For the first time since statehood in 1959, Hawaii’s population
declined for two consecutive years with fewer births, more deaths and a
greater number of residents moving to the mainland.
The trend is alarming because without enough people economic growth
could be affected, said Eugene Tian, state economist with Department of
Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
“That is something significant because with fewer people it
helps a little bit in the housing shortage, but there will definitely be
less spending consumption and that will reduce economic growth,” said
Tian, adding that 70 percent of gross domestic product is due to
consumer spending. “Because the U.S. economy in the last two years has
been growing faster than in Hawaii, people are looking for more
opportunities and a lower cost of living.”
Hawaii was one of only nine states with waning populations, the
latest Census Bureau report released this week shows. The others were
Alaska, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Wyoming
and West Virginia.
That comes with all sorts of implications, including a decreasing
demand for housing, which could lead to a slowdown or drop in home
prices, as well as a shrinking workforce in an already tight labor
market. The unemployment rate in the islands has hovered around 2
percent for most of the past year.
The state population dropped by 3,712, or 10 people per day, from
July 2017 to July 2018. There were 17,326 births, 12,660 deaths and
4,075 people migrating to the islands from foreign countries. However,
12,430 residents left Hawaii for the mainland during that same period.
Friday, December 21, 2018
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Trump bans bump stocks
The Trump administration on Tuesday banned the high-power gun
attachments of the type used in last year’s Las Vegas shooting massacre
of 58 people, giving the owners of “bump stocks” 90 days to turn in or
destroy the devices and blocking owners from being able to register
them.
President Donald Trump’s Republican Party typically supports gun ownership, and its members have fiercely fought off perceived threats to the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guaranteeing Americans the right to bear arms.
His administration, though, is sidestepping any potential debate in Congress in issuing a final rule on Tuesday that adds bump stocks to a definition of machine guns written 80 years ago, during the heyday of gangsters’ use of “tommy guns.”
The attachments use a gun’s recoil to bump its trigger, enabling a semiautomatic weapon to fire hundreds of rounds per minute, which can transform the firearm into a machine gun.
Gun Owners of America said on Tuesday that it was going to court to fight the new rule and would seek an injunction. The group said the department was attempting to rewrite laws, the regulation would lead to bans on other weapons, and bump stocks do not qualify as machine guns.
On an earlier call with reporters, senior Justice Department officials said they were ready for any possible lawsuit and confident in the review of case law they conducted while writing and revising the regulation. The department received nearly 190,000 comments on its proposal for the regulation.
President Donald Trump’s Republican Party typically supports gun ownership, and its members have fiercely fought off perceived threats to the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guaranteeing Americans the right to bear arms.
His administration, though, is sidestepping any potential debate in Congress in issuing a final rule on Tuesday that adds bump stocks to a definition of machine guns written 80 years ago, during the heyday of gangsters’ use of “tommy guns.”
The attachments use a gun’s recoil to bump its trigger, enabling a semiautomatic weapon to fire hundreds of rounds per minute, which can transform the firearm into a machine gun.
Gun Owners of America said on Tuesday that it was going to court to fight the new rule and would seek an injunction. The group said the department was attempting to rewrite laws, the regulation would lead to bans on other weapons, and bump stocks do not qualify as machine guns.
On an earlier call with reporters, senior Justice Department officials said they were ready for any possible lawsuit and confident in the review of case law they conducted while writing and revising the regulation. The department received nearly 190,000 comments on its proposal for the regulation.
Sunday, December 09, 2018
A Closer Look
12/6/18 - Trump's Witness Tampering; Wisconsin GOP's Power Grab
12/5/18 - Michael Flynn Is Cooperating with Robert Mueller
12/3/18 - Russia Probe Clouds Trump's G20 Summit
11/21/18 - Trump Turns on Allies, Stands by Saudi Arabia
11/19/18 - Trump's Weird Lie About Raking in Finland
11/15/18 - Trump Is Depressed After the Midterms
11/14/18 - Trump Panics as the Blue Wave Gets Bigger
11/12/18 - Trump and His Fellow Grifters Lie About "Voter Fraud"
11/8/18 - Trump Freaks Out After Democrats Win House
11/6/18 - Democrats Take Control of the House
11/5/18 - Trump's Closing Message for the Midterms
11/1/18 - Trump's Racist Fearmongering Is His Latest Scam
10/29/18 - Trump Attacks the Media as His Allies Blame "Both Sides" for Violence
10/25/18 - Trump Says He’s "Being Nice" While Lying About Health Care
10/24/18 - Democrats, CNN Targeted by Bombs; Trump's Caravan Lies
10/22/18 - Trump Campaigns for Republicans, Calls Democrats an "Angry Mob"
10/4/18 - GOP Pushes for Kavanaugh Vote After FBI Report
10/3/18 - Trump Melts Down over Dr. Ford's Testimony
9/27/18 - Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh Testify
9/26/18 - Trump Holds Crazy Press Conference to Defend Brett Kavanaugh
9/24/18 - Rod Rosenstein Chaos; Trump Attacks Kavanaugh's Accuser
9/12/18 - Trump Calls Puerto Rico Response "An Unappreciated Great Job"
9/6/18 - The GOP’s Corrupt Bargain with "Reckless" and "Erratic" Trump
8/15/18 - Omarosa Says Trump Knew About Hacked Emails in Advance
7/16/18 - Trump's Summit with Putin
5/7/18 - Rudy Giuliani Keeps Making Things Worse for Trump
4/26/18 - Trump Goes on Fox & Friends and Freaks Out About Michael Cohen
4/25/18 - As Macron Visits, Trump's Foreign Policy Makes No Sense
4/12/18 - Pee Tape Allegations; Paul Ryan Retires; Trump Attacks Mueller
4/2/18 - Trump's Easter Immigration Rant, Cabinet Turmoil
1/11/18 - Trump Attacks Feinstein, Makes Racist Immigration Comment
5/1/17 - Trump Admits Being POTUS Is Hard, Flubs the Civil War
and more (the playlist)
12/5/18 - Michael Flynn Is Cooperating with Robert Mueller
12/3/18 - Russia Probe Clouds Trump's G20 Summit
11/21/18 - Trump Turns on Allies, Stands by Saudi Arabia
11/19/18 - Trump's Weird Lie About Raking in Finland
11/15/18 - Trump Is Depressed After the Midterms
11/14/18 - Trump Panics as the Blue Wave Gets Bigger
11/12/18 - Trump and His Fellow Grifters Lie About "Voter Fraud"
11/8/18 - Trump Freaks Out After Democrats Win House
11/6/18 - Democrats Take Control of the House
11/5/18 - Trump's Closing Message for the Midterms
11/1/18 - Trump's Racist Fearmongering Is His Latest Scam
10/29/18 - Trump Attacks the Media as His Allies Blame "Both Sides" for Violence
10/25/18 - Trump Says He’s "Being Nice" While Lying About Health Care
10/24/18 - Democrats, CNN Targeted by Bombs; Trump's Caravan Lies
10/22/18 - Trump Campaigns for Republicans, Calls Democrats an "Angry Mob"
10/4/18 - GOP Pushes for Kavanaugh Vote After FBI Report
10/3/18 - Trump Melts Down over Dr. Ford's Testimony
9/27/18 - Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh Testify
9/26/18 - Trump Holds Crazy Press Conference to Defend Brett Kavanaugh
9/24/18 - Rod Rosenstein Chaos; Trump Attacks Kavanaugh's Accuser
9/12/18 - Trump Calls Puerto Rico Response "An Unappreciated Great Job"
9/6/18 - The GOP’s Corrupt Bargain with "Reckless" and "Erratic" Trump
8/15/18 - Omarosa Says Trump Knew About Hacked Emails in Advance
7/16/18 - Trump's Summit with Putin
5/7/18 - Rudy Giuliani Keeps Making Things Worse for Trump
4/26/18 - Trump Goes on Fox & Friends and Freaks Out About Michael Cohen
4/25/18 - As Macron Visits, Trump's Foreign Policy Makes No Sense
4/12/18 - Pee Tape Allegations; Paul Ryan Retires; Trump Attacks Mueller
4/2/18 - Trump's Easter Immigration Rant, Cabinet Turmoil
1/11/18 - Trump Attacks Feinstein, Makes Racist Immigration Comment
5/1/17 - Trump Admits Being POTUS Is Hard, Flubs the Civil War
and more (the playlist)
Saturday, December 01, 2018
George H.W. Bush
George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States and the father
of the 43rd, was a steadfast force on the international stage for
decades, from his stint as an envoy to Beijing to his eight years as
vice president and his one term as commander in chief from 1989 to 1993.
The last veteran of World War II to serve as president, he was a consummate public servant and a statesman who helped guide the nation and the world out of a four-decade Cold War that had carried the threat of nuclear annihilation.
His death, at 94 on Nov. 30, also marked the passing of an era.
Although Mr. Bush served as president three decades ago, his values and ethic seem centuries removed from today’s acrid political culture. His currency of personal connection was the handwritten letter — not the social media blast.
Mr. Bush came to the Oval Office under the towering, sharply defined shadow of Ronald Reagan, a onetime rival for whom he had served as vice president.
No president before had arrived with his breadth of experience: decorated Navy pilot, successful oil executive, congressman, United Nations delegate, Republican Party chairman, envoy to Beijing, director of Central Intelligence.
Over the course of a single term that began on Jan. 20, 1989, Mr. Bush found himself at the helm of the world’s only remaining superpower. The Berlin Wall fell; the Soviet Union ceased to exist; the communist bloc in Eastern Europe broke up; the Cold War ended.
