Snow blanketed a vast swath of the Deep South on Friday, triggering a flurry of winter weather warnings that closed businesses and schools, canceled hundreds of flights and caused traffic gridlock. It also unleashed a flurry of snowman construction and sledding in places more accustomed to sunshine than snow.
The storm dropped a rare coating of snow as far south as Brownsville, Texas — near the border of Mexico — up through southern Louisiana and parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the southern Appalachians.
“This is an unusual event — to see snow falling this early in the season all the way from Texas and the Gulf Coast region to Georgia,” said Laura Pagano, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Atlanta/Peachtree City office. “It has happened before, but not often.”
More than 200,000 customers across the region lost power as snow downed branches and power lines.
People walk along Shiloh Road in Kennesaw after a snowstorm hit metro Atlanta and North Georgia.
Since I can’t go out, I plan to escape into a good book. I finished reading Luke Harding’s excellent Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win, and I’ve begun reading Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser.
Fraser is a brilliant writer, and so far the book is fascinating. She adds context to the sentimental version of Wilder’s life portrayed in the “Little House” books. Of course in many ways it’s a tragic story of the horrendous treatment of Native Americans as well as the hardships suffered by poor people like the Ingalls family who were lured west by promised of free or cheap land. Anyway, I’m glad to have a good book to help me escape from our dreadful current reality.
As the mainstream media continues to demonstrate the tremendous progress the Mueller investigation has been making, the Trump state media made up of Fox News, Breitbart, and other right wing outlets has turned up the heat with their fake news.
Please read this excellent piece by Jonathan Chait: The Mueller Investigation Is in Mortal Danger. Chait opens by describing the process by which the GOP first claims to be shocked by bad behavior (e.g. the Access Hollywood tape), but within begins denying and finally excusing that same behavior. We’ve seen this again and again, and now it’s happening with Roy Moore. Here’s the gist of Chait’s argument:
The next step in the sequence is almost insultingly obvious. Trump is preparing to shut down Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian intervention in the 2016 election.
The administration and its allied media organs, especially those owned by Rupert Murdoch, have spent months floating a series of rationales, of varying degrees of implausibility, for why a deeply respected Republican law-enforcement veteran is disqualified to lead the inquiry: He is friends with James Comey, who is biased because Trump fired him; Comey is biased because he pursued leads turned up in Christopher Steele’s investigation, which was financed by Democrats; Mueller has failed to investigate Hillary Clinton’s marginal-to-nonexistent role in a uranium sale.
Peter Strzok
The newest pseudo-scandal fixates on the role of Peter Strzok, an FBI official who helped tweak the language Comey employed in his statement condemning Clinton’s email carelessness and has also worked for Mueller.
His alleged crime is a series of text messages criticizing Trump. Mueller removed Strzok from his team, but that is not enough for Trump’s supporters, who are seizing on Strzok’s role as a pretext to discredit and remove Mueller, too. The notion that a law-enforcement official should be disqualified for privately expressing partisan views is a novel one, and certainly did not trouble Republicans last year, when Rudy Giuliani was boasting on television about his network of friendly agents. Yet in the conservative media, Mueller and Comey have assumed fiendish personae of almost Clintonian proportions.
It’s happening, folks. Yesterday we learned that Hope Hicks was interviewed by Mueller’s team all day Thursday and Friday. Hicks knows everything that has happened. There is no way Trump is going to sit still while she either tells the truth or may get caught in a lie and have to cooperate with Mueller. The investigation is getting closer and closer to Trump and his family.
F.B.I. officials warned one of President Trump’s top advisers, Hope Hicks, earlier this year about repeated attempts by Russian operatives to make contact with her during the presidential transition, according to people familiar with the events.
The Russian outreach efforts show that, even after American intelligence agencies publicly accused Moscow of trying to influence the outcome of last year’s presidential election, Russian operatives were undaunted in their efforts to establish contacts with Mr. Trump’s advisers….
Hope Hicks with Trump and Kushner
After he took office, senior F.B.I. counterintelligence agents met with Ms. Hicks in the White House Situation Room at least twice, gave her the names of the Russians who had contacted her, and said that they were not who they claimed to be. The F.B.I. was concerned that the emails to Ms. Hicks may have been part of a Russian intelligence operation, and they urged Ms. Hicks to be cautious.
The meetings with Ms. Hicks, what the F.B.I. calls a “defensive briefing,” went beyond the standard security advice that senior White House officials routinely receive upon taking office. Defensive briefings are intended to warn government officials about specific concerns or risks.
Meanwhile, as Dakinikat wrote yesterday, the Justice Department has announced “investigations” into fake scandals like Planned Parenthood supposedly selling fetal body parts and the Uranium One non-scandal. And the GOP Congress is going to turn the sexual harassment scandal into a Democratic problem. The Democrats pushed Al Franken out without due process for minor accusations that may have been orchestrated, and now more Democrats are going to be revealed as abusers so the public will forget about Trump and Moore.
The Treasury Department paid $220,000 in a previously undisclosed agreement to settle a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment that involved Florida Democrat Alcee L. Hastings, according to documents obtained by Roll Call.
Alcee Hastings
Winsome Packer, a former staff member of a congressional commission that promotes international human rights, said in documents that the congressman touched her, made unwanted sexual advances, and threatened her job. At the time, Hastings was the chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, where Packer worked.
Hastings has called Packer’s charges “ludicrous” and in documents said he never sexually harassed her.
“Until this evening, I had not seen the settlement agreement between the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and Ms. Packer,” the congressman said in a statement Friday night. “This matter was handled solely by the Senate Chief Counsel for Employment. At no time was I consulted, nor did I know until after the fact that such a settlement was made.”
