It’s Just Another Manic Monday Reads!!!

Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!

There’s a lot going on!  We’re gearing up for the Mueller Testimony right in the middle of the usual wear and tear on the country caused by having Temper Tantrum Trumpie occupy the White House for another week.  If you get a chance, you might want to gear up for the Wednesday Testimony by watching this one hour documentary on the primary findings of the Mueller Report that aired last night.   “Understanding the Mueller Report With Ari Melber Sunday July 21, 2019”

Meanwhile, there’s some other interesting news and suggestions we should look at.   I was really glad that I attended Essence Fest 2019 and was enrapt by the speeches and presence of both Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.  It’s exciting to see so many women running for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President given we watched Hillary Clinton become the first in 2016.  Now there’s a few things we can dream about including this proffered by Harper’s Bazaar and Jennifer Wright.. “Why We Need a Two Woman Presidential Ticket! Two women? On a ticket together? Radical!  How many old white men would hyperventilate over this?

It simply can’t be done! Two women?On a ticket together? It’s too radical!

To which I’m going to respectfully say: To hell with that thinking. Put two women on the Democratic Party ticket. Specifically, Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren..

Bothered by it? No one has been troubled by the fact that presidential political party tickets have been composed of two men since the beginning of time.

If you want the best people, then some variation on Warren/Harris should at least be considered. According to a Change.org poll in California, the two are leading the pack of candidates in that state’s primary with Harris at 23 percent and Warren at 22 percent.

News outlets seem in agreement that the June debates belonged to Warren and Harris.

It’s entirely possible that one of these women will win the race for Democratic presidential candidate, and when she does, it’s already assumed that she will select one of the male candidates as her running mate.

But what if she doesn’t take this conventional route? What if we see an all-female ticket? It could be great.

Both candidates have strong ground games and even stronger policy chops!  Today, Team Warren put out an article that has the talking heads talking.  It’s about what I’ve been saying for about a year now.  The next crash is right there on the horizon.  “The Coming Economic Crash — And How to Stop It.”

When I look at the economy today, I see a lot to worry about again. I see a manufacturing sector in recession. I see a precarious economy that is built on debt — both household debt and corporate debt — and that is vulnerable to shocks. And I see a number of serious shocks on the horizon that could cause our economy’s shaky foundation to crumble.

…

The administration may breach the debt ceiling in September, leading to economic turmoil that top economists say would be “more catastrophic” than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Trump’s trade war with China threatens American manufacturing and has already hurt American companies that investors think of as “industry bellwethers,” while feedingan all-time economic slowdown in China that could have dramatic ripple effects on the American economy. And Trump is goading the U.K. toward a no-deal Brexit, which even his own administration acknowledges would have “immediate and significant spillover effects” to our economy.

The financial markets agree that there is a serious risk of downturn in the near future. The U.S. Treasury yield curve — a barometer for market confidence — normally slopes upwards because investors demand higher yields for bonds with longer maturities. But this March, it inverted for the first time since 2007, signaling that investors are so worried that things are going to get worse that they’d rather lock in lower rates for the future today than risk long-term rates going even lower. The curve has inverted before each and every recession in the past half century — with only one false signal.

And experts agree. In a recent survey of nearly 300 business economists, three-quarters expect a recession by the end of 2021 — with more than halfthinking it’ll come by the end of 2020.

Other women are running for POTUS this year.  One of the reasons that Kristen Gillibrand might not be finding high ground could be the subject of this investigation by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker: “The Case of Al Franken.A close look at the accusations against the former senator.”