His firm, restrained diplomatic sense helped assure the harmony and peace with which these world-shaking events played out, one after the other.
In 1990, Mr. Bush went so far as to proclaim a “new world order” that would be “free from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace — a world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.”
Mr. Bush’s presidency was not all plowshares. He ordered an attack on Panama in 1989 to overthrow strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega. After Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, Mr. Bush put together a 30-nation coalition — backed by a U.N. mandate and including the Soviet Union and several Arab countries — that routed the Iraqi forces with unexpected ease in a ground war that lasted only 100 hours.
However, Mr. Bush decided to leave Hussein in power, setting up the worst and most fateful decision of his son’s presidency a dozen years later.
In the wake of that 1991 victory, Mr. Bush’s approval at home approached 90 percent. It seemed the country had finally achieved the catharsis it needed after Vietnam. A year-and-a-half later, only 29 percent of those polled gave Mr. Bush a favorable rating, and just 16 percent thought the country was headed in the right direction.
The conservative wing of his party would not forgive him for breaking an ill-advised and cocky pledge: “Read my lips: No new taxes.” What cost him among voters at large, however, was his inability to express a connection to and engagement with the struggles of ordinary Americans or a strategy for turning the economy around.
That he was perceived as lacking in grit was another irony in the life of Mr. Bush. His was a character that had been forged by trial. He was an exemplary story of a generation whose youth was cut short by the Great Depression and World War II.
...
In the years after the White House, Mr. Bush wrote his memoirs and divided his time between Houston and the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, where he was a vestryman of St. Ann’s Episcopal Church. He chose College Station, the home of Texas A&M University, as the site of the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
After the earthquake and tsunami that devastated African and Asian nations in 2005, Mr. Bush collaborated with Bill Clinton, his former adversary, to lead private relief efforts that raised nearly $2 billion in the United States.
So close did the unlikely friendship of the 41st and 42nd presidents become, that the 43rd joked: “My mother calls him my fourth brother.”
In 1997, Mr. Bush made a parachute jump for the first time since bailing out over the Pacific. He did it again in 2000 to mark his 75th birthday — and still again for his 80th, 85th and 90th ones.
“Old guys can do neat things,” he said.
The last veteran of World War II to serve as president, he was a consummate public servant and a statesman who helped guide the nation and the world out of a four-decade Cold War that had carried the threat of nuclear annihilation.
His death, at 94 on Nov. 30, also marked the passing of an era.
Although Mr. Bush served as president three decades ago, his values and ethic seem centuries removed from today’s acrid political culture. His currency of personal connection was the handwritten letter — not the social media blast.
Mr. Bush came to the Oval Office under the towering, sharply defined shadow of Ronald Reagan, a onetime rival for whom he had served as vice president.
No president before had arrived with his breadth of experience: decorated Navy pilot, successful oil executive, congressman, United Nations delegate, Republican Party chairman, envoy to Beijing, director of Central Intelligence.
Over the course of a single term that began on Jan. 20, 1989, Mr. Bush found himself at the helm of the world’s only remaining superpower. The Berlin Wall fell; the Soviet Union ceased to exist; the communist bloc in Eastern Europe broke up; the Cold War ended.
His firm, restrained diplomatic sense helped assure the harmony and peace with which these world-shaking events played out, one after the other.
In 1990, Mr. Bush went so far as to proclaim a “new world order” that would be “free from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace — a world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.”
Mr. Bush’s presidency was not all plowshares. He ordered an attack on Panama in 1989 to overthrow strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega. After Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, Mr. Bush put together a 30-nation coalition — backed by a U.N. mandate and including the Soviet Union and several Arab countries — that routed the Iraqi forces with unexpected ease in a ground war that lasted only 100 hours.
However, Mr. Bush decided to leave Hussein in power, setting up the worst and most fateful decision of his son’s presidency a dozen years later.
In the wake of that 1991 victory, Mr. Bush’s approval at home approached 90 percent. It seemed the country had finally achieved the catharsis it needed after Vietnam. A year-and-a-half later, only 29 percent of those polled gave Mr. Bush a favorable rating, and just 16 percent thought the country was headed in the right direction.
The conservative wing of his party would not forgive him for breaking an ill-advised and cocky pledge: “Read my lips: No new taxes.” What cost him among voters at large, however, was his inability to express a connection to and engagement with the struggles of ordinary Americans or a strategy for turning the economy around.
That he was perceived as lacking in grit was another irony in the life of Mr. Bush. His was a character that had been forged by trial. He was an exemplary story of a generation whose youth was cut short by the Great Depression and World War II.
...
In the years after the White House, Mr. Bush wrote his memoirs and divided his time between Houston and the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, where he was a vestryman of St. Ann’s Episcopal Church. He chose College Station, the home of Texas A&M University, as the site of the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
After the earthquake and tsunami that devastated African and Asian nations in 2005, Mr. Bush collaborated with Bill Clinton, his former adversary, to lead private relief efforts that raised nearly $2 billion in the United States.
So close did the unlikely friendship of the 41st and 42nd presidents become, that the 43rd joked: “My mother calls him my fourth brother.”
In 1997, Mr. Bush made a parachute jump for the first time since bailing out over the Pacific. He did it again in 2000 to mark his 75th birthday — and still again for his 80th, 85th and 90th ones.
“Old guys can do neat things,” he said.
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
the caravan
[11/27/18] Geraldo goes off-script
[10/31/18] Washington (CNN)With his decision to deploy more than 5,000 troops to the US-Mexico border, President Donald Trump has ordered more military personnel to the US southwest than he has serving in some of the world's most contentious combat zones.
Senior military officers have defended the deployment on national security grounds, but the mission -- dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot -- raises a slew of questions, with former officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations and some veterans condemning it as a political stunt by a President eager to fire up his political base just days away from the midterm elections.
"A military strained by 17 years of war and sequestration doesn't need this," tweeted David Lapan, a former Homeland Security spokesman for the Trump administration and a former Marine. "Service members who have repeatedly spent long periods of time away from home don't need this. And the US doesn't need its military to 'defend' against a group of unarmed migrants, inc. many women & kids."
[10/31/18] Washington (CNN)With his decision to deploy more than 5,000 troops to the US-Mexico border, President Donald Trump has ordered more military personnel to the US southwest than he has serving in some of the world's most contentious combat zones.
Senior military officers have defended the deployment on national security grounds, but the mission -- dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot -- raises a slew of questions, with former officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations and some veterans condemning it as a political stunt by a President eager to fire up his political base just days away from the midterm elections.
"A military strained by 17 years of war and sequestration doesn't need this," tweeted David Lapan, a former Homeland Security spokesman for the Trump administration and a former Marine. "Service members who have repeatedly spent long periods of time away from home don't need this. And the US doesn't need its military to 'defend' against a group of unarmed migrants, inc. many women & kids."
Sunday, November 11, 2018
five myths about cable news
After a heated exchange between President Trump and CNN reporter Jim
Acosta during a post-election news conference Wednesday, the White House
suspended Acosta’s credentials. Acosta and his network have been the administration’s primary targets
for more than two years; the president watches hours of cable news
daily, and CNN is the network he loves to hate. While far more Americans
get their news from broadcast networks and local stations
than from cable news, Trump’s devotion to cable has elevated the
political importance of those networks, which remain plagued by myths.
Fox is an easy scapegoat to blame for the GOP’s lurch to the fringe. “The right-wing echo chamber breeds extremism, intimidates Republican moderates and misleads people into thinking that their worldview is broadly shared,” Nicholas Kristof explained in the New York Times in 2013. Or, as commentator David Frum put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”
It’s true that Fox makes conservative viewers even more conservative (and more likely to vote Republican). But overall, the outfit is more weather vane than bellwether, responding to the direction of the base and the GOP instead of setting a course for those groups to follow. Take immigration: In 2013, at the urging of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Fox News hosts gave favorable coverage to the immigration bill that Rubio hoped to push through the Senate. The conservative base resoundingly rejected Fox’s pivot, and hosts like Sean Hannity quickly scurried to anti-immigration positions. And in 2016, when Fox News hosts appeared lukewarm toward Trump, the presidential candidate pilloried them until they fell in line. After his election, the network dumped its anti-Trump commentators and built a prime-time lineup that reflected — rather than created — the new direction of the party.
MSNBC, with its blue palette and its starring role for Rachel Maddow, seems awfully like the political opposite of Rupert Murdoch’s empire. Back in 2013, Dylan Byers wrote in Politico that “one of the great media stories of the 21st century is the rise of MSNBC as a counterbalance to Fox News and a powerful platform for the progressive agenda.” The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley dubbed the network “Fox’s liberal evil twin,” while conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin argued in The Washington Post that it was even worse: Fox News delivered real news, she argued in 2013, while MSNBC just dished out liberal pabulum.
NBC’s Chuck Todd blames the “Roger Ailes-created echo chamber” at Fox for the dissolution of trust in American journalism. Trump blames CNN; in Wednesday’s news conference, he declared, “When you report fake news — which CNN does a lot — you are the enemy of the people.” But while faith has dropped sharply in the decades since the rise of cable news (CNN launched in 1980, Fox and MSNBC in 1996), the cable channels have not been the primary drivers of that decline.
Trust in journalism began to weaken during the Vietnam War, when reporters dutifully repeated the government’s lies about the trajectory of the conflict. It rebounded during Watergate, but it never returned to its 1950s and 1960s heights, when Walter Cronkite was dubbed the most trusted man in America. In the early 1970s, the share of Americans who said they trusted the media hovered between 68 and 72 percent, according to Gallup polls. By 2016 it had slumped to 32 percent.
