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Presidents Donald Trump's Speech to Congress Reply
Politics, World News
Kenny Tran
President Donald Trump addressed Congress on February 28 to discuss his legislative agenda. This was his first speech to Congress, and his policies on issues range from trade, defense, immigration, and counterterrorism.
"I am asking all citizens to embrace this renewal of the American spirit. I am asking all members of Congress to join me in dreaming big, and bold, and daring things for our country," Trump said. "I am asking everyone watching tonight to seize this moment. Believe in yourselves. Believe in your future. And believe, once more, in America."
It was a unifying message that many Americans had never heard Trump say.
A change in Trump's voice was evident when he condemned the recent threats to Jewish communities center, vandalism at Jewish cemeteries, and the death of two Indian men. He said that violence was a reminder that, "while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its very ugly forms."
A senior White House official said that Trump wrote the speech himself, and in the highly emotional point of his speech, he turned to the first lady's box to acknowledge Carryn Owens, a widow whose husband died in an anti-terror raid in Yemen.
"Ryan died as he lived: a warrior, and a hero — battling against terrorism and securing our nation," Trump said as the House floor erupted in a prolonged standing ovation. Carryn Owens, with tears streaming down her face, look upwards and joined in the applause.
Many praise him for his controlled speech.
"The Donald Trump I heard tonight was a lot more focused and disciplined and subdued, and it was a lot more uneventful in a good way," moderate House Republican Charlie Dent told CNN's Tom LoBianco. "There were not a lot of distractions tonight, this speech was much better than the inaugural speech."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell told CNN, "Donald Trump did indeed become presidential tonight, and I think we'll see that reflected in a higher approval rating."
"My job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America," said Trump. "But we know that America is better off when there is less conflict, not more. We must learn from the mistakes of the past. We have seen the war and the destruction that have ravaged and raged throughout the world."
Donald Trump's speech sent shockwaves throughout America, and American citizens will hope that what he says will be done.
Mississippi Mayor Was Forced To Remove Christian Flag
Ask Sam: Awkward #2 The Awkward Attacks


Managing a business -- the dollars and cents and the people -- can make anyone's head spin, but you don't have to let people see you sweat. Make decisions throughout your daily life to keep you from reaching the boiling point.
There's nothing wrong with enjoying a cup of coffee, but caffeine is not a substitute for sleep. Caffeine raises your stress hormones making you more likely to lose your cool. Cutting back can help lower your stress and keep you level headed even when your computer crashes (or maybe just when you forget to save).
Hit the gym before work to get endorphins flowing and keep you happier all day. Or if mornings aren't your thing, go pump some iron after work to practice an "active meditation" and forget about the stresses of the day. It doesn't really matter when you go, just that you go and go regularly. Regular exercise can increase your self-confidence, help relax you and lower the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
When you find yourself getting riled up, take a minute to do some nice, even breathing. Breathe in through your nose for four counts, hold for a count of four and then exhale for a count of four. Repeat. When a four count becomes easy, work on increasing to six, or even eight counts. This is something worth practicing at least once a day, but is especially helpful when you feel stress building.
By simply shifting your thoughts from your overwhelming to-do list to how pretty the green grass is, for example, can start to lessen your stress. While it sounds easy in theory, it can be challenging to apply to real life. Remind yourself once a day (set a reminder on your phone or calendar) to look for something positive. The more you practice, the more natural it will become. If you're feeling stuck, take a look at our affirmations for business owners.
The best piece of advice is simply to not let the pressure get the best of you. Enjoy the little things in life and remember that you're living out your dream!
What are you tips for keeping it together?


Turnislefthome (Turnis Left Home) is the unexplainable nickname and independent studio of 3D Illustrator, Timothy J. Reynolds. Born and raised in Winston-Salem, NC. Now currently living and working in Milwaukee, WI. Proud father of a Cockapoo puppy named Wembley. Yes, named after the Fraggle.


More than 40 years and counting—that's how long Chrysalis House has been saving families one life at a time. We could not do it without the generous support of the community. Chrysalis House specializes in treating substance dependent expecting mothers, allowing them to keep their newborns and toddlers with them while in treatment.
Chrysalis House is making a difference in so many ways. Graduates are staying sober, working in jobs that support their families, earning their GEDs, living in their own homes, and giving back to their community as their lives come full circle.


