Posted: March 2, 2020 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: 2020 Elections, Affordable Care Act (ACA), Afghanistan |
Good Day Sky Dancers!
There are several story lines cooking their way to the news day. None of them are particularly uplifting which just about matches stuff I’ve been going through lately too. I wish I could give up adulting but Spring Break and Carnival have ended not that I could truly enjoy either with this ever lingering flu. I’m going to fill the pages today with imaginary creatures since I’ve pretty much had it with the real ones. They are from Danish Illustrator/Artist Kay Nielsen whose primary works are illustrations for Fairy Tales and are stylistically Art Deco but many have Asian influences. He is best known for doing the Bald Mountain Scene in Disney’s Fantasia.
Super Tuesday is tomorrow and we’re down two candidates today as Pete Buttigieg just bumped Tom Steyer out of the last man out of the race place. His race was historic no matter what you thought of his chances or his positions. From the AP:
He opened February by sharing victory with one of the Democratic Party’s best-known figures and ended it with a humbling defeat at the hands of another. Yet Pete Buttigieg’s unlikely path over the last 30 days exceeded virtually everyone’s expectations of his presidential ambitions, except perhaps his own.
The former mayor of Indiana’s fourth largest city, an openly gay 38-year-old whose name most voters still can’t pronounce, formally suspended his White House bid Sunday night. He did so acknowledging that he no longer had a viable path to the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, even after finishing in the top four in each of the first four contests of the 2020 primary season.
“By every historical measure, we were never supposed to get anywhere at all,” Buttigieg reminded his hometown crowd, which was disappointed and hopeful at the same time. The crowd interrupted his speech with chants of “2024.”
Buttigieg began the month effectively in a first-place tie with progressive powerhouse Bernie Sanders in Iowa’s presidential caucuses. The mayor made history as the first openly gay candidate to earn a presidential delegate, never mind becoming the first to finish on top in any presidential primary contest.
And now we hear Amy’s out and gone over to the Biden side via NYT.
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who entered the Democratic presidential race with an appeal to moderate voters and offered herself as a candidate who could win in Midwestern swing states, has decided to quit the race and endorse a rival, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., according to a person close to Ms. Klobuchar.
Ms. Klobuchar will appear with Mr. Biden at his rally in Dallas Monday night. The decision comes one day after former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., departed the race, and after weeks of Democratic Party hand-wringing about a crowded field of moderate candidates splitting a finite field of centrist votes, allowing Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont to march forward unopposed among progressives and amass delegates.
From the fairy tale ‘Mother Among Thorns’ Kay Nielsen Danish illustrator 1886-1957
What would year would it be without the Republicans trying to get rid of the old Republican cum American Enterprise Institute cum ChaffeyCare cum Dole cum Care/Romney care relabeled and passed as ObamaCare? The odd thing thing about this is that it will likely kill off their most ardent Trumperz which is why they’ve got it to the Supreme Court but the Court won’t actually here it until after the Election because, well, you know that’s what the Trumpist regime requested. I’m headed for Medicare about that time so my ObamaCare is safely in place until then but all I can say is that those of us with pre-existing conditions are evidently just supposed to die so they can get on with it. This is the headline from WAPO: “Supreme Court will once again consider fate of Affordable Care Act”. written by Robert Barnes. It will also be a test of Republican Court Stacking efforts since they’ve managed to get another Religious Inquisitor on their Bench.
The Supreme Court will hear a third challenge to the Affordable Care Act, this time at the request of Democratic-controlled states that are fighting a lower court decision that said the entire law must fall.
The court’s review will come in the term that begins in October, which would not leave time for a decision before the November presidential election. The law remains in effect during the legal challenges.
Democrats are eager to keep public attention on the fate of the act, sometimes called Obamacare, which has features voters value, such as required coverage for preexisting conditions. Health care is a leading concern, especially among Democratic voters, and many considered it a persuasive argument when the party won control of the House in 2018.
The House and Democratic-led states asked the court to review a decision last year by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
Hearing a challenge from Texas and other Republican-led states and backed by the Trump administration, the panel struck down the law’s mandate that individuals buy health insurance but sent back to a lower court the question of whether the rest of the statute can stand without it. The lower court had said the entire law must fall.
The House told the Supreme Court that the 5th Circuit decision “poses a severe, immediate, and ongoing threat to the orderly operation of health-care markets throughout the country, casts considerable doubt over whether millions of individuals will continue to be able to afford vitally important care, and leaves a critical sector of the nation’s economy in unacceptable limbo.”
he House and Democratic states also have been eager to get the issue before the Supreme Court because the majority that has upheld the ACA in two previous challenges remains.
Sheherazade offers to marry the Sultan
Texas is leading the efforts in voter suppression yet again. This is from the UK Guardian: “Texas closes hundreds of polling sites, making it harder for minorities to vote. Guardian analysis finds that places where black and Latino population is growing by the largest numbers experienced the majority of closures and could benefit Republicans”
Long considered a Republican bastion, changing racial demographics in the state have caused leading Democrats to recast Texas as a potential swing state. Texas Democratic party official Manny Garcia has called it “the biggest battleground state in the country”.
The closures could exacerbate Texas’s already chronically low voter turnout rates, to the advantage of incumbent Republicans. Ongoing research by University of Houston political scientists Jeronimo Cortina and Brandon Rottinghaus indicates that people are less likely to vote if they have to travel farther to do so, and the effect is disproportionately greater for some groups of voters, such as Latinxs.
“The fact of the matter is that Texas is not a red state,” said Antonio Arellano of Jolt, a progressive Latino political organization. “Texas is a nonvoting state.”
On a local level, the changes can be stark. McLennan county, home to Waco, Texas, closed 44% of its polling places from 2012 to 2018, despite the fact that its population grew by more than 15,000 people during the same time period, with more than two-thirds of that growth coming from Black and Latinx residents.
In 2012, there was one polling place for every 4,000 residents. By 2018 that figure had dropped to one polling place per 7,700 residents. A 2019 paper by University of Houston political scientists found that after the county’s transition to vote centers, more voting locations were closed in Latinx neighborhoods than in non-Latinx neighborhoods, and that Latinx people had to travel farther to vote than non-Hispanic whites.