Hastings said that the lawsuit that Packer filed against him and an investigation by the House Ethics Committee were ultimately dismissed.
“I am outraged that any taxpayer dollars were needlessly paid to Ms. Packer,” he said.
Will another member of the Black Caucus be forced out now?
Sarah Kendzior issued a stark waning this morning in response to this tweet:
The right wing is mounting a coordinated attack on Mueller, aimed at convincing the Republican base that his investigation is illegitimate. If Trump fires Mueller and FBI leadership, the President and his friends will be above the law. https://t.co/nm7bKdOene
They are going to behave as if they are above the law regardless. Even if Mueller is not fired and brings forth extremely damning evidence, they will likely disregard it. Prepare for that. https://t.co/HPAdy5Z7ih
This is why I and others were so adamant that this investigation be carried out in 2016 or during the transition period. Once autocrats get in, it is very hard to get them out. They rewrite laws to preserve their own power.
A uranium company launched a concerted lobbying campaign to scale back Bears Ears National Monument, saying such action would give it easier access to the area’s uranium deposits and help it operate a nearby processing mill, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Ryan Zinke
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and top Utah Republicans have said repeatedly that questions of mining or drilling played no role in President Trump’s announcement Monday that he was cutting the site by more than 1.1 million acres, or 85 percent. Trump also signed a proclamation nearly halving the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which is also in southern Utah and has significant coal deposits.
“This is not about energy,” Zinke told reporters Tuesday. “There is no mine within Bears Ears.”
But the nation’s sole uranium processing mill sits directly next to the boundaries that President Barack Obama designated a year ago when he established Bears Ears. The documents show that Energy Fuels Resources (USA) Inc., a subsidiary of a Canadian firm, urged the Trump administration to limit the monument to the smallest size needed to protect key objects and areas, such as archeological sites, to make it easier to access the radioactive ore.
In a May 25 letter to the Interior Department, Chief Operating Officer Mark Chalmers wrote that the 1.35 million-acre expanse Obama created “could affect existing and future mill operations.” He later noted, “There are also many other known uranium and vanadium deposits located within the [original boundaries] that could provide valuable energy and mineral resources in the future.”
There is soooo much news today. I’ll have to add some links in the comment thread, but I’ll end this post with the latest NYT gossipy insider report on Trump’s defensive maneuvers: Inside Trumps Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation.
Around 5:30 each morning, President Trump wakes and tunes into the television in the White House’s master bedroom. He flips to CNN for news, moves to “Fox & Friends” for comfort and messaging ideas, and sometimes watches MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” because, friends suspect, it fires him up for the day.
Energized, infuriated — often a gumbo of both — Mr. Trump grabs his iPhone. Sometimes he tweets while propped on his pillow, according to aides. Other times he tweets from the den next door, watching another television. Less frequently, he makes his way up the hall to the ornate Treaty Room, sometimes dressed for the day, sometimes still in bedclothes, where he begins his official and unofficial calls.
As he ends his first year in office, Mr. Trump is redefining what it means to be president. He sees the highest office in the land much as he did the night of his stunning victory over Hillary Clinton — as a prize he must fight to protect every waking moment, and Twitter is his Excalibur. Despite all his bluster, he views himself less as a titan dominating the world stage than a maligned outsider engaged in a struggle to be taken seriously, according to interviews with 60 advisers, associates, friends and members of Congress.
For other presidents, every day is a test of how to lead a country, not just a faction, balancing competing interests. For Mr. Trump, every day is an hour-by-hour battle for self-preservation. He still relitigates last year’s election, convinced that the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, into Russia’s interference is a plot to delegitimize him. Color-coded maps highlighting the counties he won were hung on the White House walls.
Read more about the madman in the White House at the NYT link.
What stories are you following today?
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The Fox News Democratic Town Hall begins at 6PM. It looks like it will only last an hour, and if we’re lucky we won’t have to watch a scene like the one depicted above again tonight. The event will be held in Detroit. You can watch the live stream on the Fox News website.
Here are the basics from MichiganLive:
WHAT TIME IS THE TOWN HALL? The hour-long discussion is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. It will re-air at 11 p.m.
WHERE CAN YOU WATCH THE DEBATE?Fox News has not released information on tickets, but the town hall will air live on Fox News and will be live-streamed atFoxNews.com.
WHERE IS THE DEBATE? The town hall is scheduled to take place at the Gem Theatre in Detroit.
WHO WILL MODERATE THE DISCUSSION? Fox News’ chief political anchor Bret Baier will moderate.
WHAT WILL THEY TALK ABOUT? If Sunday’s debate in Flint is any indication, the bailout of the auto industry could be the hot topic Monday night.
It’s yet another ghastly hatefest that FoxNews calls the Republican Presidential Primary Debate. Live from Detroit! It’s the Xenophobia/Racism/Misogyny/White Male Anger Party!!!
There aren’t many left standing but I can’t imagine even trusting any of them to walk my dog or feed my cat, let alone run my country.
Marco Rubio’s path to the Republican nomination short of a contested convention has narrowed to nearly nothing as his campaign and allies reboot their strategy to prepare for months of guerrilla warfare to deny Donald Trump a clean, pre-convention victory.
The math for Rubio is daunting. After getting thoroughly routed on Super Tuesday, Rubio is in so deep a delegate hole that he would now need to win roughly two-thirds of all the remaining delegates to guarantee his nomination ahead of Cleveland, according to a POLITICO analysis.
