What goes through my my mind when I read the news with my morning coffee. …Or for the Simon's Rockers in the group, this is my response journal.
As Twitter ramps up efforts to purge suspicious and fake accounts from its platform, …Trump [called for the deletion of two accounts]: the New York Times and the Washington Post, neither of whose accounts are fake or suspicious.
Trump asks Twitter to delete the New York Times’ account – Vox
sigh…
https://twitter.com/heath_harper/status/1014564890361544704
Nope, we in the peanut gallery still aren’t over this yet.
Must. Read. More.
Can’t. Get. Enough.
Col Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, issued a plea for supplies, writing: “Dear Alexa, we are pinned down and in urgent need of ammunition. Please send ASAP… but only if it qualifies for Amazon Prime’s free shipping.”
By the evening of 4 July, rumours of an end were nigh.
“Some people are saying that the war is over. Can this be true?” enquired @KuiperBelle. “Those of us in Texas remain sceptical, recalling the end of the first war, when the declaration of surrender got lost in the spam filter for two years.”
Second civil war letters: Alex Jones conspiracy ignites a parody conflict – BBC News
[Snicker]
Can’t. Get. Enough.
https://twitter.com/TrancewithMe/status/1014352779190546432
Funniest, Best Tweets About The Second Civil War Letters
Cannot get enough of these.
Oh, what we missed without wifi over the 4th!
The simple fact is that if Richard Nixon had had hundreds of radio stations in virtually every city or town in America of any consequence, with all of them running right-wing talk nonstop, it would have been difficult to impeach him.
If Nixon had had Fox News in addition to all that radio power, he could have safely and easily pulled an Andrew Jackson (who sneered at and ignored the Supreme Court’s order to stop the Trail of Tears) and refused to turn over his tapes when SCOTUS ordered it, thus avoiding both impeachment and resigning office.
…A progressive billionaire or two could own a nationwide radio network with virtually 100 percent penetration, and restore progressive voices to the nation’s largest stations.
….Those of great wealth aligned with the left in America, however, have always largely ignored media, probably because they grew up in an America with the Fairness Doctrine and before the 1996 Telecommunications Act and they always just assumed that “the truth will eventually be known.”
…The analysis looked at the vote from 1996 to 2004 in 9,256 American cities and towns where Fox was available on basic cable.
“They found,” reports Morin, “clear evidence of a Fox Effect among non-Republicans in the presidential and senate races, even after controlling for other factors including vote trends in similar nearby towns without access to Fox.”
The researchers added, Morin wrote, that, “[T]he Fox effect seems to [be] permanent and may be increasing.” And that was in 2006.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1786 to his close friend Dr. James Currie, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
…Literally hundreds of right-wing talk show hosts, both local and national, are broadcasting every day, all day, in every town or city in America.
Progressive voices, on the other hand, are few and far between; in most parts of America (and virtually all of rural America), the only radio signal that carries any progressive programming whatsoever is SiriusXM, which requires a subscription and special receiver — costs that are hard to bear among voters in the reddest states where Republican policies have destroyed unions and exported jobs overseas, thus leading to widespread poverty.
…If Tom Steyer wants to see Trump impeached, wants to see a semblance of balance on our airwaves, and wants a positive, healing, life-affirming progressive message available in every town in America, he should buy iHeartMedia tomorrow
Tom Steyer — you want Trump out? Buy Clear Channel | Salon.com
mmmhmmm
Before departing Pyongyang, Mr Pompeo told reporters that his conversations with senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol had been “productive,” conducted “in good faith” and that “a great deal of progress” had been made in some areas.
…The North provided a much harsher assessment of the talks, saying that the United States betrayed the spirit of last month’s summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim by making “one-sided and robber-like” demands on “CVID,” or the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea.
It said the outcome of the follow-up talks was “very concerning” because it has led to a “dangerous phase that might rattle our willingness for denuclearisation that had been firm.”
…North Korea said Saturday that high-level talks with a US delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were “regrettable” and accused Washington of trying to unilaterally pressure the country into abandoning its nukes.
North Korea says talks with Mike Pompeo were ‘regrettable’
hmmm
Just one year ago, Andrew Wheeler worked as one of the coal industry’s most powerful lobbyists, serving as coal baron Bob Murray’s Capitol Hill muscle, challenging environmental regulations and casting doubt on the science behind climate change.
…Pruitt left behind a considerable legacy of halting critical regulations, reshaping the EPA’s science advisory boards and provoking an exodus of talent from the agency that could take decades to reverse. Yet roughly one-third of the regulatory rollbacks Pruitt attempted were halted by legal challenges ― setbacks widely attributed to his brash style and overeagerness to antagonize environmentalists. Still, he proposed some of the most drastic changes to the agency in his final months.