Myth No. 1
Cable news spawned our pugilistic and polarized politics.
CNN’s
“Crossfire,” born in 1982, has routinely been held up as the avatar of
punditry, blamed for ruining American politics by reducing news to
left-said-right-said coverage. In 2004, Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show”
appeared as a guest and tore into hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson, begging
them to “stop hurting America” with their punchy, polarizing show. When
CNN canceled “Crossfire” a few months later, network President Joe
Klein sided
with Stewart. “I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart’s overall
premise,” he said, pledging to give up on “head-butting debate shows.”
But
“Crossfire” was a copy, not an innovation. Long before cable outlets
began delivering round-the-clock coverage, network news programs
pioneered left-right roundtables. In 1971, CBS’s “60 Minutes” introduced
its “Point/Counterpoint” segment, pitting conservative segregationist
James J. Kilpatrick against liberal Nicholas von Hoffman and then Shana
Alexander. Other networks soon followed suit, experimenting with
political punditry throughout the 1970s. Even the hallowed halls of
public television beat cable news to the punch. In early 1982, PBS
launched “The McLaughlin Group,” a roundtable show featuring pundits
like Pat Buchanan and Eleanor Clift. If you want to lament, as Barack
Obama did
in 2010, that political commentary has devolved into “Rock ’Em Sock ’Em
Robots,” you’ll have to start with the networks, not cable.
Myth No. 2
Conservatives can't get enough of Fox News.
The
trope holds that conservatives mainline Fox News like a two-pack-a-day
smoker inhales cigarettes. It’s even become a subgenre of confessional
journalism, where people share their stories of parents radicalized
by Fox News. As filmmaker Jen Senko described her own father’s
addiction in an interview with the Daily Beast, “His entire life became
consumed by the agendas that were inundating him on the radio, the
television, and through the mail.” The news channel’s bright colors,
attractive hosts and constant repetition of conservative talking points
could be addictive for some, including the president, who is estimated to watch about five hours of television per day.
But
with viewership on the very best days hitting 2.5 million in prime
time, Fox News fans account for only a small fraction of conservatives
in the United States. Those on the right are far more likely to tune
into talk radio than cable news. Radio ratings work differently from
television ratings, but Rush Limbaugh says he has the equivalent of 10 to 12 million listeners a day (he hits around 14 million per week). And the three broadcast network news shows draw a combined 22 million viewers a night.
Fox
News is absolutely influential: It shapes what other outlets cover,
feeds the conservative media ecosystem and gives the president his
morning talking points. But when it comes to actually watching Fox News,
only a fraction of conservatives imbibe.
Myth No. 3
Fox News drives the Republican Party rightward.
Fox is an easy scapegoat to blame for the GOP’s lurch to the fringe. “The right-wing echo chamber breeds extremism, intimidates Republican moderates and misleads people into thinking that their worldview is broadly shared,” Nicholas Kristof explained in the New York Times in 2013. Or, as commentator David Frum put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”
It’s true that Fox makes conservative viewers even more conservative (and more likely to vote Republican). But overall, the outfit is more weather vane than bellwether, responding to the direction of the base and the GOP instead of setting a course for those groups to follow. Take immigration: In 2013, at the urging of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Fox News hosts gave favorable coverage to the immigration bill that Rubio hoped to push through the Senate. The conservative base resoundingly rejected Fox’s pivot, and hosts like Sean Hannity quickly scurried to anti-immigration positions. And in 2016, when Fox News hosts appeared lukewarm toward Trump, the presidential candidate pilloried them until they fell in line. After his election, the network dumped its anti-Trump commentators and built a prime-time lineup that reflected — rather than created — the new direction of the party.
Myth No. 4
MSNBC is the liberal response to Fox.
MSNBC, with its blue palette and its starring role for Rachel Maddow, seems awfully like the political opposite of Rupert Murdoch’s empire. Back in 2013, Dylan Byers wrote in Politico that “one of the great media stories of the 21st century is the rise of MSNBC as a counterbalance to Fox News and a powerful platform for the progressive agenda.” The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley dubbed the network “Fox’s liberal evil twin,” while conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin argued in The Washington Post that it was even worse: Fox News delivered real news, she argued in 2013, while MSNBC just dished out liberal pabulum.
But
these parallels are wrong, both historically and in the present. While
Murdoch and Roger Ailes founded Fox News with the intention of
establishing a conservative network, MSNBC was launched as simply a
chattier, more Gen-X version of NBC News. Even after the network “leaned
in” and attempted to develop into a Fox News for progressives starting
in 2006, it has never played the same role as Fox. That’s partly because
the left doesn’t have the same suspicion of “mainstream media” and
partly because MSNBC still tries to model balance. Its morning show is
anchored by a conservative, former Republican congressman Joe
Scarborough. (The reverse would be unthinkable for Fox.) And it has become
whiter and more conservative in the Trump era. Melissa Harris-Perry and
Al Sharpton are both out at the network, while Nicolle Wallace, White
House director of communications under George W. Bush, now anchors the 4
p.m. hour.
Myth No. 5
Cable news is why Americans lost trust in journalism.
NBC’s Chuck Todd blames the “Roger Ailes-created echo chamber” at Fox for the dissolution of trust in American journalism. Trump blames CNN; in Wednesday’s news conference, he declared, “When you report fake news — which CNN does a lot — you are the enemy of the people.” But while faith has dropped sharply in the decades since the rise of cable news (CNN launched in 1980, Fox and MSNBC in 1996), the cable channels have not been the primary drivers of that decline.
Trust in journalism began to weaken during the Vietnam War, when reporters dutifully repeated the government’s lies about the trajectory of the conflict. It rebounded during Watergate, but it never returned to its 1950s and 1960s heights, when Walter Cronkite was dubbed the most trusted man in America. In the early 1970s, the share of Americans who said they trusted the media hovered between 68 and 72 percent, according to Gallup polls. By 2016 it had slumped to 32 percent.
That
loss of faith was driven not by cable news but by a wholesale
ideological attack from the right, which argued that the supposedly
objective media was secretly liberal, and a smaller but still important
critique from the left of the capitalist and conservative nature of news
production. Richard Nixon and his vice president, Spiro Agnew,
delighted in discrediting the press, picking up the “liberal bias ”
arguments that conservatives had already been making for nearly 20 years.
By
the 1980s and 1990s, it was a conservative article of faith that the
only news sources that should be trusted were conservative ones. But the
continuous cries of liberal media bias didn’t convince only
conservatives; they convinced a plurality
of Americans — 44 percent as of 2014 — that the news media was slanted
and, increasingly, not to be believed. Fox News capitalized on that
trend, but the network didn’t start it. All the negative attributes of
media that cable exacerbates — manufactured urgency, polarized opinion,
false equivalency — began well before CNN, MSNBC and Fox News became
such prominent parts of the American political landscape.
Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.
Wednesday, November 07, 2018
2018 mid-term elections
By the time Nancy Pelosi took
the stage in Washington—to chants of “Speaker, Speaker!”—it was nearly
midnight. The House Democratic leader was there to tell her party that
despite a night of equivocal results and occasional heartbreak, they had
won, and she was the proof: Democrats, she said, “have taken back the
House for the American people!”
In Washington, only the House will change hands, as voters elevated the Democrats to serve as a check on the scandal-plagued President and his party. Pelosi, the minority leader and former speaker, intends to again seek the speakership; if she is successful, the 78-year-old veteran pol will become Trump’s principal foil and foe. Democrats may not have gotten the sweep they yearned for, but they got what matters to Pelosi—power.
From their new foothold in Congress’s lower house—one-half of one-third of American government—the Democrats can engage in asymmetric warfare, seizing partial control of a political narrative that for two years has been dominated by Trump alone. Democrats are already drawing up plans for a panoply of investigations aimed at the President and his allies, who are bracing for the storm to come—including potential impeachment proceedings.
If all that makes the midterms a success for Democrats, it still wasn’t the censure party officials had hoped for. Instead of a sweeping rebuke to Trump that might signify the 2016 elections was an aberration, the results showed an intensification of the trends that put the President in office. Democrats racked up massive margins among women, young people, and nonwhite voters. They ran up the score among voters with college degrees and flipped seats in historically Republican suburbs of cities like Richmond, Chicago and Denver. At the same time, much of the country’s deep-red interior got redder, allowing the GOP to easily dispatch Democratic senators in Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota. Fresh-faced Democratic candidates whose candidacies vaulted them to national celebrity—Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Stacey Abrams in Georgia, Andrew Gillum in Florida — lost hard-fought contests that bitterly disappointed progressive activists.
This was not a normal midterm election: turnout surged to levels not
seen in decades in a non-presidential contest. Often, a president’s
party loses ground in midterms because the opposition is roused to
anger. But in 2018, it wasn’t only Democrats who were riled up.
Republicans, too, turned out at high levels, perhaps vindicating Trump’s
strategy of ginning up his base voters with culture-war appeals.
The nation didn’t come together in agreement; the fault lines running
through it split further apart. Both sides rose up to register their
objections to one another. As Trump revealed two years ago, America
remains an angry and divided country whose citizens blame each other for
its ills.
The new Congressional majority will look very different from the one that preceded it. For the first time in American history, more than 100 women may serve in the 435-member House, at least 28 of them newly elected and representing at least 18 of the districts Democrats flipped. The new Democratic majority will include the youngest congresswoman ever elected, 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York; two of the three first Native American congresswomen, from Kansas and New Mexico; and the two first Muslim congresswomen. Texas elected two Latina congresswomen, Iowa sent its first two women to the House and Massachusetts elected its first black congresswoman.