Super Tuesday is the biggest day of the Democratic primary campaign. Fourteen states will hold nominating contests to pick who they think should square off this fall against likely GOP nominee President Trump.
There are 1,357 delegates at stake, about a third of all delegates. So far, fewer than 4% of the delegates have been allocated.
People will head to the polls all across the country, from Virginia to California, Tennessee to Texas. The states and voters are diverse. Almost half have significant black populations, and Latinos figure to be an important factor in the two states with the biggest delegate hauls, California and Texas.
Rosanie or the Inconstant Prince by Kay Nielson
And who’d have thunk it? The Taliban have already broken their “peace” agreement signed with the Trumpist Regime on Saturday via Agence France-Presse.
A deadly blast shattered a period of relative calm in Afghanistan on Monday and the Taliban ordered fighters to resume operations against Afghan forces just two days after signing a deal to usher in peace.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack at a football ground in Khost in eastern Afghanistan, where three brothers were killed, officials told AFP.
The blast occurred around the same time the Taliban ordered fighters to recommence attacks against Afghan army and police forces, apparently ending an official “reduction in violence” that had seen a dramatic drop in bloodshed and given Afghans a welcome taste of peace.
The partial truce between the US, the insurgents and Afghan forces lasted for the week running up to the signing of the US-Taliban accord in Doha on Saturday, and was extended over the weekend.
and the entire thing under the watchful eye of this guy which doesn’t seem to know about it even though French Journalists obviously do …
https://twitter.com/owillis/status/1234519901894828032
Night in a Chinese Garden by Kay Nielsen
And, I want to go back to Fairy Tales again. I’m tired of this adulting stuff. This article in The Atlantic has just about done me in: “The President Is Winning His War on American Institutions. How Trump is destroying the civil service and bending the government to his will.” by George Packer.
But a simple intuition had propelled Trump throughout his life: Human beings are weak. They have their illusions, appetites, vanities, fears. They can be cowed, corrupted, or crushed. A government is composed of human beings. This was the flaw in the brilliant design of the Framers, and Trump learned how to exploit it. The wreckage began to pile up. He needed only a few years to warp his administration into a tool for his own benefit. If he’s given a few more years, the damage to American democracy will be irreversible
This is the story of how a great republic went soft in the middle, lost the integrity of its guts and fell in on itself—told through government officials whose names under any other president would have remained unknown, who wanted no fame, and who faced existential questions when Trump set out to break them.
Read each of these stories please. Unfortunately, they are not fairy tales.
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Posted: February 28, 2020 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Congressional Oversight, Una Watters |
Una Watters (1918-1965) Meditation
Good Day Sky Dancers!
It looks like our last chances and hopes for getting anything but an over the hill old, narcissistic ignorant white man for President in 2020 are fading fast. Biden has been inkling Kamala as a potential vp but I’m afraid at this point it will like be Sanders/Gabbard v Trump/Pence. Meanwhile, if BB’s post yesterday didn’t show you what a clusterfuck of an administration we have trying to deal with a potential pandemic, try reading today’s headlines. I’m not seeing the coalescing around Biden every one expects either but I suppose the response in SC will tell. WTF is wrong with this country?
At this rate, if behind door number 1 and door 2 is Bernie or Trump, I’ll just hope that I can take door number 3 and the corona virus will be waiting for me.
Today’s paintings are by Una Watters, an Irish artist.
So who was Una Watters? Born Una McDonnell, she went to school at the Holy Faith Convent in Glasnevin and attended the National College of Art on the encouragement of the painter Maurice MacGonigal. She studied part-time, juggling her studies around her day job as a librarian. She met Eugene Watters at a dance in the Teacher’s Club on Parnell Square and they were married in March 1945; they honeymooned in a horse-drawn carriage which Eugene had built. They were a devoted couple, summering in Ballinasloe, fishing in the River Suck and making art.
Watters is remembered by those who knew her as a gracious, gentle woman, but as an artist, she worked tirelessly. She sketched, was involved in magazine and book illustration, calligraphy and design. (She won the Arts Council award for the 1966 Easter Rising commemoration symbol, based on the Sword of Light/An Claidheamh Soluis, though sadly did not live to enjoy her success.) She worked in oils and watercolours, painted portraits and landscapes and in her latter career, interestingly, developed an angular, almost cubist style.
UNA WATTERS (1918-1965) Blonde in a Blue Chair,1957
I’m choosing a third front today since the news is bad on those two fronts of the Democratic Primary and the Corona Virus Containment. House Oversight is more important than ever and continues. Here are some of the things I found that key committees have taken on themselves.
First up, the House Judiciary Committee is still moving forward on oversight of the Trumpist Regime and the AG’s role. From Politico: “House seeks interviews with prosecutors who quit Stone case after Trump’s intervention”.
House Democrats are seeking interviews with the four career prosecutors who quit the case of Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Donald Trump, after Trump and Justice Department leaders intervened to demand a lighter jail sentence.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) requested the interviews in a Friday letter to Attorney General William Barr that also included broader demands for documents and testimony about allegations of political interference by Trump in the work of the Justice Department.
But the most notable names on the list are four Stone prosecutors: Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed, Michael Marando and Jonathan Kravis. Nadler’s request for access to the career line prosecutors is an unusual step intended to circumvent the Justice Department’s political leadership — and one that has been viewed with caution even by Trump critics.
It’s the latest indication that House Democrats see career employees as crucial sources of information in an era in which Trump has directed his top political appointees to ignore House demands for information.
From the AP: “Dems Launch Justice Probe”
Nadler also is questioning Barr about his involvement in other cases related to friends and associates of Trump and about internal investigations into department employees who investigated Trump after the 2016 election.
“Although you serve at the President’s pleasure, you are also charged with the impartial administration of our laws,” Nadler wrote to Barr. “In turn, the House Judiciary Committee is charged with holding you to that responsibility.”
