Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Re: Something is Happening

Optimist.  They'll figure out how to wiggle out of this one too.

On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 11:21 PM Juan Matute <juanma2t@gmail.com> wrote:
News flashes are swirling around the GOP finally realizing the mess that Trump has got us in.  Time to work to fixing things.  Need to work wisely for a normalcy.
--
Hard work got me where I am today. Where am I?

Andy Gordon
Prof. Emeritus
University of Washington

Monday, July 16, 2018

Something is Happening

News flashes are swirling around the GOP finally realizing the mess that Trump has got us in.  Time to work to fixing things.  Need to work wisely for a normalcy.

Saturday, July 14, 2018

Something to Know - 14 July

I find it difficult, nay impossible, to leave through the door on my way to LAX and an airplane to Dublin without one last parting shot.   It really is an education watching our Flying Sloth making believe that he is a president.   We are experiencing so many opportunities to learn the definitions of words that we had long left behind as we progressed.   Trump's performance yesterday with his host, the Queen, left me with this impression - OAF, and I don't mean Organization of Asinine Fops:

noun a stupid, uncultured, or clumsy person. ORIGIN early 17th century: variant of obsolete auf, from Old Norse álfr 'elf'. The original meaning was 'elf's child, changeling', later 'idiot child' and 'halfwit', generalized in the current sense.
oaf
ōf/
noun
  1. a stupid, uncultured, or clumsy person.
    synonyms:lout, boor, barbarian, Neanderthal, churl, bumpkin, yokel; More




​Y'all stay calm now....
--
****
Juan

 "A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity."
- Ralph Nader

Thursday, July 12, 2018

Andy Borowitz

Queen Elizabeth Says Bone Spurs Will Prevent Her from Meeting Trump



Photograph by Mark Runnacles / Getty

LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—Queen Elizabeth II has cancelled a scheduled Friday meeting with Donald J. Trump after complaining of a "flare-up of bone spurs," Buckingham Palace has confirmed.

The announcement took many royal watchers by surprise, because in her sixty-six-year reign the Queen had never before complained of bone spurs.

But, according to the Queen's spokesman, Peter Rhys-Willington, Elizabeth had intentionally kept her chronic bone-spur condition a closely guarded secret until now. "Her Majesty is a very brave woman, and has not wanted to unnecessarily worry her subjects," Rhys-Willington said. "And so, for decades, she has suffered in silence."

The Queen referred to her bone spurs obliquely in an official statement issued on Thursday. "We are sorry to have to cancel the engagement, but we feared that meeting Donald Trump would be most painful," the Queen's statement read.



--
****
Juan

 "A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity."
- Ralph Nader

Something to Sleep on:

"Everything is horrible—worse than we ever imagined—and there's not a damn thing we can do about any of it. But whatever happens, we can't give in to despair."



--
****
Juan

 "A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity."
- Ralph Nader

Something to Know - 12 July

Steve Breen for Jul 11, 2018 Comic Strip




Okay, I'm all packed and just about ready to go (flight on Aer Lingus leaves Saturday evening).  So, my sister (Santa cruz News Bureau), sends this off-the-shelf creation that I am too lazy to ignore, and is about the U.K (of which concerns Scotland and part of Ireland).  The American President is an uncouth, uncultured, illiterate, unsophisticated sloth.  All is "uns" explains his affinity with Kim Jong Un.  It will be interesting to pass through the U.K. and NATO countries to assess collateral damage.  Trump is doing a job that the most masterful Russian agent could only dream about.

British Launch Nationwide Assault On Trump And His Ego

DONALD TRUMP

The British are laying multiple traps for Trump to guarantee his global humiliation during his scheduled visit later this week.

Considering recent events, it shouldn't come as a great surprise that the British are doing their best to guarantee that Trump is thoroughly humiliated during his scheduled visit this week.

Trap #1: "American Idiot" 

CNN reported on Tuesday that "There's a British campaign to make Green Day's 'American Idiot' the No. 1 song when Trump arrives" on Friday.