That is an enormously difficult, if not impossible, climb for a candidate who has so far won only a single state, Minnesota, and especially one who is not predicting victory in any of the next dozen states and territories that cast ballots, until his home state of Florida votes on March 15.
“It’s fair to say that Rubio’s path to 1,237 is shot,” Dave Wasserman, an analyst with the Cook Political Report who closely tracks the delegate race, said of the threshold to secure the nomination.
“There’s virtually no chance for Marco Rubio to get to a majority prior to the convention,” said John Yob, who served as a top delegate strategist for Rick Santorum in 2012 and John McCain in 2008.
Even inside the Rubio orbit, there has been an acknowledgement that as long as Ted Cruz (and John Kasich) stay in the race, they have virtually zero mathematical chance of securing the nomination. Asked directly by Fox’s Megyn Kelly on Wednesday night if it was now “mathematically impossible” for him to be the nominee, Rubio dodged.
My thought is that Rubio was basically a VEEP and not much else. He’s not too bright and he really doesn’t appear to enjoy working at anything. However, he’s managed to totally cut himself off from that path having been replaced by the Chris Christie lapdog and Mr. Slave act. Rubio’s made far too many penis size jokes for that now and his Senate seat is as good as gone.
Mitt Romney has instructed his closest advisers to explore the possibility of stopping Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention, a source close to Romney’s inner circle says.
The 012 GOP nominee’s advisers are examining what a fight at the convention might look like and what rules might need revising.
“It sounds like the plan is to lock the convention,” said the source.
Romney is focused on suppressing Trump’s delegate count to prevent him from accumulating the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the nomination.
But implicit in Romney’s request to his team to explore the possibility of a convention fight is his willingness to step in and carry the party’s banner into the fall general election as the Republican nominee. Another name these sources mentioned was House Speaker Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate in 2012.
In the immediate wake of Super Tuesday, each has much to gain from such a deal. As the candidate currently with more delegates, Cruz would love to get enough support from Rubio’s delegates to secure the nomination. For Rubio, currently in third place, for whom holding his home state of Florida has now become a do-or-die situation, the idea of securing the vice presidency would be a valuable insurance policy. As a young man, he would have an inside track to the presidency in eight years. Our current immigration situation would likely be addressed by a Cruz-Rubio administration to the degree that the issue would no longer be any obstacle for him in 2024. The beauty of this arrangement is that the primary voters would be the ones to decide which candidate will be at the top of the ticket. And voters could freely vote for their favorite with much less concern that failing to rally around the other would be helping Trump. Let Ted compete with Trump in the states with electorates like Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Alaska. Let Marco compete with Trump in states with electorates like Florida and Minnesota.
Kasich seems to be holding out for Ohio and the rest of the Great Flyover to weigh in.
So, I’m voting on Saturday and phonebanking. I’m also planning to go see the Big Dawg tomorrow morning so I’m either live blogging that or going to be late with my impressions.
The debate tonight will feature Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich. With only four candidates on the stage, this will be the smallest debate yet. The event begins at 9PM ET/6PM PT tonight on Fox News. Here’s how to watch it online:
If you do have a cable subscription, you can also watch on your Android oriOS mobile device with Fox News Go. Unfortunately, Fox isn’t offering a ton of options to watch online without cable, but if you can borrow a login from someone then you’ve got mobile covered.
The Fox News Election HQ app for Android and iOS can’t stream the debate, but you can use it to grade the candidates as you follow along. At the end of the debate, it will give you a “debate scorecard” to show you which candidate you align with the most.
To say that sexism exists in soccer is like saying that leaves grow on trees. The average female player’s salary in the United States is about $15,000 per year, while the average for men is $155,000. Considering that women’s sports generally have a smaller audience, that gap can make sense. But given the numbers from July 5, it’s harder to make that case. And unfortunately, the inequalities don’t stop at salaries.
Consider the unfolding dispute between José Mourinho, manager of the Chelsea club, one of the top teams in Britain’s Premier League, and Eva Carneiro, Chelsea’s first-team doctor and assistant medical director.
The dispute stems from an Aug. 8 match between Chelsea and Swansea. With two minutes to play, Swansea captain Ashley Williams crashed into Eden Hazard, Chelsea’s forward. The referee called a foul on Williams and immediately beckoned for the medical team – which included Carneiro and Jon Fearn, the first-team physiotherapist – to enter the pitch and treat Hazard. Unsurprisingly, Fearn dashed onto the field, Carneiro hot on his heels. What was surprising was the reaction of Mourinho, who leapt forward angrily, shouting obscenities and gesturing wildly at his medical staff.
It had been a difficult game. The score was locked 2-2, and there were only 10 players left on Chelsea’s side of the field, since the goalkeeper had been sent off. The moment Fearn and Carneiro stepped on the pitch, the rules dictated that Hazard would have to be taken off.
Mourinho later defended his outburst, stating that the medical team had acted incorrectly in entering the pitch and leaving the team with nine men. “Without a doubt, if you are involved in the game, you have to understand the game,” he said, calling his medical staff “impulsive and naïve.”
In fact, Carneiro has been a part of Chelsea’s first team for four years. Also, with 90 seconds left in the game, and Chelsea poised for a free kick that Hazard was unlikely to have a large role in, Mourinho’s anger was both misplaced and inappropriate. Nevertheless, Carneiro has since been banned from matches or training sessions, as well as entering the team’s hotel.
