atria and corridors of the Senate buildings teem with foot soldiers of the resistance, the president and other Republicans have been trying to stoke fears of social chaos with overblown rhetoric comparing Democrats to a mob. “The only way to shut down the Democrats new Mob Rule strategy is to stop them cold at the Ballot Box,” Trump tweeted earlier this month—a warning echoed in GOP political ads across the country. He unveiled a hashtag aimed at Democrats: #JobsNotMobs. Trump, of course, is far from the first politician to use the fear of the rabble to boost his party’s fortunes. Occasionally Democrats have positioned themselves as the upholders of decorum—a firewall of sanity against the unhinged radicalism of frothing Goldwaterites in 1964 or lunatic Tea Partiers in the Obama years. And this fall, with Trump applauding a congressman who beat up a journalist and pipe bombs targeting Democratic officials, they certainly could position their party as the defender of lawfulness. But overall it’s usually been conservatives who’ve run on law and order, for conservatism at its core prizes stability over change, uniformity over fractiousness, control over expressiveness. Calvin Coolidge, for example, brandished the “law and order” slogan expertly as governor of Massachusetts in the wake of the 1919 Boston police strike, even using it to launch a presidential boomlet. In modern times, the phrase is associated with no one more than Richard Nixon—the president Trump resembles most. Like Trump, Nixon ran for president on a promise to protect the peace-loving public from Democrats who would coddle the libertine and the lawless. Like Trump as well, he dusted it off for the midterm elections that arrived as the opposition was surging—in one instance stoking a liberal protest so that he could capitalize on the backlash, with his speechwriter William Safire, a former public relations man, calling it “the most serious mob attack on a national leader in American history.” *** America may feel as if it’s unraveling today, but things were worse in 1968. Mass protests against the Vietnam War continued to swell in size and took on an increasingly radical tenor. Revolutionary zeal ran much hotter than it does today. The Weathermen and the Black Panthers make today’s “antifa” gangs look downright toothless. On campuses, student strikes, canceled classes and building takeovers were all but replacing homecoming as an annual ritual. Urban riots, also a rite of summer by 1968, got started early that year, after Martin Luther King’s assassination in April, and continued through the violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. Throw in a rising crime rate, and it was easy to understand the yearning for a president who would restore calm and safety. (Then, as now, there was right-wing vigilante violence, too—such as at George Wallace rallies, where audience members pummeled protesters, or at the “hard hat” riot of 1970, when pro-Nixon construction workers roughed up antiwar marchers.) Intuitively understanding this hunger for stability, Nixon promised “law and order” in his campaign speeches that year. Like the best slogans, this one worked on many levels. It resonated with voters who were concerned about the spike in violent crime, scared by the uprisings in inner-city black neighborhoods; resentful toward what they saw as spoiled college kids wasting their parents’ tuition dollars; or put off by opposition to the war. There was also, of course, a none-too-subtle racial element in the appeals. Nor was law and order just about physical disorder. Broadly, it was about psychic disorder too—a call to beat back the cultural impulses that were bringing radical changes in music and fashion, family dynamics and parenting styles, attitudes toward racial and sexual difference, and so much else. After Nixon’s election, he continued his appeals to aggrieved traditionalists on dozens of issues. Yet none resonated as viscerally as that of lawlessness. That came in handy in 1970, when Nixon’s approval numbers were falling, anger was mounting over his failure to end the Vietnam War, and the Republicans’ midterm prospects were looking bleak. To rally his voters, Nixon used a trip to San Jose, California, to reinforce his image as the protector of civil order. On Thursday, October 29, just days before the elections, he arrived at San Jose’s municipal auditorium for a speech to find demonstrators massed outside. Inside the arena, even as he and other politicians spoke, the protesters battered the walls from outside, disrupting the speeches inside.. After his speech, Nixon left the building via the rear door, where he was met by a crowd of perhaps 2,000 demonstrators, cordoned off by police barricades, chanting and hoisting signs. The mood was ugly. The protesters shouted profanities. Signs compared the president to a Nazi or flaunted obscene images. Nixon, who had in the past baited hecklers to profitable effect, clambered onto the hood of his limousine and thrust out his arms to make the double-V for which he was known. “This is what they hate to see,” he whispered to one of his entourage, as overheard by a reporter. Suddenly, a refrigerator’s worth of projectiles sailed through the air—eggs, tomatoes, vegetables—along with a hail of rocks. Nixon darted into his car as the Secret Service arranged an emergency evacuation. On the staff bus trailing behind, speechwriter Safire watched stones strike the