For the past couple of weeks, a social media campaign has sought to make Green Day's classic 2004 jam "American Idiot" the No. 1 tune in the UK by the time Trump arrives Friday…. The campaign asks people to download "American Idiot" between Friday, July 6, and Friday, July 13, to push the 14-year-old single to the top of the Official UK Charts. So far the effort appears to be working, with the song checking in at No. 18 on the chart Tuesday.

British media giant, The Independent, elaborated on the effort, reporting:

"American Idiot" was originally written in part about President George W. Bush and features lyrics such as: "Don't wanna be an American idiot/One nation controlled by the media/Information Age of hysteria/It's calling out to idiot America."

It was recently referenced by Sen. Tim Kaine, who suggested that if the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, planned on gifting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with a CD of Elton John's song "Rocket Man", Kim should reciprocate with "American Idiot".

TRAP #2: Nationwide Protests

The Independent reported that "In January, Mr Trump reportedly told Theresa May that he would not visit unless she banned protests, which she said would be impossible."

Indeed there are multiple protests scheduled throughout the United Kingdom this week, with The Independent reporting that: "Activist Leo Murray successfully raised the necessary £16,000 to pay for 'Project Trump Baby' – a six metre-high inflatable baby resembling Trump, with unusually small hands and feet, which will be flown over London when the real-life version arrives."

The Guardian added that the "'angry Trump baby' balloon will fly over Westminster from Parliament Square after the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, gave permission for it, before mass marches begin at midday."

The Guardian also reported on other scheduled protests:

Thursday

  • "Trump is expected to be at the US ambassador's residence in Regent's Park, London, overnight and at 5.30pm on Thursday protesters plan to greet him with a 'wall of sound.' More demonstrations are planned for Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, later in the evening, when Trump and his wife, Melania, will be guests of honour at a dinner for 100 guests."

Friday

  • "Women's March London – which brought 100,000 people to the streets of the capital in 2017 – will assemble at 11am outside the BBC offices in Portland Place before leaving at 12.30pmto move along Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus and Whitehall, culminating in a rally at Parliament Square." 'The Women's March is led by women but it is not just about women, we will have every voice in society represented,' said Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, its London co-organiser. 'The Trump-Pence administration has overseen a massive regression in women's rights, and it is not enough to say this is happening somewhere else, this is not our business. We have to stand up.'
  • "A second London demonstration led by Stop Trump – which includes members of the TUC, Stop the War and Friends of the Earth – will also start outside the BBC's headquarters at 2pm, ending at 5pm in Trafalgar Square, where organisers hope 'very large numbers' – in the tens of thousands – will attend."
  • "For the Bring the Noise rally, organisers are encouraging marchers to take 'pots and pans out of the kitchen … and on to the streets, banging to show our disapproval and claiming our political voice in public space.'"

The Guardian concluded their report, noting that: "There will also be demonstrations on Friday evening in Glasgow and on Saturday in Edinburgh at noon."

For anyone planning on being in the U.K. this week, the Evening Standard published an article detailing "where to peacefully protest" Trump's visit.




--
****
Juan

 "A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity."
- Ralph Nader

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Something to Know - 11 July

Jeff Danziger for Jul 11, 2018 Comic Strip


It is too darned easy and too confusing and disheartening to get into the current topics of conversation regarding the SCOTUS and what the loyal opposition needs to do to overcome.   My main effort will be to maintain a relative calm and disengagement, since I will be leaving for Europe this Saturday for a 38-day vacation, that includes a 2-week tour of Ireland, followed by a 21-day sea cruise from Amsterdam to Norway, to Iceland, to Scotland and back to Amsterdam ....then re-entry to a once-great and and respected nation.  So, I am looking at the big picture from outer-space, and this AXIOS bulletin spells it all out.  So, I would appreciate it if those of you, who have the necessary skills, would clean this all up before I get back.   It's either than or the Rule Of Law that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is working on that will get the job done.