It turns out, however, that she does understand the game. The Premier League Doctors’ Group released a statement declaring that “a refusal to run onto the pitch would have breached the duty of care required of the medical team to their patient.” Carneiro was beckoned onto the field by the referee. Her response was appropriate, and her punishment does not correspond with the performance of her duties. So the question is, why was she punished?
Carneiro – one of three women on Chelsea’s 13-person medical and fitness staff – is a prime example of what happens when a woman gains a position of power usually reserved for men. Last year, on the sidelines during matches, she faced obscene chants from fans. It seems her gender controls her career. Type her name into YouTube, and the first clip is titled “Eva Carneiro Hot Chelsea Doctor.” It’s just a video of her doing her job.
Considering that Carneiro was only performing her duties in the match against Swansea, Mourinho’s overreaction – especially his claims that she is naïve and ill-informed when he himself didn’t know the rules – clearly demonstrates that some people in authority in the world of soccer are not prepared to treat women equally. It’s bad enough that so few women can attain positions in the sport, but this rash and unfounded demotion indicates that Mourinho does not consider her valuable, despite a positive injury record and years of service to the team.
Mourinho has never apologized for his actions, and even with the League doctors supporting Carneiro…no official action, fines or sanctions were taken against Mourinho. Even though there is an actual rule against the sort of conduct Mourinho exhibited toward Carneiro.
Rule 7 of the Premier League’s Code of Conduct for managers states: “A manager shall not make public any unfair criticism of any match official or any other manager or any player, official or employee of his or another club.”
But the Premier League says it is a:
The Premier League said it considers the situation to be a “club matter”.
My god, it is like some kind of domestic dispute. WTF?
After the match on Saturday, the Chelsea manager explained:
“I wasn’t happy with my medical staff because even if you are a medical doctor or secretary on the bench, you have to understand the game.”
“If you go to the pitch to assist a player, then you must be sure that a player has a serious problem. I was sure that Eden didn’t have a serious problem. He had a knock and was very tired.
“My medical department left me with eight fit outfield players in a counter attack after a set piece and we were worried we didn’t have enough players left.”
Take key note about the dig….regarding whether you are a medical doctor or a secretary…you have to understand the game.
And Carneiro, 41 who was born in Gibraltar, posted a message on Facebook:
“I would like to thank the general public for their overwhelming support. Really very much appreciated.”
Photo: Facebook
How depressing, that one of the women at the forefront of football in this country feels she has to thank the public for encouraging her to simply do her job.
Women firefighters douse flames during the Pearl Harbor attack.
The sexism is strong with Mourinho….
Chelsea fans are upset, criticising Mourinho for ‘blaming anyone but himself’. While others are accusing
him of sexism, following an earlier incident this month where he ranted at the wife of Real Madrid manager Rafael Benítez, saying she should ‘occupy herself’ by ‘taking care of her husband’s diet’.
Now this is where that crack about understanding the game comes into play:
There are also those asking that we leave Carneiro’s gender out of the equation – but I’m afraid that’s impossible.
By saying that she doesn’t “understand the game”, Mourinho has made this all about her gender. The insidious narrative he’s perpetrating is that, as a woman, Carneiro couldn’t possibly grasp the complexities of football. It’s the old, sexist joke about women not getting the offside rule, on a massive scale.
Such comments, coming from a highly respected football manager, are dangerous. They give fans the impression that it’s OK to make Carneiro’s sex an issue. That maybe they were right to treat her differently. That she really in an outsider.
He has sanctioned their sexism, as the below tweets (just a sample of the comments Carneiro receives on social media) show. And one can’t help but speculate that Carneiro might agree.
Seriously, I bet there are more disgusting tweets out there and you can be sure she gets horrible sexist shit yelled to her at the games as well. (Go to that link, middle of page, and see the sexist abuse Carneiro received from fans as she took to the field.)
Last year, at an FA sports medicine conference in Sweden, the Chelsea doctor made a rare public speech:
“Women want to be leaders, we just put them off as we go along,” she told the audience.
“In every programme I’ve watched in my life, the female doctor is either hyper-sexualised or she’s not present. This needs to change. Women are discouraged at a young age.
“As a male you can aspire to having a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. Women are told that if they want to have both, at best it’s going to be difficult and at worse it’s going to be a disaster. Ninety percent of the mail I receive is from young women wanting to perform the same role. We need to tell them it’s possible and that their presence will improve results.”
Carneiro doesn’t need special treatment. She has, to my knowledge, never asked for it.
U.S. 1st Womens Liberation March, 5th Ave, New York City, 1971
But nor does she need a boss who tells her how to do her job, when she’s already playing by the rules – those set by football’s overwhelmingly male governing bodies (that Mourinho admitted he knew Hazard wasn’t properly injured only highlights where the grey area really lies here).
For this talented doctor to be demoted, simply for performing her job as asked, shows the sexism that flows through the veins of the beautiful game.
And I, for one, am calling foul.
Oh, yeah…and what is more disgusting is the reports that Mourinho called the doctor a slut. Which, I have looked and have been unable to find the original transcript for btw:
According to Sky Sports,José Mourinhoinsulted theChelseaclub doctor,Eva Carneiro, labelling her a “slut” during their row in thePremier League openerlast weekend.
Sky Sports have published a transcription of the exchange, which took place in Portuguese and includes two insults directed towards Carneiro by Mourinho. In addition to yelling “slut” in her direction, the Chelsea boss calls for the medic to stop offering Hazard treatment whilst waving his arms theatrically and shouting,“stop, for f*ck’s sake”.
Not only do these reports indicate a massive lack of respect on Mourinho’s part, but what must not be neglected is the fact that Carneiro had no option but to enter the field of play after having been waved on by the referee.
