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Migrant children deaths: Health warnings came months earlier
Migrant children deaths: Health warnings came months earlier
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Trump threatens to close ‘Southern Border entirely’ if Dems don’t fund wall
According to a report earlier this month by CBS News, about $558 billion in goods flowed across the border in both directions last year. It found that the U.S. exported $243.3 billion in goods across the border along with $58 billion in services.
…Duncan Wood, director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, told CBS MoneyWatch that shutting down the border would cost “hundreds of millions of dollars a day” or “maybe a billion.”
…The shutdown has left 800,000 federal employees furloughed or forced to work without pay through the holidays.
Trump threatens to close ‘Southern Border entirely’ if Dems don’t fund wall | TheHill
“Weh, weh, weh,” cried orange asshat, all the way home.
Former US Army 4-star general blasts Trump’s visit to US troops – INSIDER
Last week, Trump announced he would withdraw the roughly 2,000 US troops from Syria, citing the highly disputed claim that the Islamic State group had been “defeated.” Following the backlash from many national-security experts, Trump suggested he was open to using Iraq as a staging point for another intervention in Syria, “if we wanted to do something.”
McCaffrey also criticized Trump, who did not meet with Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi during the trip, for snubbing the leader of Iraq.
…”Announcing we’re going to use it as the site from which we’ll conduct combat operations in other nations, I mean, it’s just inciting Iraqi sovereignty concerns.”
He also criticized one of Trump’s falsehoods about the military: the claim that US troops received their first pay raise “in more than 10 years” under his administration.
Former US Army 4-star general blasts Trump’s visit to US troops – INSIDER
hmmmm
The history of Jews, Chinese food, and Christmas, explained by a rabbi – Vox
The history of Jews, Chinese food, and Christmas, explained by a rabbi – Vox
However you spent today, the Peanut Gallery wishes you a merry, merry 25th of December.
Mystery case that appears tied to Mueller investigation reaches Supreme Court
Roberts temporarily stayed an order holding an unnamed foreign government-owned company in contempt of court and accruing financial penalties for every day it does not comply with a subpoena the company has been challenging for months.
…The firm fighting the subpoena asked the Supreme Court to intervene after a D.C. Circuit Court panel ruled Tuesday that it was not immune to subpoenas because of its connection to a foreign government and the laws in the company’s home country.
…The stay will give the Supreme Court seven days to decide if the justices want to intervene in the case, and it could be the first time the full court hears a completely sealed court case.
Mystery case that appears tied to Mueller investigation reaches Supreme Court
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Some Parting Thoughts After Six Years On The Executive Council
Some Parting Thoughts After Six Years On The Executive Council
What a quaint, bizarrely unique thing the Council is….
Trump Foundation to liquidate remaining material assets, mainly schlocky portraits of Donald Trump.
[The] Trump Foundation agreed to dissolve itself as part of an agreement with the New York Attorney General’s office. The state attorney general said an investigation into the foundation’s finances uncovered “a shocking pattern of illegality” as the now-president of the United States used the nonprofit as a receptacle to accept donations and spent them on things Trump didn’t want to spend his own money on.
Trump Foundation to liquidate remaining material assets, mainly schlocky portraits of Donald Trump.
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Trump Organization: Democrats raise ethics concern about deal in Dominican Republic.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, who will soon chair the House Oversight Committee, said Democrats plan to ask the Trump Organization for records related to the company’s talks with developers in the Dominican Republic because of concerns one of the president’s sons attempted to discuss a deal after his father’s inauguration , he told ABC News. The conversation could hint to a potential violation of the ethics rules that deal with the president’s business dealings.
Trump Organization: Democrats raise ethics concern about deal in Dominican Republic.
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Amtrak falls below Trump in governor’s pecking order
Gov. Andrew Cuomo powwowed with President Donald Trump in Washington last week to discuss the Gateway Program, a $30 billion project that would repair and replace Amtrak infrastructure along the Northeast Corridor. He returned with a radical revision: decoupling the biggest piece—the construction of a new conduit under the Hudson River to carry commuter trains between New York and New Jersey—from the larger enterprise, as well as booting Amtrak’s representative from overseeing the Gateway Program Development Corp. and inserting a Trump appointee.
Amtrak falls below Trump in governor’s pecking order
Whaaaaaaaaaaaa?
Winter Solstice 2018 Coincides With Both A Full Moon And Meteor Shower
How often do these events coincide, where the winter solstice is adorned by a full moon? The last time it occurred was in 2010 and the next event will not be until 2094. On December 21 you will also be able to see Mercury and Jupiter in conjunction in the long night sky. On top of all that, the Ursid meteor shower will peak on the nights of December 21 and 22, adding shooting starts to the mix.