windows, spewing glass. Another car, ferrying aide H.R. Haldeman, was also hit by a rock, then stalled and was rear-ended. Just as some conservatives last week spread rumors that a Democrat had sent the pipe-bomb packages in order to discredit the right, so in 1970 some of Nixon’s critics began whispering that the administration had engineered the San Jose incident to reflect badly on the left. Some took to calling the episode “the Nixon Hoax,” claiming that Nixon—abetted by a compliant press corps—had magnified, or even concocted the whole episode. Far from a mob riot, they said, it amounted to a run-of-the-mill protest in which no one got hurt. (No one was arrested for rock-throwing, after all, and no one was reported injured by a rock—though of course projectiles of some sort had shattered the window on Safire’s bus and nicked the cars in the presidential caravan.) Some speculated that the White House had even recruited members of the conservative group Young Americans for Freedom or other paid goons to pose as demonstrators in order to provoke the entire incident. This unfounded conspiracy theory sprang from the fevered imagination of young leftists. But it contained a kernel of truth. Nixon, everyone knew, liked having boisterous crowds at his rallies because they made him look good—especially when he could scold the hecklers. Bill Gulley, a Secret Service agent, claimed that “knowing how the Nixon advance team worked,” he thought it “well within the realm of possibility” that the San Jose incident was “rigged.” Haldeman’s diary, published long afterward, was more precise, noting that while the White House hadn’t set up the incident, Nixon had been keen to provoke a response: “We wanted some confrontation and there were no hecklers in the hall, so we stalled departure a little so they could zero in outside,” he wrote. But when the violence came, it was more than they had bargained for—“rather scary, … as rocks were flying … Bus windows smashed, etc.” Having escaped unscathed, Haldeman and Nixon and the team saw a payoff. Nixon’s stunt, Haldeman noted, “made a huge incident and we worked hard to crank it up.” He envisioned a “really major story” that “might be effective” on Election Day. After leaving San Jose for his home in San Clemente, in Southern California, Nixon began calling his aide “with ideas about how to push the line.” Two days later, in Phoenix, Nixon gave another speech. He positioned himself as the bulwark against mob rule as he recounted the incident in San Jose. His language was more composed and deliberate than Trump’s has been this fall, but it similarly played up the peril and prevalence of mob violence from the left. He told his audience: The crowd inside were exercising their right to peaceable assembly, as you are today. They were listening to political speakers. They were weighing the issues in the campaign of 1970. And outside the hall there was a mob of about 1,000, maybe a few more. We could see the hate in their faces as we drove into the hall, and the obscene signs they waved. We could hear the hate in their voices as they chanted their obscenities. … As we came out of the hall and entered the motorcade, the haters surged past the barricades. They began throwing rocks. These were not small stones; they were large rocks. They were heavy enough to smash windows, windows in the press bus, windows in the staff cars. They weren’t directed at me, though some did hit the presidential car. Most of the rocks hit the buses and the other cars behind. Nixon encouraged his listeners to identify with the crowd inside the hall—“people like you”—who he said “were repelled by the atmosphere of violence and hatred that marred the event. And they thought to themselves, ‘Is this America?’” The audience cheered. And, as if to rebut his critics in the news media, he insisted, “‘Law and order’ are not code words for racism or repression. ‘Law and order’ are code words for freedom from fear in America.” The night before the election, the White House paid for television time to rebroadcast the remarks. Ironically, its poor, grainy quality—a local Phoenix station had provided it—made many in the White House fear that it backfired; the Republicans lost many governorships and gave up seats in the House while gaining slightly in the Senate. But if the effect of the San Jose incident and its aftermath on the elections was hard to discern, there was another, more subtle—and perhaps more important—shift in the political mood that fall. According to Safire, “‘elitism’ and ‘permissiveness,’ which had been sociologists’ terms, became household words. Radical chic, national guilt, self-hate became more suspect. A backlash against demonstrators, part of a general self-identification of Middle America, gained momentum, strengthening Nixon’s hand and presaging his easy domination of [Democratic presidential candidate George] McGovern two years later.” The political atmosphere of the late 1960s and early 70s, with its suspicion, fearfulness, paranoia, and extremism, is returning. Last time around, the social disorder, hyped by Nixon and his supporters, played into the hands of the right. It is not clear why this time it would be any different. Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2zadcKo #Headlines by: David Greenberg Original Post: https://ift.tt/2zadcKo https://ift.tt/2CLKz9z
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-time-president-stoked-protest-so-he.html