In the aftermath of this incident, Mourinho has been heavily criticised by the English footballing world and this saga could very well impact on his relationship with the club owner,Roman Abramovich.
This next article talks about the ethics involved in the demotion and mistreatment of Carneiro. My question is, but….would the situation have turned out different if Carneiro was a man? I don’t know.
Schoen initially tweeted at Spelman on August 5 after finding her Twitter feed funny. She “favorited” at least one of his tweets, but didn’t respond. He then sent her a lengthy Facebook message (see below), calling her a “special soul,” to which she responded kindly, but informed him that she had a boyfriend. She then blocked him on both Twitter and Facebook.
Yeah, take a look at that post, and see why it makes sense…a victim is trying to be nice to the attacker so that the violence does not get even more out of control…there are so many abused women who fit that mode. That assholes don’t see this, and will use it against the woman…saying her behavior asked for it. Bullshit!
Anyway, this is a shitload of links I know, hope you take your time and read them.
What is going on in your part of the world today?
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Fox News is calling the warm-up debate among the Republican presidential candidates who have poll numbers from around zero to three percent the “Happy Hour debate.” It begins at 5PM Eastern, and the participants will be Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, and Jim Gilmore.
It’s been called the “happy hour” debate — the 5 p.m. face-off that precedes the prime-time showdown among the top-polling Republican presidential candidates in Cleveland.
But the stakes for those invited to “happy hour” could be even higher.
Seven lower-polling candidates were invited to the 5 p.m. ET Fox News/Facebook debate stage. The smaller pond, it’s an opportunity for at least one of the candidates to make a big splash — and start the buzz that builds a fledgling bid into a serious campaign.
“An underdog is going to emerge from this first debate,” Craig Shirley, a conservative strategist and Reagan biographer, said.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who flamed out of the 2012 race after an infamous debate gaffe, is looking for redemption. Former New York Gov. George Pataki, even though he won’t be on the big stage with Donald Trump, appears poised to hammer the billionaire front-runner. Former HP exec Carly Fiorina has been blunt in saying that, as the only woman in the field, she would be a potent adversary against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Any of the seven could have a break-out moment Thursday afternoon that catapults them into the upper mix of the 17 candidates now on the field.
I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine any of those losers breaking through. But another conflict could be between Rick Santorum and Lindsey Graham over this claim from Santorum:
Santorum told Fox News on Thursday he plans to just be “authentic.”
“I did this 22 times the last time around,” said the former presidential candidate.
He said he’ll be able to stand out by pointing to his legislative record as a former senator, fighting to ban partial-birth abortions, enact welfare reform and impose Iran sanctions.
“They’re really isn’t anybody else up there on the stage who has a record of accomplishment in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
Graham has been in Congress a lot longer than Santorum was. He must have a few accomplishments.
I hope I’m not going to be alone in watching this thing. If you’re doing so, please share your observations in the comment thread below.
I’ll put up a separate post for the 9:00 main event.
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It’s not quite as nice here yet as it was when that photo of Boston Common in the Spring of 2012 was taken, but we’re making progress. Yesterday it got up to 70 degrees! All that snow we got in January and February is almost gone, although there are still piles of it here and there. Spring rains will soon wash the rest of it away, and it will be only a memory. I can’t wait for trees to start budding and tulips and daffodils to start popping their heads up. But if the trees grow too much, there’s nothing to worry since there are tree service largo fl who can do trimming and removal.
So what’s happening in the news? Today I found myself focusing on more lightweight stories. I hope you don’t mind. I just loved this article at Slate that pokes fun at the “gluten free” fad that has gotten manufacturers putting labels on things that never contained gluten to begin with. No offense intended to anyone here who actually has celiac disease.
Gluten is by now firmly cemented as our most infamous nutritional bête noir, even ifmost people can’t actually explain it. But even the staunchest gluten-free evangelists have, up til this point, missed another carb-contaminated industry: art. Luckily, a Gluten Free Museum has been created on Tumblr for those who just can’t stomach the idea of gluten in their favorite works of art.
In photos that span the worlds of high art, television, film and even advertising, Gluten Free Museum rids cultural artifacts of their carbs.
Here are a couple of examples: That nasty gluten on the left and gluten-free on the right. Check out the links to see more gluten vs. gluten-free images.
Years ago, millions of people thought they had hypoglycermia. Now it’s gluten intolerance.
Speaking of questionable health issues, singer Joni Mitchell has been in the hospital for three days with a disease that doctors say isn’t real.
It’s still not clear what caused Joni Mitchell to faint in her Bel Air home earlier this week, sending her to the hospital. But the legendary 71-year-old singer has said in the past that she suffers from a rare and mysterious condition called Morgellons, something that has been a subject of debate on whether it’s a real illness or not.
Scientists and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are skeptical that Morgellons is an actual medical condition and believe it’s more of a psychological problem. The people who believe it’s a real illness say that it has some scary symptoms, including fibers (or even “specks, dots, granules, or worms“) coming out of the skin causing tingling sensations that sometimes leads to lesions and scars, fatigue and problems with short-term memory, according to the New York Times.
In a 2010 interview with the L.A. Times,Mitchell said she has this “weird, incurable disease that seems like it’s from outer space.” She added, “Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: they cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable or mineral. Morgellons is a slow, unpredictable killer — a terrorist disease: it will blow up one of your organs, leaving you in bed for a year.”
I think I heard something about this on that weird radio show Coast to Coast AM. They also discuss things like alien implants, bigfoot, and ghosts. It’s kind of fun to listen to in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep.