At his house, Franken said he understood that, in such an atmosphere, the public might not be eager to hear his grievances. Holding his head in his hands, he said, “I don’t think people who have been sexually assaulted, and those kinds of things, want to hear from people who have been #MeToo’d that they’re victims.” Yet, he added, being on the losing side of the #MeToo movement, which he fervently supports, has led him to spend time thinking about such matters as due process, proportionality of punishment, and the consequences of Internet-fuelled outrage. He told me that his therapist had likened his experience to “what happens when primates are shunned and humiliated by the rest of the other primates.” Their reaction, Franken said, with a mirthless laugh, “is ‘I’m going to die alone in the jungle.’ ”

Now sixty-eight, Franken is short and sturdily built, with bristly gray hair, tortoiseshell glasses, and a wide, froglike mouth from which he tends to talk out of one corner. Despite his current isolation, Franken is recognized nearly everywhere he goes, and he often gets stopped on the street. “I can’t go anywhere without people reminding me of this, usually with some version of ‘You shouldn’t have resigned,’ ” Franken said. He appreciates the support, but such comments torment him about his departure from the Senate. He tends to respond curtly, “Yup.”

When I asked him if he truly regretted his decision to resign, he said, “Oh, yeah. Absolutely.” He wishes that he had appeared before a Senate Ethics Committee hearing, as he had requested, allowing him to marshal facts that countered the narrative aired in the press. It is extremely rare for a senator to resign under pressure. No senator has been expelled since the Civil War, and in modern times only three have resigned under the threat of expulsion: Harrison Williams, in 1982, Bob Packwood, in 1995, and John Ensign, in 2011. Williams resigned after he was convicted of bribery and conspiracy; Packwood faced numerous sexual-assault accusations; Ensign was accused of making illegal payoffs to hide an affair.

What follows is a detailed investigation of the complaints most of which still smell a bit fishy to me.  Especially, this woman who appears to be have sent up to the deed by the usual cast of “conservative” henchmen.

Tweeden may well have felt harassed, and even violated, by Franken, but he insisted to me that her version of events is “just not true.” He confirmed that he had rehearsed the skit with her, noting, “You always rehearse.” The script, he recalled, called for a man to “surprise” a woman with a kiss, in a “sort of sudden” way, and though Tweeden had read the script, it’s possible that in the moment he startled her. Tweeden wasn’t an actress—before going into broadcasting, she had been a Frederick’s of Hollywood model—so she may have been unfamiliar with rehearsals. But Franken said, of Tweeden, “I don’t remember her being taken aback.” He adamantly denied having stuck his tongue in her mouth.

Franken’s longtime fund-raiser, A. J. Goodman, a former criminal-defense lawyer, told me that it was “easy to see how it could have grossed Tweeden out” to be kissed by Franken. At the time, Franken was fifty-five, and his clothes tended toward mom jeans and garish windbreakers. “He was like your uncle Morty,” Goodman recalled. “He wasn’t Cary Grant. But tongue down the throat? No. I’ve done hundreds of events with this guy. I’ve been on the road and on his book tours with him.” She said that Franken was “five hundred per cent devoted” to Bryson, his wife, whom he met during his freshman year at Harvard. “He can be a jerk, but he’s all about his family,” Goodman said. (Franken and Bryson have a daughter, a son, and four grandchildren.)

In Hollywood, Franken’s reputation had been far from wild. According to Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad’s book, “Saturday Night,” when Franken worked on “S.N.L.” he was seen as a stickler and a “self-appointed hallway monitor” figure. James Downey, who spent decades writing for the show, told me, of Franken, “He’s lots of things, some delightful, some annoying. He can be very aggressive interpersonally. He can say mean things, or use other people as props. He can seem more confident that the audience will find him adorable than he ought to. His estimate of his charm can be overconfident. But I’ve known him for forty-seven years and he’s the very last person who would be a sexual harasser.”

It’s a long read but worth revisiting the evidence.

Down here in New Orleans there’s an East Bank and a West Bank of the Mississippi even the the actually directions of the locations are north of the river and south of the river.  The West Bank has always been the forgotten of the two banks because it’s original purpose was that of the Slave Trade Markets which New Orleans wanted kept out of their faces even though it was a part of the city’s history as well as the region. Gretna is one of the places that sprung up when immigrants from countries like Italy showed up and it still has an ethnic feel to it including a Spanish revival Catholic Orphanage called Hope Haven built in 1925,  The place has been in the headlines recently in a less than favorable light: “New lawsuit filed against Catholic Church in N.O. details alleged sexual abuse at orphanage.”