Yosef Asaf Borger was born in Holon raised in Tel Aviv Israel. 网易云音乐是一款专注于发现与分享的音乐产品, 依托专业音乐人、 dj、 好友推荐及社交功能, 为用户打造全新的音乐生活。 He is also part of the dubstep duo Alphamale Primates which consists of him Tomba.
He is the founder of Buygore Records and former drummer of Israeli deathcore band Shabira. Download passion pit sleepyhead borgore remix. Self- described as " Gorestep", his music incorporates triplet drum patterns with heavy metal influences.
Yosef Asaf Borger was born in Holon and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is the founder of Buygore Records and former drummer of Israeli deathcore band Shabira.


Welcome to the club, where Fitness Coaches are your friends, and great conversations carry on long after your workout. Our members and guests love our social activities that range from Larimer Square happy hours to training for the Colfax Marathon.
Comfortable and welcoming, Colorado Athletic Club-16th Street offers our members and guests the best fitness options in LoDo.
Friendly, familiar faces, our trainers and instructors are dedicated to you and your success. They also happen to be right in your neighborhood.
Looking for laps or relaxation? Why not both? We've got options. Our indoor pool is ideal for your training needs. The saltwater pool not only helps with buoyancy but is gentle on the skin and your suit. Jump in.
The studios at 16th Street are designed for you to get the most from your workout. Seamlessly move from a warrior pose in yoga class to our cycling studio as you get ready for your next triathlon.
When you set foot in your new club, you'll feel the energy and camaraderie and meet members who are just like you.


Behind The Scenes Wovens is a beautiful collection of woven cottons perfect for dressmaking shirts and blouses.
This fabric is sold by the 1/4 metre. If you order just one 1/4 this will be cut as a long quarter as we do not cut fat quarters of this fabric. Multiple units of fabric will be sent to you in one continuous piece. What is a fat quarter? Please see the FAQ page.


