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welcome to reality trivia
reality is the state of things as they actually exist
november 16, 2018
real news today
november 16, 2018
*COPS EVACUATE NEIGHBORHOOD AFTER FINDING ‘CLANDESTINE LABORATORY’ AT HOME OF WISCONSIN NEO-NAZI ARRESTED FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE(Amerikkkans)
*The egregious lie Americans tell themselves
(Reality)
*TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PLOTS COSTLY PRIVATE-CARE EXPANSION FOR VETERANS
(Payback)
*Chuck Schumer Caved to Facebook and Donald Trump. He Shouldn’t Lead Senate Democrats.
(Sellouts)
*Parents Deliver Ashes of Diabetic Children to Price-Gouging Insulin Manufacturer
(Corporate Criminals)
*House Republicans, Terrible Before the Midterms, Are Now Much Worse
(GOP Politics)
*Neo-Confederates have failed for the past 150 years. Now, they have a new ally.
(White Supremacy)
*Thousands told to vacate North Carolina apartments in second wave of people displaced by Florence
(America)
*Toxic herbicide found in many Texans’ drinking water
(ENVIRONMENT)
*‘Incredibly disturbing’: Former reserve deputy gets probation for child porn — after facing potential life term in prison(Gestapo USA)
*DeVos proposes overhaul to campus sexual misconduct rules
(Education)
*Energy company takes stance against Trump effort to rollback mercury rule
(Environment)
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
comment/tweet of the day
defeating republicans is akind to throwing out the garbage
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WELCOME TO THE PATRIARCHY, @Ocasio2018
So this is the Washington welcome for America's youngest woman ever elected to Congress: mistaken for a spouse, then an intern, then having some disgusting creep comment on her outfit. And it's still November.
#OcasioCortez
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Michael Avenatti✔
@MichaelAvenatti
Whomever wrote and approved that TMZ article better get their checkbook ready because it was purposely malicious and false. It was designed to harm Lisa, me and my family and we are going expose TMZ for what they did. No journalist should rely on or defend garbage like that.
6:56 AM - Nov 16, 2018
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Democrat Stacey Abrams Ends Bid For Georgia Governor, Decrying 'Suppression'
November 16, 20185:15 PM ET
Jessica Taylor at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., July 25, 2018.
Republican Brian Kemp will be the next governor of Georgia, with Democrat Stacey Abrams conceding Friday afternoon following a bitter 10-day battle since election day last week.
The contest between the two had been one of the most closely-watched — and bitter — of the cycle. Abrams, who was vying to become the first black woman ever elected governor in U.S. history, had alleged throughout the campaign that Kemp, who stepped down as secretary of state after the election, had been working to disenfranchise minority voters and suppress new registrations.
Those charges spilled out well beyond Nov. 6, with the race too close to call. Abrams had been fighting to include additional provisional and absentee ballots into the count, hoping that could help her close the roughly 18,000 vote deficit she needed to force a runoff next month.
But with a 5 p.m. Friday deadline for all of Georgia's counties to certify their election results, a path for Abrams was looking slim. It's now up to interim secretary of state Robyn Crittenden to certify the state's results.
The Associated Press reported that the Abrams campaign had been considering additional legal challenges, including one before the state Supreme Court that was precipitated on a provision allowing losing candidate to challenge results based on "misconduct, fraud or irregularities ... sufficient to change or place in doubt the results."
Kemp's campaign had long maintained they would be victorious and were preparing for a transition. They ripped Abrams for her refusal to concede, calling it a "publicity stunt" and "temper tantrum."
But Abrams had vowed to press on for nearly two weeks, with her campaign framing it as a much bigger fight for voting rights, especially among minority voters.
And ultimately Abrams, the former state House minority leader, came much closer than any Georgia Democrat has in decades of flipping either the governor's mansion or a Senate seat, despite some other high-profile efforts. With the rapidly diversifying and growing Atlanta suburbs, Democrats have been arguing the state could turn blue, but this is the closest they've gotten to making that dream a reality.
The contest between the two had been one of the most closely-watched — and bitter — of the cycle. Abrams, who was vying to become the first black woman ever elected governor in U.S. history, had alleged throughout the campaign that Kemp, who stepped down as secretary of state after the election, had been working to disenfranchise minority voters and suppress new registrations.
Those charges spilled out well beyond Nov. 6, with the race too close to call. Abrams had been fighting to include additional provisional and absentee ballots into the count, hoping that could help her close the roughly 18,000 vote deficit she needed to force a runoff next month.
But with a 5 p.m. Friday deadline for all of Georgia's counties to certify their election results, a path for Abrams was looking slim. It's now up to interim secretary of state Robyn Crittenden to certify the state's results.
The Associated Press reported that the Abrams campaign had been considering additional legal challenges, including one before the state Supreme Court that was precipitated on a provision allowing losing candidate to challenge results based on "misconduct, fraud or irregularities ... sufficient to change or place in doubt the results."
Kemp's campaign had long maintained they would be victorious and were preparing for a transition. They ripped Abrams for her refusal to concede, calling it a "publicity stunt" and "temper tantrum."
But Abrams had vowed to press on for nearly two weeks, with her campaign framing it as a much bigger fight for voting rights, especially among minority voters.
And ultimately Abrams, the former state House minority leader, came much closer than any Georgia Democrat has in decades of flipping either the governor's mansion or a Senate seat, despite some other high-profile efforts. With the rapidly diversifying and growing Atlanta suburbs, Democrats have been arguing the state could turn blue, but this is the closest they've gotten to making that dream a reality.
Veterans aren’t getting their GI Bill payments — because VA’s 50-year-old computer system broke
Alex Horton washington post
11/15/18
Daniel Gorman knows what it’s like to return from war, and he wants to help fellow veterans come home, too: The former sailor turned New York National Guardsman is finishing a graduate degree in social work at Fordham University.
But the Department of Veterans Affairs has thrown his fall semester into chaos by underpaying him without notice or explanation — making him one veteran among potentially tens of thousands on the GI Bill who have watched their bank accounts dwindle because of the agency’s ongoing technology failures.
“I can’t afford rent. I can’t afford groceries. It’s a lot of emotional strain and aggravation,” Gorman, an Iraq War veteran, said. He added: “I’m supposed to graduate in May 2019, but I don’t know if that’s feasible if this persists.”
The problems began this summer when VA’s benefit processing system buckled under complex new formulas for GI Bill students. As a result, scores of veterans waited weeks or months to be paid, and have fallen victim to the agency’s decades-old technology that advocates and lawmakers have warned for months would do precisely what it did — fail.
Now some veterans are still struggling to overcome financial straits after they took out loans or put expenses on credit cards. And advocates are concerned veterans are taking on financial burdens on top of other challenges, such as mental health and balancing school with family.
And there is concern VA won’t have the problems straightened out ahead of the spring semester, either.
Many veterans still haven’t received payments. Others, like Gorman, have been underpaid. He was set to receive $631 a month while studying full-time. Just $269 arrived Nov. 1 — a hard hit in New York City, given that his course load and unpaid internship make it difficult to work even part time.
The House Veterans' Affairs Committee is scheduled to grill VA officials over the problem Thursday.
"This is — to be kind — a train wreck,” said Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), the committee’s chairman, NBC reported. “This discussion started over a year ago.”
VA spokesman Curt Cashour said Tuesday that:
The issue stems from two changes to how claims are processed, Cashour said. Payments are now tied to campus Zip codes, eliminating many overpayments. Other recalculations were designed to offset costs of additional education programs.
But those formulas proved too much for VA systems to handle.
“Essentially, the law requires a 50-year-old IT platform that was designed to do the equivalent of basic math to instead perform something akin to calculus in short order,” Cashour said.
In July, VA noted a series of technology challenges but it appeared confident its systems could handle the new, complicated rules. “We have a handful of defects left,” Robert Worley, the VA official who oversees veterans education benefits, assured the House VA committee.
The title of the hearing — “Is VA Ready for August 1st?” — reflected a concern over the hundreds of thousands of veterans heading to school.
It was also a question.
“The resounding answer was no,” said Kristofer Goldsmith, the assistant director of policy at Vietnam Veterans of America.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie acknowledged the widespread failures in a Sept. 27 hearing, telling lawmakers that “even something as simple as changing the percentages broke the system.”
VA, which received nearly $200 billion in funding this year, delayed implementation until it could solve its issues.
Problems have persisted. Roe told Wilkie in a Nov. 5 letter that his staff’s visit to a VA processing center yielded disturbing findings. Crashes and latency problems over six months wasted 16,890 man hours, according to the letter.
That totals nearly two years.
When asked why VA relies on ancient computer systems, Cashour pointed to the Veterans' Affairs committees, suggesting it was a funding issue.