Girl in the Sand (1950) is one of the ‘lost’ works by Una Watters
Robert Reich–writing for American Prospect-– argues that “Trump’s attorney general has corrupted the Justice Department and willfully abetted the president’s lawlessness”. I imagine we will be watching all of this slog its way through the courts that Moscow Mitch has been dutifully stacking. Reich believes that Barr is marching us towards dictatorship. He has a list of five examples of the how, what, and when. One is, of course, Barr’s interference in the Roger Stone trial.
Trump’s longtime confidant and adviser, who faced a prison sentence for obstructing Congress and witness tampering in connection with the Russia investigation. The day prosecutors announced they were seeking seven to nine years for Stone’s sentencing, Trump called the sentence “a horrible aberration,” and said that the prosecutors “ought to be ashamed of themselves” and were “an insult to our country.” A mere 24 hours later, after Trump’s public tantrum, the Department of Justice announced it would change its sentencing recommendation for Stone. Showing more backbone than Barr, four career prosecutors then withdrew from the case, and one resigned.
The incident caused such an uproar that Barr was forced to declare that he wouldn’t be “bullied” and that Trump’s tweets “make it impossible to do my job.” But anyone who has watched Barr repeatedly roll over for Trump saw this as a minimal face-saving gesture.
https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1233396697184731139
I can imagine the House will be doing constant battle with Barr as long as we have Trump around. This was a late breaking story yesterday that does have to do with the Corona Virus but–more importantly–it involves a whistle blower whose job in H&HS has been taken from her. From WAPO: “U.S. workers without protective gear assisted coronavirus evacuees, HHS whistleblower says.” Administration retaliation against whistle blowers is against the law.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services sent more than a dozen workers to receive the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, without proper training for infection control or appropriate protective gear, according to a whistleblower complaint.
The workers did not show symptoms of infection and were not tested for the virus, according to lawyers for the whistleblower, a senior HHS official based in Washington who oversees workers at the Administration for Children and Families, a unit within HHS.
The whistleblower is seeking federal protection, alleging she was unfairly and improperly reassigned after raising concerns about the safety of these workers to HHS officials, including those within the office of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. She was told Feb. 19 that if she does not accept the new position in 15 days, which is March 5, she would be terminated.
The whistleblower has decades of experience in the field, received two HHS department awards from Azar last year and has received the highest performance evaluations, her lawyers said.
The complaint was filed Wednesday with the Office of the Special Counsel, an independent federal watchdog agency. The whistleblower’s lawyers provided a copy of a redacted 24-page complaint to The Washington Post. A spokesman for the Office of the Special Counsel confirmed that it has received the complaint and assigned the case.
This is via Politico and is quite interesting: “Senate Intel chair privately warned that GOP’s Biden probe could help Russia. Richard Burr’s discussion with Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley highlights the divide among Republicans over the Biden investigation.”
The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee has privately expressed concerns about his colleagues’ corruption investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, further exposing divisions within the GOP over whether to continue pursuing an effort that led in part to President Donald Trump’s impeachment.
In a Dec. 5 meeting, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told the leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Finance committees — Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, respectively — that their probe targeting Biden could aid Russian efforts to sow chaos and distrust in the U.S. political system, according to two congressional sources familiar with the meeting.
The meeting took place as the House was charging forward with impeachment articles against Trump over an alleged effort to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rivals, including the former vice president and his son Hunter. And it underscores disagreements among Senate Republicans over the merits of a Biden investigation.
A spokeswoman for Burr declined to comment. Representatives for Johnson did not return multiple requests for comment. After publication of this story, Taylor Foy, a Grassley spokesman said “we do not have a record of any meeting on Dec. 5” with either Burr or Intelligence Committee staffers about the Biden investigation.
When asked whether he has met or worked with Burr on the Biden probe, Grassley said earlier Thursday: “No, I haven’t. And I haven’t had any conversation with him either.” Johnson did not answer directly, only saying: “We talk about things.”
Burr has rarely spoken publicly about the issues surrounding the impeachment of Trump. And his exchange with Johnson and Grassley was not the only time Burr purportedly has expressed such concerns to his Republican colleagues.
So, at least the House of Representatives continues to work. We can only hope that we hang on to the majority there.
I’m going to stop here because I spent all day into the night with a dying cat yesterday and I am emotionally exhausted. Kinsey was a senior cat with hyperthyroidism that I rescued from the JP SPCA a little over 4 years ago. She had been getting hopelessly frail the last 4 -6 weeks. She also started having ear polyps. My vet came over last night to help ease her forward. By late afternoon, she had trouble standing up and couldn’t walk. She quit eating and drinking. I spent most of the day just brushing her and scratching her chin. She always purred for me and I was glad the day and transition was mostly peaceful for her. She was ready to go. She will join my beloved Miles among the Ginger today whom she knew during his final days.
Take care of yourself and your beloveds!
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Posted: February 24, 2020 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: morning reads |
Skeleton Krewes photo by @VarleyPix
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’m entering my second coughing, sniffling, miserable week of influenza Type 2 and there are only two people I would wish it on. We will get to both of them later because frankly I’m stressed and worried. Not only did we not get an infrastructure week and a signed bill that would help us revitalize our country’s roads, grids, and public goods and services provisions, we’ve got less infrastructure than we did two years ago.
We are facing climate change essentially leaderless. We are facing the potential of the corona virus essentially leaderless and without a fully functional CDC. We are staring down Hurricane and Tornado season and undoubtedly more fires, mudslides, and floods. We essentially have dysfunctional, leaderless agencies ill prepared and staffed for that too.
Okay, I couldn’t make it to the second paragraph with up bringing the two guys least prepared to deal with any of this and who could use a good dose of a bad virus. The current President needs a good dose of something and he can just hang out with the other old white pure ID Geezer and discuss why philosophical diatribes and political purges accomplish anything out here in the real world. Maybe if either of them actually had a few real problems they would go away and we could find some people that actually have lived through some real problems and can deal with it
So, down here in New Orleans we’ve been living in dysfunctional infrastructure hell since Katrina. We lack a basic tax commitment to public health and safety. Our sewers and pumping systems do not work adequately. The mega privatized utility that gives us our gas and electricity can’t keep their grid up and the lights on. Building inspectors that okay-ed the Hard Rock Hotel site which collapsed, killed people,and still serves as a macabre sepulchre were shown by their GPS trackers to never, ever been near the site.