The 71-year-old singer-songwriter has often complained of her battle with Morgellons, a medical mystery that has stumped the scientific community for years.
“I couldn’t wear clothing. I couldn’t leave my house for several years,” she described in her 2014 book Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words. “Sometimes it got so I’d have to crawl across the floor. My legs would cramp up, just like a polio spasm. It hit all of the places where I had polio.” (It’s unclear if Morgellons was related to her recent hospitalization, but she has certainly brought attention to the issue over the years.)
Sufferers of Morgellons report itching, biting, and crawling sensations. “Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin,” Mitchell has said. “They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable or mineral.”
They say their skin feels like it’s erupting from underneath, infested by insects, worms, or mysterious fibers. Like Mitchell, they say their symptoms are debilitating: they point to lesions that won’t heal, and say the biting and stinging that afflicts them every day leaves them fatigued and depressed, even affecting their memory.
It sounds awful, whatever it is.
For the past decade, researchers have searched for a biological cause or single underlying factor that might explain the suffering. But they have mostly concluded that Morgellons is “a psychosis or mass-shared delusion.”
In one of the most comprehensive studies to date, published in the journal PLOS, researchers from the CDC collected detailed epidemiological information, medical histories, and skin samples from 115 Morgellons sufferers in Northern California.
“No parasites or mycobacteria were detected,” they reported. The researchers also couldn’t find any environmental explanation for patients’ suffering.
The fiber-like strands on sufferers were mostly just cotton debris, probably lint from clothing. Their skin damage seemed to be caused by nothing more than sun exposure. While some patients had sores, these appeared to have arisen from chronic picking and scratching.
Interestingly, a large number of people in the study had a psychiatric or addictive condition, including depression and drug use. Among half of the participants in the study used drugs, but it wasn’t clear whether the drugs caused the symptoms or whether they were being used to deal with the disease.
I don’t know what to think. They used to say chronic fatigue syndrome was imaginary, and now it seems to be an accepted diagnosis. I just hope Joni feels better soon.
Via Raw Story
Comedian Jon Fugelsang came up with the perfect response to anti-gay “christian” fanatics.
John Fugelsang clashed with conservative radio host Heidi Harris on Friday when Harris questioned the need for sexual orientation to be covered under anti-discrimination statutes.
“Being gay is what sets a person apart from straight people,” Fugelsang told Harris on MSNBC’s Ed Show. “If you don’t like gay people, take it up with the manufacturer, because God keeps creating them around the world.” . . . .
Harris argued that in the workplace, only a person’s behavior could set them apart, proving that non-discrimination statutes like one that was voted down by North Dakota legislators on Thursday were unnecessary.
“Why are we protecting a certain group of people because of their behavior?” Harris asked at one point, causing Fugelsang to facepalm. “Not only that, but how do you prove someone didn’t get hired because they were gay? You can’t prove that any more than you can prove somebody didn’t get hired because of their age or their sex.” . . . .
“You might not realize this, but sometimes straight people are mean to gay people,” Fugelsang said to her. “That’s why gay people have needed more protection.”
I posted something about that North Dakota law yesterday in a comment, but I’m going to post it again here. I really like the way newspapers are started to highlight the horrible lawmakers who support discrimination. In this case it was The Fargo Forum.
A North Dakota newspaper on Friday plastered across its front page the photos of every state lawmaker that voted down a measure that would have protected LGBT individuals from discrimination.
Fargo-based The Forum’s provocative front page was published amid national outrage over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which critics argued would allow business owners with religious objections to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Legislators in the Hoosier State later agreed to alter the law to specify that it cannot be used to defend discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
A bill that would have outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation failed to passThursday in the North Dakota House by a vote of two to one, according to local TV station WDAY.
View the front page below.
Good for The Forum! That makes me proud to call Fargo my birthplace. I want to see North Dakota and Indiana go back to being states with sane governments where Democratic Senators can be sent to Washington. Just a short time ago, North Dakota had two Democratic Senators.
Can you believe that a so-called “news” site (The Blaze”) raised $800,000 for that pizza place in Indiana that say they’d never cater a same-sex wedding?
Flush with nearly $800,000 in donations from supporters, the owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, aren’t through talking about gay people.
‘God has blessed us for standing up for what we believe, and not denying Him,’ Crystal O’Connor tells Fox News.
She also said her family ‘doesn’t hate gays’ but simply would not deliver pizzas to a gay wedding because of their religious beliefs….
Memories Pizza was so besieged by phone calls and online comments that they temporarily shut their doors. This resulted in a Go Fund Me campaign that as of Friday afternoon was closing in on $800,000.
Of the LGBTI community her family has offended O’Connor says: ‘All we can do is pray for them, and truly, we’re not really angry at them. We’re sad for them. Very sad.
‘We have to accept them, and we just ask they accept us.’
What a pathetic excuse for a human being she is. I don’t know who she’s praying to all the time, but she’s certainly not following Jesus’ teachings.
The former Secretary of State’s team signed a lease Wednesday to house its headquarters in a Brooklyn Heights office building, a move indicating Clinton will launch her second presidential campaign within two weeks.
The Federal Election Commission gives candidates 15 days to create a campaign committee after “campaign activity” — which includes leasing office space.
Sources said Friday that Clinton’s camp has leased two floors, totaling about 80,000 square feet, at One Pierrepont Plaza.
The offices are near a dozen subway lines. The building touts itself as “Modern Offices. Brooklyn Cool.”
But the location, just across the East River from downtown Manhattan, is about as corporate as Brooklyn gets.