Axios 
 
PRESENTED BY QUALCOMM 
 
Axios AM
By Mike Allen ·Jul 11, 2018

Good Wednesday morning. It's 7/11.

Situational awareness: To protect allergic passengers, Southwest Airlines "will stop giving away peanuts on flights next month, ending a tradition that goes back decades" ... Starbucks "will eliminate single-use plastic straws ... by making a strawless lid or alternative-material straw options available" ... "Alamo Drafthouse Leads U.S. Theater Chains in Eliminating Plastic Straws."

 
 
 Trump unwinds the 20th century

Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios

 

As President Trump meets other NATO leaders in Brussels today, the backdrop is his role in tearing at the post-World War II order. But Axios future editor Steve LeVine writes that a picture is taking shape of an American future without many of the basic institutions that many consider 20th century advances:

  • Unions: A decimation of the 120-year-old organized labor movement, most recently with last month's Supreme Court rulingweakening the funding of public collective bargaining.
  • International order: Trump is part of a wave of leaders challenging the post-World War II order, established to avoid another world war — NATO, our alliance with Europe, trade deals, the World Trade Organization.
  • Black voting: In 2013, the Supreme Court invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act, and last month the court decided that counties can purge voter rolls of people who don't regularly vote.
  • Women's rights ... For now, more fear than reality: A primary conservative goal is the invalidation or weakening of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion.
  • Respect for a free press and its role as a check on power.
  • Racial progress and harmony: The Muslim travel ban and Trump administration's border policies inflame rather than soothe tensions.

The N.Y. Times' Peter Baker quotes Curt Levey, president of the conservative Committee for Justice, as saying the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh will mean "a conservative court, really [for] the first time since the 1930s."

  • Why it matters: One of the main legacies of that court was the dismantlement of key components of the New Deal, which established Social Security and other social programs that are part of the U.S. firmament.

Be smart: Karen Harris, managing director at Bain Macro Trends, tells Axios that the new order will be the U.S., Russia and China — "multiple parallel great powers pushing against each other in the two new borderlands of cyberspace and [actual] space."

  • That, she said, "will lead to a more fragmented geopolitical order and by extension, a more fragmented international trade and finance order."


--
****
Juan

 "A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity."
- Ralph Nader

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Something to Know - 10 July

Steve Benson for Jul 10, 2018 Comic Strip
The world has good news (Thai soccer team rescue), and lots of crappy news.  I am trying to put the SCOTUS out of my range for a while, and just figure that the hike out of this mess is just going to be a 30-year long challenge.  On a more short-term look, the following story from today's Los Angeles Times is a very sad look into the world that trump may not have created all by himself, but one that he encourages and keeps the flames going.  What is even sadder is that this is one minority taking it out on another.  Hate has no boundaries.  This is cruelty and our 45th president lives to see this happen:​


Authorities search for suspects in brutal beating of 92-year-old man

Man, 92, is badly beaten
Authorities searching for several men and one woman involved in South L.A. attack.
RODOLFO RODRIGUEZ has a broken cheekbone and other injuries after several people assaulted him in Willowbrook on Wednesday, a sheriff's detective says. (KTLA) 
By Brittny Mejia

Authorities are searching for multiple suspects in an attack on a 92-year-old man in South Los Angeles last week.
Rodolfo Rodriguez had gone out for his daily walk in Willowbrook about 7 p.m. Wednesday when he was assaulted, according to a GoFundMe campaign set up by Rodriguez's family. Rodriguez has a broken cheekbone and bruises on his face.

His family told KTLA that a woman confronted Rodriguez after he reportedly bumped into a girl who was with her.
Rodriguez was then struck from behind and "as he fell on the ground, he blacked out," L.A. County Sheriff's Department Det. Matt Luna said.
"The mom pushes him to the floor and grabs the brick and starts beating on him," Rodriguez's grandson, Erik Mendoza, told KTLA. A few men joined in, Mendoza said.
Misbel Borjas, who lives near Rodriguez, was passing by in a car when she saw Rodriguez walking and trying to pass the woman and the girl.
Then, Borjas said, she saw the woman push Rodriguez and start to hit him with a block of cement.
"She was yelling at him, 'Go back to your country,' or 'Go back to Mexico,' " Borjas recalled. "It was racist."