And, we’re so stretched by things we’ve ceased doing Carnival safely this year. Two people were killed by floats. Two people fell off floats. Two people fell of a balcony. I feel like Mardi Gras 2020 is way too symbolic of symptoms plaguing our tired old country.
‘A man was hit and killed by a Mardi Gras float in New Orleans on Saturday evening, the second such death in a week.’ That headline comes from The Guardian. This is probably why the only thing I want to see on the actual Mardi Gras Day are the skeleton Krewes and the Indians. The rest can just take those sewer cluttering, earth damaging plastic beads and slip on mule dung on Bourbon Street. I’m now firmly committed to the stodgy ideas that superkrewes are not a super idea where ever thing is oversized but our public safety and infrastructure commitments. And screw all those Hard Rock Hotel Developers and AirBnB parasites while we’re at it.
The individual, who was not immediately named, was killed at around 7pm after he appeared to fall underneath a large tandem float during the Krewe of Endymion parade near the city centre.
Witness video posted online suggested the man fell at a point in the parade route where there were no barricades to separate onlookers from floats, which often pass close to the roadside.
Eyewitnesses speaking to local media suggested the man jumped to catch an item thrown from the float then slipped on beads left on the floor.
On Wednesday, 58-year-old Geraldine Carmouche was run over and killed by a tandem float. Witnesses suggested Carmouche tripped on a hitch holding the two floats together and fell underneath the second trailer.
Such deaths are rare at the annual carnival event. Local reports suggested the last similar incident occurred in 2008, when a man was struck by a float after the parade ended. In 1981 a three year-old girl was killed by a rolling float.
New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell instructed all remaining parades to end the use of tandem floats.
CL Thomas of Nashville blogs about and photographs Skeleton Krewe
I will now briefly discuss some of the floats for Krewe D’etat whose good ol boy designers still don’t seem to have gotten over Hillary being succesful or Bill Clinton’s blow job in an “Epstein didn’t kill himself float”, took a huge whack at Bernie in a “communist float”, and then did an ugly parody on the impeachment with a horrible portrayal of Speaker Pelosi. I turned off the TV pretty quickly and returned to coughing fits.
This one was way over the top for the family route imho and you’ll remember I raised very young two daughters in the French Quarter for five years. There is satire and then there is tasteless, tacky, mean, and unfunny. I thought the dick stuff at KDV was a bit much. This was just tacky and gross.
Also, there was a huge Trump 2020 signs at the top of one of the big floats. That’s shenanigans imho. This was clearly just more Trumpy White Male mean spiritedness on display. Save that crap for protests and rallies creeps!!!!
For some reason, all of this clusterfuck seems appropriate during the Trumpist Regime Chaos with the Berner steriods thrown in. All it needed was a bunch of really old guys wagging their fingers and screaming and women and people of color. Really.
Here’s some real leadership from Forbes’ Jeff McMahon writing on a Climate Change Activist and Former UN Climate Change Christiana Figueres.
In a book out tomorrow, the woman who led the negotiations for the Paris Agreement calls for civil disobedience to force institutions to respond to the climate crisis.
“It’s time to participate in non-violent political movements wherever possible,” Christiana Figueres writes in “The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis,” which will be released tomorrow by Knopf.
Figueres served as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010-16. She co-authored the book with her strategic advisor, Tom Rivett-Carnac. The two also support voting:
“Large numbers of people must vote on climate change as their number one priority,” they write. “As we are in the midst of the most dire emergency, we must urgently demand that those who seek high office offer solutions commensurate with the scale of the problem.”
But they note that electoral politics have failed to meet the challenge, largely because of systemic roadblocks including corporate lobbying and partisan opposition.
Photo by Rick Olivier Mardi Gras Day With The Skull And Bones Gang
Science Denial or ignorance and profiting from trashing the planet and commiting acts of extraction terror typifies our two least favorite guys too. Remember Bernie making money from dumping toxic nuclear waste on a poor border town down in Texas? Well, read this in WAPO today written by Fred Hiatt. ” How Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both reject the reality of climate change.”
We have at hand a bipartisan, rigorous plan to address that danger.
And now it is more than possible that we will end up with two presidential candidates who reject that plan in favor of two varieties of utter unseriousness.
The first is the denialism of President Trump. He either believes or cynically pretends to believe that climate change is not a threat. His administration has gravely aggravated the threat, for example by recklessly relaxing regulation of the super-warming gas methane.
The second version is the fantasy extremism of Sen. Bernie Sanders. He would prosecute oil executives “for the destruction they have knowingly caused” (he “welcomes their hatred”) and phase out carbon-neutral nuclear power. The Vermont independent would ban the fracking of natural gas, which is — if you control the methane emissions — a useful transitional fuel from dirty coal to clean wind and solar.
As though by magic, Sanders’s proposals will “dramatically decrease the cost of energy storage” and (why not?) make electricity “virtually free” after 2035 (though, sadly, we would still have to pay for “operations and maintenance costs”). All fossil fuels will be gone by 2030, the renewable energy that takes its place will be “publicly owned,” and — not to worry — the plan “will pay for itself over 15 years.”
Unfortunately, there is no magic wand to make such things happen, as Patrick Pouyanné told me last week. Pouyanné is one of those people whose hatred Sanders might welcome; he is chairman and chief executive of Paris-based Total, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies.
I particularly liked this point made by Pouyanné:
Pouyanné said a U.S. ban on fracking — or the jailing of oil executives, for that matter — would have little impact on climate change. Why? Because much of the world’s oil is located in poorer countries that depend desperately on oil exports, and they will gladly make up any shortfall.
“Change will not come from changing the source of supply,” he said. “You have to reduce demand.”