“It’s laughable that VA is blaming Congress for its IT issues, especially given the fact that Congress just passed the largest VA budget in history,” said Molly Jenkins, a House VA committee spokeswoman, calling the agency’s IT failures “inexcusable, decades long, and well documented."
VA was allotted $30 million to improve its system, Jenkins said, adding that VA was six months late with a required progress update.
"[VA] sounded no alarms in their May 2018 report that there would be any delays at all,” Jenkins said.
Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm, helped implement the processing system and will also testify before Congress on Thursday. The company and VA declined to discuss their role, or whether they were paid on time for their work.
Associated costs have soared. VA marshaled a battalion of 202 additional employees to process education claims at a cost of $4.5 million since August, Stars and Stripes reported, though the problems remain unsolved.
Veterans have left scores of angry messages on VA social media channels.
“How long can this take to fix?” Jon Shirah asked on the agency’s GI Bill Facebook page on Nov. 5. ″It’s been over 2 months without pay.”
A staffer for the American Legion, rather than VA, contacted Shirah to help.
Advocates have criticized VA for waiting months to alert veterans of the problem and suggest VA could have warned veterans to prepare for financial challenges.
VA issued an alert on Oct. 10, apologizing for delays and conceding it caused “financial hardship” for veterans. The bulletin also included a plea to universities not to penalize veterans for late payments.
VA’s announcements were news to former Navy helicopter pilot Stephanie Erwin, now a doctoral candidate at George Washington University. She first heard from her school — not VA — that massive problems were occurring.
Her housing payments of around $2,300 did not show up for two months. She relied on savings to stay afloat. “A lot of veterans are hesitant to raise their hand and ask for help,” she said.
But her savings dwindled, and grants awarded to her were locked by the school because VA had not paid her tuition. Those grants helped pay for food and medical insurance. Erwin asked for help from the American Legion on Nov. 5.
VA issued her payments around Veterans Day.
Cashour, the VA spokesman, would not say whether the agency is prepared for the spring semester.
“I don’t have indication VA is ready at all,” Goldsmith said, frustrated with the potential with more uncertainty. “I don’t think the American people intended the GI Bill to feel like a deployment.”
But the Department of Veterans Affairs has thrown his fall semester into chaos by underpaying him without notice or explanation — making him one veteran among potentially tens of thousands on the GI Bill who have watched their bank accounts dwindle because of the agency’s ongoing technology failures.
“I can’t afford rent. I can’t afford groceries. It’s a lot of emotional strain and aggravation,” Gorman, an Iraq War veteran, said. He added: “I’m supposed to graduate in May 2019, but I don’t know if that’s feasible if this persists.”
The problems began this summer when VA’s benefit processing system buckled under complex new formulas for GI Bill students. As a result, scores of veterans waited weeks or months to be paid, and have fallen victim to the agency’s decades-old technology that advocates and lawmakers have warned for months would do precisely what it did — fail.
Now some veterans are still struggling to overcome financial straits after they took out loans or put expenses on credit cards. And advocates are concerned veterans are taking on financial burdens on top of other challenges, such as mental health and balancing school with family.
And there is concern VA won’t have the problems straightened out ahead of the spring semester, either.
Many veterans still haven’t received payments. Others, like Gorman, have been underpaid. He was set to receive $631 a month while studying full-time. Just $269 arrived Nov. 1 — a hard hit in New York City, given that his course load and unpaid internship make it difficult to work even part time.
The House Veterans' Affairs Committee is scheduled to grill VA officials over the problem Thursday.
"This is — to be kind — a train wreck,” said Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), the committee’s chairman, NBC reported. “This discussion started over a year ago.”
VA spokesman Curt Cashour said Tuesday that:
- 895 students have waited longer than two months; they could be missing in the range of $1,500 to $6,000 or more in expected payments.
- Nearly 60,000 total claims remain.
- In October alone, about 1,000 students under financial hardship called a VA hotline for immediate help.
- About 450,000 veterans have been affected, though VA hasn’t explained the depth of their issues.
The issue stems from two changes to how claims are processed, Cashour said. Payments are now tied to campus Zip codes, eliminating many overpayments. Other recalculations were designed to offset costs of additional education programs.
But those formulas proved too much for VA systems to handle.
“Essentially, the law requires a 50-year-old IT platform that was designed to do the equivalent of basic math to instead perform something akin to calculus in short order,” Cashour said.
In July, VA noted a series of technology challenges but it appeared confident its systems could handle the new, complicated rules. “We have a handful of defects left,” Robert Worley, the VA official who oversees veterans education benefits, assured the House VA committee.
The title of the hearing — “Is VA Ready for August 1st?” — reflected a concern over the hundreds of thousands of veterans heading to school.
It was also a question.
“The resounding answer was no,” said Kristofer Goldsmith, the assistant director of policy at Vietnam Veterans of America.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie acknowledged the widespread failures in a Sept. 27 hearing, telling lawmakers that “even something as simple as changing the percentages broke the system.”
VA, which received nearly $200 billion in funding this year, delayed implementation until it could solve its issues.
Problems have persisted. Roe told Wilkie in a Nov. 5 letter that his staff’s visit to a VA processing center yielded disturbing findings. Crashes and latency problems over six months wasted 16,890 man hours, according to the letter.
That totals nearly two years.
When asked why VA relies on ancient computer systems, Cashour pointed to the Veterans' Affairs committees, suggesting it was a funding issue.
“It’s laughable that VA is blaming Congress for its IT issues, especially given the fact that Congress just passed the largest VA budget in history,” said Molly Jenkins, a House VA committee spokeswoman, calling the agency’s IT failures “inexcusable, decades long, and well documented."
VA was allotted $30 million to improve its system, Jenkins said, adding that VA was six months late with a required progress update.
"[VA] sounded no alarms in their May 2018 report that there would be any delays at all,” Jenkins said.
Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm, helped implement the processing system and will also testify before Congress on Thursday. The company and VA declined to discuss their role, or whether they were paid on time for their work.
Associated costs have soared. VA marshaled a battalion of 202 additional employees to process education claims at a cost of $4.5 million since August, Stars and Stripes reported, though the problems remain unsolved.
Veterans have left scores of angry messages on VA social media channels.
“How long can this take to fix?” Jon Shirah asked on the agency’s GI Bill Facebook page on Nov. 5. ″It’s been over 2 months without pay.”
A staffer for the American Legion, rather than VA, contacted Shirah to help.
Advocates have criticized VA for waiting months to alert veterans of the problem and suggest VA could have warned veterans to prepare for financial challenges.
VA issued an alert on Oct. 10, apologizing for delays and conceding it caused “financial hardship” for veterans. The bulletin also included a plea to universities not to penalize veterans for late payments.
VA’s announcements were news to former Navy helicopter pilot Stephanie Erwin, now a doctoral candidate at George Washington University. She first heard from her school — not VA — that massive problems were occurring.
Her housing payments of around $2,300 did not show up for two months. She relied on savings to stay afloat. “A lot of veterans are hesitant to raise their hand and ask for help,” she said.
But her savings dwindled, and grants awarded to her were locked by the school because VA had not paid her tuition. Those grants helped pay for food and medical insurance. Erwin asked for help from the American Legion on Nov. 5.
VA issued her payments around Veterans Day.
Cashour, the VA spokesman, would not say whether the agency is prepared for the spring semester.
“I don’t have indication VA is ready at all,” Goldsmith said, frustrated with the potential with more uncertainty. “I don’t think the American people intended the GI Bill to feel like a deployment.”
This book was beloved by evangelical Christians and abstinence-only educators — but the author now says it's harmful bunk
The anti-sex puritanism of the religious right has done serious harm to a generation.
By Alex Henderson / AlterNet
November 16, 2018, 10:41 AM GMT
If the road to hell really is paved with the finest of intentions, one of the best examples is the right-wing anti-sex chastity movement—which has gone hand in hand with abstinence-only sex education in the Bible Belt. The data clearly shows that sexually liberal countries like the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway actually have much lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies than the U.S. Regardless, Joshua Harris’ 1997 anti-sex book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” was a favorite in right-wing evangelical circles. But in a new Washington Post op-ed, Christine Emba explains how badly debunked the book has been in recent years—so debunked that even Harris is now distancing himself from it.
“I Kissed Dating Goodbye” was a major hit in far-right Christian fundamentalist circles when it came out 21 years ago. Harris was a young Gen-X-er at the time, and his book was hailed as a manifesto of chastity by evangelical X-ers who swore off dating and premarital sex.
But in the last few years, Emba notes, Harris’ late 1990s readers have reconsidered the chastity movement and now sees its flaws. These days, Emba notes, Harris’ old admirers realize that his book “stunted their relationships, skewed their views of marriage and sexuality or otherwise changed their lives for the worse.”
