While most Americans still see Moscow as a key U.S. adversary, new polling suggests that view is changing, most notably among the households of military members.
The second annual Reagan National Defense Survey, completed in late October, found nearly half of armed services households questioned, 46%, said they viewed Russia as ally.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson has been illegally withholding aid to Puerto Rico for months
An attorney for indicted Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas warned Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., that “Lev remembers” their phone calls — even if the Intelligence Committee’s top Republican does not.
Phone records obtained from AT&T and released in the Intelligence Committee’s impeachment report revealed four phone calls between Nunes and Parnas on April 12, amid the smear campaign that ousted then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, including one which lasted longer than eight minutes. Parnas, who played a key role in Giuliani’s hunt for damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden, was later indicted on campaign finance charges. Prosecutors have said he is still under investigation for more crimes.
A Texas consultant who devised a controversial approach to addressing homelessness in San Antonio a decade ago was tapped by President Donald Trump this month to bring his strategy to the rest of the country.
Robert Marbut Jr., the founding president of San Antonio’s homeless shelter Haven for Hope, will lead the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates with 19 federal departments and agencies to address homelessness.
But aspects of Marbut’s approach to addressing homelessness have garnered blowback from housing advocates. He calls feeding homeless people on the street “enabling” them, and once while working in Florida, he went undercover as a homeless person to study them.
Highest recommendation.
The scope of trump and Republicon viciousness on this issue is informative. Or it would be, if we had not been hearing for years how they treat people they rate as less valuable or worthwhile humans, such as immigrants and asylum applicants.
Most Americans realize the complexities of homelessness. Most will also find it repulsive for people to be treated like dogs. Most would also like dogs treated better than the methods preferred and implemented by trump’s choice for a homelessness czar.
Many believe people should be “enabled” with food, and that gets to part of the heartlessness of this latest trump atrocity.
Americans who are already forced to ration between health care and necessary medications, and food, will find food more immediately imperative than shelter. Connect the dots: trump’s policies are going to lead to an explosion of homelessness. That’s why he needs his homelessness czar.
This is a planned assault on poor Americans, because Republicon wealthy people are working to reduce taxes further by killing public safety net programs. trump began talking up the eyesore of inconvenient, dirty street people months ago. The orderly roll-out of this brutality probably means it is one of the correlated agendas of trump’s White House neo-Nazi, Stephen Miller.
Miller and trump’s newest czar, Marbut, clearly share a similar lack of humanity.
“In the ‘guiding principles’ listed on his website, Marbut writes that homeless people who exhibit good behavior should get 'privileges such as higher quality sleeping arrangements, more privacy and elective learning opportunities.’
…"In developing Haven for Hope, Marbut and other planners” visited various homeless shelters when he was devising a plan for San Antonio, and “conclud[ed] a single campus with centralized services would be most helpful to San Antonio’s homeless population.
"The shelter’s opening resulted in a decrease in visible homelessness downtown, the organization’s CEO and president, Kenny Wilson, told the Tribune this summer.
…A critic "said the organization has grown more compassionate in recent years but criticized its 'courtyard,’ an open-air sleeping space Haven for Hope initiated under Marbut’s stewardship.” Presumably, this courtyard is similar to those we’ve seen with trump’s immigration “policy,” and is for the “bad dog” humans who have been swept off the streets and out of view, but who haven’t acquired behaviors or status which earn them the treat of accommodations better than a crowded courtyard.
Having been homeless...and hanging on by a thread away from it again now...fuck Try no and all of his equally as terrible minions.
The next person who tries to correct me when I say “Happy Holidays” is going to be told Happy Hanukkah instead. Very tired of hearing, “No, it’s MERRY CHRISTMAS.” I’m pretty sure Judaism was around a lot longer than your Buckstar’s boycotting butt, Karen.
My boss once shared a great story about that. This happened when he was in a layover in North Carolina back when the “War on Christmas” bullshit was first becoming prominent. He had gone to get a pack of cigarettes, and after he paid for it:
“Merry Christmas.” “Happy holidays.” “No. I said Merry Christmas.” “Do you know what Hanukkah is about?” “No, what?” “Some people tried to make us worship their ways, so we rose up and killed them. Happy Hanukkah.”
I celebrate Christmas, but generally avoid holiday themed greetings when working as a cashier unless the customer mentions their holiday specifically.
The other day, two older ladies were buying briskets and told me they was for their Hanukkah celebration that night, so I responded something like “Well Happy Hanukkah! It’s the third night, right?”
I shit you not these two old ladies were so tickled that someone at a store wished them a happy Hanukkah. One of them literally told me I was “the first one to do that”.
To those who think there’s a war on Christmas, please get the fuck over yourself and remember that not everyone experiences the world the way you do.
The White House has just sent Congress a letter attacking the impeachment inquiry as “completely baseless” while suggesting to the Judiciary Committee that neither the president nor his attorneys will participate in any manner. Chairman Jerry Nadler had set a deadline of Friday 6 PM for a response.
Claiming Congress has “violated basic principles of due process and fundamental fairness,” which is false, White House Counsel Pat Cipillone also falsely claimed the Committee has not “heard a single shred of evidence” against the president.
The tone of the letter is highly-partisan, calling the impeachment a “charade,” claiming congressional Democrats have “wasted” Americans’ time, and saying if Democrats adopt Articles of Impeachment it will constitute an “abuse of power.”