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St. Paul man convicted of locking girlfriend in…
St. Paul man convicted of locking girlfriend in dog kennel
Luke Brandon Scott
By Pioneer Press | ppress@pioneerpress.com |
PUBLISHED: April 25, 2011 at 11:01 pm | UPDATED: November 12, 2015 at 11:26 pm
A St. Paul man accused of assaulting his girlfriend and locking her in a dog kennel was found guilty of multiple felonies by a Ramsey County jury Monday evening.
Luke Brandon Scott, 29, offered no visible reaction as he was convicted of two counts of assault, terroristic threats and false imprisonment for his mistreatment of Caitlin Hodges the night of Sept. 26 and early Sept. 27. He was found not guilty of two counts of kidnapping.
During closing arguments Monday morning, Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Janice Barker said Hodges told Scott she no longer wanted to be intimate with him. This made him angry and he refused to let her leave his house in the 1200 block of East Reaney Avenue, Barker said.
Barker then cataloged the abuses she said Scott inflicted upon Hodges: She said he slapped her, threw her to the ground, punched her, bit her, made her mop up spilled beer with her hair, dragged her by the hair, wrapped his arm around her throat, kicked her, hit her with a riding crop, hit her in the mouth with a bottle and knocked out her tooth, held a knife to her face, pointed a pellet gun at her eye and threw his own dog against a refrigerator.
"He tells her, 'I'm going to hang you from the basement and let you bleed slow,' " Barker said. "He tells her to go into the dog kennel because that's where the (female dogs) belong."
Hodges, 21, testified that Scott eventually unlocked the door early Sept. 27 and that she walked to a SuperAmerica station to get help.
"The night became a night of terror for her," Barker said. "The night became a night of fear. The night became a night of degradation."
Scott's attorney, Leif Carlson, argued that the state had accused his client of "sensational, dark, ugly charges of kidnapping, assault, terrorism," but that the reality was "two intoxicated people acting like children."
Carlson said Hodges had an open relationship with Scott and was having sex with other men, which Carlson said puts in doubt her allegation that Scott became a "possessive animal" because she was leaving him.
"It doesn't square," Carlson said.
Carlson also said other people at the house testified that Hodges was drinking heavily during the incident. She was drunk and belligerent and passing in and out of consciousness, Carlson said. So, according to Carlson, it's not hard to believe that she crawled into the dog kennel herself to sleep, as Scott testified.
And it's reasonable to believe that she lost her tooth not because Scott hit her in the face with a bottle, but because she fell on a bottle and injured herself, Carlson said.
"Caitlin Hodges drank for so long, she drank so much, she finally fell down and hurt herself," Carlson said. "Luke Scott didn't assault her. She's not to be believed."
Scott had testified he wouldn't let Hodges leave his house because he didn't want her to drive drunk.
The jury will reconvene today to determine whether there were aggravating factors that should influence Scott's sentence.
Tad Vezner contributed to this report.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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The Surprising Relationship Between Retail Tax and Property Tax
by Rachel Quednau
Look to the center of any town or city and you will find value. In fact, together with our colleagues at the geoanalytics firm, Urban3, we've definitively proven that traditional, walkable downtowns are far more financially productive per acre than the suburban development on the fringe of any city. (Check out these articles to get up to speed.)
But one pushback we often get when we publish this data is, "What about sales tax?" And these commenters have a point: What about the, surely, vast amounts of sales tax that auto-oriented businesses in suburban areas of town contribute to our communities? A Walmart may not pay much property tax per acre compared with a block of small downtown shops, but its sale tax contributions must be enormous compared to these local stores, right? And that probably outweighs the difference in property tax, so really, Strong Towns and Urban3 should stop being so obsessed with property tax value per acre as measure of the worth of a development… This is how the arguments typically play out.
But today, I'd like to put those arguments to rest using, once again, data collected and visualized by Urban3.
Property Tax vs. Sales Tax Revenue
Let's start with a basic example: Durango. It's a small community (population: 18,500) in rural Colorado with the standard development pattern we see in every city, big and small: a historic, walkable, mixed-use downtown in the center and suburban, auto-oriented development on the edges.
Here's what property tax values per acre look like in Durango:
Remember: We use tax value per acre rather than tax value per business in order to determine the potency of a particular development. Think of it like measuring miles per gallon instead of miles per tank. Tanks vary in size, but a gallon is a gallon across the board.
This is the standard pattern we see everywhere; the compact, walkable city center (that big green spike in the middle) far out performs any other development in terms of property tax per acre.
Now let's look at the sales/retail tax per acre:
Surprised? The images look virtually identical. It turns out that these downtown developments are producing the same concentrated value in retail taxes as they are in property taxes.
What's more, when we put both of these tax values together, the impact is staggering:
Meld all the value surrounding the downtown into one and you wouldn't even come close to producing the same amount of property and retail tax value per acre that this small historic downtown generates.
Let's look at this another way. The images below show retail tax and county (property) tax value for downtown Durango in dark blue, compared with tax value for the rest of the more spread out, auto-oriented town in tan.
So downtown Durango occupies just 22% of the land in the city, but its retail and property taxes are producing an amount that is nearly equivalent to the amount of tax value produced by the entire rest of the city!
By adding just a few more acres of downtown development, Durango could make as much in retail taxes in its city center as it makes in the rest of the whole town:
Think about that for a minute. If this town just filled a few more blocks with mixed-use, walkable development, it would make the same amount in taxes as the whole city is currently making. And this is a small community; we're talking about adding a few dozen buildings that are two or three stories tall, not adding blocks full of 20-story condominiums. You can explore more tax data from Durango here.
The Mall Factor
So the pattern seems pretty apparent: Sales tax value per acre fairly closely mirrors property tax value per acre, and when you combine the two, the value of downtown development over suburban-style development becomes crystal clear. But what about cities where there is a significant sales tax generated outside the downtown? For instance, many towns, especially smaller communities, have a big suburban mall that fills their sales tax coffers.
Here's a city where we can see this in action. Peoria, Illinois has a large shopping mall on the edge of town called Northwoods. Here's the sales tax value per acre in Peoria:
The mall's sales taxes per acre look right on par with downtown Peoria. So why isn't the mall a meaningful investment for the community? Well, here's property tax value per acre:
Suddenly, the mall melts back into the fabric of every suburban-style building around it. Its property tax contributions per acre are negligible compared with downtown Peoria's.
Now let's see the combined sales and property tax values:
When we add it all together, the downtown is still the clear winner — even with that mall producing a solid chunk of the community's sales taxes.
3 Key Lessons
I want to wrap up this discussion on tax values by pointing out a few key insights regarding the traditional vs. suburban styles of development that we've contrasted today:
1. We've neglected our downtowns for decades and they're still dominating in tax value. What the above illustrations show is that our downtown cores — most of which are full of buildings more than a century old — are, today, producing exponentially more value than the far newer buildings on the fringes of our communities. In the typical town or city, downtown has been utterly neglected or even outright abandoned for the last several decades, but that hasn't decreased its value very much. The way city centers are designed — with compact multistory buildings and streets built for people rather than cars — is what gives it that value. Meanwhile, newer suburban buildings like big box stores, fast food restaurants and strip malls are built for cars instead of people, depreciate rapidly and are unable to adapt to new uses. Thus, their low tax value.
2. Sales tax is volatile and convoluted; we shouldn't rely on it. This isn't illustrated in the graphics above, but it's a vital point to make when talking about sales tax. Even in the situations where a city like Des Moines is getting a nice municipal bump from sales tax revenue, it's not a reliable source to depend on. Retail sales can vary wildly based on the economic climate, tourism trends and other ebbs and flows of commerce — and those variations directly impact sales tax revenue. On the other hand, property tax is a much more stable and predictable source of revenue for a community. Sales tax is often also a more convoluted resource to obtain. Many municipalities don't directly receive all their sales tax revenue from the businesses within their city limits, making it an even less worthwhile source to rely on for local funding. In contrast, property taxes pretty much always go right to the municipalities where the property resides.
3. Sales tax isn't as important as most towns think it is. Take a look at the graphic below showing locally produced budget sources for all 50 states.
Source: Lincoln Land Institute via the Census
The vast majority of American states get no more than 20% of their local revenue from sales tax, and most get around 40% or more from property tax. It's important to keep this in mind when weighing the significance of sale taxes generated by suburban developments in your city. They might provide your municipal budget with a nice chunk of change, but in the big picture, that value doesn't matter nearly as much as property tax value and it's not something your community can reliably count on.
In closing, when your community is considering where to invest its resources, choose the neighborhood that's going to give the most back — in the form of property tax and sales tax. We can keep repeating the mistakes of the suburban development pattern and watch our towns deteriorate in front of us, or we can employ the traditional development pattern that has been successfully used for centuries to create financially strong communities across America.
A huge thanks to Urban3 — especially Josh McCarty — for these graphics and ideas. Durango graphics slightly updated 2/6/18 to reflect final draft data.
Best of 2018: The More We Grow, the Poorer We Become
Local governments can't take on more and more promises without generating enough wealth to meet those obligations—not without a reckoning. We need a radical revolution in how we plan, manage, and inhabit our cities, counties, and neighborhoods. We need a Strong Towns approach.
Ivy Vann
Local Planning Authority Comes From the States. Are Our Planning Boards Doing Their Jobs?
In New Hampshire, the state charges local planning boards with looking at whether the zoning they have created is going to make a town prosperous. This implies a clear obligation to do the math on costs and benefits of new development.
But Rich People Live Here, So We Can't Be Going Broke!
If your growth strategy only works as long as wealthy people live in your town, your growth strategy is deeply fragile.
Connor Nielsen
Growing Lasting Wealth in Cobb County
Communities like Cobb County must address the problems that have plagued them from the outset by encouraging the style of development that produces true value per acre.
Rachel Quednau
Rachel Quednau served as Content Manager for Strong Towns from 2015-2018 and is currently in a Master of Theological Studies program at Harvard Divinity School. Previously, she worked for several organizations fighting to end homelessness at the federal and local levels. Rachel is a Midwesterner who draws from her experiences living in Milwaukee, WI, New York City, Washington, DC, Walla Walla, WA and Minneapolis, MN to help her build better places wherever she is. She has a B.A. in Religion from Whitman College and lives with her husband, Jack, in Cambridge, MA. One of her favorite ways to get to know a new city is by going for a run in it. You can find her musings on Twitter @rquednau.
Posted in Quednau, #DotheMath
tagged with value per acre, sales tax