Harris himself has become critical of his book. On his website, the author officially stated, “While I stand by my book’s call to sincerely love others, my thinking has changed significantly in the past 20 years. I no longer agree with its central idea that dating should be avoided…. In light of the flaws I now see in ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye,’ I think it’s best to discontinue its publication.”
Emba, in her op-ed, views “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” as exemplary of so many things that are flawed in right-wing dogma. Emba asserts, “Bad marriage? You must have screwed around as a teen. Still in public housing? Should have gotten a better job. The if/then mindset doesn’t take into account how much is actually out of our personal control, or the systemic forces — race, class, family history — that might hold someone back.”
Emba concludes, “Let the implosion of a cultural touchstone like ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’ serve as a lesson, or at least a warning. The next time we’re tempted toward too-formulaic thinking, we’ll know to take it with a grain of salt. After all, life is rarely so pure.”
“I Kissed Dating Goodbye” was a major hit in far-right Christian fundamentalist circles when it came out 21 years ago. Harris was a young Gen-X-er at the time, and his book was hailed as a manifesto of chastity by evangelical X-ers who swore off dating and premarital sex.
But in the last few years, Emba notes, Harris’ late 1990s readers have reconsidered the chastity movement and now sees its flaws. These days, Emba notes, Harris’ old admirers realize that his book “stunted their relationships, skewed their views of marriage and sexuality or otherwise changed their lives for the worse.”
Harris himself has become critical of his book. On his website, the author officially stated, “While I stand by my book’s call to sincerely love others, my thinking has changed significantly in the past 20 years. I no longer agree with its central idea that dating should be avoided…. In light of the flaws I now see in ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye,’ I think it’s best to discontinue its publication.”
Emba, in her op-ed, views “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” as exemplary of so many things that are flawed in right-wing dogma. Emba asserts, “Bad marriage? You must have screwed around as a teen. Still in public housing? Should have gotten a better job. The if/then mindset doesn’t take into account how much is actually out of our personal control, or the systemic forces — race, class, family history — that might hold someone back.”
Emba concludes, “Let the implosion of a cultural touchstone like ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’ serve as a lesson, or at least a warning. The next time we’re tempted toward too-formulaic thinking, we’ll know to take it with a grain of salt. After all, life is rarely so pure.”
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Betsy DeVos costing taxpayers nearly $20 million for armed security after she was greeted on the job by hecklers
Travis Gettys - raw story
16 NOV 2018 AT 06:02 ET
After two protesters blocked her path during a visit to a Washington, D.C., middle school, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been receiving round-the-clock security from the U.S. Marshals Service.
The unusual security arrangement cost taxpayers $5.3 million last year and $6.8 million this year, with an estimated cost of $7.74 million for next year, reported NBC News.
The Department of Education will ultimately reimburse the $19.84 million estimated cost, which far exceeds the $3.5 million spent on security for former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, who resigned in July over his lavish spending habits.
Cabinet secretaries typically are protected by security arranged by internal enforcement units in their departments, but DeVos has been under the unusual protection arrangement since she was greeted by hecklers a few days after her confirmation.
About three dozen protesters greeted DeVos on Feb. 10, 2017, as she attempted to visit Jefferson Academy, and two of the protesters stood alongside a stairway and created a barrier with their arms by gripping the opposite railing.
DeVos and a man accompanying her briefly tried to pass but gave up and left the school grounds in a waiting town car.
It’s not clear who made the request for additional security, but former Attorney General Jeff Sessions granted the protection on February 13, 2017 — six days after her controversial confirmation as education secretary.
“The order was issued after the Department of Education contacted administration officials regarding threats received by the Secretary of Education,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “The U.S.M.S. was identified to assist in this area based on its expertise and long experience providing executive protection.”
The U.S. Marshals Service operates within the Justice Department and typically protects federal judges and apprehends federal fugitives, as well as administration of the witness protection program.
A spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment on the threats against DeVos, but a former spokeswoman for one of her predecessors said the former education secretary Arne Duncan had received death threats but did not use Marshals’ protection.
Education Department spokeswoman Liz Hill said DeVos had not personally requested the protection, and she also declined to comment on the threats.
NBC News and the watchdog group American Oversight determined that DeVos spent less than 4 percent of her time visiting traditional public schools in the school year that began in September 2017.
The unusual security arrangement cost taxpayers $5.3 million last year and $6.8 million this year, with an estimated cost of $7.74 million for next year, reported NBC News.
The Department of Education will ultimately reimburse the $19.84 million estimated cost, which far exceeds the $3.5 million spent on security for former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, who resigned in July over his lavish spending habits.
Cabinet secretaries typically are protected by security arranged by internal enforcement units in their departments, but DeVos has been under the unusual protection arrangement since she was greeted by hecklers a few days after her confirmation.
About three dozen protesters greeted DeVos on Feb. 10, 2017, as she attempted to visit Jefferson Academy, and two of the protesters stood alongside a stairway and created a barrier with their arms by gripping the opposite railing.
DeVos and a man accompanying her briefly tried to pass but gave up and left the school grounds in a waiting town car.
It’s not clear who made the request for additional security, but former Attorney General Jeff Sessions granted the protection on February 13, 2017 — six days after her controversial confirmation as education secretary.
“The order was issued after the Department of Education contacted administration officials regarding threats received by the Secretary of Education,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “The U.S.M.S. was identified to assist in this area based on its expertise and long experience providing executive protection.”
The U.S. Marshals Service operates within the Justice Department and typically protects federal judges and apprehends federal fugitives, as well as administration of the witness protection program.
A spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment on the threats against DeVos, but a former spokeswoman for one of her predecessors said the former education secretary Arne Duncan had received death threats but did not use Marshals’ protection.
Education Department spokeswoman Liz Hill said DeVos had not personally requested the protection, and she also declined to comment on the threats.
NBC News and the watchdog group American Oversight determined that DeVos spent less than 4 percent of her time visiting traditional public schools in the school year that began in September 2017.
GOP Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith jokes about voter suppression in video: “I think that’s a great idea”
As Mississippi’s run-off election approaches, this new video follows the senator’s viral “public hanging” comments
SHIRA TARLO - salon
NOVEMBER 16, 2018 3:14PM (UTC)
A video clip featuring Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith "joking" about making voting "a little more difficult" for some people is causing a stir as Mississippi's Senate race heads into a runoff.
In the 18-second clip, Hyde-Smith says to a group of supporters, "And then they remind me, that there's a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who that maybe we don't want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. So I think that's a great idea."
The video was shot at a Nov. 3 campaign event in Starkville, the executive editor of the Starkville Daily News, Ryan Phillips, confirmed on Twitter. Hyde-Smith can be seen standing outside her campaign bus in the video. It was first shared on social media by Lamar White Jr., the publisher and founder of The Bayou Brief, a nonprofit news organization in Louisiana. He told local news outlets that he did not film the video.
Hyde-Smith's campaign quickly issued a statement on Thursday in an attempt to do damage control. "Obviously, Sen. Hyde-Smith was making a joke and clearly the video was selectively edited," spokeswoman Melissa Scallan said in a Thursday statement.
Hyde-Smith faces a runoff election against Democrat Mike Espy in the race to fill longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran's seat. Because neither Hyde-Smith nor Espy garnered more than 50 percent of the vote on Election Day — both received slightly more than 40 percent — the race advanced to a runoff on Nov. 27, which polling predicated.
"It's ok to still have a sense of humor in America isn't it?" the Hyde-Smith campaign later asked on Twitter, posting a picture of the senator at the same event alongside two Mississippi State University students. "These students enjoyed a laugh with Cindy despite out of state social media posts trying to mislead Mississippians."
The Espy campaign quickly issued a statement in response to the recording. "For a state like Mississippi, where voting rights were obtained through sweat and blood, everyone should appreciate that this is not a laughing matter," Espy spokesman Danny Blanton said in a statement. "Mississippians deserve a senator who represents our best qualities – not a walking stereotype who embarrasses our state."
The video of Hyde-Smith comes days after White released a now-viral video of the Republican Senate candidate, in which she says she would be "on the front row" at a "public hanging." White told local news outlets that he did not take that video either, which was recorded during a Nov. 2 campaign stop in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Espy called his opponent's comments about attending a public hanging "hurtful and harmful." "This is 2018," Espy said during a Monday morning appearance on CNN. "We need leaders who will try to unite us and not divide us," and Hyde-Smith's comments, he argued, "reinforce the stereotypes that have held back our state."
Other critics have contended that the video shows disrespect for the state's long history with racism that includes 581 lynchings between 1882 and 1968 — the most of any U.S. state in that period, according to the NAACP. Hyde-Smith and her campaign, however, have refused to explain or apologize for the comment, only calling her remarks "an exaggerated expression of regard." The campaign added, "any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous."