“Which brings us back to the plan, put forward this month by the Climate Leadership Council, that would actually work. Supported by energy companies (including Total) and environmental groups alike, it would impose a steadily rising tax on carbon. That would lead to reduced consumption and increased innovation in alternatives, including battery storage for solar and wind power. To get buy-in from industry, the plan would do away with a lot of regulation — but only so long as emissions were, in fact, going down.
And we’ve lost one of the best math minds on and off the planet. She was recently celebrated in a movie. “Katherine Johnson Dies at 101; Mathematician Broke Barriers at NASA” is the lede for her NYT Obit. Katherine Johnson was part of a small group of African-American women mathematicians who did crucial work at NASA, in 1966. They were featured in “Hidden Numbers” in 2016.
They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them.
Wielding little more than a pencil, a slide rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, who died at 101 on Monday at a retirement home in Newport News, Va., calculated the precise trajectories that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong’s history-making moonwalk, let it return to Earth.
A single error, she well knew, could have dire consequences for craft and crew. Her impeccable calculations had already helped plot the successful flight of Alan B. Shepard Jr., who became the first American in space when his Mercury spacecraft went aloft in 1961.
The next year, she likewise helped make it possible for John Glenn, in the Mercury vessel Friendship 7, to become the first American to orbit the Earth.
Yet throughout Mrs. Johnson’s 33 years in NASA’s Flight Research Division — the office from which the American space program sprang — and for decades afterward, almost no one knew her name.
Vintage Mardi Gras Costumes
And the Corono Virus looks like it’s spreading. Italy is the latest country dealing with death and illness. This update is from WAPO.
The World Health Organization declined to declare the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic on Monday, saying the rapidly spreading disease has “pandemic potential” but does not yet require that designation.
China’s leaders also postponed the biggest event on their political calendar, the National People’s Congress, as the country’s battle against the virus disrupts the ruling Communist Party’s agenda and hammers the domestic economy.
In a speech to party officials Sunday, President Xi Jinping warned that the outbreak was a “crisis” that would inevitably jolt the country’s economic development, but he pledged that the disruption would be temporary and manageable.
Beijing also abruptly backtracked on an earlier announcement that it would relax travel restrictions on the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan, amplifying concerns about the government response to the outbreak.
Meanwhile, the epidemic is surging around the world. Just four days ago, Italy had only confirmed three cases. As of Monday, it has the largest known outbreak outside Asia.
OffBeat Magazine Photographer: Rick Olivier Chief Al Morris
This is bad news for the US Intelligence community. Eli Clifton writes this for Responsible Statecraft: “Trump’s new acting Director of National Intelligence conducted undisclosed work for Hungary’s far-right government”.
An investigation by Responsible Statecraft has found that President Trump’s newly installed acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, knowingly provided public relations services directed at U.S. media on behalf of a project funded by Hungary’s far-right government. Grenell didn’t register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), which is a requirement applying to individuals and entities operating inside the U.S. as an “agent” of a “foreign principal.”
Grenell’s appointment as acting Director of National Intelligence, which was announced last week, was met with widespread ridicule and disbelief.
“President Trump selected an unqualified loyalist as his top spy,” said International Institute for Strategic Studies senior fellow Jonathan Stevenson in a New York Times op-ed.
“Mr. Grenell, who currently serves as ambassador to Germany, is manifestly unqualified for the job, even in an acting capacity,” the Washington Post editorial board said. “He has no experience in intelligence or in managing large organizations – like the 17 agencies that will now report to him.”
Craig Engle, Grenell’s attorney, told Responsible Statecraft that Grenell “knew that the Hungarian government was the sponsor” of work he undertook, but claimed that Grenell’s activities did not require him to file under FARA.
According to the Justice Department, activities requiring registration as an “agent” to a “foreign principal” includes engaging in “acts within the United States as a public relations counsel, publicity agent, information-service employee or political consultant for or in the interests of such foreign principal.”
On Friday, ProPublica reported that Grenell took undisclosed payments for advocacy work on behalf of Vladimir Plahotniuc, a Moldovan politician who was later accused of corruption. Engle told ProPublica that Grenell was not required to file under the FARA because “he was not working at the direction of a foreign power.”
Grenell’s history as a Twitter troll and political operative is well documented, but his work for foreign entities and governments has largely gone unreported.
In 2009, Grenell founded Capitol Media Partners (CMP), a public relations firm with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, DC.
And then there is this:
If you haven’t watched the Production “The Music Makers of Gennett Records” about small town Richmond, Indiana and all the Roots music and popular music it recorded and pianos it made, you simply must!! It’s produced by the Indianapolis Public TV station. Hint: Louis Armstrong and a lot of the greats from down here figure prominently but it also includes Hopi Ritual music and Hill music. This was essentially one of three early recording studios. Its history is fascinating and you’ll hear a lot of that ragtime and blues in their early incarnations.
During the early 20th century, one tiny recording studio in Richmond, Indiana, had a big impact on the soundtrack of the Jazz Age. The Music Makers of Gennett Records tells the unlikely story of the Gennett Recording Studios, where many of the greatest artists in American jazz, blues, country, and gospel music first recorded.
Discover the unlikely story of the Gennett Recording Studios, where many of the greatest artists in American jazz, blues, country, and gospel music first recorded. The documentary traces the careers of early Gennett musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, and the singing cowboy Gene Autry, among other popular artists of the era, and features several of their rare 1920s recordings.
Produced by WTIU for Indiana Public Media. Click here to learn more about the film.
And, I have officially thrown in with Elizabeth Warren. I wrote her a check and I’m making phone calls for her. I’m really at a loss of what else to do at this point. I’m also slightly less panicked about Joe Biden because what will be a complete disappointment is better than the other two shitfests at the top of their respective nominations now.
If she gets through SC and Super Tuesday I will likely vote for her. I’m pretty sure that Louisiana will not be an important state for any one but I’m just going to do what I can.
So, that’s enough for me today. Back to coughing and escapism.
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Posted: February 21, 2020 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Director of National Intelligence (DNA), political purges, presidential pardons |
Good Day Sky Dancers!