It is located in a building where Morgan Stanley and employees of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney, currently Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, have offices.
On Wednesday afternoon, I had the pleasure of sitting down with De Niro and his Tribeca partner Jane Rosenthal to discuss the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, which this year boasts a very formidable lineup including live events, star-studded film premieres, and talks featuring the likes of George Lucas, Christopher Nolan, the Monty Python crew, and a 25th anniversary Goodfellasdiscussion with the cast moderated by The Daily Show’’s Jon Stewart. Our talk eventually veered to his prophetic 2006 Hardball appearance, and whether or not he’ll be endorsing Hillary Clintonfor president in 2016.
“Hopefully it will be her, yes,” said De Niro. “I think that she’s paid her dues. There are going to be no surprises, and she has earned the right to be president and the head of the country at this point. It’s that simple. And she’s a woman, which is very important because her take on things may be what we need right now.”
“She’s smart, has run things before, and knows how government works and how to get things done,” added Rosenthal. “She’s watched it from the sidelines, and the frontlines.”
Now it’s your turn. What stories have caught your interest today?
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I can’t figure out if the corporate media wants to stop Hillary Clinton from running for president or if they desperately want her to run so they can figuratively flog her with a cat-o-nine-tails and then put her in stocks in front of the Capital building.
The story about Hillary using a private email domain when she was Secretary of State has reached the point of ridiculousness, but the media can’t help themselves–they are and yet the coverage continues to get more heated by the hour. The Hillary haters in the media see blood in the water and they’re circling in hopes of getting their teeth into her.
Sorry for the tortured metaphors, but seriously, what does the media want from this woman?
Check out this story from The Hill reporting on remarks by House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz of Utah. (Chaffetz and former Chairman Darrell Issa have been the leaders of the “investigations” of the Bengazi, IRS, and Fast and Furious non-scandals.)
Asked on “Fox and Friends” whether Clinton’s exclusive use of a personal email address during her time as secretary of State raised national security concerns, Chaffetz said, “It does beg the question: Were there any sort of classified pieces of information that were flowing through her personal email account?”
“Which is something you can’t do and something yesterday Gen. Petraeus had to plead guilty to, or was going out in a deal, dealing with his personal email and interaction with somebody who didn’t have a classification,” Chaffetz added….
Petraeus reached a plea deal, the Justice Department announced Tuesday, over charges he failed to turn over for archiving small record books kept while commanding U.S. forces in Afghanistan, instead providing them and their classified information to his mistress, Paula Broadwell, who wrote a biography of the Army general.
Seriously?
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Tuesday, “we have no indication that Secretary Clinton used her personal email account for anything but unclassified purposes,” adding that Clinton used secure phone calls, aides or took other steps to send sensitive messages and has turned over some emails for archiving.
subpoenaed all communications of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton related to Libya and to the State Department for other individuals who have information pertinent to the investigation,” according to a statement by committee spokesman Jamal Ware. “The Committee also has issued preservation letters to internet firms informing them of their legal obligation to protect all relevant documents.”
Back to The Hill article (emphasis added):
Earlier this week, Chaffetz said his committee would join the House Select Committee on Benghazi to further explore Clinton’s use of personal emails. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of that committee, said Clinton might have to testify several times before the panel, even into 2016.
Chaffetz himself lists a personal gmail address on his “official House card,” according to ABC News, but Chaffetz says that’s different. According to the Hill, when he was asked about the comparison between his use of email and Clinton’s, Chaffetz said, “Well that’s like comparing apples to a boat.”
Are Clinton’s email shenanigans a federal offense? Probably not. But we still don’t know the whole story, and it seems to be thickening by the minute — notably with a new report from the AP that she was protecting her email by cycling it through her own private email server out of Chappaqua. But the more important question is why the Clintons, who more than anyone in American politics understand the high risks of perceived improprieties, have left Hillary’s campaign so vulnerable even before it is officially out of the gate.
Why in God’s name did they change the name of the Clinton Foundation to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation? That gives Hillary full ownership of a stream of potential conflict-of-interest revelations that have been emerging ever since, notably in the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Politico: that the foundation solicited funds from at least 60 corporations that were lobbying the State Department during her tenure as Secretary of State; that the foundation quietly resumed soliciting donations from foreign governments once she left the State Department; that an Obama Administration ethics framework established to monitor potential conflicts of interest between Bill Clinton’s lucrative foreign speech engagements and State on Hillary’s watch was less-than-exacting.
And one imagines this is only the beginning. At the Post, a lead reporter on the Clinton story is Rosalind S. Helderman, whom some may recall was the dogged investigative journalist whose forensic journalism helped expose the pay-for-play scandal that brought down Bob McDonnell, the former Virginia Governor, and his wife Maureen.
You can check out Rich’s links for more background. Both the Post and the NYT are really pushing this story, but the Post seems even more worked up than the Times. Rich points out that Democrats really don’t have any legitimate alternatives to Clinton. Who are they going to run instead? Martin O’Malley? Jim Webb? Give me a break. And sorry, Emo-Progs,, Elizabeth Warren is not running.
At least one Joe Biden backer sees this new “scandal” as a golden opportunity, according to the Washington Post.
Dick Harpootlian, a former Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina, home to an early and important presidential primary, said recent reports about Clinton’s use of private e-mail to conduct government business and her family’s charitable foundation accepting donations from foreign governments while she was secretary of state could be damaging to her likely 2016 presidential campaign.