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Hockey Champions Trophy
The Hockey Champions Trophy is an event held annually by the International Hockey Federation (since 1978). Founded by Pakistan's Air Marshal Nur Khan, it features the world's top-ranked field hockey teams competing in a round robin format. The Pakistan Hockey Federation started the competition as a men's tournament in 1978. The tournament has been an annual affair since 1980 for men and since 1987 for women.
In the men's tournament, the Australians have won the trophy twelve, the Germans nine, and the Dutch eight times. Pakistan is the only Asian champion, with three titles to its name including the first two in 1978 and 1980. In the women's tournament both the Netherlands and Australia have won the trophy six times, while Argentina won five titles.
Six teams qualify for the championship, though the first edition had five teams, the second had seven and 1987 had eight. In the year following the Olympics or a World Cup, the six teams include the host, the defending champion, the world champion and the next highest ranked teams from either the most recent World Cup or Olympic Games.
The last placed team in the tournament is dropped and replaced by the winner of the Champions Challenge, which was introduced in 2001 and can be considered as the Champions Trophy for so called B-nations.
Other articles related to "hockey, champions, hockey champions trophy, champions trophy":
Germany National Field Hockey Team
... The Germany national field hockey team represents Germany in international field hockey ... The team have won the 2006 Men's Hockey World Cup in Mönchengladbach, Germany ... The team caused an upset in the 2002 Men's Hockey World Cup when they defeated Australia 2-1 with striker Olivier Domke scoring the winner after Germany came back from being 1-0 ...
Lists Of Tennis Players
... List of female tennis players By Grand Slam championship List of Australian Open champions List of French Open champions List of Wimbledon champions List of U.S ... Open champions ...
Pakistan Hockey Federation - Major Hockey Tournaments Won By Pakistan - Hockey Champions Trophy
... 1978 Men's Champions Trophy 1980 Men's Champions Trophy 1994 Men's Champions Trophy ...
Hockey Champions Trophy - Women - Team Appearances
... results representing England The Netherlands is the only team to have competed at almost every Champions Trophy, except for only one edition 13 teams have ... International field hockey FIH Men's World Cup Women's World Cup Men's Junior World Cup Women's Junior World Cup Champions Trophy Champions Challenge I Champions Challenge II ...
Famous quotes containing the word champions:
"Did all the lets and bars appear
To every just or larger end,
Whence should come the trust and cheer?
Youth must its ignorant impulse lend—
Age finds place in the rear.
All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,
The champions and enthusiasts of the state:"
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
Terms related to hockey champions trophy:
1995 Women's Hockey Champions Trophy
2007 Men's Hockey Champions Trophy
Field Hockey Team
Hockey Champions
Hockey World Cup
Pakistan Hockey Federation
Penalty Strokes
Wikipedia (Creative Commons)