Winter Solstice 2018 Coincides With Both A Full Moon And Meteor Shower
Wild.
New Hampshire Police Arrested a Man for Being Mean to Them on the Internet
There’s a long history of law enforcement officials using defamation laws to silence their critics. Under English common law, the crime of “seditious libel” prohibited criticism of the government because it could lead to insurrection. And in the Sedition Act of 1798, Congress criminalized false statements criticizing the federal government.
But, as the Supreme Court recognized in a landmark 1964 decision, New York Times Company v. Sullivan, the First Amendment was meant to repudiate the whole notion of seditious libel.
…In its decision upholding the newspaper’s First Amendment rights, the Supreme Court recognized the “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
….In states that still have criminal defamation laws on the books, public officials still use them to prosecute their critics.
For example: The editor and publisher of a small newspaper in Kansas were convicted of criminal defamation after the paper published an article suggesting that the mayor lived in another county and was therefore ineligible for public office. …A Kansas man was charged with criminal defamation after he posted a yard sign criticizing his local government’s inaction on a water drainage problem; the lawsuit was dropped after the ACLU got involved.
…The Exeter Police Department’s criminal complaint against Frese is a textbook example of the use and abuse of criminal defamation laws. Someone who has had a history of trouble with the police went to the internet to air his grievances, and the police department itself decided to prosecute him[.]
This is absurd, and it’s a telling reminder of what happens when law enforcement is given the power to crack down on expression. It’s time we toss criminal defamation laws into the dustbin of history, where they belong.
hmmmm
Go, Wonder Woman! Movies led by women dominate box office, study finds
Films with women in top roles earn more than films with men in the lead, according to a new study.
…”The perception that it’s not good business to have female leads is not true,” CAA agent and researcher Christy Haubegger told The New York Times. “They’re a marketing asset.”
The data also found that the films with female leads passed the Bechdel test, which stipulates that two female characters have a conversation about something other than a man.
Go, Wonder Woman! Movies led by women dominate box office, study finds – CNET
hmmmm
Trump Quietly Starts Firing Servicemembers Living with HIV Just Before the Holidays
The plaintiffs received notification just days before Thanksgiving, denying their discharge appeals despite compliance with fitness assessments and medical treatment, as well as strong support from commanding officers.
…The lawsuit challenges the Pentagon’s discriminatory deployment policies, which prevent servicemembers living with HIV from deploying outside the United States without a waiver. For years, these policies have restricted the opportunities of servicemembers with HIV. Now these same deployment restrictions are being used to justify separating servicemembers solely based on HIV status.
The “Deploy or Get Out” policy, unveiled by the Trump administration in February 2018, directs the Pentagon to identify servicemembers who cannot be deployed to military posts outside of the United States for more than 12 consecutive months and to separate them from military service. Since current U.S. military policy identifies servicemembers living with HIV as non-deployable, they face immediate discharge under this Trump policy.
Trump Quietly Starts Firing Servicemembers Living with HIV Just Before the Holidays | Lambda Legal
sigh…
Trump administration defies court order by pushing abstinence, Democrats say
The Trump administration may be violating federal court orders that found it had unlawfully canceled a federal program to prevent teen pregnancies and shifted that funding to efforts focused primarily on abstinence.
…Earlier this year, federal courts ruled five times against the administration’s termination of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, an annual $101 million effort created under the Obama administration with bipartisan support in Congress to help teenagers avoid unwanted pregnancies. Later, courts in New York and Oregon found that redirecting the funds to abstinence programs that are not “proven effective through rigorous evaluation” is “unlawful.”
…Critics say the administration’s opposition to the TPPP is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to target programs intended to improve women’s reproductive health. This includes attempting to roll back a federal contraceptive coverage provision allowing women to avoid out-of-pocket costs for birth control and the targeting of the Title X family planning program, which has a disproportionate impact on low-income women.
Trump administration defies court order by pushing abstinence, Democrats say
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Two active shooter drills at an air force base turned into a panic about a real shooting
On an August morning at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the medical treatment facility was holding a mass casualty drill. Personnel acting as the injured streamed in.
Across the base, unbeknownst to the medical staff, a second active shooter drill was taking place, with a second set of people pretending to be injured.
Then a real injured person came on the scene: someone who worked at the medical facility hurt their ankle jogging on base, and called another employee screaming and crying.
…In the confusion, someone in the emergency room called the Base Defense Operations Center reporting a real active shooter. Events spiraled from there.