How to follow the 2018 midterms without losing your sanity


After all the huffing, puffing, canvassing, and hand-wringing, the 2018 midterm elections are nearly here. Now it's time to hunker down and prep for election night, leaving just one question: how can we make it through our first post-Trump national election without losing our sanity? SEE ALSO: 10 political podcasts to help you keep your sanity before the midterms We're still suffering from New York Times needle-related flashbacks thanks to that tense November night two years ago, and things certainly haven't calmed down in the time since. (FWIW, the needle will, reportedly, make a comeback this year.) Read more... More about Politics, Web Culture, Midterm Elections, Culture, and Web Culture source: https://ift.tt/2Av8l8u #Headlines by: Marcus Gilmer Original Post: https://ift.tt/2Av8l8u https://ift.tt/2Sqj5fd
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/how-to-follow-2018-midterms-without.html

Woman 'brutally punched' for speaking Spanish in racist attack on London train


British Transport Police arrest man on suspicion of racially aggravated actual bodily harm source: https://ift.tt/2Pop45z #Headlines by: Adam Forrest Original Post: https://ift.tt/2z92B2j https://ift.tt/2JjsbpT
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/woman-brutally-punched-for-speaking.html

DHS secretary: 'This caravan is not getting in'


A caravan of Central American immigrants headed for the U.S. through Mexico "is not getting in," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen vows. "My general message to this caravan is: Do not come," Nielsen told "Fox News Sunday." "You will not be allowed in." "There is a right way to immigrate to the United States," she added, "and this is not it." Since its formation, the caravan has reportedly swelled to more than 7,000 people. But its size is nothing new, Nielsen said. "We have a crisis at the border right now ... [and] this caravan is one iteration of that," Nielsen said. "Frankly, we essentially see caravans every day with these numbers." The Mexican government has already offered some caravan members asylum, Nielsen said. She directed those wishing to emigrate from their home countries to settle there. "Mexico has offered them asylum — in some cases, they have refused. Mexico has offered them work permits — in some cases, they have refused," Nielsen said. "What the president and I are both saying ... is, 'if you seek asylum, do so in that country.'" She went on to outline how asylum is different from other means of immigration — reasons why, she said, that caravan members should not continue to the U.S. border. "Mexico has offered you refuge. If you want a job, that is not asylum. If you want to be reunited with your family, that is not asylum. If you want to just come live in the United States, that is not asylum," she said. "There are legal ways to do that, but this is about the rule of law." Like President Donald Trump, Nielsen also made indirect reference to the possibility that the caravan may include terrorists — an assertion that has yet to be backed by evidence. "I cannot tell you as secretary of Homeland Security that I know everybody in this flow," Nielsen said. "What I do know is that we stop 3,000 people a year who have travel patterns similar to terrorists from attempting to come in the Southwest border. And, as you know, in general we stop across the United States ... terrorists every day." Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2z9nxWW #Headlines by: emueller@politico.com (Eleanor Mueller) Original Post: https://ift.tt/2z9nxWW https://ift.tt/2PZQZpp
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/dhs-secretary-this-caravan-is-not.html

Saturday, October 27, 2018

Russia, Turkey, France and Germany call for lasting ceasefire in Syria


World leaders issue joint statement from summit on war-torn country source: https://ift.tt/2zbZF58 #Headlines by: Eleanor Busby Original Post: https://ift.tt/2Q0OhjE https://ift.tt/2Jjn5tH
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/russia-turkey-france-and-germany-call.html