The Republican's voter suppression comments drew similar criticism on Thursday in a state where African-American voters used to face voter suppression policies, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, and where some strict voting policies remain enforced.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power tweeted about the video Thursday, saying, "This level of GOP transparency about voter obstruction ambitions testifies to the feeling of complete impunity that pervades. Voters and fair-minded judges must change this."
Meanwhile, Mississippi's Republican Party chairman Lucien Smith on Thursday claimed that the video was "heavily edited" and "misleading." He alleged it was used to deflect attention away from accusations that Espy accepted payments from an African despot.
White, however, told a local news outlet that there was no evidence the video was "selectively edited," as Hyde-Smith's campaign claimed. "This is what she said – verbatim," White said of Hyde-Smith's comments.
Amid the mounting backlash against Hyde-Smith, President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to swoop into Mississippi to save the troubled Republican candidate before her runoff election against Espy. Plans for a Trump rally in Mississippi are not yet finalized, but it is expected to take place on the eve of the runoff, Politico reports. The news outlet notes that it would be Trump's first rally since his nationwide pre-midterm tour. Trump won Mississippi by nearly 18 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election.
In the 18-second clip, Hyde-Smith says to a group of supporters, "And then they remind me, that there's a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who that maybe we don't want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. So I think that's a great idea."
The video was shot at a Nov. 3 campaign event in Starkville, the executive editor of the Starkville Daily News, Ryan Phillips, confirmed on Twitter. Hyde-Smith can be seen standing outside her campaign bus in the video. It was first shared on social media by Lamar White Jr., the publisher and founder of The Bayou Brief, a nonprofit news organization in Louisiana. He told local news outlets that he did not film the video.
Hyde-Smith's campaign quickly issued a statement on Thursday in an attempt to do damage control. "Obviously, Sen. Hyde-Smith was making a joke and clearly the video was selectively edited," spokeswoman Melissa Scallan said in a Thursday statement.
Hyde-Smith faces a runoff election against Democrat Mike Espy in the race to fill longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran's seat. Because neither Hyde-Smith nor Espy garnered more than 50 percent of the vote on Election Day — both received slightly more than 40 percent — the race advanced to a runoff on Nov. 27, which polling predicated.
"It's ok to still have a sense of humor in America isn't it?" the Hyde-Smith campaign later asked on Twitter, posting a picture of the senator at the same event alongside two Mississippi State University students. "These students enjoyed a laugh with Cindy despite out of state social media posts trying to mislead Mississippians."
The Espy campaign quickly issued a statement in response to the recording. "For a state like Mississippi, where voting rights were obtained through sweat and blood, everyone should appreciate that this is not a laughing matter," Espy spokesman Danny Blanton said in a statement. "Mississippians deserve a senator who represents our best qualities – not a walking stereotype who embarrasses our state."
The video of Hyde-Smith comes days after White released a now-viral video of the Republican Senate candidate, in which she says she would be "on the front row" at a "public hanging." White told local news outlets that he did not take that video either, which was recorded during a Nov. 2 campaign stop in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Espy called his opponent's comments about attending a public hanging "hurtful and harmful." "This is 2018," Espy said during a Monday morning appearance on CNN. "We need leaders who will try to unite us and not divide us," and Hyde-Smith's comments, he argued, "reinforce the stereotypes that have held back our state."
Other critics have contended that the video shows disrespect for the state's long history with racism that includes 581 lynchings between 1882 and 1968 — the most of any U.S. state in that period, according to the NAACP. Hyde-Smith and her campaign, however, have refused to explain or apologize for the comment, only calling her remarks "an exaggerated expression of regard." The campaign added, "any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous."
The Republican's voter suppression comments drew similar criticism on Thursday in a state where African-American voters used to face voter suppression policies, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, and where some strict voting policies remain enforced.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power tweeted about the video Thursday, saying, "This level of GOP transparency about voter obstruction ambitions testifies to the feeling of complete impunity that pervades. Voters and fair-minded judges must change this."
Meanwhile, Mississippi's Republican Party chairman Lucien Smith on Thursday claimed that the video was "heavily edited" and "misleading." He alleged it was used to deflect attention away from accusations that Espy accepted payments from an African despot.
White, however, told a local news outlet that there was no evidence the video was "selectively edited," as Hyde-Smith's campaign claimed. "This is what she said – verbatim," White said of Hyde-Smith's comments.
Amid the mounting backlash against Hyde-Smith, President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to swoop into Mississippi to save the troubled Republican candidate before her runoff election against Espy. Plans for a Trump rally in Mississippi are not yet finalized, but it is expected to take place on the eve of the runoff, Politico reports. The news outlet notes that it would be Trump's first rally since his nationwide pre-midterm tour. Trump won Mississippi by nearly 18 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election.
*bites from real news - 11/16/2018*
*Authorities find a rocket launcher and pipe bombs during massive Florida white supremacist sting
Thirty-nine members of the United Aryan Brotherhood and Unforgiven neo-Nazi groups were arrested in a Florida drug trafficking sting — and one had functional pipe bombs in his home.
*Kellyanne Conway’s husband George slams the Trump administration as “a shitshow in a dumpster fire”
*“Pretty Much a Failure”: HUD Inspections Pass Dangerous Apartments Filled With Rats, Roaches and Toxic Mold
The system for inspecting federally subsidized properties is failing low-income families, seniors and people with disabilities and undermining the agency’s oversight, The Southern Illinoisan and ProPublica have found.
*Russians impersonating U.S. State Department aide in hacking campaign - researchers
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hackers linked to the Russian government are impersonating U.S. State Department employees in an operation aimed at infecting computers of U.S. government agencies, think tanks and businesses, two cybersecurity firms told Reuters ... (https://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUKKCN1)
*Trump to nominate Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, as next EPA administrator
Wheeler, who began his career at the Environmental Protection Agency and spent years on Capitol Hill, also spent time as an industry lobbyist before joining the Trump administration. He took over as ... (The Washington Post)
*Democrat beats Republican by 1 vote in Kentucky state House race
Democratic challenger Jim Glenn beat GOP state Rep. D.J. Johnson by one vote in their Kentucky state House race. "I've had 25 people tell me they are the one person that voted for me," Glenn told the Associated Press. "Whether it wa ... (The Hill)
*Trump Offered to Nominate Ricardel as Ambassador to Estonia, Sources Say
Pissident Donald Trump offered to nominate Mira Ricardel as ambassador to Estonia after first lady Melania Trump forced the deputy national security adviser out of the White House, according to two people familiar with the matter. Ricardel turned do ... (Bloomberg)
*Trump-appointed judge forces White House to reinstate press pass of CNN’s Jim Acosta
Judge Timothy Kelly found Friday morning that the U.S. government must give Acosta due process before revoking his press pass — which he ordered must be reinstated.
*Food There's no such thing as humane meat or eggs. Stop kidding yourself
Many people think they consume humane meat, but only a tiny fraction actually do. The majority of consumers are totally wrong about what they eat
*RNC pays alleged leader of the 2000 'Brooks Brothers Riot' to observe Broward recount
A Republican party operative from New York who made his name influencing the 2000 presidential recount process is back in South Florida this week on the payroll of the Republican National Committee. Joseph Brendan Quinn arrived quietly in Fort Laude ... (Miami Herald)
UTSA Suspends Professor Who Called Police on Black Student But Insists Race ‘Didn’t Play a Role’ In Incident
By Tanasia Kenney - atlanta black star
November 16, 2018
After a pair of investigations, officials at the University of Texas-San Antonio concluded that racial bias wasn’t a factor in a viral incident where a white professor called police on a Black student for having her feet propped up in class.
Video posted to Twitter earlier this week showed officers approach the unnamed student as she sat in the lecture hall Monday after biology professor Anita Moss called them to have the student escorted from class. The clip sparked swift outrage from the campus community.
An investigation conducted by Howard Grimes, the interim dean of the College of Sciences, revealed the incident followed days of mounting tensions between the two over classroom etiquette and that Moss had emailed the student telling her not to return to class until they discussed it, the San Antonio Express-News reported. Moss sent the e-mail to the wrong address, however, leaving the professor to interpret the student’s presence in class that day as a blatant act of defiance.
A separate investigation by the Equal Opportunity Services Office also determined racial bias was not a factor in the incident but concluded the lecturer had acted irrationally by having the student removed from class, UTSA president Taylor Eighmy said in a statement. Moss’ lack of judgment ultimately led the university to suspend her for the rest of the semester.
“This pre-occupation [with putting feet on chairs] interfered with her effective academic management in the classroom and she showed a lapse in judgment in calling the campus police for putting feet on chairs, which posed no apparent safety risk,” Grimes’ report read.