In a stark illustration of the demographic divides that increasingly define American politics, the Democrats’ side of the aisle appears set to be only about one-third white and male, while the Republican caucus is on track to be 90% white men. The Democrats’ center of gravity has moved leftward, but the new members come from a diverse array of ideological backgrounds. At least seven of the new members have said they won’t support Pelosi in the leadership elections set to be held in late November. But if she prevails—as expected—this young, diverse, potentially unruly big-tent caucus will incongruously be led by the same figurehead of the past 15 years.
The consequences for policy are likely to be small. While Pelosi called for bipartisanship in her election-night remarks, most observers expect divided government to produce more gridlock. The new Democratic House is unlikely to find common ground on legislation with the GOP Senate and President. That’s partly because many Democrats are in a fighting mood. But it’s also because the midterm results may tie the GOP even closer to the President. The Republicans who remain in Congress are the ones in the safest districts, who hewed closest to Trump. They embody a party now tethered to Trump’s polarizing closing message of racial provocation, anti-immigrant fervor and jingoistic aggression. The Democrats rode to victory on a wave of anti-Trump grassroots fervor two years in the making. When the Resistance comes to Washington, it will be up against a thoroughly Trumpified GOP.
The new Congressional majority will look very different from the one that preceded it. For the first time in American history, more than 100 women may serve in the 435-member House, at least 28 of them newly elected and representing at least 18 of the districts Democrats flipped. The new Democratic majority will include the youngest congresswoman ever elected, 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York; two of the three first Native American congresswomen, from Kansas and New Mexico; and the two first Muslim congresswomen. Texas elected two Latina congresswomen, Iowa sent its first two women to the House and Massachusetts elected its first black congresswoman.
In a stark illustration of the demographic divides that increasingly define American politics, the Democrats’ side of the aisle appears set to be only about one-third white and male, while the Republican caucus is on track to be 90% white men. The Democrats’ center of gravity has moved leftward, but the new members come from a diverse array of ideological backgrounds. At least seven of the new members have said they won’t support Pelosi in the leadership elections set to be held in late November. But if she prevails—as expected—this young, diverse, potentially unruly big-tent caucus will incongruously be led by the same figurehead of the past 15 years.
The consequences for policy are likely to be small. While Pelosi called for bipartisanship in her election-night remarks, most observers expect divided government to produce more gridlock. The new Democratic House is unlikely to find common ground on legislation with the GOP Senate and President. That’s partly because many Democrats are in a fighting mood. But it’s also because the midterm results may tie the GOP even closer to the President. The Republicans who remain in Congress are the ones in the safest districts, who hewed closest to Trump. They embody a party now tethered to Trump’s polarizing closing message of racial provocation, anti-immigrant fervor and jingoistic aggression. The Democrats rode to victory on a wave of anti-Trump grassroots fervor two years in the making. When the Resistance comes to Washington, it will be up against a thoroughly Trumpified GOP.
Pelosi, in her victory speech,
vowed to “find common ground where we can, and stand our ground where we
can’t.” Elections, she said, “are about the future.” But as a new
political chapter opens in the Trump era, the future looks like a
pitched battle between two starkly different versions of what America
should be.
***
2016 exit polls
exit polls analysis
***
Hawaii election 2018 / official election results
Ige wins re-election
Hirono, Gabbard, Case cruise to victories
***
[11/15/18] Twitter reminds McConnell
***
2016 exit polls
exit polls analysis
***
Hawaii election 2018 / official election results
Ige wins re-election
Hirono, Gabbard, Case cruise to victories
***
[11/15/18] Twitter reminds McConnell
Tuesday, November 06, 2018
U.S. reimposes sanctions on Iran
The Trump administration reinstated all sanctions removed under the
2015 nuclear deal, targeting both Iran and states that trade with it.
They will hit oil exports, shipping and banks - all core parts of the economy.
Thousands of Iranians chanting "Death to America" rallied on Sunday, rejecting calls for talks.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to sell oil and break the sanctions.
The military was also quoted as saying it would hold air defence drills on Monday and Tuesday to prove the country's capabilities.
The demonstrations took place on the 39th anniversary of the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran, which led to four decades of mutual hostility.
Before travelling to a campaign rally for the US mid-term elections, President Donald Trump said Iran was already struggling under his administration's policies.
He called the sanctions, "very strong", saying: "We'll see what happens with Iran, but they're not doing very well, I can tell you."
What started this?
Washington re-imposed the sanctions after Mr Trump in May pulled out of a 2015 accord aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Washington also says it wants to stop what it calls Tehran's "malign" activities including cyber attacks, ballistic missile tests, and support for violent extremist groups and militias in the Middle East.
"We are working diligently to make sure we support the Iranian people and that we direct our activity towards ensuring that the Islamic Republic of Iran's malign behaviour is changed," US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, told Fox News on Sunday.
"That's the goal, that's the mission, and that's what we will achieve on behalf of the president."
They will hit oil exports, shipping and banks - all core parts of the economy.
Thousands of Iranians chanting "Death to America" rallied on Sunday, rejecting calls for talks.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to sell oil and break the sanctions.
The military was also quoted as saying it would hold air defence drills on Monday and Tuesday to prove the country's capabilities.
The demonstrations took place on the 39th anniversary of the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran, which led to four decades of mutual hostility.
Before travelling to a campaign rally for the US mid-term elections, President Donald Trump said Iran was already struggling under his administration's policies.
He called the sanctions, "very strong", saying: "We'll see what happens with Iran, but they're not doing very well, I can tell you."
What started this?
Washington re-imposed the sanctions after Mr Trump in May pulled out of a 2015 accord aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Washington also says it wants to stop what it calls Tehran's "malign" activities including cyber attacks, ballistic missile tests, and support for violent extremist groups and militias in the Middle East.
"We are working diligently to make sure we support the Iranian people and that we direct our activity towards ensuring that the Islamic Republic of Iran's malign behaviour is changed," US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, told Fox News on Sunday.
"That's the goal, that's the mission, and that's what we will achieve on behalf of the president."
Saturday, November 03, 2018
(no longer) poles apart
Unnecessary utility poles are all over Hawaii because two companies
that share most of them often disagree about their responsibilities. Now
that problem has been resolved.
In a move that will eliminate 14,000 unsightly poles, Hawaiian Telcom agreed to let Hawaiian Electric Cos. have sole ownership of about 120,000 utility poles on Oahu, Hawaii island, Maui, Molokai and Lanai.
The agreement ends nearly a century of joint pole ownership between the electrical utility and its longtime partner that was once just a phone company.
Under the new arrangement, Hawaiian Telcom will lease pole space for its telephone, internet and TV transmission lines. In return, Hawaiian Electric will provide Hawaiian Telcom with a $48 million credit, though $26 million of that covers disputed past costs of jointly owning poles.
John Komeiji, Hawaiian Telcom president and general manager, called the deal a win for both companies and the state.
“With this change, Hawaiian Telcom joins many other communications providers that lease space on poles, enabling us to channel more of our resources toward investment in fiber and expansion of next generation services statewide,” he said in a statement.
Sharing utility pole ownership historically was done to minimize the number of poles in communities and reduce expenses for companies that needed such infrastructure. On Oahu, joint pole ownership dated to 1922 with Hawaiian Electric, Mutual Telephone Co. and streetcar operator Honolulu Rapid Transit Co., according to Hawaiian Electric.
In more modern times, however, joint pole ownership was a source of discord for Hawaiian Electric and Hawaiian Telcom. Problems included how much Hawaiian Telcom should pay for new poles or even whether new poles were necessary.
As a result, sometimes two poles carried lines when only one was necessary. This occurred in cases where Hawaiian Telcom disagreed over the need for a new pole. Hawaiian Electric would install a new pole for its use and cut off the top of the adjacent old pole where its lines used to hang, while Hawaiian Telcom kept its equipment on the old pole.
The two companies figure 14,000 such “double poles” exist. The agreement calls for these old poles kept by Hawaiian Telcom to be removed within 10 years, with Hawaiian Telcom paying $650,000 a year for the work.
In a move that will eliminate 14,000 unsightly poles, Hawaiian Telcom agreed to let Hawaiian Electric Cos. have sole ownership of about 120,000 utility poles on Oahu, Hawaii island, Maui, Molokai and Lanai.
The agreement ends nearly a century of joint pole ownership between the electrical utility and its longtime partner that was once just a phone company.
Under the new arrangement, Hawaiian Telcom will lease pole space for its telephone, internet and TV transmission lines. In return, Hawaiian Electric will provide Hawaiian Telcom with a $48 million credit, though $26 million of that covers disputed past costs of jointly owning poles.
John Komeiji, Hawaiian Telcom president and general manager, called the deal a win for both companies and the state.
“With this change, Hawaiian Telcom joins many other communications providers that lease space on poles, enabling us to channel more of our resources toward investment in fiber and expansion of next generation services statewide,” he said in a statement.
Sharing utility pole ownership historically was done to minimize the number of poles in communities and reduce expenses for companies that needed such infrastructure. On Oahu, joint pole ownership dated to 1922 with Hawaiian Electric, Mutual Telephone Co. and streetcar operator Honolulu Rapid Transit Co., according to Hawaiian Electric.
In more modern times, however, joint pole ownership was a source of discord for Hawaiian Electric and Hawaiian Telcom. Problems included how much Hawaiian Telcom should pay for new poles or even whether new poles were necessary.