Luna said authorities are still trying to verify what the woman said to Rodriguez.
Borjas was able to snap a photo of the woman, who began to walk away.
Borjas said as she was on the phone with 911, a few men began to assault Rodriguez while he was on the ground.
There were possibly three to four men involved in the attack, Luna said.
"We have a witness that can identify the female, but that's it," Luna said. "We have no leads at this time."

Twitter: @Brittny_Mejia
--
****
Juan

 "A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity."
- Ralph Nader

Friday, July 6, 2018

Something to Know - 6 July

Screen_Shot_2018-07-05_at_3.51.05_PM.png
The Dobson family

"I need somebody to come through here please, ASAP. Now. There's about eight people in a van, and they've been in the store for about an hour. They keep going back and forth to the bathrooms by my back door." That's the 911 call—obtained by WSB-TV Channel 2 Action News—from a Subway employee on a family of 6, Felicia and Othniel Dobson and their four children, ages 8, 12, 13, and 19. The family had stopped at the Subway in Coweta County, Georgia, on their trip back from South Georgia to their home state of North Carolina. They had been attending a grandparent's birthday party for the weekend.

36688568_10157569576843146_1042842476357877760_n.jpg
The Dobsons

The employee freaked out because this isn't some Cleaver family reunion! These people have high levels of melanin in their skin!!!!

A Newnan police officer showed up. The Dobsons said the officer apologized and told them the employee had said she was suspicious of the family and that she has been robbed before and thought they would rob her.

Cleavers.gif
Surprisingly never happened here

The Dobson family told the Channel 2 Action news that their 19-year-old is going to college this year, the kids are upstanding young folk, and there had been nothing to indicate there was an issue. Subway headquarters says they are "investigating," and the owner of this particular franchise called the family to apologize and say the woman had been put on  "administrative leave."

I reached out to Felicia Dobson and she sent this statement from the family.

It can be dangerous to make a call to law enforcement  with blatantly false information for people of color. The employee's voice was quivering as she described my family as non-customers, more women than men, and hanging around a back door eventually describing us as being suspicious and possibly going to rob her to an officer. This call came after we purchased several footlong subs and one addition while she took a smoke break outside of the store.  We have no words for her action.  Our kids were stunned to see their parents speaking with an officer following what they thought was a normal dinner followed by using a single stall bathroom one at a time.  Our hope is that this one day stops happening to people in this country.  Discrimination is never ok.  We pray that love will prevail.

-- 

****
Juan

 "A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity."
- Ralph Nader









Monday, July 2, 2018

Something to Know - 2 July



​The News Noise is all about who is going to fill Kennedy's seat on the Supreme Court, and if you don't find that newsy, then how about North Korea's apparent disregard of any denuclearization, or maybe it's Brazil defeating Mexico in Fütbol Soccer, or maybe you are looking at AMLO's success in Mexico, or the good news that 13 people were alive in the Caves of Thailand.  But, please read this column and say it is not right that the Republicans are going to make ​already stressed poor people and their kids go without food.   Placing work restrictions on qualifying for food stamps (the SNAP program) could force some children to go without any food - plain and simple.  While the rich got richer on Trumps tax cut, the hungry will now go without food - plain and that simple:

If Congress Changes Food Stamp Requirements, Kids Will Go Hungry

By Sarah Bowen, Sinikka Elliott and Annie Hardison-Moody

Ms. Bowen, Ms. Elliott and Ms. Hardison-Moody are professors who have conducted a study on child hunger.

"What do you do when you're hungry?" we asked Maylee, a 6-year-old girl. "I go to bed and think about eating," she said.

We first met Maylee's family in 2012, when we began a five-year study about food and poverty in North Carolina. Over the course of the project, we conducted multiple interviews with more than 100 poor and working-class mothers of young children, including Maylee's mother, Ashley Taylor. We also made ethnographic observations of 12 families: accompanying them on trips to grocery stores and food pantries, tagging along during school lunches and doctor's visits, and spending time in their homes as they cooked and ate. And in 2017, we interviewed the kids in each family.

Four months before we interviewed Maylee, her family's food stamps had been cut off because of an administrative error. Ashley still hadn't been able to get it straightened out. "It's been tough," said Ashley. She regularly went to food pantries, and Maylee and her younger sister received backpacks filled with food from their school. Ashley was always looking for sales and recipes that she could make on a budget, and she had cut back on the size of her own meals. But even with all her efforts, there just wasn't enough. "The kids don't eat the way that I'd like," Ashley said.

In 2016, children in 3.1 million households experienced food insecurity at some point during the year. Whether temporary or chronic, food insecurity is devastating for kids. As a nation, we have historically tried to align our policies with the belief that we should do what we can to prevent children from being hungry. When he signed the National School Lunch Act in 1946, President Truman said, "In the long view, no nation is any healthier than its children." Almost 20 years later, President Johnson argued that the food stamp program represented a way of "apply[ing] the power of America's new abundance to the task of building a better life for every American."

ADVERTISEMENT


Our national policies have long reflected, imperfectly, the moral imperative that children deserve adequate food. Until now.

The draft of the farm bill that was passed by the House on June 21 entails an important change in the rules governing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps). SNAP is the country's most important food assistance program, serving one out of every eight Americans.

While SNAP already has work requirements for able-bodied adults without children, the House's proposal imposes an even harsher policyand extends it to parents of school-age children. It would require that most adults provide monthly proof that they are working or enrolled in at least 20 hours of work force training per week in order to receive support. Those who can't comply — whether it's because they can't find a job or their work hours drop below 20 hours a week — could be locked out of the program for three years.

The Senate's bipartisan version of the bill, passed last Thursday, does not include those changes to SNAP. As the House and Senate now try to reconcile their differences, a major question is whether the stricter work requirements that will leave more kids hungry will become law.


Tightening SNAP's eligibility rules is one of the Republicans' central goals. President Trump offered his support, as did the White House, for stricter work requirements in the farm bill, and the House Agriculture Committee chairman, Michael Conaway, predicted that the new work requirements would make it into the final version of the bill.

Analysts estimate that the new rules would impose large administrative costs on states and lead to more than one million people losing their food stamps. On average, each of those people would lose $1,816 in SNAP benefits annually. And because a majority of the people at risk are in households with children, the result would be more hungry kids.

The United States has held on to a tenuous agreement over recent decades that children deserve to have enough to eat, no matter what their parents do. The House proposal puts us in jeopardy of losing even this modicum of decency. Although the new rule technically targets adults, children will suffer as a result of it.

Eleven-year-old Avery, one of the kids in our study, knew that her dad sometimes skipped meals because he wanted "to make sure us kids get full." Avery also said that when she got hungry, she went outside and ran around, or drank "bottles and bottles of water," until the feeling went away.

Some kids talked about going to neighbors' houses and asking for something to eat. Eight-year-old Clayton proudly explained that he collected cans and bottles to help pay for food for his family.

"If you could tell the president something about food, what would it be?" we asked dozens of the kids we interviewed. More than one child wanted to tell the president about their favorite food. Eight-year-old Phoebe's answer has stayed with us: "That I don't have enough."

Millions of children in the United States are like Phoebe. The new SNAP rules proposed by the House would drastically cut many families' SNAP benefits, making an already harsh reality even worse for kids in food-insecure households. SNAP should not be restricted; to the contrary, it should be expanded, so that fewer families — and especially kids — are hungry.


Columbia. Annie Hardison-Moody is assistant professor of agricultural and human sciences at North Carolina State University.

Sarah Bowen is associate professor of sociology at North Carolina State University. Sinikka Elliott is assistant professor of sociology at the University of British




--
****
Juan

 "A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity."
- Ralph Nader