A little more recently Gretna achieved infamy with this awful headline directly after Katrina hit the area via NPR: “Evacuees Were Turned Away at Gretna, La.”

Three days after Hurricane Katrina struck, authorities blocked the road that connects the city of Gretna to New Orleans. Thousands of evacuees say they were prevented from escaping the flooding and chaos, and that shots were fired over their heads.

Believe me, there’s not much wealth over there  to protect in Gretna during a good time so there were much sinister forces stopping people from the East going to the West bank where they likely could’ve been reached by buses. Color all of us unsurprised when the local news came up with a headline that has now gone quite viral and national via WAPO: “Officer suggests Ocasio-Cortez should be shot, after he read fake news on Facebook”.  Yes, said officer is from Gretna, LA land of shooting at survivors of the worst disaster in the country to stop them from coming near the burbs.

It was not clear from his Facebook post whether police officer Charlie Rispoli knew he was responding to fake news when he suggested Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) should be shot.

“This vile idiot needs a round……..and I don’t mean the kind she used to serve,” Rispoli, a 14-year veteran of the Gretna Police Department in Louisiana, said Thursday, referring to a gunshot and the lawmaker’s earlier career as a bartender, the Times-Picayune/the New Orleans Advocate reported.

The post, which appears to have been deleted along with Rispoli’s Facebook account, comes amid a reckoning with racist and violent social media posts by police and federal law enforcement officers. As posts have been made public, firings and investigations have followed across multiple departments.

We’re all assuming what happens in Gretna gets covered up and buried in Gretna.  Just like everything else, nothing will happen.

Texan Wendy Davis is running for US Congress. Let’s hope she can win it.  I still have my pink Wendy Shoes.   This is via the Texas Tribune: “Wendy Davis announces bid for Congress, will challenge U.S. Rep. Chip Roy.  The former state senator is running for office for the first time since her unsuccessful campaign for Texas governor.”

 Former Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis is running for Congress.

Early Monday morning, Davis announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination in Central Texas’ 21st District. She is challenging U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a freshman Republican from Austin.

She made her intentions known in a biographical video, narrated in part with archival footage from her late father, Jerry Russell.

“I’m running for Congress because people’s voices are still being silenced,” she said. “I’m running for our children and grandchildren, so they can live and love and fight for change themselves.”

So the voices of women with much needed diversity will hopefully block out the trauma of yet another Trumpf Hate Fest in Cincinnati this week undoubtedly timed to draw attention away from the Mueller Testimony.  That Hatefest is scheduled for August 1st.  The second set of Democratic debates are set for July 30 and 31.  

The Mueller Testimony is on Wednesday.  Are you up for all of that?

Robert Mueller’s Capitol Hill testimony

• Date: Wednesday, July 24, 2019

• Times: 8:30 a.m. – House Judiciary Committee hearing, 12:00 p.m. – House Intelligence Committee hearing

• Location: Washington, D.C.

How to watch Mueller’s testimony

• Free online stream:  Watch CBSN for live coverage of Mueller’s testimony on Capitol Hill. CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell hosts a CBS News network special report starting at 8:30 a.m.

Schedule of Mueller’s testimony

• It will be split across two committee appearances with three hours allotted for the Judiciary Committee and two hours for the Intelligence Committee.
• There will be a 30-minute break in between the two hearings, and the former special counsel will have the opportunity to ask for breaks during each appearance.
• Neither committee is expecting Mueller to give lengthy or extensive answers to lawmakers’ questions. Democratic staff members of the committees say they anticipate “yes” or “no” answers from the former special counsel or very short sentences. But in the end, they believe that the two hearings will help Americans better understand the Mueller report.

Well, that should keep us busy for a few days!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?