As a result, sometimes two poles carried lines when only one was necessary. This occurred in cases where Hawaiian Telcom disagreed over the need for a new pole. Hawaiian Electric would install a new pole for its use and cut off the top of the adjacent old pole where its lines used to hang, while Hawaiian Telcom kept its equipment on the old pole.
The two companies figure 14,000 such “double poles” exist. The agreement calls for these old poles kept by Hawaiian Telcom to be removed within 10 years, with Hawaiian Telcom paying $650,000 a year for the work.
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Sunday, October 28, 2018
scientists concerned about political meddling
[10/21/18] Is the Trump administration applying undue political influence on scientific research?
Some Hawaii scientists are convinced that it is, and that’s why they support efforts by 15 U.S. Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, to investigate political meddling into scientific research or communications at the Department of the Interior.
“It’s for real,” said Robert Richmond, director of the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Kewalo Marine Laboratory. “A number of my (federal) colleagues say interference is a persistent concern under this administration.”
Hirono and her colleagues sent a letter to Interior Department Inspector General Mary Kendall this month asking for an investigation. The request follows reports of pressure by officials of the Trump administration earlier this year to edit out any mention of human-induced climate change from a National Park Service report on sea-level rise.
What’s more, the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists surveyed scientists working across federal agencies, including those working within the Interior Department, and found a significant percentage of them are concerned about the influence of political appointees on their work.
In June, Hirono was among a group of Senate Democrats that accused the Interior Department of delaying key grants while the agency conducted what the senators claimed was a politically motivated review of its grant-making. In a letter sent to the department then, the senators expressed concern over potential undue influence from a high-level political appointee given authority over the grant- review process.
Much of the concern centers around the Trump administration’s view on climate science, with the commander in chief himself openly expressing skepticism.
“I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change,” he told the Miami Herald during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Almost immediately after Trump’s inauguration, the Environmental Protection Agency and Departments of Interior and Energy eliminated sections of their websites that discussed the science and impacts of climate change.
Then in 2017, Trump announced his intention to remove the United States from the Paris accord dealing with climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, and began pushing for coal and fossil fuel exploration. Among other things, he rescinded the 2013 Climate Action Plan and the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, a group President Barack Obama created to prepare the U.S. for the impacts of climate change.
Richmond, the UH professor and coral reef expert, said he saw undue political influence during the George W. Bush administration but it was nowhere near the level experienced over the last couple of years.
“I’ve never seen such blatant disregard in any area as in climate science,” he said.
Some Hawaii scientists are convinced that it is, and that’s why they support efforts by 15 U.S. Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, to investigate political meddling into scientific research or communications at the Department of the Interior.
“It’s for real,” said Robert Richmond, director of the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Kewalo Marine Laboratory. “A number of my (federal) colleagues say interference is a persistent concern under this administration.”
Hirono and her colleagues sent a letter to Interior Department Inspector General Mary Kendall this month asking for an investigation. The request follows reports of pressure by officials of the Trump administration earlier this year to edit out any mention of human-induced climate change from a National Park Service report on sea-level rise.
What’s more, the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists surveyed scientists working across federal agencies, including those working within the Interior Department, and found a significant percentage of them are concerned about the influence of political appointees on their work.
In June, Hirono was among a group of Senate Democrats that accused the Interior Department of delaying key grants while the agency conducted what the senators claimed was a politically motivated review of its grant-making. In a letter sent to the department then, the senators expressed concern over potential undue influence from a high-level political appointee given authority over the grant- review process.
Much of the concern centers around the Trump administration’s view on climate science, with the commander in chief himself openly expressing skepticism.
“I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change,” he told the Miami Herald during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Almost immediately after Trump’s inauguration, the Environmental Protection Agency and Departments of Interior and Energy eliminated sections of their websites that discussed the science and impacts of climate change.
Then in 2017, Trump announced his intention to remove the United States from the Paris accord dealing with climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, and began pushing for coal and fossil fuel exploration. Among other things, he rescinded the 2013 Climate Action Plan and the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, a group President Barack Obama created to prepare the U.S. for the impacts of climate change.
Richmond, the UH professor and coral reef expert, said he saw undue political influence during the George W. Bush administration but it was nowhere near the level experienced over the last couple of years.
“I’ve never seen such blatant disregard in any area as in climate science,” he said.
Friday, October 26, 2018
Megan Kelly out
Megyn Kelly is out at NBC News, according to the
$69 million talk show host's own soon-to-be ex-colleagues at 30 Rock,
who confirmed the poorly kept secret Friday morning with a tweet.
"This
morning, NBC News host Megyn Kelly is in talks with the network about
her imminent departure, according to a source familiar with the
situation," revealed a tweet from the "Today" show's Twitter account.
Fox News has learned that Kelly and her team are not at NBC’s headquarters, and that initial exit discussions are taking place over the phone.
Fox News has learned that Kelly and her team are not at NBC’s headquarters, and that initial exit discussions are taking place over the phone.
NBC's confirmation followed a furious spate of developments that followed Kelly's ill-advised suggestion on Tuesday that putting on "blackface" isn't necessarily racist under certain circumstances. Kelly, whose unpopularity at the Peacock Network was already well known, apologized tearfully for the comment, but on Thursday NBC announced that her show would be taped reruns until further notice. That sparked rumors - now confirmed - that she would be out just halfway through her bank-breaking, three-year contract that pays her $23 million per annum.
As her job hosting "Megyn Kelly Today" circled the drain, other developments swirled around Kelly, who rose to stardom at Fox News Channel. Fox News learned that Kelly's legal team was insisting on having #MeToo superstar Ronan Farrow accompany her to settlement talks. Kelly had sided with Farrow, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning story about now-disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct was spiked by NBC suits.
Kelly -- a champion of the #MeToo movement – had also irked network honchos by taking on-air shots at NBC for not hiring an independent law firm to conduct an investigation into the culture of the company amid refusing to air Farrow’s reporting and Matt Lauer’s termination for sexual misconduct.
NBC declared the network didn’t do anything wrong when handling Lauer after executives refused to launch an independent investigation. Instead, an in-house review found that management was completely oblivious to Lauer’s behavior. Meanwhile, Farrow has said that he was “blocked from further reporting” regarding Weinstein and is working on a book that will detail his side of why NBC News didn’t air his story. All this has resulted in NBC News chairman Andy Lack coming under fire for his handling of sexual misconduct allegations. An NBC insider feels Lack wanted Kelly ousted for not toeing the company line – with the blackface remarks making a convenient excuse to terminate her.
“But what is racist?” Kelly asked in a live panel discussion. “Because you get in trouble if you’re a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on white face for Halloween… back when I was a kid that was OK, as long as you were dressing like a character”
Kelly offered a heartfelt apology to open her show on Wednesday and received a standing ovation from the in-studio audience. But Lack condemned Kelly’s comments during a previously scheduled town hall event for his news division staff on Wednesday.
Kelly’s comments have been reported extensively on both “NBC Nightly News” and “Today,” leading to much speculation that NBC News executives hoped to put a spotlight on the controversial rhetoric as a way to separate with the veteran journalist. NBC colleagues quickly became her biggest critics when Craig Melvin called her comments “racist and ignorant” and Al Roker said she “owes a bigger apology to folks of color around the country.”
Kelly's first season averaged nearly 2.4 million viewers, 375,000 fewer than the "Today" show 9 a.m. hour had before she arrived. She has reportedly hired a prominent Hollywood attorney who is speaking with NBC executives Friday.
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
suspicious packages addressed to Democrats
The U.S. Secret Service said on Wednesday that it had intercepted a pair of suspicious packages addressed to former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
A third suspicious package found in the mailroom of Time Warner Center in New York City forced the evacuation of the building, which houses CNN’s New York bureau.
The package addressed to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, N.Y., was recovered late Tuesday, the Secret Service said in a statement to Yahoo News. A second package addressed to Obama was intercepted by Secret Service personnel in Washington, D.C., early Wednesday. The Secret Service screens all mail addressed to its protectees; the Clintons and Obamas have had Secret Service detail since serving in the White House.
“The packages were immediately identified during routine mail screening procedures as potential explosive devices and were appropriately handled as such,” the statement read. “The protectees did not receive the packages nor were they at risk of receiving them.”
A third suspicious package found in the mailroom of Time Warner Center in New York City forced the evacuation of the building, which houses CNN’s New York bureau.
The package addressed to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, N.Y., was recovered late Tuesday, the Secret Service said in a statement to Yahoo News. A second package addressed to Obama was intercepted by Secret Service personnel in Washington, D.C., early Wednesday. The Secret Service screens all mail addressed to its protectees; the Clintons and Obamas have had Secret Service detail since serving in the White House.
“The packages were immediately identified during routine mail screening procedures as potential explosive devices and were appropriately handled as such,” the statement read. “The protectees did not receive the packages nor were they at risk of receiving them.”
The
Secret Service said it has “initiated a full scope criminal
investigation” to “determine the source of the packages and identify
those responsible.”
The discovery of the three packages comes just two days after a pipe bomb was found in the Bedford, N.Y., mailbox of billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Soros, like the Clintons, lives in Westchester County. According to the New York Times,
the device sent to the Clintons was similar to the one sent to Soros, a
liberal donor who has long been the target of conservative
conspiracies.
Officials
told ABC News that the devices found in packages addressed to Soros,
Clinton and Obama “appear to be of similar pipe bomb style
construction.”
NBC
News reported that the return address on the suspicious packages sent
to Soros, Clinton and Obama belonged to Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz,
D-Fla., a former Democratic National Committee official.
Wasserman-Schultz’s offices in Sunrise, Fla., were evacuated Wednesday
after a suspicious package was found mailed there, local police said.