“There’s always another shoe to drop with Hillary,” Harpootlian said in an interview Wednesday. “Do we nominate her not knowing what’s in those e-mails?… If the e-mails were just her and her family and friends canoodling about fashion and what they’re going to do next week, that’s one thing. But the fact that she’s already turned e-mails to the Benghazi committee because she was doing official business on it means she’s going to die by 1,000 cuts on this one.”
He wishes.
Harpootlian — who has been an active and outspoken booster of a Biden 2016 candidacy — said the foundation donations and e-mail stories have sparked chatter among South Carolina politicos about drafting other candidates into the Democratic primary. Referencing Biden specifically, he said, “I’ll tell you this: He ain’t got no e-mail problems. He ain’t got no foundation problems. What you see with Joe is what you get. There’s nothing hidden there.”
Harpootlian added, “The chatter down here is, ‘Is this the best we can do?’ Certainly everyone wants to give a woman a chance to lead this country, but is [Clinton] the woman? There are plenty of other women who would be competitive, whether it’s Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar or Kirsten Gillibrand.”
Sorry, Dick, those women aren’t running and they wouldn’t be any more competitive than your pal Joe Biden–who has his own past scandals to worry about.
Some Democrats are uneasy about the reports involving Hillary Clinton ’s use of a private email account during her time as secretary of state and her foundation’s fundraising practices, calling on her to break her silence and personally address the two controversies.
Some party figures say the recent disclosures show a need for Democratic rivals to step forward and challenge Mrs. Clinton for a nomination that has long seemed to be hers for the asking.
At least one of these “uneasy” Democrats was willing to use his name.
Don Paulson, chairman of the Muscatine County Democrats in Iowa, said he was disturbed by the Clinton Foundation’s practice of accepting donations from foreign governments at a time when Mrs. Clinton was preparing a campaign for the White House. He saw that as one reason why the party should vet her and other candidates in a competitive primary, rather than allow her to coast to the nomination without a real fight. “It’s a healthier thing all around if there’s competition,” he said.
I’m sure Muscatine County Chairman is a Very Important Job, so we’d better being paying close attention to Mr. Paulson. Or not.
The WSJ admits that “Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement…was legal while she served as the nation’s top diplomat,” but never mind that. It’s still so “troubling” and it makes people so “uneasy.” They do include the names of two more disapproving Democrats:
Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who has worked on six presidential campaigns, said of the email account: “She needs to explain why she did what she did. I do think it’s a real issue, and I think it’s an issue that has to get dealt with on a serious level.”
“I don’t think it’s something a junior staffer can put out a statement and expect the thing to go away,” he said.
Kim Weaver, chairman of the O’Brien County Democrats in Iowa, which holds the nation’s first presidential contest, said: “The questions need to be answered.” She added she would like to hear whether the personal email system Mrs. Clinton used carried adequate security protections. “If it’s no big deal, why not just come out and say what it is.”
It seems that Iowa Democrats are particularly upset.
But will any of this matter to voters in November of 2016? Brendan Nyhan of the NYT blog The Upshot doesn’t think so. He notes that most Americans aren’t thinking about the 2016 presidential campaign yet, and when they do, attitudes toward toward the “email furor” will likely break down along partisan lines.
Of course that won’t stop his newspaper from running story after story about it on their front page while they ignore the potential loss of health insurance for 8,000,000 Americans along with other important world events.
According to the State Department, Hillary Clinton’s use of a personalized email address during her time as secretary of state was no secret.
“The State Department has long had access to a wide array of Secretary Clinton’s records — including emails between her and Department officials with state.gov accounts,” State Department Deputy Spokesperon Marie Harf said in an email to Business Insider….
Business Insider reached out to Clinton’s representatives. They put us in touch with two former State Department officials who argued that Clinton was careful to use the address in a manner that went above and beyond regulatory requirements and ensured her communications were preserved.
The former officials, who requested anonymity to freely discuss Clinton’s emails and State Department policy, echoed the notion the former secretary’s personalized email address was not kept secret. They said she used it to communicate with over 100 department staffers, other officials, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill….
Clinton’s spokesman Nick Merrill issued a statement in response to the article wherein he argued Clinton corresponded with people on their government account whenever she conducted official business….”Like Secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any Department officials. For government business, she emailed them on their Department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained,” Merrill said.
Guess what? John Kerry is the first Secretary of State to use a government email account! Colin Power also used a private account during the Bush Administration.
The two former officials said efficiency was one reason Clinton set up her own address. At the time, State Department policy would not have allowed her to have multiple email addresses on her Blackberry. Because of this, the officials said, she opted to have one address for both personal and governmental communications. They echoed Merrill’s statement and said Clinton took care to correspond with other State officials exclusively on their governmental addresses. The officials said this meant all of her emails and those sent to her were immediately preserved on government servers.
According to the two officials, regulations discouraged the use of personal email but did not prohibit it. Merrill also argued that Clinton’s use of private email was not against the rules.
“Both the letter and spirit of the rules permitted State Department officials to use non-government email, as long as appropriate records were preserved,” he said.
So far, Hillary herself has only responded on Twitter:
I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
rrectly in entering the pitch and leaving the team with nine men. “Without a doubt, if you are involved in the game, you have to understand the game,” he said, calling his medical staff “impulsive and naïve.”
By saying that she doesn’t “understand the game”, Mourinho has made this all about her gender. The insidious narrative he’s perpetrating is that, as a woman, Carneiro couldn’t possibly grasp the complexities of football. It’s the old, sexist joke about women not getting the offside rule, on a massive scale.
In the aftermath of this incident, Mourinho has been heavily criticised by the English footballing world and this saga could very well impact on his relationship with the club owner,Roman Abramovich.
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