The James New York - NoMad is an elegant and upscale hotel wedding venue located in New York, New York dedicated to taking couples out of the city's known hustle and bustle and transporting them into a urban wedding getaway. Situated minutes away from Madison Square Park and the Flatiron District, couples and their guests will be in the middle of the city's iconic touristy spots without compromising the exclusive and private feel wanted for every wedding celebration. The James New York - NoMad brings balance and coordination to any wedding theme with the use of their unmatched customer service, stunning even space, clean decorations, modern furniture, and more. When booking this venue, couples can feel confident in receiving a memorable and unique wedding day experience.
This location offers 5,000 square feet of prime event space that can be customized to match the vision of a couple's creative floor plan layout. Their staff can easily cater to parties of all sizes, whether it's an intimate ceremony of 50 people or a huge celebration of over 100 wedding guests. Their Great Room, a sophisticated space, can easily accommodate up to 230 wedding guests. Their foyer can accommodate a small party of 15 guests, while their other rooms can easily accommodate up to 130 wedding guests. Their staff will work with couples to figure out the best room and layout design to match their needed space. The venue also offers spacious get-ready rooms for the couple and their wedding parties.
This welcoming hotel offers couples a corner king studio room and provides their guests with unmatched room rates. Their rooms boast floor-to-ceiling windows, providing guests with stunning panoramic views of the New York skyline. Guests are welcome to use the 24-hour concierge, fitness center, and more.