In April he proposed gutting auto emissions standards, which would essentially eliminate the only remaining major federal rule to curb greenhouse gases. Weeks later, he put forward a “transparency” rule that would dramatically limit the public health studies the EPA may use when writing regulations. By June, Pruitt kicked the effort up a notch, issuing a formal notice to solicit ideas on how the agency performs regulatory cost-benefit analyses, in a move widely seen as a giveaway to industry polluters, and proposed a regulation to replace a landmark Obama-era rule protecting drinking water for 117 million Americans
Last year, Wheeler served as a lobbyist for Energy Fuels Resources, a uranium mining company with operations just outside Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Last July, Wheeler and a top executive from the firm met with top Interior Department officials to discuss Bears Ears the same week Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended that President Donald Trump dramatically shrink the monument, according to agency calendars. Pruitt’s flashy efforts to bolster the coal industry came after repeated meetings with Murray, the outspoken mining magnate who runs Murray Energy. Wheeler, by contrast, worked for him until mid-2017, helping deliver the Trump administration a so-called action plan that included a federal bailout of coal-fired plants, the repeal of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and a challenge to the 2009 EPA endangerment finding that determined carbon dioxide pollution poses a risk to public health.
Scott Pruitt’s Replacement Is Even Worse
sigh…
On Friday, in the latest sign of disarray in the administration, officials admitted in court that they may miss a judge’s Tuesday deadline to reunite children under 5 with their parents.
…But hopes that the reunions would be swift were dashed in court on Friday and by other reports of a badly malfunctioning system that was overwhelmed when the President ordered a so-called zero tolerance policy that led to separations with no plan for dealing with the kids.
Some parents who have gone through immigration procedures have told CNN they don’t know how to get in touch with their kids — despite a court deadline that expired Friday for the administration to at least put parents in telephone touch with their offspring.
One Guatemalan woman called Lesvia, who got out of a detention center in Texas on Thursday, told CNN’s Miguel Marquez on Friday that she received no answers about the whereabouts of her 10-year-old son, who she last saw on May 19.
…The administration has yet to tell Americans exactly how many kids are still in custody, how long they will remain split from their parents and when this grim chapter of modern political history will end.
…Trump is also a master of distraction, and he has a polished record of creating new political storms to disguise scandals and dramas that could damage him politically.
He also got lucky. The retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and a vacancy that could cement the court’s ideological balance for a generation have captured the political imagination of Washington for over a week.
Next week, Trump will leave for a foreign trip packed with high-profile photo-ops, which includes a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that is likely to further shove the separations issue into the background.
Yet all this time, several thousand kids are wondering when they will see their parents again.
…Doubts about the Trump administration’s capacity to reunite children and their parents are being exacerbated by its unwillingness or inability to publicly describe the scale of the problem or to explain how much progress it is making toward ending it.
On Thursday, Azar said that “under 3,000” children from separated families were in custody.
On Friday in a court filing, HHS said that number included “approximately” 101 kids under 5.
But there is no certainty over how many kids are still separated from their parents and how many families have been reunited — let alone the issue of how the government will deal with new families who cross the border and who won’t be separated but will still presumably be treated as criminals under the zero tolerance policy.
Trump administration separated families. Reuniting them is a mess. – CNNPolitics
hmmmm
US District Judge Dana Sabraw laid out a series of deadlines in a ruling last week. By Friday, officials must make sure every separated parent has a way to contact their child. By July 10, children younger than 5 must be reunited with their parents. And by July 26, all children should be reunited with their parents.
…Exactly how many kids from separated families are in custody? The last time officials released an official tally on this was June 26. Thursday, Azar said the number was “under 3,000” but added that reviews were ongoing and he could not provide more precise figure. This is an important number because — since officials have declined to specify the total number of families that have been reunited — looking at the number of children in custody is one of the few ways for the public to have any sense of whether reunions are happening, and how quickly.
…Officials haven’t disclosed how many parents from separated families were deported. But in court on Friday, Fabian revealed details about one subset: 19 parents of children younger than 5 were deported, she said.
…Parents have also been offered the option to sign voluntary departure orders to speed up their cases even if they still have other legal options — and told they’ll be reunited with their children before they are deported if they do.
Immigrant advocacy groups say they’re concerned that some parents may have been coerced or may have signed documents they didn’t understand.
The government hasn’t answered key questions on family separations – CNNPolitics
Agggggggggggggggggh
While New York is unique in relying solely on one test, the long-simmering disagreements over definitions of merit, excellence, and equity resonate more broadly. Selective public high schools exist in dozens of states from Virginia to Illinois.
…The consideration of racial diversity in admissions is front and center again on the national stage as well. Harvard University is facing a lawsuit alleging discrimination against Asian-Americans. And on Tuesday, the US Departments of Education and Justice announced a rollback of a variety of Obama-era guidance around affirmative action.