Grimes’ investigation also found that Moss had expressed repeated frustration with the way students behaved in her class, asking several of them to refrain from texting, putting their feet on the chairs and talking to one another during class. Having one’s feet on chairs was a particular pet peeve of hers, the report noted, and an act she described as “uncivil” and a “form of disrespect.”
On Friday, Moss confronted the student who was later escorted out and demanded that she put her feet on the floor. The lecturer said she voiced her frustrations to another colleague after class who suggested she call campus authorities, according to the report.
Naturally, the student who Moss had admonished days earlier was confused when she arrived to class on Monday and was told to get out. Moss handed the student a printed copy of the email she never received and repeatedly asked her to leave.
“This class is very important to me, and I do not want to miss the lecture, as we have a test coming on Wednesday,” the student told Moss, according to the report.
When the professor informed the student she was calling the police, the student replied, “Do what you need to do,” and took a seat. Officers arrived minutes later and removed the student without incident.
In his report, Grimes noted that “none of the students interviewed for this report, including (the) escorted student, felt that Dr. Moss should be terminated from her employment at UTSA.”
“The instructor has a very strong track record of positive student evaluations, and she had no prior incidents of classroom mismanagement,” Eighmy also wrote. “Moreover, the students interviewed shared their opinions that the faculty member’s actions did not warrant her dismissal.”
As for the student in question, she will return to the class, which will be taught by another faculty member.
Video posted to Twitter earlier this week showed officers approach the unnamed student as she sat in the lecture hall Monday after biology professor Anita Moss called them to have the student escorted from class. The clip sparked swift outrage from the campus community.
An investigation conducted by Howard Grimes, the interim dean of the College of Sciences, revealed the incident followed days of mounting tensions between the two over classroom etiquette and that Moss had emailed the student telling her not to return to class until they discussed it, the San Antonio Express-News reported. Moss sent the e-mail to the wrong address, however, leaving the professor to interpret the student’s presence in class that day as a blatant act of defiance.
A separate investigation by the Equal Opportunity Services Office also determined racial bias was not a factor in the incident but concluded the lecturer had acted irrationally by having the student removed from class, UTSA president Taylor Eighmy said in a statement. Moss’ lack of judgment ultimately led the university to suspend her for the rest of the semester.
“This pre-occupation [with putting feet on chairs] interfered with her effective academic management in the classroom and she showed a lapse in judgment in calling the campus police for putting feet on chairs, which posed no apparent safety risk,” Grimes’ report read.
Grimes’ investigation also found that Moss had expressed repeated frustration with the way students behaved in her class, asking several of them to refrain from texting, putting their feet on the chairs and talking to one another during class. Having one’s feet on chairs was a particular pet peeve of hers, the report noted, and an act she described as “uncivil” and a “form of disrespect.”
On Friday, Moss confronted the student who was later escorted out and demanded that she put her feet on the floor. The lecturer said she voiced her frustrations to another colleague after class who suggested she call campus authorities, according to the report.
Naturally, the student who Moss had admonished days earlier was confused when she arrived to class on Monday and was told to get out. Moss handed the student a printed copy of the email she never received and repeatedly asked her to leave.
“This class is very important to me, and I do not want to miss the lecture, as we have a test coming on Wednesday,” the student told Moss, according to the report.
When the professor informed the student she was calling the police, the student replied, “Do what you need to do,” and took a seat. Officers arrived minutes later and removed the student without incident.
In his report, Grimes noted that “none of the students interviewed for this report, including (the) escorted student, felt that Dr. Moss should be terminated from her employment at UTSA.”
“The instructor has a very strong track record of positive student evaluations, and she had no prior incidents of classroom mismanagement,” Eighmy also wrote. “Moreover, the students interviewed shared their opinions that the faculty member’s actions did not warrant her dismissal.”
As for the student in question, she will return to the class, which will be taught by another faculty member.
the "best people", another fool chosen!!!
Trump’s Nominee to Replace Kavanaugh Is a Staunch Defender of Dwarf-Tossing
Neomi Rao is best known as Trump’s anti-regulation czar, but she’s a veteran of the culture wars.
STEPHANIE MENCIMER - mother jones
NOVEMBER 16, 2018 6:00 AM
President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees have had some unusual hobbies and pet causes. Alabama District Court nominee Brett Talley is an amateur ghost-hunter and horror novelist. (The White House withdrew his nomination after it was revealed that he’d blogged favorably about the Ku Klux Klan.) Don Willett, confirmed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, opposes same-sex marriage but once tweeted that he “could support recognizing a constitutional right to marry bacon.” Add to that list Neomi Rao, Trump’s nominee to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the powerful DC Circuit, who has written at least two law review articles and a blog post in which she defended dwarf-tossing.
Especially popular in Florida bars, dwarf-tossing is the strange spectacle in which competitors throw Velcro-clad little people at a wall or mattress like a shotput. The longest toss wins. The sport has been banned in some American states and parts of France, where a judge upheld such bans because of “considerations of human dignity.” Rao considers these laws an affront to individual liberty that fails to recognize the right of the dwarf to be tossed. In one article, she wrote that the decision in France upholding the dwarf-tossing ban was an example of “dignity as coercion” and that it “demonstrates how concepts of dignity can be used to coerce individuals by forcing upon them a particular understanding of dignity.”
Dwarf-tossing is an odd cause for a federal judicial nominee to champion. Even weirder, Rao has invoked it repeatedly in her writing to make the case that a misguided focus on human dignity is leading US courts to run afoul of the Constitution in decisions that advance LGBT rights and racial equality. These are areas of the law where, she argues, judges are letting the pernicious influence of international human rights law creep into their jurisprudence at the expense of American exceptionalism and personal freedom.
Her scholarly work hits on all the conservative bugaboos obsessed over by lawyers in the Federalist Society, the influential legal group that has played a major role in the Trump administration’s judicial nominations, including hers. It also gives a pretty good indication of where she will come down as a judge, not just on dwarf-tossing bans, but on some of the nation’s most contentious issues.
Rao, whom Trump nominated to the DC Circuit on Tuesday, is currently the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an agency often called the most important government office you’ve never heard of. Run by political appointees, OIRA has the power to water down health, safety, and environmental regulations created by federal agencies, and it often deploys a brutal cost-benefit-analysis approach that favors big corporations over individuals.
Rao’s nomination last year to run the office was controversial. A law professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, Rao founded the Center for the Study of the Administrative State in 2015, with money from the conservative Koch brothers. She was instrumental in having the GMU law school renamed for the late Justice Scalia, with whom she had bonded while working as a clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. When Rao was nominated for the OIRA post, critics feared that she was brought in as a primary instrument of Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s quest to dismantle the administrative state.
Those concerns have surfaced again, now that she is now poised to bring her anti-regulatory views to a court where virtually every major new federal regulation eventually gets litigated. “She’s a young academic who subscribes to an ardent strain of libertarian, small-government ideology,” says James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform who co-authored a report on Rao’s background when she was nominated to OIRA last year.
Her views on regulation are well known: She thinks the president should have absolute authority to replace at will the heads of independent federal agencies like the Federal Energy Regulation Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Federal Reserve—agencies Congress tried to insulate from politics of the presidency. She supports Trump’s order for federal agencies to eliminate two regulations for every one they create. But Rao’s participation in the American culture wars has received little attention.
Born to Parsi doctors who immigrated from India in the 1970s, Rao grew up in the Detroit metro area and attended Yale University. She interned at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has helped the Trump administration pick federal judges. She worked as a reporter for the conservative Weekly Standard before heading off to the University of Chicago law school. From there, she took the well-trod path of many conservative rising stars, clerking first for 4th Circuit Judge Harvie Wilkinson and then for Thomas. After a stint on Capitol Hill as counsel to Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, she landed an associate position in the White House counsel’s office during the administration of President George W. Bush. At the time, Kavanaugh was also working in the administration, as White House staff secretary. A year later, he left to take the seat on the DC Circuit that Rao has been nominated to fill.
For the past decade, Rao has been on the faculty of GMU’s law school, a bastion of conservative legal scholars. She was not well known outside conservative circles before joining the Trump administration. Her specialty, administrative law, isn’t a particularly media-friendly topic. But her obscurity might also be a related to the impenetrability of her scholarship, including her hot takes on dwarf-tossing. “She takes these sort of nutty positions on whether we should recognize human dignity” and whether it falls within the jurisdiction of the court, says Goodwin, who read all of her work while writing his report.
Turgid to the point of incomprehensibility, Rao’s writing reflects little of her idol Scalia’s literary genius, but it does hint at some of his homophobia. The work suggests that Rao’s conservatism goes far beyond regulation and extends to some of the nation’s most contentious social issues, including affirmative action, the welfare state, and international humanitarian aid. It’s particularly focused on LGBT rights, with special scorn reserved for Supreme Court decisions written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose retirement this summer elevated Kavanaugh and made Rao’s nomination possible.