The White House calls the impeachment of a crime syndicate leader masquerading as a “President” as “completely baseless”, saying it will NOT cooperate with the inquiry. #Impeachment #ImpeachTrump #ImpeachmentHearings #Impeach45
Source: thenewcivilrightsmovement.com
The Ukraine scandal isn’t just about Trump forcing Ukraine to ‘do him a favor,’ it’s much larger
Highest recommendation.
“Low oxygen levels are also associated with global heating, because the warmer water holds less oxygen and the heating causes stratification, so there is less of the vital mixing of oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor layers. Oceans are expected to lose about 3-4% of their oxygen by the end of this century, but the impact will be much greater in the levels closest to the surface, where many species are concentrated, and in the mid to high latitudes.
“Intensive farming also plays a major role. When excess artificial fertiliser from crops, or manure from the meat industry, runs off the land and into rivers and seas, it feeds algae which bloom and then cause oxygen depletion as they decompose.
"The problem of dead zones has been known about for decades, but little has been done to tackle it. Farmers rarely bear the brunt of the damage, which mainly affects fishing fleets and coastal areas. Two years ago, the meat industry in the US was found to be responsible for a massive dead zone measuring more than 8,000 sq miles in the Gulf of Mexico.
…"Protecting marine life could help the oceans to function better, soaking up more carbon and providing barriers against sea level rises and storm surges, in the form of coral reefs and mangrove swamps.
”‘A healthy ocean with abundant wildlife is capable of slowing the rate of climate breakdown substantially,’ said Dr Monica Verbeek, the executive director of the group Seas at Risk. ‘To date, the most profound impact on the marine environment has come from fishing. Ending overfishing is a quick, deliverable action which will restore fish populations, create more resilient ocean ecosystems, decrease CO2 pollution and increase carbon capture, and deliver more profitable fisheries and thriving coastal communities.’“
Some lost limbs. Others suffered horrific burns, head injuries or wounds that left them infertile. Still others live with the memory of injured coworkers screaming in agony or dying under heaps of rubble.
Since then, dozens of other incidents have killed workers and endangered residents near petrochemical plants. But tragedies like these don’t have to happen.
In January 2017, the EPA issued the Chemical Disaster Rule, which provided sweeping new safeguards for workers, first responders and communities where dangerous plants are located. It would have forced operators to address unsafe practices and keep their equipment up to date.
Will Americans wake up before November, 2020 and realize that Trump’s primary purpose as president is to
FUCK OVER EVERY AMERICAN WHO ISN’T WEALTHY.
Michigan’s second-highest court has dealt a legal blow to Nestlé’s Ice Mountain water brand, ruling that the company’s commercial water-bottling operation is “not an essential public service” or a public water supply.
The court of appeals ruling is a victory for Osceola township, a small mid-Michigan town that blocked Nestlé from building a pumping station that doesn’t comply with its zoning laws. But the case could also throw a wrench in Nestlé’s attempts to privatize water around the country.
YES
One of the key issues examined by the report is the claim, repeatedly made by the president and his supporters, that impeachment would “nullify” the 2016 presidential election and the popular will — which is already a weak claim given that Trump never won the popular vote, and that impeaching Trump would still install Mike Pence as president. But the report more broadly rejects the entire claim that an election result immunizes a president from punishment for official misconduct.
Guess who Makes FAR More than Hunter — and who is far Less Qualified for the Job
According to the report, “Even as the House of Representatives began drafting charges against President Trump this week, his private attorney, who many believe is partly responsible for leading Trump on the path to his likely impeachment, made an audacious trip to the country at the center of the scandal.”
Excerpt from this Grist story:
If you want to learn how your favorite movies and shows are secretly about climate change, there’s a pretty good chance we’ve got it covered. Getting from any topic to climate change in the fewest possible steps is kind of a hobby of mine, so when I heard that Frozen II had some serious climate overtones, I went to the movie theater looking for signs of them.
The film offered plenty of clues that it’s a parable for our planetary crisis. Arctic ice caps re-form over a choppy sea, Queen Elsa visits a glacier (!!!) to learn the secrets of the past, and, uh, Disney said so. Songwriter Kristen Anderson-Lopez told the L.A. Times that the filmmakers were thinking about our rapidly heating planet when they developed the storyline.
But walking out of the theater after the movie ended, I overheard a little boy posing a question that pointed to an important parallel I’d missed. “Mommy, who was the bad guy?” the blond preschooler asked. His mom was stumped. Because Frozen II is, more or less, a Disney movie without a villain. In the end, everyone was facing the same threat: environmental disasters from a world thrown out of whack.
The sequel begins about where the original film left off: with the first movie’s small-time villain, Hans, vanquished, Anna and Kristoff happily together, and Elsa queen of the bustling little kingdom of Arendelle. But this peaceful scene doesn’t last long. A series of intense natural disasters strike Arendelle one night, and people flee the town to escape the buffeting winds and shifting earth. The four elemental spirits of earth, air, fire, and water are upset, so the princesses must journey north to the enchanted forest and restore harmony between humans and the environment.
The cause of this disharmony, we learn, is a dam that Elsa and Anna’s grandfather built many years ago, supposedly as a “gift” for the tribe of indigenous people upriver of Arendelle. Elsa and Anna learn the truth: Their grandfather’s motives may not have been so pure, and their entire society was made possible by screwing over the original inhabitants of the land. And taking down the dam is the only way to set things right and save their kingdom. But that means making some sacrifices, like accepting that their own city, which was built on a floodplain at the mouth of a river, might not make it.