Somali-Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is a shining example of America's broken immigration, refugee and foreign admissions programs. She's been under fire during her first term as a Congresswoman for her repeated attacks against Jewish Americans. More recently, she spoke at a fundraiser for the terror-tied organization CAIR, in which she stated that 'some people did something' on 9/11. Yeah. Nice going.
Omar's refugee fairytale is filled with half-truths that no one in the media bothers to look into. For example, her parents were strong supporters of General Mohamed Siad Barre, the brutal communist dictator who ruled Somali with an iron fist after assassinating the country's president in 1969. In other words, Omar's parents were the bad guys in her refugee fairytale, and they had to flee the country during an uprising in 1991 in order to avoid being ripped to shreds by the oppressed people of Somalia. That nation has been a failed state ever since then (see the movie "Black Hawk Down" from the Somali Tourism Council if you have any questions about this).
Despite being the villains of the story, Ilhan Omar's family won the golden ticket and got to come to America as "refugees" — because their neighbors back home wanted them to face justice. Why are they even here in the first place? Oh, right, because we are the "stupid country" when it comes to immigration.
Anyway, as part of her efforts to fit right in and prove that she's just as "American" as you are, here's a video of Ilhan Omar giggling about those zany, madcap comedians in Al Qaeda.


From its modest beginnings in the 1960's, the Wayne State University Art Collection has grown from 127 objects to include nearly 6000 works of art. Former University Curator and Professor Emeritus, Richard Biliatis, founded the collection in the belief that it would "provide a sense of history, as well as a source of education and enrichment for students, faculty, alumni and community." A majority of the collection represents works by Michigan and regional artists from the mid-to-late 20th century, including significant gifts from the James Pearson Duffy collection of over 1500 works, predominately by artists of the 'Cass Corridor,' sometimes referred to as Detroit's first avant garde. Also included in the collection are ethnographic objects from Africa and South America; the Arthur C. Danto Master Print Collection; a large collection of late 20th c. contemporary prints, sculptures and paintings by nationally and internationally known artists from the Eugene Applebaum collection (exhibited at the Applebaum Pharmacy Building); artworks by Wayne State University faculty and alumni; and an important collection of large-scale public sculptures. A growing aspect of the collection is work by African-American artists such as Romare Bearden, Sam Gilliam, Tyree Guyton, Jacob Lawrence, Al Loving, Howardena Pindell, Hughie Lee Smith and Larry Walker.
The university's enduring philosophy is that pieces in the collection appear throughout the campus – in signature buildings, libraries, the medical complex, meeting rooms, the President's office and residence, and on the university's malls and lawns. Integrated into public spaces, the collection embraces and enhances the everyday lives of people on campus and in the surrounding communities.


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NIAID Releases New Clinical Guidelines for Prevention of Peanut Allergy | Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America
NIAID Releases New Clinical Guidelines for Prevention of Peanut Allergy
FeaturedAdvocating for PatientsAsthma and Allergy News and Research
AAFA Community Services 1/5/1711:04 AM
Last edited by Melanie Carver 1/5/1711:18 AM
[Press Release]
PR Contact:
Adam Bailine, Vice President, Marketing & Communications
abailine@aafa.org
AAFA Applauds NIAID Release of Addendum Guidelines for the Prevention of Peanut Allergy
New Clinical Guidelines Focus on Peanut Allergy Prevention
January 5, 2016, LANDOVER, MD – The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) applauds the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), release of new Addendum Guidelines today to help clinicians introduce peanut-containing foods to infants to prevent the development of peanut allergy. The new Addendum Guidelines for the Prevention of Peanut Allergy in the United States supplement the 2010 Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Food Allergy in the United States, and emphasizes that infants should start other solid foods before they are introduced to age appropriate peanut-containing foods.
The three guidelines for when infants should be introduced to peanut-containing foods are:
Guideline 1: Infants at high risk of developing peanut allergy due to severe eczema, egg allergy, or both should have peanut-containing foods introduced into their diets as early as 4 to 6 months of age. All infants in this group should have peanut IgE testing performed prior to introduction.
Guideline 2: Infants with mild or moderate eczema should have peanut-containing foods introduced into their diets around 6 months of age. No testing is necessary in this group prior to introduction.
Guideline 3: Infants without eczema or any food allergy should have peanut-containing foods freely introduced into their diets, without any testing beforehand.
"This represents a monumental shift in our understanding of peanut allergy and ways to prevent it from developing. Previously, pediatricians and allergists recommended avoidance of peanut until 3 years of age, but now mounting evidence demonstrates that we can prevent a significant number of new peanut allergy cases by introducing it into the diet during infancy," said David R. Stukus, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics Section of Allergy/Immunology Nationwide Children's Hospital, member of AAFA's Board of Directors, and part of the NIAID Coordinating Committee, and the Expert Panel that drafted the Addendum Guidelines. "It's important to understand that the majority of infants can have this safely introduced at home without any evaluation but those at highest risk (severe eczema and/or egg allergy) should be evaluated for the presence of peanut allergy antibody prior to introduction."
Peanut allergy is a growing health problem for which no treatment or cure exists. "AAFA is dedicated to keeping infants and children with food allergies safe and healthy until a cure is found. AAFA is proud to have participated in the NIAID Expert Panel and Coordinating Committee to help develop the Addendum Guidelines," said Meryl Bloomrosen, MBA, MBI, AAFA's Senior Vice President of Policy, Advocacy and Research, and member of the NIAID Coordinating Committee. "We commend NIAID for its timely response to the results of the landmark NIAID-funded Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP) study, published last year. We look forward to educating parents and caregivers of infants so that they are familiar with these guidelines, which is essential to their successful implementation."
About NIH and NIAID
NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. NIAID conducts and supports research – at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide – to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID website. For more information about NIH, and NIAID, visit www.nih.gov, and www.niaid.nih.gov.
Founded in 1953 and celebrating over 60 years of service, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) is the oldest and largest nonprofit patient organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for people with asthma, allergies and related conditions through education, advocacy and research. AAFA provides practical information, community-based services, support and referrals through a national network of chapters and educational support groups. Through its Kids With Food Allergies division, AAFA offers the oldest, most extensive online support community for families raising children with food allergies. In September 2016, AAFA launched its Food Allergy Patient & Family Registry, a program that collects, manages and analyzes data from and about people with food allergies to advance research through patient information. For more information, visit www.aafa.org, https://research.kidswithfoodallergies.org/, and www.kidswithfoodallergies.org.
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Tags: peanut allergy, food allergy, NIAID, NIH
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On Dec. 12th The Guardian (and most other UK news outlets) reported that the government of Theresa May officially adopted the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. Among the expressions of antisemitism included in the definition, as it relates to Israel, are "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis".
As blogger David Collier demonstrated in a groundbreaking report released yesterday, such Nazi analogies (along with other expressions of antisemitism) are disturbingly common amongst members of the largest pro-Palestinian organisation in the UK, Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
With this in mind, note the photo used by the Guardian to illustrate a Feb. 23rd report on protests in Sydney – organised by Palestine Action Group – over the Israeli Prime Minister's recent visit.
Remarkably, nowhere in the story (including in the photo caption) is the antisemitic placard – depicting the Jewish prime minister as Adolf Hitler – even alluded to. A Times of Israel story about the protest, on the other hand, led with the Hitler sign, in a report titled "Anti-Israel Protesters in Sydney Depict Netanyahu as Hitler". Australian broadcaster SBS also noted the Hitler comparison in their report on the protest.
In the 650-strong crowd, many waved placards and flags and chanted as they moved down Pitt Street and through the central business district as a police helicopter hovered overhead.
Let's conduct a brief thought experiment. Imagine, while Barack Obama was still president, the Guardian covered a right-wing march in which some activists carried large placards depicting Obama as a monkey or an Islamic terrorist. Surely such an unambiguous expression of racism would have been incorporated into the story – if not in the headline ("racism at right-wing protest"), then certainly in the photo caption or body of the text.
The Guardian's failure to convey to readers the antisemitic nature of the anti-Netanyahu placard in Sydney is not in itself antisemitic. However we do believe it's indicative of their continuing obfuscation of endemic antisemitism within the pro-Palestinian movement and, more broadly, representative of how media outlets can normalise antisemitism without setting out to do so.
Excellent analysis – the parallel to a hypothetical Obama placard is spot on! (Recently, a TV sports broadcaster in America was fired for describing Venus Williams as playing like a 'guerrilla' – except that, being broadcast, the word sounded identical to 'gorilla'. He explained that he meant 'guerrilla' but got canned anyway.
In all fairness, if one is describing a tennis match on television, it is best to not confuse the audience with potentially improper homonyms. I am not a tennis fan, and am unsure as to whether players approach the net in guerilla fashion or not. That said, a more articulate announcer might describe her stealthy, or aggressive, approach.
That's called doing homework and being prepared, and it's why they get paid the big bucks.
The Guardian ignores anti-Semitism much in the same fashion that Donald J Trump ignores anti-Semitism.
Yes, I noticed that omission too when I saw the article. While sometimes it could be argued that a picture speaks for itself, in this case it really does need spelling out – in order to make clear what scumbags those people carrying the placard are.