Conservatives hated Kennedy for his sympathy for gay rights and his openness to looking abroad to international law for guidance in American courts. Rao channelled these views in a law review article in which she critiqued Lawrence v. Texas, a landmark decision Kennedy wrote in 2003 that brought an end to the criminalization of consensual gay sex. In the decision, Kennedy wrote, “The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons.”
Rao saw the opinion as a sign of creeping European influence and warned that such nebulous concepts as dignity were dangerous threats to personal freedom. “The American Constitution protects rights—not values such as human dignity—limiting the grand scale theorizing possible by the Supreme Court,” she wrote in the Columbia Journal of European Law in 2008.
Kennedy’s decision in United States v. Windsor, the 2013 ruling that struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, came in for similar derision in “The Trouble with Dignity and Rights of Recognition,” a 2013 piece Rao wrote in the Virginia Law Review Online. “Windsor does not uphold a substantive right or freedom, only a right to have your marriage validated by the federal government,” she wrote. “The constitutional right at issue—some form of freestanding dignity of recognition—has little connection to our constitutional text or history.”
Rao’s distaste for squishy concepts in the law, such as dignity, was reflected in her 2009 testimony at the confirmation hearing of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who’d come under fire for showing too much empathy on the bench. “In our courts,” Rao testified, “the rule of law should prevail over the rule of what the judge thinks is best.” Unless, perhaps, the judge has an affinity for dwarf-tossing.
Especially popular in Florida bars, dwarf-tossing is the strange spectacle in which competitors throw Velcro-clad little people at a wall or mattress like a shotput. The longest toss wins. The sport has been banned in some American states and parts of France, where a judge upheld such bans because of “considerations of human dignity.” Rao considers these laws an affront to individual liberty that fails to recognize the right of the dwarf to be tossed. In one article, she wrote that the decision in France upholding the dwarf-tossing ban was an example of “dignity as coercion” and that it “demonstrates how concepts of dignity can be used to coerce individuals by forcing upon them a particular understanding of dignity.”
Dwarf-tossing is an odd cause for a federal judicial nominee to champion. Even weirder, Rao has invoked it repeatedly in her writing to make the case that a misguided focus on human dignity is leading US courts to run afoul of the Constitution in decisions that advance LGBT rights and racial equality. These are areas of the law where, she argues, judges are letting the pernicious influence of international human rights law creep into their jurisprudence at the expense of American exceptionalism and personal freedom.
Her scholarly work hits on all the conservative bugaboos obsessed over by lawyers in the Federalist Society, the influential legal group that has played a major role in the Trump administration’s judicial nominations, including hers. It also gives a pretty good indication of where she will come down as a judge, not just on dwarf-tossing bans, but on some of the nation’s most contentious issues.
Rao, whom Trump nominated to the DC Circuit on Tuesday, is currently the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an agency often called the most important government office you’ve never heard of. Run by political appointees, OIRA has the power to water down health, safety, and environmental regulations created by federal agencies, and it often deploys a brutal cost-benefit-analysis approach that favors big corporations over individuals.
Rao’s nomination last year to run the office was controversial. A law professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, Rao founded the Center for the Study of the Administrative State in 2015, with money from the conservative Koch brothers. She was instrumental in having the GMU law school renamed for the late Justice Scalia, with whom she had bonded while working as a clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. When Rao was nominated for the OIRA post, critics feared that she was brought in as a primary instrument of Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s quest to dismantle the administrative state.
Those concerns have surfaced again, now that she is now poised to bring her anti-regulatory views to a court where virtually every major new federal regulation eventually gets litigated. “She’s a young academic who subscribes to an ardent strain of libertarian, small-government ideology,” says James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform who co-authored a report on Rao’s background when she was nominated to OIRA last year.
Her views on regulation are well known: She thinks the president should have absolute authority to replace at will the heads of independent federal agencies like the Federal Energy Regulation Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Federal Reserve—agencies Congress tried to insulate from politics of the presidency. She supports Trump’s order for federal agencies to eliminate two regulations for every one they create. But Rao’s participation in the American culture wars has received little attention.
Born to Parsi doctors who immigrated from India in the 1970s, Rao grew up in the Detroit metro area and attended Yale University. She interned at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has helped the Trump administration pick federal judges. She worked as a reporter for the conservative Weekly Standard before heading off to the University of Chicago law school. From there, she took the well-trod path of many conservative rising stars, clerking first for 4th Circuit Judge Harvie Wilkinson and then for Thomas. After a stint on Capitol Hill as counsel to Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, she landed an associate position in the White House counsel’s office during the administration of President George W. Bush. At the time, Kavanaugh was also working in the administration, as White House staff secretary. A year later, he left to take the seat on the DC Circuit that Rao has been nominated to fill.
For the past decade, Rao has been on the faculty of GMU’s law school, a bastion of conservative legal scholars. She was not well known outside conservative circles before joining the Trump administration. Her specialty, administrative law, isn’t a particularly media-friendly topic. But her obscurity might also be a related to the impenetrability of her scholarship, including her hot takes on dwarf-tossing. “She takes these sort of nutty positions on whether we should recognize human dignity” and whether it falls within the jurisdiction of the court, says Goodwin, who read all of her work while writing his report.
Turgid to the point of incomprehensibility, Rao’s writing reflects little of her idol Scalia’s literary genius, but it does hint at some of his homophobia. The work suggests that Rao’s conservatism goes far beyond regulation and extends to some of the nation’s most contentious social issues, including affirmative action, the welfare state, and international humanitarian aid. It’s particularly focused on LGBT rights, with special scorn reserved for Supreme Court decisions written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose retirement this summer elevated Kavanaugh and made Rao’s nomination possible.
Conservatives hated Kennedy for his sympathy for gay rights and his openness to looking abroad to international law for guidance in American courts. Rao channelled these views in a law review article in which she critiqued Lawrence v. Texas, a landmark decision Kennedy wrote in 2003 that brought an end to the criminalization of consensual gay sex. In the decision, Kennedy wrote, “The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons.”
Rao saw the opinion as a sign of creeping European influence and warned that such nebulous concepts as dignity were dangerous threats to personal freedom. “The American Constitution protects rights—not values such as human dignity—limiting the grand scale theorizing possible by the Supreme Court,” she wrote in the Columbia Journal of European Law in 2008.
Kennedy’s decision in United States v. Windsor, the 2013 ruling that struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, came in for similar derision in “The Trouble with Dignity and Rights of Recognition,” a 2013 piece Rao wrote in the Virginia Law Review Online. “Windsor does not uphold a substantive right or freedom, only a right to have your marriage validated by the federal government,” she wrote. “The constitutional right at issue—some form of freestanding dignity of recognition—has little connection to our constitutional text or history.”
Rao’s distaste for squishy concepts in the law, such as dignity, was reflected in her 2009 testimony at the confirmation hearing of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who’d come under fire for showing too much empathy on the bench. “In our courts,” Rao testified, “the rule of law should prevail over the rule of what the judge thinks is best.” Unless, perhaps, the judge has an affinity for dwarf-tossing.
daily beast cheat sheet
11/16/18
Norovirus Spreads to 100+ Camp Fire Evacuees at Northern California Shelters
daily beast
The misery unleashed by the wildfires in California is only getting worse. More than 140 people who escaped the Camp Fire have come down with symptoms of norovirus at four different shelters. Over 40 are currently experiencing symptoms and some have been described as “acutely ill” by the Butte County Public Health Department. Norovirus symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting, fever, and body aches—and it’s also highly contagious. “The number of sick people is increasing every day,” the health department said. “Twenty-five people have been to the hospital for medical support. Staff serving the shelters have also been sick.” Meanwhile, face masks are starting to sell out as conditions across Northern California get worse. “The air quality will likely be worse Friday,” said Kristine Roselius, a spokesperson for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, according to the San Francisco Gate. “We’ll see readings in the ‘unhealthy’ to ‘very unhealthy’ range.” Dozens of schools across the Bay Area were closed Friday due to the smoky conditions.
Northern California Fire Death Toll Rises to 63; Number of Missing Jumps to 600
daily beast
Authorities announced seven more fatalities on in Northern California’s wildfire, raising the death toll of the Camp Fire to 63. The Associated Press reports the announcement came after officials searched through the town of Paradise for human remains. Authorities also raised the number of homes destroyed by the fire to 9,700. County officials said the number of people reported missing in the wake of the blaze rose to more than 600, though it is unclear if some of those on list are duplicates or have been located. The fire, which started a week ago, has displaced 52,000 people. Some 5,000 fire personnel are still fighting the deadliest wildfire in state history, as more wildfires burn in Southern California, where three people have died in blazes near Los Angeles. The region’s primary blaze—the Woolsey Fire—was reported to be 62 percent contained as of Friday morning.