White House tempers hopes of retaining House control


The White House is lowering expectations that Republicans will maintain control of the House in the midterm elections — while positioning President Donald Trump to claim credit for any seats his party gains in the Senate. White House political director Bill Stepien wrote a three-page memo this week in which he outlined the political landscape confronting the GOP and bluntly warned that the party’s prospects for the House are “challenging.” “House Republicans’ goal this year is to minimize their losses,” he wrote in the memo, which was distributed to senior administration officials. A copy was obtained by POLITICO. The warning comes as Republicans try to preserve a 23-seat majority, with dozens of GOP-held seats at risk in the Nov. 6 election. Many Republican officials concede their path to retaining their grip on the speaker’s gavel is narrow and believe they will suffer their greatest losses in suburban areas, where the president has proven to be a drag on GOP candidates. But in the memo, Stepien attempted to divert blame from Trump toward several other factors which he said made a “traditionally challenging year even more difficult.” He noted that dozens of Republican incumbents had retired, creating a plethora of vacant seats for the party to defend. Stepien also highlighted the fundraising challenges confronting the GOP, noting that 92 Democratic challengers outraised incumbent House Republicans during the third fundraising quarter. And he pointed out that the party in power historically suffers significant losses during a president’s first midterm election. The memo was first reported on by Bloomberg. It comes as Trump prepares to embark on an aggressive cross-country tour through key swing states in the final days leading up to the Nov. 6 election. On Saturday, the president will campaign for Rep. Mike Bost, a downstate Illinois Republican who faces a treacherous path to reelection. While GOP prospects in the House are uphill, they are brighter in the Senate, where the party could expand its slim majority. Races are largely being fought in Republican-friendly states like North Dakota, Missouri, and Indiana, where Democratic incumbents are up for reelection. Yet it is Trump, Stepien contended, who deserves credit for any potential Senate gains. The key races in play, he argued, were ones that Trump had far over-performed previous Republican presidential candidates — a dynamic that imperiled Democratic candidates in those states. “The 2018 Senate map is only (potentially) favorable because of the way President Trump rewrote it in 2016,” Stepien wrote. “The prospect of redeploying President Trump’s 2016 coalition again in 2018 put these ‘red state Democrats’ on early notice, prompted the recruitment of strong GOP challengers and is what truly makes these states the pick-up opportunities they could be this November,” he added. “These are NOT ‘red states’ or ‘Republican states’ – they are ‘Trump states.’” Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2SmW2Sx #Headlines by: aisenstadt@politico.com (Alex Isenstadt) Original Post: https://ift.tt/2SmW2Sx https://ift.tt/2qe3Uc0
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/white-house-tempers-hopes-of-retaining.html

Trump's indefensible response to the synagogue shooting draws outrage


"If they had protection inside, the results would have been far better." That's what Donald Trump had to say after learning of a shooting that occurred at a synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday. He thinks that good guys with guns — whether in the congregation or via hired security — could have stopped this bad guy with a gun. Instead of making the easy choice to condemn the violent actions that led to multiple deaths, the President of the United States paraphrased an NRA talking point. Trump says Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh has “little to do with” gun laws, says the synagogue should have “had some kind of a protection” inside the temple, and later blames synagogue for not having armed guardspic.twitter.com/AWg5AwkEKp — Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) October 27, 2018 Read more... More about Politics, Culture, Donald Trump, Synagogue Shooting, and Culture source: https://ift.tt/2PpkgwF #Headlines by: Adam Rosenberg Original Post: https://ift.tt/2PpkgwF https://ift.tt/2Sn3mxv
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/trumps-indefensible-response-to.html

Family of rare Chinese mountain cats captured on video for the first time


Breed is listed as an endangered species. source: https://ift.tt/2PXL2cA #Headlines by: Staff Reporter Original Post: https://ift.tt/2z3x2GU https://ift.tt/2qeJ3oZ
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/family-of-rare-chinese-mountain-cats.html

Anthony Scaramucci says Trump is not ‘a liar'. He’s an ‘intentional liar’ who uses ‘a methodology of mistruth'