“A breakdown of communication led to a completely uncoordinated and ineffective combined response that could have resulted in serious injury or property damage,” the Air Force said in a report summarizing the findings of its investigation into the incident.
…Units from the Dayton area and the state of Ohio responded en masse.
At the same time, authorities on base requested a SWAT team.
…Air Force security went into the hospital. And when one airman encountered a locked door, five shots were fired.
Other people in the hospital heard those shots, and more calls went out to 911.
Though the incident commander quickly learned that Air Force security had fired the shots, 50 other civilian responders didn’t get the message, the report said, “breached the front door of the hospital and entered with weapons drawn.”
Two active shooter drills at an air force base turned into a panic about a real shooting – CNN
SNAFU?
Donald Trump Cancels Pay Raise for Most Federal Workers | Fortune
President Donald Trump said he’s canceling pay raises for most federal workers that were to take effect in January, citing “serious economic conditions” and the strain that the raises would place on the federal budget.
The move would undo a planned raise for most federal workers, including a 2.1% across-the-board increase as well as raises that account for higher costs of living in cities like San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C. The pay raises were intended to help federal salaries keep pace with inflation. Consumer prices have risen 2.9% in the 12 months through June.
In a letter informing Congress of the canceled raises, Trump said the raises would cost $25 billion.
…In April, the Federal Salary Council reported that the overall salaries of federal workers lags the salaries of similar workers in the private sector by about 32%.
Donald Trump Cancels Pay Raise for Most Federal Workers | Fortune
This bit of news slid by….
Texas board of education exposes how poorly we teach history
Texas has maintained a special sway over the content of textbooks that serve students across the United States. During the Cold War, Texas shaped the work of every major national textbook publisher. Today, one of every 10 public school students in the United States is a Texan, and publishers still don’t want to print books that can’t be used in the state.
…It was during the Cold War that Texas conservatives truly found their footing. The Daughters of the American Revolution allied with the recently formed John Birch Society and Texans for America to push the state board to fight communism. The board enthusiastically accepted the task, repeatedly mandating the censorship or diminishment in history textbooks of, among others, labor unions, Social Security, the United Nations, racial integration and the Supreme Court. It compelled the inclusion of “the Christian tradition,” the free market and conservative heroes Joseph McCarthy, Herbert Hoover, Douglas MacArthur and Chiang Kai-shek.
……Liberals, less cohesively organized, risked being charged with subversion if they spoke out. Texas officials made textbook authors and teachers sign loyalty oaths. Publishers quickly complied with the demands of the Texas board.
…More than the inclusion of any particular event or figure, it is this deeply simplistic, often anti-historical approach that presents the greatest obstacle to Texas students learning how the past can inform contemporary problems and debates.
…This approach fails to teach students about the often complicated, sometimes painful reality of our nation’s history, with its equal parts violence, dispossession and disenfranchisement and democracy, individual freedoms and justice. More broadly, it does startlingly little to engage or invite students into doing history. If students have tears in their eyes, they are unlikely tears of inspiration so much as boredom.
Texas board of education exposes how poorly we teach history [Opinion] – HoustonChronicle.com
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Texas Will Finally Teach That Slavery Was Main Cause of the Civil War
Since 1917, when state law authorized the board, which is often staffed by non-educators, to purchase all public school textbooks, it has maintained control of Texas’ public school curriculum. Lundstrom of the Tribune reports the board’s standards have turned into a battleground for conservatives and liberals over what students should be taught.
…The new curriculum still lists only one cause for the extremely fraught Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it cuts out many historical figures, including Francis Scott Key, who wrote the Star-Spangled Banner, African-American poet Phillis Wheatley, as well as several Confederate leaders. Under pressure, the board voted to keep Helen Keller and Hillary Clinton on a list of notable Americans that could be included in lessons, though Oprah Winfrey, Barry Goldwater and astronaut Ellen Ochoa got the nix. The board also voted to keep in a specific description of the defenders of the Alamo as “heroic.”
…Texas represents one-tenth of grade school and high school students in the U.S., and the textbooks written to Texas standards [are used in several] other states as well.
Texas Will Finally Teach That Slavery Was Main Cause of the Civil War | Smart News | Smithsonian
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Indigenous activist urges the Vatican to revoke 500-year-old documents
He described the doctrine as the idea that the first Christians to locate land inhabited by Indigenous peoples had a “right of domination” over those lands and peoples.
“We got in the habit of calling it the ‘doctrine of discovery,’ but what I’ve learned from studying those documents … is that it’s really the doctrine of domination,” he said.
Indigenous activist urges the Vatican to revoke 500-year-old documents | CBC Radio
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