Friends raised money for a gay college athlete after her parents disowned her. Then the NCAA called.
"The online crowdfunding webpage was organized and promoted in a manner not permitted under NCAA legislation."
LINDSAY GIBBS - thinkprogress
NOV 16, 2018, 3:23 PM
UPDATE: The NCAA reversed course Friday, according to a statement from Canisius College, and will allow Scheck to retain her eligibility while receiving GoFundMe donations.
---
Every time you think the NCAA has finally reached the depths of their depravity, the organization finds another way to sink lower. Earlier this year, the draconian bylaws of the governing body of collegiate sports nearly derailed efforts to provide financial support for the family of a hospitalized football player who was injured during a game, and in 2015, the organization threw the book at a homeless athlete for the crime of being homeless.
Now, an athlete who was disowned and financially cut off by her parents because she is gay is being forced to choose between her sport and her livelihood, after the NCAA caught wind of an effort by her friends to raise money to cover such luxuries as a roof over her head and edible goods.
Ah, the purity of amateurism!
Emily Scheck, a cross-country runner at Canisius College in upstate New York, had to deal with this worst-case scenario when her parents discovered, through social media, that she was dating a woman: She was told to either return home so she could receive dehumanizing, harmful, and ineffective conversion therapy, or stay at school and be cut out of their lives forever, according to a report by Outsports.
Sheck did not want to endure conversion therapy, so her parents quickly disowned her. They cut off all financial support, left her with a huge credit card bill, canceled insurance on her car, and left her with no way to pay for tuition, books, and a meal plan at school (She’s only on a partial athletic scholarship). It was a nightmare.
So, Sheck’s friends decided to step up. Eight days ago, her friend Grace Hausladen set up a GoFundMe to help her out. So far, it has raised over $25,000.
But there’s a catch. According to Outsports, an NCAA compliance officer at Canisius College reached out and told her she had two options: “Return every penny and maintain her NCAA eligibility, or keep the money and leave the cross-country team.”
The school confirmed this to Outsports in a statement:
After a review by the College’s compliance staff, and following consultation with the NCAA, it was determined that the online crowdfunding webpage was organized and promoted in a manner not permitted under NCAA legislation. Canisius informed the student-athletes that it would be necessary to end the online fundraising effort and work with the website host to return the donations received in order to preserve the student-athlete’s eligibility.
Initially, the GoFundMe stopped accepting donations and Sheck and Hausladen waited as officials at Canisius and the NCAA looked for a solution. But three days ago, Hausladen opened up donations on the page again, and announced that both of them were no longer members of Canisius College’s running programs.
“Though running had been a huge part of both of our lives, no longer being part of Canisius teams will not stop us from running and training on our own,” Hausladen said. “This opportunity to help a friend in need has helped her and others to see that there is hope and love when it seems lost.”
Earlier this year, the NCAA ruled that failing to stop decades of sexual abuse of hundreds of student-athletes by a university employee was not a violation of NCAA bylaws. The NCAA has remained silent about Jordan McNair, a University of Maryland football player who died as a result of negligence by university employees.
But at least the NCAA is here to ensure a homeless, impoverished LGBT student-athlete is appropriately disciplined.
---
Every time you think the NCAA has finally reached the depths of their depravity, the organization finds another way to sink lower. Earlier this year, the draconian bylaws of the governing body of collegiate sports nearly derailed efforts to provide financial support for the family of a hospitalized football player who was injured during a game, and in 2015, the organization threw the book at a homeless athlete for the crime of being homeless.
Now, an athlete who was disowned and financially cut off by her parents because she is gay is being forced to choose between her sport and her livelihood, after the NCAA caught wind of an effort by her friends to raise money to cover such luxuries as a roof over her head and edible goods.
Ah, the purity of amateurism!
Emily Scheck, a cross-country runner at Canisius College in upstate New York, had to deal with this worst-case scenario when her parents discovered, through social media, that she was dating a woman: She was told to either return home so she could receive dehumanizing, harmful, and ineffective conversion therapy, or stay at school and be cut out of their lives forever, according to a report by Outsports.
Sheck did not want to endure conversion therapy, so her parents quickly disowned her. They cut off all financial support, left her with a huge credit card bill, canceled insurance on her car, and left her with no way to pay for tuition, books, and a meal plan at school (She’s only on a partial athletic scholarship). It was a nightmare.
So, Sheck’s friends decided to step up. Eight days ago, her friend Grace Hausladen set up a GoFundMe to help her out. So far, it has raised over $25,000.
But there’s a catch. According to Outsports, an NCAA compliance officer at Canisius College reached out and told her she had two options: “Return every penny and maintain her NCAA eligibility, or keep the money and leave the cross-country team.”
The school confirmed this to Outsports in a statement:
After a review by the College’s compliance staff, and following consultation with the NCAA, it was determined that the online crowdfunding webpage was organized and promoted in a manner not permitted under NCAA legislation. Canisius informed the student-athletes that it would be necessary to end the online fundraising effort and work with the website host to return the donations received in order to preserve the student-athlete’s eligibility.
Initially, the GoFundMe stopped accepting donations and Sheck and Hausladen waited as officials at Canisius and the NCAA looked for a solution. But three days ago, Hausladen opened up donations on the page again, and announced that both of them were no longer members of Canisius College’s running programs.
“Though running had been a huge part of both of our lives, no longer being part of Canisius teams will not stop us from running and training on our own,” Hausladen said. “This opportunity to help a friend in need has helped her and others to see that there is hope and love when it seems lost.”
Earlier this year, the NCAA ruled that failing to stop decades of sexual abuse of hundreds of student-athletes by a university employee was not a violation of NCAA bylaws. The NCAA has remained silent about Jordan McNair, a University of Maryland football player who died as a result of negligence by university employees.
But at least the NCAA is here to ensure a homeless, impoverished LGBT student-athlete is appropriately disciplined.
*What's Inside*
november 13 - NOVEMBER 15
✔AMAZON HQ2 WILL COST TAXPAYERS AT LEAST $4.6 BILLION, MORE THAN TWICE WHAT THE COMPANY CLAIMED, NEW STUDY SHOWS(CAPITALISM)
*CHICAGO STATE’S ATTORNEY’S ACTIONS LEAD TO FRESH WAVE OF EXONERATIONS OF MEN FRAMED BY ROGUE COPS
(GESTAPO USA)
*RADIOACTIVE ROCKS UNDER ANTARCTICA MAKE AN AREA OF ICE THE SIZE OF RHODE ISLAND DISAPPEAR
(EARTH)
*ORCAS HAVE PERSONALITIES SIMILAR TO HUMANS
(WEIRD THINGS)
*SCIENTISTS ARE TURNING HUMAN EXCREMENT INTO RENEWABLE BIOFUEL
(CURRENTS)
*FIRST BLACK WOMAN PRESIDENT NAMED FOR HARVARD CRIMSON
(REAL PEOPLE)
*WEST COAST CRAB FISHERS SUE 30 FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES OVER CLIMATE CHANGE
(ENVIRONMENT)
*LANDOWNERS FIGHT THE BAYOU BRIDGE PIPELINE IN COURT
(OIL)
*‘IT’S OK TO BE WHITE’: A NEW INSIDIOUS WHITE SUPREMACIST RECRUITING TOOL IS SPREADING ACROSS US COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES(WHITE SUPREMACY)
*DIABETES, OBESITY, METABOLIC DISEASE, SUGARS, ALDEHYDES, AND THE AMERICAN DIET
(CURRENTS)
*INSURGENTS SEEK FEMALE CHALLENGER TO REPLACE PELOSI
(DEMO POLITICS)
*AREN'T YOU JUST SO PROUD, GOP?
BY NANCEGREGGS(GOP POLITICS)
*FACEBOOK USED OPPOSITION-RESEARCH FIRM TO LINK CRITICS TO GEORGE SOROS, REPORT SAYS
(WORTHLESS MEDIA)
✔TRUMP SUGGESTS REPUBLICANS LOST BECAUSE PEOPLE PUT ON DISGUISES TO VOTE ILLEGALLY
(TRUMP)
*DONALD TRUMP'S SOUL IS TROUBLED BY THE RUDE PUNDIT
(COMMENTARY)
*SUPER-EARTH MAY LURK AROUND NEARBY STAR
(SPACE NEWS)
*GOP LAWMAKER BUSTED FOR FRAUD OFFERS TO HELP BUILD TRUMP’S BORDER WALL IN EXCHANGE FOR LIGHTER SENTENCE
(GOP POLITICS)
*CLIMATE PROTESTERS GLUE THEMSELVES TO DOWNING STREET GATES
(WORLD)
*HERE'S WHAT THE MEDIA REALLY MEANS WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT THE 'WORKING CLASS'
(WORTHLESS MEDIA)
*WHY THE EPA WON’T GET THE LEAD OUT OF OUR WATER
(ENVIRONMENT)
*TEXAS EDUCATION BOARD MOVES TO REINSERT HILLARY CLINTON, HELEN KELLER INTO CURRICULUM
(EDUCATION)
*CENTURY-OLD WEST VIRGINIA LEASES YIELD PALTRY GAS ROYALTIES. A SUIT COULD CUT OTHERS’ PAYOUTS TO A TRICKLE, TOO.