What happens in an autocratic government when someone tells the Tin Pot Fattie something he doesn’t want to hear? Well, it’s something akin to off with his head Amerikkkan style. Heaven forbid we get to decide our own elections here without Russian or Saudi or Chinese or Israeli interference! Yeah, if we’re lucky Susan Collins might raise an eyebrow and Lindsey Graham might find one tiny pearl to clutch on Sunday’s news programs. But, it’s more like Moscow Mitch will keep them all in the pack like good little playing card soldiers.
Bye Bye National Security!
From The Daily Beast: “Russia Is Helping Elect Trump Again, Intel Official Says”.
Intelligence officials briefed House lawmakers last week that Russian actors were interfering in the 2020 elections, once more to the benefit of Donald Trump. The contents of the briefing, which was first reported by The New York Times, sparked a series of dramatic events that have further eroded relations between Hill Democrats and the White House, and prompted the president—it appears—to appoint a top political ally to oversee the nation’s national security apparatus.
The meeting, which took place on Feb. 13, was conducted for the House Intelligence Committee by an aide to the outgoing acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. According to a legislator who was present, the aide, Shelby Pierson, Maguire’s election security chief, described a Russian elections-intrusion effort that never stopped from 2016.
“It continues with the same target, and the same purpose, and it’s clear that they [the Russians] favor one candidate over the other,” is how the lawmaker described it.
“The Republicans [on the committee] went nuts,” over Pierson’s presentation, the member told The Daily Beast. A second source familiar with the briefing said that Republicans didn’t understand why the Kremlin would try to boost Trump, since he had been so tough on Russia, in their view. Reps. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), Will Hurd (R-TX) and Chris Stewart (R-UT)—who, according to The Times, has been a Trump favorite to replace Maguire—were particularly vocal in their skepticism, the member said. A spokesperson for Wenstrup said the congressman does not comment on classified or closed-door matters before the Intelligence Committee. Spokespersons for Stewart and Hurd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Raise your hand if you learned in first or second grade why the Russians want our country in eternal and internal disarray. So now, The Tin Pot Fattie has replaced an experienced National Intelligence official with a Republican Politico operative that goes on Fox and twitter to stroke the orange snot blob’s bottomless need for adoration. This is from WAPO: “Senior intelligence official told lawmakers that Russia wants to see Trump reelected”. Yes he knows his electoral illegitimacy really knows no bounds!
Trump announced Wednesday that he was replacing Maguire with a vocal loyalist, Richard Grenell, who is the U.S. ambassador to Germany. The shake-up at the top of the intelligence community is the latest move in a post-impeachment purge. Trump has instructed aides to identify and remove officials across the government who aren’t defending his interests, and he wants them replaced with loyalists.
A senior U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers last week that Russia wants to see President Trump reelected, viewing his administration as more favorable to the Kremlin’s interests, according to people who were briefed on the comments.
After learning of that analysis, which was provided to House lawmakers in a classified hearing, Trump grew angry at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office, seeing Maguire and his staff as disloyal for speaking to Congress about Russia’s perceived preference. The intelligence official’s analysis and Trump’s furious response ruined Maguire’s chances of becoming the permanent intelligence chief, according to people familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
…
Maguire, a career official who is respected by the intelligence rank and file, was considered a leading candidate to be nominated to the post of DNI, White House aides had said. But Trump’s opinion shifted last week when he heard from a Republican ally about the official’s remarks.
The official, Shelby Pierson, said several times during the briefing that Russia had “developed a preference” for Trump, according to a U.S. official familiar with her comments. That conclusion was part of a broader discussion of election security that also touched on when the U.S. government should warn Democratic candidates if they are being targeted by foreign governments.
So, now what? He’s got help from the Russians and as usual, we’ve got the GOP trying to suppress the vote and minority participation in the US Census which sets up all kinds of political and funding priorities in the country. From the L.A. Times: “GOP is accused of sending misleading ‘census’ forms ahead of the actual count”
The Republican National Committee is sending documents labeled “2020 Congressional District Census” to people in California and across the country just weeks before the start of the official nationwide count of the country’s population.
Critics say the misleading mailers — in envelopes labeled “Do Not Destroy. Official Document” and including a lengthy questionnaire on blue-tinted paper similar to the type used by the real census — are designed to confuse people and possibly lower the response rate when the count begins in mid-March.
The top of the mailer states it is “commissioned by the Republican Party.” In smaller print on the second page, below a request for donations, is a notice that it is paid for by the Republican National Committee. Included in the envelope is a four-page letter from National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel asking for donations to the party and a promise to support Trump in 2020.
Unlike the official census form, the RNC survey is largely made up of political questions, such as whether the respondent supports using military force against Iran, thinks race relations in the country are getting worse and believes “political correctness” has gotten out of hand.
From the UK Daily Mail: “Russia is interfering AGAIN in 2020 election to help Donald Trump get a second term, intelligence officials secretly told Congress – prompting fury from president and Republicans” I’m pretty sure the fury is they’ve just been caught again and that’s about it.
One lawmaker told the Daily Beast that the officials briefed them that: ‘It continues with the same target, and the same purpose, and it’s clear that they [the Russians] favor one candidate over the other.
Trump was furious when he learned that Schiff had been briefed that intelligence officials believe Russia is trying to aid his re-election – and wrongly believed it was only the Democrat who had been briefed.
The president believed the information would be used against him, sources told the New York Times.
Schiff was the lead Democratic house manager at Trump’s impeachment trial, which ended in his acquittal earlier this month.
In the wake of learning that Schiff had been briefed, Trump had a furious confrontation with the acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire.
Maguire was replaced Wednesday night by Rick Grenell, Trump’s ultra-loyal ambassador to Germany.
The New York Times reported that two Trump officials said the timing was a coincidence and not because of the row about the briefing.
The official who told lawmakers Russia was meddling was named as Maguire’s aide Shelby Pierson, who serves as the intelligence community’s top election security official.