According
to CNN, the package that triggered the evacuations there was intended
for former Attorney General Eric Holder but included the wrong address,
so it was returned to Wasserman-Schultz’s offices.
Meanwhile,
multiple news organizations reported a suspicious package addressed to
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., was intercepted Wednesday at a
congressional mail facility.
At
the White House, press secretary Sarah Sanders issued a statement
condemning the “attempted violent attacks recently made against
President Obama, President Clinton, Secretary Clinton, and other public
figures.”
“These
terrorizing acts are despicable,” she added. “And anyone responsible
will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. The United
States Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies are
investigating and will take all appropriate actions to protect anyone
threatened by these cowards.”
Sunday, October 21, 2018
Canada legalizes marijuana sales to public
Canada is now the largest country with a legal national marijuana marketplace as sales began early Wednesday in Newfoundland.
Canada has had legal medical marijuana since 2001 and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has spent two years working toward expanding that to include so-called recreational marijuana. The goal is to better reflect society’s changing opinion about marijuana and bring black market operators into a regulated system.
Uruguay was first was the first country to legalize marijuana.
Tom Clarke, an illegal pot dealer for three decades, was among the first to make a legal sale in Canada when his store opened at midnight local time in Portugal Cove, Newfoundland. He made his first sale to his dad and a lineup of about 50 to 100 people waited outside his shop.
“This is awesome. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this. I served my dad,” Clarke said. “I am so happy to be living in Canada right now instead of south of the border.”
Clarke, whose middle name is Herb, has been called THC for years by his friends. His dad, Don, said he was thrilled he was among the first customers of legal pot.
“It’s been a long time coming. We’ve only been discussing this for 50 years. It’s better late than never,” he said.
In nearby St. John’s, Newfoundland, hundreds of customers were lined up around the block at the private store on Water Street, the main commercial drag in the provincial capital, by the time the clock struck midnight. A festive atmosphere broke out, with some customers lighting up on the sidewalk and motorists honking their horns in support as they drove by the crowd.
Ian Power, who was first in line, said he plans to frame his purchase.
Canada has had legal medical marijuana since 2001 and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has spent two years working toward expanding that to include so-called recreational marijuana. The goal is to better reflect society’s changing opinion about marijuana and bring black market operators into a regulated system.
Uruguay was first was the first country to legalize marijuana.
Tom Clarke, an illegal pot dealer for three decades, was among the first to make a legal sale in Canada when his store opened at midnight local time in Portugal Cove, Newfoundland. He made his first sale to his dad and a lineup of about 50 to 100 people waited outside his shop.
“This is awesome. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this. I served my dad,” Clarke said. “I am so happy to be living in Canada right now instead of south of the border.”
Clarke, whose middle name is Herb, has been called THC for years by his friends. His dad, Don, said he was thrilled he was among the first customers of legal pot.
“It’s been a long time coming. We’ve only been discussing this for 50 years. It’s better late than never,” he said.
In nearby St. John’s, Newfoundland, hundreds of customers were lined up around the block at the private store on Water Street, the main commercial drag in the provincial capital, by the time the clock struck midnight. A festive atmosphere broke out, with some customers lighting up on the sidewalk and motorists honking their horns in support as they drove by the crowd.
Ian Power, who was first in line, said he plans to frame his purchase.
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Bill Cosby sentenced to prison
Less than two hours after being designated a sexually violent predator, Bill Cosby has been sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison by a Pennsylvania judge after being convicted for the 2004 rape of former Temple University employee Andrea Constand.
Cosby will serve “no less than three years and no more than 10 years,” Judge Steven O’Neill said Tuesday, adding that the actor also must pay a fine and court costs.
The ruling comes nearly three years after the much accused actor once known as “America’s Dad” was arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Constand. With Cosby sitting in the Norristown, PA courthouse, the long-expected decision comes six months after a jury found Cosby guilty of all three counts in a retrial.
“No one is above the law,” O’Neil said today from the bench to Cosby, who was seated just in front of him in the courtroom, adding it’s no matter their “wealth, fame, celebrity or even philanthropy” — a clear dig at the latter element Cosby’s lawyers frequently brought up regarding their client’s character.
Proclaiming he felt feel a duty to “the public, the Commonwealth and the defendant,” O’Neill said there would be “no probation, no limited confinement” such as home arrest. “I am compelled to consider the guidelines,” O’Neill told the court of the prison time, which could have been up to four years under legislative rules.
“This is a court of law and I plan to sentence you under the law,” O’Neill said.
Cosby is the first major conviction of the #MeToo and Time’s Up era that has seen the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, ex-CBS boss Les Moonves and others investigated, dethroned and, in the case of Weinstein, charged with crimes in the past year.
Cosby will serve “no less than three years and no more than 10 years,” Judge Steven O’Neill said Tuesday, adding that the actor also must pay a fine and court costs.
The ruling comes nearly three years after the much accused actor once known as “America’s Dad” was arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Constand. With Cosby sitting in the Norristown, PA courthouse, the long-expected decision comes six months after a jury found Cosby guilty of all three counts in a retrial.
“No one is above the law,” O’Neil said today from the bench to Cosby, who was seated just in front of him in the courtroom, adding it’s no matter their “wealth, fame, celebrity or even philanthropy” — a clear dig at the latter element Cosby’s lawyers frequently brought up regarding their client’s character.
Proclaiming he felt feel a duty to “the public, the Commonwealth and the defendant,” O’Neill said there would be “no probation, no limited confinement” such as home arrest. “I am compelled to consider the guidelines,” O’Neill told the court of the prison time, which could have been up to four years under legislative rules.
“This is a court of law and I plan to sentence you under the law,” O’Neill said.
Cosby is the first major conviction of the #MeToo and Time’s Up era that has seen the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, ex-CBS boss Les Moonves and others investigated, dethroned and, in the case of Weinstein, charged with crimes in the past year.
Saturday, August 25, 2018
John McCain
WASHINGTON >> Sen. John McCain, who faced down his captors in a
Vietnam prisoner of war camp with jut-jawed defiance and later turned
his rebellious streak into a 35-year political career that took him to
Congress and the Republican presidential nomination, died Saturday after
battling brain cancer for more than a year. He was 81.
McCain, with his irascible grin and fighter-pilot moxie, was a fearless and outspoken voice on policy and politics to the end, unswerving in his defense of democratic values and unflinching in his criticism of his fellow Republican, President Donald Trump. He was elected to the Senate from Arizona six times but twice thwarted in seeking the presidency.
An upstart presidential bid in 2000 didn’t last long. Eight years later, he fought back from the brink of defeat to win the GOP nomination, only to be overpowered by Democrat Barack Obama. McCain chose a little-known Alaska governor as his running mate in that race, and turned Sarah Palin into a national political figure.
After losing to Obama in an electoral landslide, McCain returned to the Senate determined not to be defined by a failed presidential campaign in which his reputation as a maverick had faded. In the politics of the moment and in national political debate over the decades, McCain energetically advanced his ideas and punched back hard at critics — Trump not least among them.
The scion of a decorated military family, McCain embraced his role as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, pushing for aggressive U.S. military intervention overseas and eager to contribute to “defeating the forces of radical Islam that want to destroy America.”
Asked how he wanted to be remembered, McCain said simply: “That I made a major contribution to the defense of the nation.”
One dramatic vote he cast in the twilight of his career in 2017 will not soon be forgotten, either: As the decisive “no” on Senate GOP legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, McCain became the unlikely savior of Obama’s trademark legislative achievement.
Taking a long look back in his valedictory memoir, “The Restless Wave,” McCain wrote of the world he inhabited: “I hate to leave it. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace. … I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”
***
Rivals pay tribute
McCain, with his irascible grin and fighter-pilot moxie, was a fearless and outspoken voice on policy and politics to the end, unswerving in his defense of democratic values and unflinching in his criticism of his fellow Republican, President Donald Trump. He was elected to the Senate from Arizona six times but twice thwarted in seeking the presidency.
An upstart presidential bid in 2000 didn’t last long. Eight years later, he fought back from the brink of defeat to win the GOP nomination, only to be overpowered by Democrat Barack Obama. McCain chose a little-known Alaska governor as his running mate in that race, and turned Sarah Palin into a national political figure.
After losing to Obama in an electoral landslide, McCain returned to the Senate determined not to be defined by a failed presidential campaign in which his reputation as a maverick had faded. In the politics of the moment and in national political debate over the decades, McCain energetically advanced his ideas and punched back hard at critics — Trump not least among them.
The scion of a decorated military family, McCain embraced his role as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, pushing for aggressive U.S. military intervention overseas and eager to contribute to “defeating the forces of radical Islam that want to destroy America.”
Asked how he wanted to be remembered, McCain said simply: “That I made a major contribution to the defense of the nation.”
One dramatic vote he cast in the twilight of his career in 2017 will not soon be forgotten, either: As the decisive “no” on Senate GOP legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, McCain became the unlikely savior of Obama’s trademark legislative achievement.
Taking a long look back in his valedictory memoir, “The Restless Wave,” McCain wrote of the world he inhabited: “I hate to leave it. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace. … I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”
***
Rivals pay tribute
Sunday, August 12, 2018
Hawaii Primary Elections 2018
Election 2018
Ige defeats Hanabusa for governor
Josh Green defeats Tokuda, Carvalho, Iwamoto, Espero for lieutenant governor
Ed Case over Doug Chin and Donna Mercado Kim for U.S. House
Fukunaga wins handily over Hussey and Dos Santos-Tam (Council District 6)
Ige defeats Hanabusa for governor
Josh Green defeats Tokuda, Carvalho, Iwamoto, Espero for lieutenant governor
Ed Case over Doug Chin and Donna Mercado Kim for U.S. House
Fukunaga wins handily over Hussey and Dos Santos-Tam (Council District 6)
Friday, August 10, 2018
Fox News on demographic change
The Trump
Era does have one upside: people now feel comfortable saying the quiet
parts out loud. You no longer have to decipher what they're really
about-they'll just tell you straight-up. That's why it's a more and more
common experience to wake up and see that one of the fabulously rich
resentment-peddlers on the president's favorite news network spent the
previous evening spouting unabashed white nationalism on-air. Usually,
it's Tucker Carlson who pops up on Fox News to rail against "demographic changes" in America-that is, non-white people immigrating here. That kind of rhetoric has earned Carlson praise from Richard Spencer and David Duke.
This is no longer a dogwhistle. Ingraham is saying outright that allowing non-white people to come here-and, down the line, threaten the majority power enjoyed by White America-is tantamount to destroying America. In this formulation, what defines the United States is its whiteness, or at least the idea that white people are at the center of American life. Which they are, for now. To Ingraham, America is not a daring experiment in self-government based on the principles of liberty, equality before the law, and self-determination, which anyone can be a part of if they work hard and buy into these values. White people got here first-ignore those pesky Native Americans!-so it's white people's turf.
Like the Trump administration, which has tried to cut even legal immigration by any means possible,
Ingraham is no longer pantomiming about how illegal immigration is the
problem. The problem for these folks is that Certain People are coming
here, full stop. They want more people from Norway,
or they don't want anyone coming at all. You can tell because Ingraham
backed her soliloquy with footage of...people farming? That seems like a
pretty traditional American activity. Ah, but everyone featured in the
video playing as you say "the America we know and love" is gone...is
Latino. And now you're showing people climbing a border fence.
"None of us ever voted for" this, Ingraham said, apparently pining for the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act. No one needs to vote in favor of new people coming to America. It is the story of America. This discussion used to center on how we can better enforce our immigration laws. Now it's about whether anyone should be allowed in at all.
Ingraham went on to highlight the case of one undocumented immigrant who committed child rape as part of an attack on Philadelphia as a sanctuary city. This is a classic ploy among propagandists-to highlight one horrific occurrence and present it as representative of an entire group.
That is why the president, and Fox News, continually highlight MS-13 when discussing immigration, even though MS-13 makes up a tiny percentage of immigrants-and of the nation's gang members-and undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native citizens. (Meanwhile, ICE arrests of noncriminal immigrants have skyrocketed.) Oh, and the very basis for the current immigration crisis is bunk: illegal border crossings are at historic lows, a fraction of the level during the 1990s.
***
Ingraham responds.
***
Melania's parents becomes U.S. citizens via chain migration
"None of us ever voted for" this, Ingraham said, apparently pining for the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act. No one needs to vote in favor of new people coming to America. It is the story of America. This discussion used to center on how we can better enforce our immigration laws. Now it's about whether anyone should be allowed in at all.
Ingraham went on to highlight the case of one undocumented immigrant who committed child rape as part of an attack on Philadelphia as a sanctuary city. This is a classic ploy among propagandists-to highlight one horrific occurrence and present it as representative of an entire group.
That is why the president, and Fox News, continually highlight MS-13 when discussing immigration, even though MS-13 makes up a tiny percentage of immigrants-and of the nation's gang members-and undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native citizens. (Meanwhile, ICE arrests of noncriminal immigrants have skyrocketed.) Oh, and the very basis for the current immigration crisis is bunk: illegal border crossings are at historic lows, a fraction of the level during the 1990s.
***
Ingraham responds.
***
Melania's parents becomes U.S. citizens via chain migration
Friday, August 03, 2018
NRA in financial trouble
The National Rifle Association says that it’s in “deep financial trouble” — so deep in fact that it may be “unable to exist.”
The group says it is under such financial distress because New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has convinced a number of financial service providers, banks, and insurance providers against doing business with the gun-advocacy group. As a result, the NRA claims that it will be forced to end its magazine publishing and television services, and will be forced to curtail rallies and potentially shutter some of its offices.
In April, Gov. Cuomo encouraged New York-based businesses to cut ties with the NRA. “New York may have the strongest gun laws in the country, but we must push further to ensure that gun safety is a top priority for every individual, company, and organization that does business across the state,” he said in a statement. “I am directing the Department of Financial Services to urge insurers and bankers statewide to determine whether any relationship they may have with the NRA or similar organizations sends the wrong message to their clients and their communities who often look to them for guidance and support. This is not just a matter of reputation, it is a matter of public safety, and working together, we can put an end to gun violence in New York once and for all.”
In response, the NRA sued, claiming that the governor was attempting to deny the group the ability to speak freely about gun-related issues. This week, it filed an additional claim, obtained by Rolling Stone, suggesting that the move has impacted its cash flow to the point that it may soon be forced out of existence.
The group says it is under such financial distress because New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has convinced a number of financial service providers, banks, and insurance providers against doing business with the gun-advocacy group. As a result, the NRA claims that it will be forced to end its magazine publishing and television services, and will be forced to curtail rallies and potentially shutter some of its offices.
In April, Gov. Cuomo encouraged New York-based businesses to cut ties with the NRA. “New York may have the strongest gun laws in the country, but we must push further to ensure that gun safety is a top priority for every individual, company, and organization that does business across the state,” he said in a statement. “I am directing the Department of Financial Services to urge insurers and bankers statewide to determine whether any relationship they may have with the NRA or similar organizations sends the wrong message to their clients and their communities who often look to them for guidance and support. This is not just a matter of reputation, it is a matter of public safety, and working together, we can put an end to gun violence in New York once and for all.”
In response, the NRA sued, claiming that the governor was attempting to deny the group the ability to speak freely about gun-related issues. This week, it filed an additional claim, obtained by Rolling Stone, suggesting that the move has impacted its cash flow to the point that it may soon be forced out of existence.
Monday, July 23, 2018
Hawaii Elections 2018
Monday, July 16, 2018
Trump - Putin Summit
President Trump emerged from his historic summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin
in Helsinki on Monday saying he doesn’t “see any reason” to think that
Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
But Putin himself acknowledged that he preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton in the election. “Yes I did,” he said. “Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.”
Trump said the pair “spent a great deal of time” in their discussions on Moscow’s meddling.
***
House Speaker Paul Ryan delivered a strongly worded statement, saying there’s “no question” that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and noting that U.S. intelligence agencies and a House panel agreed.
“The president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally,” Ryan said, in what was, for the mild-mannered speaker, akin to a reprimand. Ryan said Russia “remains hostile to our most basic values and ideals.”
Other high-profile Republicans also expressed dismay.
***
At the conclusion of President Trump’s extraordinary joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin,
critical reaction flooded in from members of the media, political
analysts and government officials, but none resonated more than that of
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
*** [7/17/18]
Trump now says he misspoke.
***
Ohio GOP leader resigns
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Maryland newsroom shooting
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (Reuters) - A man brandishing a shotgun walked into the office of a small newspaper in Maryland on Thursday and killed at least five people in a targeted assault, one of the deadliest attacks recorded on a U.S. media outlet, authorities said.
The suspect described as a white man in his 30s who lives in Maryland fired through a glass door, looked for victims and then sprayed the newsroom of the Capital Gazette newspaper group in Annapolis with gunfire, police and a witness said.
***
The shooting at a Maryland newsroom that killed five people was a targeted attack, according to local police.
Anne Arundel Police Department Bill Krampf said that the assailant, armed with a shotgun, looked for victims in the newsroom of the Capital Gazette, a daily newspaper in Annapolis, which is located in the first floor of a multi-office building.
"He looked for his victims as he walked through the lower level," Krampf said in a news conference Thursday evening.
***
Fox News reports that the newspaper doesn't have an ideological bent.
***
Hannity blames Maxine Waters and Obama for the shooting.
The suspect described as a white man in his 30s who lives in Maryland fired through a glass door, looked for victims and then sprayed the newsroom of the Capital Gazette newspaper group in Annapolis with gunfire, police and a witness said.
***
The shooting at a Maryland newsroom that killed five people was a targeted attack, according to local police.
Anne Arundel Police Department Bill Krampf said that the assailant, armed with a shotgun, looked for victims in the newsroom of the Capital Gazette, a daily newspaper in Annapolis, which is located in the first floor of a multi-office building.
"He looked for his victims as he walked through the lower level," Krampf said in a news conference Thursday evening.
***
Fox News reports that the newspaper doesn't have an ideological bent.
***
Hannity blames Maxine Waters and Obama for the shooting.
Monday, May 14, 2018
Trump moves U.S. Embassy to Jerusalum
5/14/18 - Israeli forces kill 58 Palestinian protestors
5/14/18 - Jeanine Pirro says Trump has fulfilled biblical prophecy
5/14/18 - U.S. embassy opened in Jerusalem
12/4/17 - Trump to move U.S. embassy to Jerusalem
5/14/18 - Jeanine Pirro says Trump has fulfilled biblical prophecy
5/14/18 - U.S. embassy opened in Jerusalem
12/4/17 - Trump to move U.S. embassy to Jerusalem
Friday, May 11, 2018
Trump pulls out of Iran deal
WASHINGTON
— President Trump declared on Tuesday that he was withdrawing from the
Iran nuclear deal, unraveling the signature foreign policy achievement
of his predecessor Barack Obama, isolating the United States from its
Western allies and sowing uncertainty before a risky nuclear negotiation
with North Korea.
The decision, while long anticipated and widely telegraphed, leaves the 2015 agreement
reached by seven countries after more than two years of grueling
negotiations in tatters. The United States will now reimpose the
stringent sanctions it imposed on Iran before the deal and is
considering new penalties.
Iran said
it will remain in the deal, which tightly restricted its nuclear
ambitions for a decade or more in return for ending the sanctions that
had crippled its economy.
So did
France, Germany and Britain, raising the prospect of a trans-Atlantic
clash as European companies face the return of American sanctions for
doing business with Iran. China and Russia, also signatories to the
deal, are likely to join Iran in accusing the United States of violating
the accord.
Mr.
Trump’s move could embolden hard-line forces in Iran, raising the
threat of Iranian retaliation against Israel or the United States,
fueling an arms race in the Middle East and fanning sectarian conflicts
from Syria to Yemen.
The president,
however, framed his decision as the fulfillment of a bedrock campaign
promise and as the act of a dealmaker dissolving a fatally flawed
agreement. He predicted his tough line with Iran would strengthen his
hand as he prepared to meet North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to begin
negotiating the surrender of his nuclear arsenal.
“This
was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” a
grim-faced Mr. Trump said in an 11-minute address from the Diplomatic
Reception Room of the White House. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t
bring peace, and it never will.”
Mr.
Trump’s announcement drew a chorus of opposition from European leaders,
several of whom lobbied him feverishly not to pull out of the agreement
and searched for fixes to it that would satisfy him.
It
also drew a rare public rebuke by Mr. Obama, who said Mr. Trump’s
withdrawal would leave the world less safe, confronting it with “a
losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle
East.”
The
response from Iran itself, however, was muted. President Hassan Rouhani
declared that the Iranians intended to abide by the terms of the deal,
and he criticized Mr. Trump for his history of not honoring
international treaties. Mr. Trump won strong backing from Saudi Arabia
and Israel, whose leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hailed him
for a “historic move” and “courageous leadership.”
Three
times previously, the president’s aides had persuaded him not to
dismantle the Iran deal. But Mr. Trump made clear that his patience had
worn thin, and with a new, more hawkish cohort of advisers — led by
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the national security adviser, John
R. Bolton — the president faced less internal resistance than earlier in
his administration.
Friday, April 20, 2018
Democrats sue Russia, Trump campaign, Wikileaks
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Democratic Party sued the Russian government,
U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign and WikiLeaks on Friday,
charging that they carried out a wide-ranging conspiracy to influence
the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The party alleged in its federal lawsuit in Manhattan that top officials in Trump’s Republican campaign conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and tilt the election to Trump by hacking Democratic Party computers.
The lawsuit alleged that Trump’s campaign “gleefully welcomed Russia’s help” in the 2016 election and accuses it of being a “racketeering enterprise” that worked in tandem with Moscow.
“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” said Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee. “This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment, but the campaign operation Trump has already set up ahead of the 2020 president election called the lawsuit frivolous and characterized it as a fundraising effort.
“This is a sham lawsuit about a bogus Russian collusion claim filed by a desperate, dysfunctional, and nearly insolvent Democratic Party,” the campaign’s manager, Brad Parscale, said in a statement.
Defendants in the lawsuit include three people who have been indicted as a result of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling: former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Manafort associate Rick Gates and former campaign aide George Papadopoulos.
Also named as defendants were Donald Trump Jr., Trump associate Roger Stone and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The party alleged in its federal lawsuit in Manhattan that top officials in Trump’s Republican campaign conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and tilt the election to Trump by hacking Democratic Party computers.
The lawsuit alleged that Trump’s campaign “gleefully welcomed Russia’s help” in the 2016 election and accuses it of being a “racketeering enterprise” that worked in tandem with Moscow.
“During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign,” said Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee. “This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment, but the campaign operation Trump has already set up ahead of the 2020 president election called the lawsuit frivolous and characterized it as a fundraising effort.
“This is a sham lawsuit about a bogus Russian collusion claim filed by a desperate, dysfunctional, and nearly insolvent Democratic Party,” the campaign’s manager, Brad Parscale, said in a statement.
Defendants in the lawsuit include three people who have been indicted as a result of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling: former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Manafort associate Rick Gates and former campaign aide George Papadopoulos.
Also named as defendants were Donald Trump Jr., Trump associate Roger Stone and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Saturday, April 14, 2018
foam container ban bill fails
Despite overwhelming support from environmental groups and
eco-friendly businesses, lawmakers have tabled bills that would have
banned foam containers and plastic straws statewide, citing concerns
about hurting the local manufacturing industry.
Senate Bill 2498 proposed banning the sale and use of polystyrene foam containers. The bill advanced through the state Senate but stalled after crossing over to the House. The House Finance Committee chose not to hear the bill.
Rafael Bergstrom, Oahu chapter coordinator of the Surfrider Foundation, has been outspoken about his support for the foam ban. He called the bill’s failure a frustrating end to the session, considering it was one of the most publicly supported bills.
“In the Finance Committee, Chair (Sylvia) Luke didn’t even hear the bill, so it just died. It died without a hearing, without any public input, without reason from any legislator as to why they’re stopping it,” Bergstrom said in an interview. “I was (copied) on 150 emails to Chair Luke and Vice Chair (Ty) Cullen in the two to three weeks the bill was up for a hearing in their committee. And it was from students, teachers, restaurant owners, people in the tourism industry, just general citizens … and none of them got a response. Not even a ‘We’re not going to hear this because of this’ — just radio silence.”
Bergstrom called the actions of Luke and Cullen, chairwoman and vice chairman, respectively, of the House Finance Committee, “unacceptable.”
“That’s completely ignoring the job you’re supposed to be doing, which is to represent the people,” he said.
Luke told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that local foam container manufacturers would have been negatively affected by the bill, which she believes would have triggered layoffs.
Foam ban supporters testified that Kalihi-based packaging producer and distributor KYD Inc. is the only company producing foam products in Hawaii. The company — which employs 90 workers along with its sister company Hawaii’s Finest Products LLC — opposed the bill earlier in the session, calling a ban “discriminatory” and questioning the environmental benefits.
“We need to take a step back and figure out what is the impact and how does the Legislature justify putting a lot of people out of jobs without taking a look at what other alternatives, what is going to be the cost to businesses,” Luke said. “And when you talk about Styrofoam, it is people’s individual responsibility to take care of trash. Does that outweigh the Legislature’s move to put a bunch of residents out of work?”
Luke said when more people realized the economic impact of the ban, the ban became “more shocking and devastating.”
Bergstrom said the threat of layoffs by local manufacturers was “pretty much a lie” because the companies produce more than just foam containers.
Meanwhile, Senate Bill 2285, which proposed a ban on plastic straws, stalled before the Senate Judiciary and Ways and Means committees.
University of Hawaii-Manoa student Jun Shin, an at-large board member for Young Progressives Demanding Action — Hawaii, said he was disappointed the ban failed.
“I really hope the Legislature brings it back next year and they’re able to get the momentum on it,” the 18-year-old said. “It’d be awesome if we could get more people interested and understand the stakes involved.”
Senate Bill 2498 proposed banning the sale and use of polystyrene foam containers. The bill advanced through the state Senate but stalled after crossing over to the House. The House Finance Committee chose not to hear the bill.
Rafael Bergstrom, Oahu chapter coordinator of the Surfrider Foundation, has been outspoken about his support for the foam ban. He called the bill’s failure a frustrating end to the session, considering it was one of the most publicly supported bills.
“In the Finance Committee, Chair (Sylvia) Luke didn’t even hear the bill, so it just died. It died without a hearing, without any public input, without reason from any legislator as to why they’re stopping it,” Bergstrom said in an interview. “I was (copied) on 150 emails to Chair Luke and Vice Chair (Ty) Cullen in the two to three weeks the bill was up for a hearing in their committee. And it was from students, teachers, restaurant owners, people in the tourism industry, just general citizens … and none of them got a response. Not even a ‘We’re not going to hear this because of this’ — just radio silence.”
Bergstrom called the actions of Luke and Cullen, chairwoman and vice chairman, respectively, of the House Finance Committee, “unacceptable.”
“That’s completely ignoring the job you’re supposed to be doing, which is to represent the people,” he said.
Luke told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that local foam container manufacturers would have been negatively affected by the bill, which she believes would have triggered layoffs.
Foam ban supporters testified that Kalihi-based packaging producer and distributor KYD Inc. is the only company producing foam products in Hawaii. The company — which employs 90 workers along with its sister company Hawaii’s Finest Products LLC — opposed the bill earlier in the session, calling a ban “discriminatory” and questioning the environmental benefits.
“We need to take a step back and figure out what is the impact and how does the Legislature justify putting a lot of people out of jobs without taking a look at what other alternatives, what is going to be the cost to businesses,” Luke said. “And when you talk about Styrofoam, it is people’s individual responsibility to take care of trash. Does that outweigh the Legislature’s move to put a bunch of residents out of work?”
Luke said when more people realized the economic impact of the ban, the ban became “more shocking and devastating.”
Bergstrom said the threat of layoffs by local manufacturers was “pretty much a lie” because the companies produce more than just foam containers.
Meanwhile, Senate Bill 2285, which proposed a ban on plastic straws, stalled before the Senate Judiciary and Ways and Means committees.
University of Hawaii-Manoa student Jun Shin, an at-large board member for Young Progressives Demanding Action — Hawaii, said he was disappointed the ban failed.
“I really hope the Legislature brings it back next year and they’re able to get the momentum on it,” the 18-year-old said. “It’d be awesome if we could get more people interested and understand the stakes involved.”
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