(OIL)
*CANADA REGISTERS SIXFOLD INCREASE IN US CITIZENS SEEKING ASYLUM IN 2017
(AMERICA)
*LATINO TURNOUT UP 174% IN 2018 MIDTERMS ELECTIONS, DEMOCRATS SAY
(ELECTIONS)
✔THE DC CENTRIST DEMOCRAT SPIN CYCLE
(SELLOUTS)
*THE NARROWNESS OF MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS IS ABOUT TO UNRAVEL
(CAPITALISM)
*‘CRYING NAZI’ RELEASES VIDEO GAME WHERE USERS PLAY RICHARD SPENCER AND KILL REPORTERS AND LGBT PEOPLE IN PULSE-LIKE CLUB(AMERIKKKANS)
*DRILLING OVERWHELMS AGENCY PROTECTING AMERICA’S LANDS
(OIL)
*TRUMP WANTS TO CUT OFF DISASTER RELIEF TO PUERTO RICO
(COLONIES)
*FOR VETERANS DAY, TRUMP SERIAL-INSULTS VETERANS, TROOPS, EVERYONE BY THE RUDE PUNDIT
(COMMENTARY)
*IOWA STUDENTS FEARFUL AFTER RACIST NOTE LEFT UNDER DORM ROOM DOOR: ‘PORCH MONKEY…LEAVE OR ELSE’
(EDUCATION)
*FEWER FOREIGN STUDENTS COMING TO UNITED STATES FOR SECOND YEAR IN ROW: SURVEY
(AMERICA)
*late news of interest*
Mitch McConnell advances Senate vote on GOP ‘segregationist’ judge — nominated by Republicans for the third time
Noor Al-Sibai - raw story
15 NOV 2018 AT 17:52 ET
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday advanced the nomination of a judge who has been called a “segregationist” — and has ties to white supremacists.
In December 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed that Thomas Farr — a GOP judge re-nominated by Donald Trump after his initial nomination in 2017 was stalled by the Senate — had links to the scientific racism Pioneer Fund group.
Farr’s link to the group created in 1937 to promote “race betterment” came “through his longtime boss and mentor, Thomas Ellis, the political mastermind behind the arch-segregationist Senator Jesse Helms,” the SPLC noted. Ellis was a former director, grantee and “close associate” of the group.
Prior to the report on the judge’s links to the Pioneer Fund, civil rights groups raised alarms about his previous rulings and actions — including his role in drafting and defending NC’s “monster” voter ID law that a federal court struck down because it targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.”
In September 2017, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, a progressive activist with the NAACP, wrote a letter to the Senate urging them to withdraw Farr’s nomination due to his “long record as an advocate for hyper-partisan, segregationist causes.”
The conservative Washington Times outlet noted that Farr was first nominated in 2006 by President George W. Bush to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, but his nomination “languished” after Democrats took over the Senate.
The seat has remained open ever since.
In December 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed that Thomas Farr — a GOP judge re-nominated by Donald Trump after his initial nomination in 2017 was stalled by the Senate — had links to the scientific racism Pioneer Fund group.
Farr’s link to the group created in 1937 to promote “race betterment” came “through his longtime boss and mentor, Thomas Ellis, the political mastermind behind the arch-segregationist Senator Jesse Helms,” the SPLC noted. Ellis was a former director, grantee and “close associate” of the group.
Prior to the report on the judge’s links to the Pioneer Fund, civil rights groups raised alarms about his previous rulings and actions — including his role in drafting and defending NC’s “monster” voter ID law that a federal court struck down because it targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.”
In September 2017, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, a progressive activist with the NAACP, wrote a letter to the Senate urging them to withdraw Farr’s nomination due to his “long record as an advocate for hyper-partisan, segregationist causes.”
The conservative Washington Times outlet noted that Farr was first nominated in 2006 by President George W. Bush to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, but his nomination “languished” after Democrats took over the Senate.
The seat has remained open ever since.
Stunning investigation reveals how HUD residents are forced to live in squalor under Ben Carson’s leadership
Brendan Skwire - rawstory
15 NOV 2018 AT 11:47 ET
After Ben Carson was named to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, housing advocates warned Carson would run the agency like a slumlord — and a new report by NBC’s Stephanie Gosk indicates they were right.
The investigation took viewers to a public housing project in Hartford Connecticut, where residents deal with mold, rodent and vermin infestations, and ceiling collapses that have gone unrepaired. Meanwhile taxpayers have paid the building’s owner “nearly a million and a half dollars” over the past two years. The report also found more than 1,000 public housing properties across the country receiving failing grades, forcing 40,000 families, who depend on Carson’s leadership at HUD, to live in squalor.
In one clip, HUD inspectors recorded by a tenant can be heard complaining that “the system is broken.” Another says that he has 432 properties to manage in Connecticut, and only five staff members with which to do so. Meanwhile, Gosk noted that “under housing secretary Ben Carson, HUD has shed more than 480 staff out of 8,000,” while housing activists complained the agency “does not have a firm grip on what’s happening on the ground.”
Earlier this year, Carson supported President Trump’s proposed $8.8 billion cut to the agency, and proposed tripling rents for residents. But if viewers expected him to weigh in on the scandal, they would be disappointed.
“Secretary Carson declined to be interviewed,” said Gosk, although an anonymous spokeperson said “the secretary believes very deeply that families should not be forced to live in housing that’s unsafe, and taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing it.”
The investigation took viewers to a public housing project in Hartford Connecticut, where residents deal with mold, rodent and vermin infestations, and ceiling collapses that have gone unrepaired. Meanwhile taxpayers have paid the building’s owner “nearly a million and a half dollars” over the past two years. The report also found more than 1,000 public housing properties across the country receiving failing grades, forcing 40,000 families, who depend on Carson’s leadership at HUD, to live in squalor.
In one clip, HUD inspectors recorded by a tenant can be heard complaining that “the system is broken.” Another says that he has 432 properties to manage in Connecticut, and only five staff members with which to do so. Meanwhile, Gosk noted that “under housing secretary Ben Carson, HUD has shed more than 480 staff out of 8,000,” while housing activists complained the agency “does not have a firm grip on what’s happening on the ground.”
Earlier this year, Carson supported President Trump’s proposed $8.8 billion cut to the agency, and proposed tripling rents for residents. But if viewers expected him to weigh in on the scandal, they would be disappointed.
“Secretary Carson declined to be interviewed,” said Gosk, although an anonymous spokeperson said “the secretary believes very deeply that families should not be forced to live in housing that’s unsafe, and taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing it.”
denial conservative style!!
From Crooks & Liars: I've never gone wrong betting on the racism and arrogant ignorance of the Right: I've only erred occasionally on the point spread. And predicting Conservative behavior is dead-easy because traditionally they only have four basic settings:
Pleading Ignorance.
Of course Conservatives are ignorant -- deeply and malignantly ignorant. This comes from letting lying demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity take a dump in their skulls for the last 20 years. But since the GOP OnStar only emits turns in one direction, traditionally the only way Conservatives have been permitted to be "wrong" about anything was that they were "not Conservative enough!". From Crain's, October, 2015:
- Arrogant triumphalism: The aforementioned "We won! You lost! Bush is a genius! Suck it Libtards!"
- All-out denialism: The aforementioned "Everything I see on non-Fox teevee is fake! Terrible lies by the terrible Murrica-hating Libtard media conspiracy!"
- Bargaining: It doesn't matter whether or not I'm a brain-washed moron...because Both Sides!"
- Running Away: As I pointed out back during the first Great Skedaddle back in 2009, because Conservatives are by nature abject moral cowards, their last "out" is doing like German soldiers did after the fall of Berlin: stop running away from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms. See, "I'm an independent."
Pleading Ignorance.
Of course Conservatives are ignorant -- deeply and malignantly ignorant. This comes from letting lying demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity take a dump in their skulls for the last 20 years. But since the GOP OnStar only emits turns in one direction, traditionally the only way Conservatives have been permitted to be "wrong" about anything was that they were "not Conservative enough!". From Crain's, October, 2015:
