Trump Wedding Planner Appointed to Oversee HUD in NY, NJ 

An employee of the Trump organization and wedding planner for Eric Trump’s wedding, may head the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s office for New York and New Jersey.

: Trump Wedding Planner Appointed to Oversee HUD in NY, NJ | NBC New York

As if there aren’t enough shallow, incompetent, morons in way over their heads and completely out of their element in this administration.

How Jeanne Shaheen moved off the sidelines 

When I passed through the New Hampshire Institute of Politics during the 2016 presidential campaign, I paused to look at the amazing photographs of many would-be presidents who have come through the Granite State over the decades. But it was a young campaign aide off to the side who drew my attention.

How Jeanne Shaheen moved off the sidelines – CNNPolitics.com

And now -for contrast- an article about a politicians who good at their job and gets things done.

Syria conflict: Russia issues warning after US coalition downs jet 

The coalition said it had shot down the Syrian Su-22 after it bombed US-backed fighters in Raqqa province on Sunday.

Moscow says it will track US-led coalition aircraft as targets, and halts a communications system …aimed at preventing air incidents.

Syria conflict: Russia issues warning after US coalition downs jet – BBC News

Jeezus Christ… Russia and the US unofficially – officially now in a proxy war with each other Syria? Man is this WH ever weak and incompetent! Just on the losing side of everything.

What Sessions did (and didn’t) tell us 

The attorney general answered some questions but not others, at a Senate hearing.

…Mr Sessions is far from the first politician to seek refuge in a fuzzy memory under sharp questioning. Definitive statements proven inaccurate under oath are more prone to accusations of perjury.

…When it came time to discuss his conversations with the president, Mr Sessions demurred, noting that he wanted to give Mr Trump the opportunity to review the question before sharing his thoughts. It was as if the attorney general was trying to pre-emptively invoke executive privilege – the right of a president to candid counsel from his advisers – without using those magic words.

What Sessions did (and didn’t) tell us – BBC News

hmmm

Shooting at UPS building in SF leaves multiple victims wounded 

Several people were injured when an active shooter let loose a barrage of gunfire Wednesday morning at the UPS building in the Potrero Hill area of San Francisco, prompting a massive police response and a shelter-in-place warning for the surrounding area, officials and witnesses said.

Multiple victims were being treated at San Francisco General Hospital, the extent of their injuries unknown, according to hospital spokesman Brent Andrew. 

Shooting at UPS building in SF leaves multiple victims wounded – SFGate

sigh…

Gunman dead after shooting congressmen at Virginia baseball field 

The top Republican in the House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan, was applauded on the chamber floor as he said: “We are united… an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

Gunman dead after attacking congressmen at Virginia baseball field – BBC News

….Unless that attack is on a black church or children’s school. In that case, an attack on one of us is no big deal. It’s business as usual and the NRA crying out that they are the real victim of this crime and the entire GOP climbing right on board with them.

Jeff Sessions personally asked Congress to let him prosecute medical marijuana providers – The Washington Post

Sessions is asking congressional leaders to undo federal medical marijuana protections that have been in place since 2014.

…The protections, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, prohibit the Justice Department from using federal funds to prevent certain states “from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

…Sessions’s citing of a “historic drug epidemic” to justify a crackdown on medical marijuana is at odds with what researchers know about current drug use and abuse in the United States.

…Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R.-Calif.) said that “Mr. Sessions stands athwart an overwhelming majority of Americans and even, sadly, against veterans and other suffering Americans who we now know conclusively are helped dramatically by medical marijuana.”

Jeff Sessions personally asked Congress to let him prosecute medical marijuana providers – The Washington Post

Trump WH has no use for reality, the plough ahead no matter how bone-headed and wrong-headed the scheme.

Abortions Rights Aren’t Optional for Democrats — There’s No Economic Justice Without Abortion Rights

In spite of this, even some on the self-proclaimed socialist left, like Sanders, now seem willing to sell out abortion rights in pursuit of the elusive vote of the working-class white man. There’s no evidence that moving right on abortion will gain Democratic votes. But it’s an appeal to the same dynamic Trump ran on: a bygone America, the symbol of which is the white factory man, able to support his children and a stay-at-home wife on the salary he earned doing good honest work with his hands.

Safe, legal abortion and modern, reliable contraception made it easier for women to pursue education and work; it let us delay childbearing and to choose our marital mates more carefully, and enabled us to leave bad relationships more easily or avoid them entirely; it let us compete with men. Which is a big part of why it’s such a divisive and animating issue, both for the women who are thriving because of the freedom contraception and abortion offer, and for the traditionalists who think life was better when gender roles were clearer and women knew their place (and it wasn’t in the corner office or on the factory floor).

Many of the white voters who support Trump do so him precisely because he suggests to them that he’ll put white men back on top. If Democrats do the same, they’ll only be able to peel off some of these voters — many are simply GOP loyalists who aren’t going to be swayed — and they’ll alienate their base, which remains a multiracial and disproportionately female coalition, while they sell their souls.

Abortions Rights Aren’t Optional for Democrats — There’s No Economic Justice Without Abortion Rights

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Why Women Are So Angry with Sanders 

When Sanders repeatedly declared that “identity politics” were a problem, he exposed a dangerous weakness in progressive political thought that remains unaddressed. …To separate class from gender, race, sexuality, and ability in fighting for economic justice is to create a fiction that economic injustice is only driven by one kind of social injustice– the kind that able-bodied cishet white men experience. It’s a dangerous fiction that at its heart reinforces patriarchal white supremacy, and it’s becoming all the more dangerous as we fight against an administration and its attendant political movement that wants nothing more than to roll back as many social justice gains as possible.

Why Women Are So Angry with Sanders | Bitter Gertrude

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Mark Warner: More state election systems were targeted by Russians

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence panel told USA TODAY that Russian attacks on election systems were broader and targeted more states than those detailed in an explosive intelligence report leaked to the website The Intercept.

…The National Security Agency report said Russian military intelligence executed a cyber-attack on at least one U.S. supplier of voting software and sent deceptive emails to more than 100 local election officials in the days leading up to the election last November — a sign that Moscow’s hacking may have penetrated further into voting systems than previously known.

Mark Warner: More state election systems were targeted by Russians

hmmmm

New research on role of sexism in 2016 election.

The MSS attempts to test for resentment toward women through questions about feminism and women in the workplace. Here are the five statements from the MSS that the Blair Center Poll asked its sample to assess:

  • Many women are actually seeking special favors, such as hiring policies that favor them over men, under the guise of asking for “equality.”
  • Most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist.
  • Feminists are seeking for women to have more power than men.
  • When women lose to men in a fair competition, they typically complain about being discriminated against.
  • Discrimination against women is no longer a problem in the United States.

…fewer Sanders primary voters than Clinton primary voters were “sexist,” according to the scale. But when the general election came around, a model that used the Modern Sexism score was “highly significant” in predicting the 25 percent of Sanders voters who did not swing to Clinton. 

…In the general election, a high Modern Sexism score was very predictive of a decision not to vote for Clinton. …Among almost all the subgroups of voters in the sample, being “sexist,” according to the scale, moved you away from a Hillary vote. (Latinas and black Americans of both sexes didn’t seem influenced by their sexism scores in casting their votes.) So even controlling for all other variables, the researchers found that a Republican man who is strongly sexist had only a 10 percent chance of voting for a woman.

…“The GOP became this anti-feminist party under Reagan to chase votes in the South,” says Maxwell, who is working on a book on the way race, gender, and religion worked together to form the Republicans’ Southern Strategy. While appealing to white male voters via race-baiting, the GOP also “decided to drop the Equal Rights Amendment from their platform. They cultivated this patriarchal culture, they demonized feminists. And now in 2016, these numbers are like—we don’t see partisan gaps like that on a lot of things.”

New research on role of sexism in 2016 election.

hmmm