…Some in New York have suggested adding more specialized high schools, as well as changing the approach to gifted education. Similar questions in Boston have led the district to begin phasing out third-grade testing and tracking of students into “advanced work” classes – in favor of a system called Excellence for All.
‘Keep the test!’ A debate flares over exam-based public high schools. – CSMonitor.com
hmmm
In May, it identified and challenged more than 9.9 million “potentially spammy” or automated accounts per week, compared with 6.4 million in December 2017.
Twitter suspends over 70 million accounts in two months: Washington Post | Reuters
hmmm
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (U.S.C.I.S.) had formed a task force in order to identify people who lied on their citizenship applications and to denaturalize them.
…Historically, denaturalization has been an exceedingly rare occurrence, for good reason: by the time a person is naturalized, she has lived in this country for a number of years and has passed the hurdles of obtaining entry, legal permanent residency, and, finally, citizenship. The conceit of naturalization is that it makes an immigrant not only equal to natural-born citizens but indistinguishable from them. So denaturalization, much like the process of stripping a natural-born American of citizenship, has been an extraordinary procedure reserved for very serious cases, mostly those of war criminals.
…The creation of the task force itself is undoing the naturalization of the more than twenty million naturalized citizens in the American population by taking away their assumption of permanence. All of them—all of us—are second-class citizens now. The President calls immigrants “animals.” The Attorney General presumes that everyone crossing the border—or at least the southern border—is a criminal.
…Question 26 on the green-card application, for example, reads, “Have you EVER committed a crime of any kind (even if you were not arrested, cited, charged with, or tried for that crime)?” (Emphasis in the original.) The question does not specify whether it refers to a crime under current U.S. law or the laws of the country in which the crime might have been committed. In the Soviet Union of my youth, it was illegal to possess foreign currency or to spend the night anywhere you were not registered to live. In more than seventy countries, same-sex sexual activity is still illegal. On closer inspection, just about every naturalized citizen might look like an outlaw, or a liar.
In America, Naturalized Citizens No Longer Have an Assumption of Permanence | The New Yorker
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Single members might choose to live in a house with a family, or live in a house with other single members. Each member has a spiritual guide, called a “head.” The regional female leaders were called “handmaids” before the Margaret Atwood novel and subsequent TV series made that word too charged, and are now called “women leaders,” said Craig Lent, People of Praise’s overall coordinator, a position akin to chairman of the board. The coordinator is elected by the board to a single, six-year term.
…A founding member, Adrian Reimers, left People of Praise and wrote a manuscript that paints the group in its early years as having a powerful — in his view, dangerous — influence over its members. The 1997 document talks about how people who leave are described as having a “quitting spirit” and that leaving the group is like adultery.
Coral Anika Theill told the National Catholic Reporter that her five-year stint in the group in Oregon “still traumatizes me to this day.” She said she suffered under conservative ideology, strict gender-role divisions that emphasized women’s submission, and secrecy toward outsiders.
…Members contribute at least 5 percent of their gross income to the community, Lent said. Their commitment also may mean choosing to not take a promotion or other job in a city that does not have a People of Praise branch.
Lent said the group is politically and theologically diverse. Asked if members hold particular views about hot-button issues like abortion and gender, he said they believe life begins at conception, and that men are the leaders of the home.
oy…..
Some immigrant U.S. Army reservists and recruits who enlisted in the military with a promised path to citizenship are being abruptly discharged, the Associated Press has learned.
…The AP was unable to quantify how many men and women who enlisted through the special recruitment program have been booted from the Army, but immigration attorneys say they know of more than 40 who have been discharged or whose status has become questionable, jeopardizing their futures.
…Eligible recruits are required to have legal status in the U.S., such as a student visa, before enlisting. More than 5,000 immigrants were recruited into the program in 2016, and an estimated 10,000 are currently serving. Most go the Army, but some also go to the other military branches.
To become citizens, the service members need an honorable service designation, which can come after even just a few days at boot camp. But the recently discharged service members have had their basic training delayed, so they can’t be naturalized.
Margaret Stock, an Alaska-based immigration attorney and a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who helped create the immigrant recruitment program, said she’s been inundated over the past several days by recruits who have been abruptly discharged.
All had signed enlistment contracts and taken an Army oath, Stock said. Many were reservists who had been attending unit drills, receiving pay and undergoing training, while others had been in a “delayed entry” program, she said.
“Immigrants have been serving in the Army since 1775,” Stock said. “We wouldn’t have won the revolution without immigrants. And we’re not going to win the global war on terrorism today without immigrants.”
…The AP interviewed Calixto and recruits from Pakistan and Iran, all of whom said they were devastated by their unexpected discharges.
“Now the great feeling I had when I enlisted is going down the drain,” said Calixto, 28. “I don’t understand why this is happening.”
In hopes of undoing the discharge, he filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., last week alleging the Defense Department hadn’t given him a chance to defend himself or appeal. He said he was given no specific grounds other than “personnel security.”
Calixto, who lives in Massachusetts and came to the U.S. when he was 12, said in an email interview arranged through his attorney that he joined the Army out of patriotism.
In the suit, Calixto said he learned he was being kicked out soon after he was promoted to private second class.
The Pakistani service member who spoke to the AP said he learned in a phone call a few weeks ago that his military career was over.
“There were so many tears in my eyes that my hands couldn’t move fast enough to wipe them away,” he said. “I was devastated, because I love the U.S. and was so honored to be able to serve this great country.”
He asked that his name be withheld because he fears he might be forced to return to Pakistan, where he could face danger as a former U.S. Army enlistee.
Portions of the 22-year-old’s military file reviewed by the AP said he was so deeply loyal to the U.S. that his relationships with his family and fiancee in Pakistan would not make him a security threat. Nonetheless, the documents show the Army cited those foreign ties as a concern.
…Non-U.S. citizens have served in the military since the Revolutionary War, when Continental soldiers included Irish, French and Germans. The U.S. recruited Filipino nationals to serve in the Navy in the 1940s, and worked to enlist Eastern Europeans in the military over the next decade, according to the Defense Department.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly 110,000 members of the Armed Forces have gained citizenship by serving in the U.S. military, according to the Defense Department.
Many service members recruited through the program have proven to be exemplary. In 2012, then-Sgt. Saral K. Shrestha, originally from Nepal, was named U.S. Army Soldier of the Year.
In general, the immigrant recruits have been more cost-effective, outperforming their fellow soldiers in the areas of attrition, performance, education and promotions, according to a recently released review by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research institution.
AP NewsBreak: US Army quietly discharging immigrant recruits
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr
A former Kentucky campaign official for President Donald Trump is due in court on Friday after being charged with human trafficking in the U.S. southern state.
Timothy Nolan, a retired district court judge, was arrested last month and charged with forcing a minor to engage in commercial sex around August 2016.
He is also charged with inducing a minor to engage in sexual activity and giving alcohol to a minor, according to the complaint.
Ex-Trump campaign official charged with human trafficking | Reuters
Imagine the uproar if another Presidential candidate was connected to someone like this. No uproar here. Just crickets. Enabled by media from left to right on the spectrum. Just crickets.
The number of migrants dying from extreme heat on the U.S.-Mexico border rose 55 percent in the past nine months after an increase in unaccompanied children and families trying to enter the United States illegally, the U.S. government said on Monday.
Heat-related deaths, the main cause of migrant fatalities on the U.S. southwest border, rose to 48, up from 31 over the same period in 2017, said U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora.
…The death toll is expected to rise in the triple-digit heat of summer months as vulnerable, unacclimatized immigrants attempt to cross harsh environments, putting border fatalities on track for a year-on-year increase in 2018, Zamora said.
…Humanitarian groups such as San Diego-based Border Angels say the main cause of rising deaths is tighter border security and law enforcement, such as the recent imposition of a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossers. That has prompted migrants to make long treks through hostile terrain via remote crossing points.
…Until four years ago, the vast majority of migrants arrested at the border were Mexicans. With improved economic conditions in Mexico, their number has fallen, as have overall arrests on the border, which dropped to 303,916 in 2017, down 26 percent from 2016, according to Border Patrol data.
Immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador now top the list of people arrested at the southern border as gun and gang-related violence drives an exodus from those countries, according to U.S. government data.
…“You really know someone is leaving a bad situation if they’re willing to risk their lives and their children’s’ lives for a chance to live,” said Cordero, 36, a water drop leader.
Morones suspects Border Patrol agents of destroying the water supplies left by his group. One such act was caught on video in Arizona by another humanitarian group called No More Deaths.
U.S. border deaths rise on family, child migrants: patrol agency | Reuters
hmmm
…The Thomson Reuters Foundation released its results Tuesday of a survey of 550 experts on women’s issues, finding India to be the most dangerous nation for sexual violence against women, as well as human trafficking for domestic work, forced labor, forced marriage and sexual slavery, among other reasons.
…War-torn Afghanistan ranked second, as the worst country for non-sexual violence against women, which includes conflict-related violence and domestic abuse. It also ranked second worst for access to healthcare and access to economic resources and discrimination.
…Syria, where a war has raged for more than seven years, ranked third on the list. The country is considered the second-most dangerous in terms of sexual violence and access to healthcare. Syria also tied for third with the United States in terms of sexual violence and harassment.
…The foundation’s survey was conducted after the #MeToo campaign emerged in October 2017. The large number of women alleging sexual misconduct since then is the reason the US has been included on the list.
India most dangerous country for women, US ranks 10th in survey – CNN
hmmm
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