Trump blew up at Maguire in the Oval Office last week over what the president perceived as staff disloyalty, citing Pierson’s briefing.
That ruined Maguire’s chance of becoming the permanent intelligence chief, sources told The Washington Post.
Trump incorrectly believed Pierson gave the information exclusively to Schiff and gave Maguire a ‘dressing down’ that left him ‘despondent,’ sources told the newspaper.
Pierson chairs the Election Executive and Leadership Board, which was created in July 2019 to specifically deal with election security matters.
She gave the closed-door briefing to the House Intelligence Committee last Thursday.
One of Trump’s Republican allies on the committee told him what she said, the Post reported.
Some of Trump’s biggest defenders during the House impeachment inquiry – including Reps. Devin Nunes and Elise Stefanik – sit on the intelligence panel.
So, the president is still a moron. This may not rival the Night of the Long Knives but combined with granting pardons to people who have abused their power in public positions and absconded with public treasure seems particularly relevant to the crime family occupying the Oval Office.
Guess who is in charge of that process now? This is from Salon: “Trump’s controversial pardons came after Kushner wrestled control from Justice Department: report. Kushner supported clemency for Rod Blagojevich even as White House officials allegedly “argued heavily against it”
I suppose after you’ve cribbed and stolen your plan for an Israeli Palestinian peace process off of a 40 year old book and it’s going nowhere you have to look for other hobbies.
President Donald Trump’s controversial pardons of numerous supporters convicted of corruption came after his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner wrestled control of the process from the Department of Justice, according to a new report.
While the Justice Department has traditionally overseen the pardon process and made recommendations to the White House, Kushner has taken “a leading role” as the Trump administration seeks to exert more control over clemency decisions, The Washington Post reported.
Trump, who granted clemency to 11 people on Tuesday, tasked Kushner and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who served on the president’s impeachment legal team, last year with revamping the pardon process, according to the report. All clemency applications must now be submitted directly to the White House Office of American Innovation, which is headed by Kushner. Trump’s son-in-law has also been tasked with solving Middle East peace, reforming the immigration system, building the border wall and re-electing the president, among a variety of other responsibilities.
Kushner has personally reviewed applications before presenting them to Trump for approval, two senior administration officials told the outlet.
So far, this is going really well for crooked elected officials and political appointees isn’t it? What’s next? Pardoning Jared’s Dad? Or Roger Stone? This is via CNN.
President Donald Trump said Thursday he won’t act to grant clemency to his friend and former associate Roger Stone right now, saying he wants the process to play out before making a decision.
“I’m not going to do anything in terms of the great powers bestowed upon a president of the United States, I want the process play out, I think that’s the best thing to do,” Trump said in Las Vegas. “Because I’d love to see Roger exonerated and I’d love to see it happen because I personally think he was treated very unfairly.”
The President didn’t rule out an eventual pardon or commutation, but said the process should play out first.
“At some point I’ll make a determination, but Roger Stone and everybody has to be treated fairly. And this has not been a fair process,” Trump said.
Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison earlier Thursday. He was convicted last fall of lying to Congress and threatening a witness regarding his efforts for Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Meanwhile, meet the Acting DNI RIchard Grenell via TPM . Maybe Hope Hicks should have the job next.
Grenell, a vocal Trump loyalist who is currently the ambassador to Germany, brings to the job of acting Director of National Intelligence years of experience aggravating the German government coupled with a background in strategic communications.
The political operative’s appointment has raised questions of his fitness for the job. As director of national intelligence, Grenell will oversee the 17 constituent agencies of the country’s intelligence community, managing the flow of information gathered by the country’s spies to President Trump.
“It’s difficult to contemplate managing 17 different organizations without having any experience with the intelligence process overall,” Jeffrey Edmonds, a former director for Russia on the National Security Council and a former CIA intelligence analyst, told TPM. “I just think it’s quite dangerous in the sense that the right information might not get to the right people.”
Since DNI Dan Coats stepped down from the position in August 2019, the government has lacked a Senate-confirmed official in the job.
So, I’m depressed enough and still coughing way too much with this flu so I’ll end with these two things. But, please add more!
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Posted: February 17, 2020 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: Afternoon Reads |
A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
—James Madison, in a letter to W T Barry, Aug 4, 1822
Good Day Sky Dancers!
We’re deep in parade season down here in New Orleans which gives me a much needed escape from the reality of living in Trumpist America. I never quite know what to do with it, the Trump cult, and the surprised old Republicans who can’t believe all that race-baiting, gun fetishism, and radical religious right enabling they’ve done for their base has finally left the dreamland of ‘Give us your votes and we’ll talk a good story at you’ in trade for the cult of a mobster/monster that will do anything for money and attention.
Jennifer Rubin is an outspoken never-Trumper but fed the beast that now consumes the US Constitution when she thought it was simply tax cuts and lip service. Her op-ed today makes for interesting reading: “The descent of the GOP into authoritarian know-nothingism”.
I could have told you they were headed there back in the 1980s when I was in my 20s. But, anyway … she’s got its number now. I always thought Ronald Reagan was the smiley face version of ‘GOP authoritarian known knowthingism ‘ back then when Rubin was still thinking it was all fine and good. Trump talked about Mexicans as ‘criminals and rapists’ for his announcement while Reagan was all ‘welfare queens with Cadillacs.’ Come at me and tell me that you think both those sentiments don’t go at the same dark vision of the non-Anglo American. I can give you more quotes than that. We can talk policy. Anyway, more follows below.
It is not as if anti-intellectualism suddenly appeared with the election of President Trump. The habitual rejection of expertise on everything from climate change to the economic impact of immigration has been rampant in the Republican Party for some time. It is part and parcel of the invented victimization of mostly white, non-college-educated men who attribute their loss of prestige and status to “elites,” especially those in colleges and the media. Even right-wingers who should know better have felt compelled to pander to audiences that wear ignorance and anti-intellectualism as a badge of honor.