The US president has been increasingly under fire for abandoning the truth source: https://ift.tt/2qa63FK #Headlines by: John Wagner Original Post: https://ift.tt/2Riqw70 https://ift.tt/2CK73YH
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/anthony-scaramucci-says-trump-is-not.html

Police responding to 'active shooter' in Pittsburgh synagogue


Police officers have responded to reports of a gunman at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. source: https://ift.tt/2Oc7RI5 #Headlines by: Original Post: https://ift.tt/2OTsDBh https://ift.tt/2OTBqDq
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/police-responding-to-active-shooter-in.html

Twitter: It was a 'mistake' not to suspend bomb suspect for threats


Hours after FBI Director Christopher Wray announced the arrest of Cesar Sayoc in connection with sending 13 IEDs, Twitter finally suspended two accounts tied to Sayoc. Once he was identified, internet users quickly found posts of his showing videos a... source: https://ift.tt/2RfWQak #Headlines by: Original Post: https://ift.tt/2RfWQak https://ift.tt/2CGsbyS
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/twitter-it-was-mistake-not-to-suspend.html

Friday, October 26, 2018

Trump lashes out at Twitter over his follower count


President Donald Trump today accused Twitter of reducing the number of users who follow him and suggested the company is slowing down his account's growth, in his latest attack on internet companies over alleged bias. "Twitter has removed many people from my account and, more importantly, they have seemingly done something that makes it much harder to join - they have stifled growth to a point where it is obvious to all," Trump wrote on Twitter. "A few weeks ago it was a Rocket Ship, now it is a Blimp! Total Bias?" The president didn't provide evidence to support his claim, and the White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Twitter has been a critical communications channel for Trump. He not only taps the platform to speak directly to his conservative voter base, but also uses it to announce major policy initiatives and to try to shape media coverage. Despite his fondness for the medium, Trump has accused Twitter and other social media of being biased against him. His gripes echo claims from Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy that Twitter "shadow bans" conservative leaders, making it harder to find and follow their accounts. The president’s Twitter following has grown by 10.5 percent over the past six months, with only one significant decrease in early July when the company removed tens of millions of suspicious accounts, according to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media monitoring service. That July crackdown caused a number of prominent Twitter users, including former President Barack Obama, to lose a chunk of their followers. "Our focus is on the health of the service, and that includes work to remove fake accounts to prevent malicious behavior," Twitter said in a statement. "Many prominent accounts have seen follower counts drop, but the result is higher confidence that the followers they have are real, engaged people." Twitter on Thursday reported that its number of monthly active users declined by 9 million from the previous quarter. It's unclear if those figures contributed to the president's remark about it being "harder to join." Annie Yu contributed to this report. Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine ]]> source: https://ift.tt/2ENw4oo #Headlines by: soverly@politico.com (Steven Overly) Original Post: https://ift.tt/2ENw4oo https://ift.tt/2qcWCoZ
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/trump-lashes-out-at-twitter-over-his.html

Woman injures 14 children in knife attack at Chinese kindergarten


Police have not made public the 39-year-old's motive source: https://ift.tt/2RdPfsQ #Headlines by: Jon Sharman Original Post: https://ift.tt/2OPA6Bm https://ift.tt/2AtgI4r
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/woman-injures-14-children-in-knife.html

Megyn Kelly Today cancelled after Halloween blackface comments


Megyn Kelly is currently negotiating her departure from the NBC Network source: https://ift.tt/2EOktFQ #Headlines by: Sarah Harvard Original Post: https://ift.tt/2Ji4iz9 https://ift.tt/2CKpbBV
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/megyn-kelly-today-cancelled-after.html

Follow live as more suspicious packages are sent across America


Suspect Cesar Sayoc Jr arrested in Plantation, Florida source: https://ift.tt/2z4pjZu #Headlines by: Dave Maclean, Mythili Sampathkumar, Clark Mindock Original Post: https://ift.tt/2O7WQqR https://ift.tt/2ORuw1v
source: https://droolindognews.blogspot.com/2018/10/follow-live-as-more-suspicious-packages.html