With Trump, the resort to lies, conspiracies and propaganda has become a matter of political survival for the ambitious right-wingers. Trump’s authoritarian contempt for truth sets the tone, forcing military hawks such as Cotton to remain mum when Trump dismisses traumatic brain injuries as “headaches” and former Cold Warriors such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to parrot Russian propaganda on Ukraine.
Their know-nothingism is sustained and hardened inside the right-wing media loop. Trump and his sycophants can repeat whatever falsehoods required to support Trump without fear of contradiction, let alone mockery, in the right-wing media world. It is only when Republicans venture out into legitimate media that refuses to play along with conspiracy theories that they run into trouble.
Trump has merged the know-nothingism of right-wing populism with a far more dangerous intellectual evolution from defense of limited-government conservatism, which was formerly at the heart of modern conservatism, to outright worship of authoritarianism. Now, far too many conservatives have reverence for executive power and reject constitutional government.
Attorney General William P. Barr and his cheerleaders from the Federalist Society embody this frightening development. Donald Ayer, former U.S. deputy attorney general under George H.W. Bush, writes that Barr advocates “the need for a virtually autocratic executive who is not constrained by countervailing powers within our government under the constitutional system of checks and balances.” For Barr, limited government means limited checks on the president, the antithesis of the framers’ vision.
So, we’ve got Sen Tom Cotton spreading conspiracy theories about the Coronavirus. The entire party denies climate change and still believes wholesale tax cuts to the rich do something other than blow up the deficit and lead to problems with infrastructure and basic necessary services like dealing with the actual potential threat of the Coronavirus.
The only Republican news recently that I find really hard to believe that seems to be verifiably true is that Stephen Miller found a woman dumb enough to marry him and the spoils of the wedding went to a Trump hotel. See, there’s enough truth can be strange in that Party that you’d think they’d just thrive on that rather than baseless conspiracy theories. And he’s the embodiment of policy shaped by the vision of both Reagan’s ‘welfare queens’ and Trump’s ‘rapists and criminals’ that are still as odious as they day either were spoken.
In 1976, Reagan repeatedly invoked his own female bête noire as he barnstormed the country in a doomed bid to primary President Gerald Ford. There’s a woman in Chicago, Reagan told voters, who “used eighty names, thirty addresses, fifteen telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four non-existent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare.” And she wasn’t the only one. Reagan bemoaned a welfare system infested with fraud, although he kept returning to the woman in Chicago. She wore a fur coat. She drove a Cadillac. She paid for T-bone steaks with food stamps. He didn’t refer to her by name but by a sobriquet—one he didn’t invent, but which he repeated so often it metastasized into an ugly stereotype: She was the welfare queen.
We cannot be a more perfect union until the racist tropes of Trump and his Republican cronies are removed from the American political lexicon.
“Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes”
—Benjamin Franklin in a letter written in November 1789, to French scientist Jean-Baptiste Le Roy,
So, another Trumpist “conspiracy” theory is how great the economy is doing. I shall point to the bar chart above to show you that Trump’s economy is quite average. It comes via Axios and statistics easily found at a FED or Department of Labor near you.
Why it matters: GDP is the most comprehensive economic scorecard — and something presidents, especially Trump, use as an example of success. And it’s especially relevant since Trump is running for re-election on his economic record.
Between the lines: Economists dispute how much credit presidents can take for a booming or sagging economy under their watch. There are factors that can boost or reduce growth outside of their policies.
Where it stands: Unlike other presidents, Trump inherited a steady economy that’s since entered the longest stretch of growth in history. Interest rates remain low. Growth picked up in the wake of the 2017 tax cuts, but now the pace has moderated.
What he’s saying: “Our economy is the best it has ever been,” Trump said earlier this month in his State of the Union speech.
But some aspects of the Trump economy, like wage growth and business investment, pale in comparison to other periods.
While solid, “this is not a gangbusters economy,” Nathan Sheets, who’s held roles at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, tells Axios.
There have been periods with “high growth, low inflation, rapid productivity, and the gains from growth were being broadly shared across society. That was gangbusters,” says Sheets.
By the numbers: Last year the economy grew at 2.3%, after year-over-year accelerations in 2017 and 2018 — marking he slowest annual growth rate since Trump took office. Growth under Trump has yet to hit his oft-promised 3% mark annually.
Economists say the effects of the tax are wearing off. Businesses were too unnerved by the trade war to spend money on new factories or equipment — a key driver of growth.
Yes, but: If history is any guide, an incumbent president isn’t going to have a great shot at re-election if the economy tips into a recession under their watch.
The press needs to really speak out on our average economy and all its underlying problems like farm bankruptcies and more loss of manufacturing and export related jobs and industry.
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“
“For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”
—George Washington, in an address to the officers of the army on March 15, 1783
So, the Editors of New York Magazine ponder this dreadful thought “11 Months From Today. A second term for Trump seems more possible than ever. But what would it look like?” which I seem to wonder myself given that Bernie, Biden and Bloomberg seem to sucking in all the breathable fresh air these days and returning it to us toxic. So, what 19 alternative realities does Jonathan Chait and his panel of experts imagine? They all sound horrible and you may read them. This one is my for sure takeaway.
In the past four years, I saw people in my clinical practice experiencing a level of anxiety specific to the political climate that we really hadn’t seen before. It’s why I started writing about “Trump anxiety disorder.” The American Psychological Association does a “Stress in America” survey, and the 2019 one had 62 percent of American adults citing the current political climate as a source of stress, which has gone up since Trump took office. It’s not unlike a child living in a home that’s chaotic; we don’t have faith in the leaders we have historically put trust in, and that’s creating a lot of trauma. If Trump does get reelected, we’ll see a spike in this feeling of fear like we haven’t seen before. People will have to come to terms with the prospect of another four years of trying to keep up the fight. We can feel anxious for only so long, because anxiety is exhausting, and eventually that fatigue could transform into depression and leave us feeling really helpless. All of that could lead to more civil unrest or unhealthy behaviors such as drinking and emotional eating — people trying to deal with the stress in any way they can.
—Dr. Jennifer Panning
We may still have a hint of a Republic. Can we keep it? Or will the Democratic party hand it to Republicans to strangle this year?
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