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News · Schools
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Receives Honor for Activism from National Organization
By Sharon Aron Baron on June 25, 2019 No Comments
MSD student Lea Serrano with American Ethical Union President John McCormick.
By: Sharon Aron Baron
The American Ethical Union honored the activism of students and teachers following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting in an event in Tampa.
MSD Teacher Dr. Jacob Abraham.
Held June 22, MSD teachers Kimberly Krawczyk, a math teacher and Dr. Jacob Abrahan, Director of Forensics and speech coach, along with student Lea Serrano, accepted the 2019 Elliot-Black award on behalf of the school.
Serrano urged attendees never to forget both the victims and survivors. Krawczyk spoke about the failures of administrators to act on the shooter's mental health issues and the desire for future schools to never have to undergo an active shooter drill.
The school was honored for its advocacy in the wake of the deadly 2018 shooting. That work led to then-Governor Rick Scott signing a bill that raised the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21 and the banning of so-called "bump stocks."
The Elliott-Black Award is the highest honor that the AEU bestows to organizations or individuals in recognition of their significant and positive impact on society through profound courage and commitment and in the fulfillment of ethical ideals. Previous honorees have included the Southern Poverty Law Center, former congressman Robert C. Eckhardt, and Aubrey M. Daniel III, who famously said to President Nixon that "the United States must be a nation of laws, not men."
MSD Teacher Kimberly Krawczyk.
The AEU is a national organization devoted to the nontheistic religion of Ethical Culture with 23 ethical societies nationwide.
The award ceremony was part of the AEU's 104th Annual Assembly in Tampa from June 21-23, celebrating the theme of "Democracy for All." Speakers included Carlos Guillermo Smith, the first openly gay Latin member of the Florida House of Representatives and Howard Simon, former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Throughout the Assembly, attendees attended workshops and talks to learn about how they can get more involved in advocating for the rights of the most disenfranchised in our country.
Sharon Aron Baron
Sharon Aron Baron is a Parkland resident and editor of Talk Media. she has been covering Parkland news since 2012. Parkland Talk was created to provide News, Views, and Entertainment for the residents of Parkland.
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Meet Your School Resource Officers at Parkland Night Out


John Anthony Lennon (b. Greensboro, North Carolina, 1950) is an American composer of contemporary classical music based in Georgia. He was raised in Mill Valley, California, and was professor of composition at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, until 2017. He also taught at the University of Tennessee (beginning in 1977), and taught as a guest composer at Northwestern University in the spring of 1998.
He earned a B.A. degree in liberal arts from the University of San Francisco, at first majoring in English and minoring in philosophy, later adding music courses. He received M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in music composition from the University of Michigan, where he studied composition with Leslie Bassett and William Bolcom.
Lennon is known particularly for his works for classical guitar (all written for the American guitarist David Starobin), including Another's Fandango (1981), Gigolo (1996), and the guitar concerto Zingari (1991).
Lennon's music is published by C. F. Peters, E. C. Schirmer, Dorn Publications, Mel Bay, Woodwind Services, Inc., Roseanne Music, Galaxy/Columbia University Press, and Oxford University Press. His music has been recorded by CRI, Bridge Records, Contemporary Record Society, Society of Composers/Capstone, and Open Loop, and (as a performer) with the University of Michigan recording series.
In 1981 he was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1994 he won a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, tying for third place. He has also won a Rome Prize and been a resident of the MacDowell Colony.
He lives in in Atlanta, Georgia.


skyfall-movie-image-daniel-craig-james-bond. skyfall-movie-image-daniel-craig-james-bond. HD Wallpaper and background images in the James Bond club tagged: james bond.
This James Bond photo might contain 기호, 포스터, 텍스트, 칠판, 사인, and 서명.


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Texas senator John Cornyn slams his AG's SCOTUS case to overturn Trump's defeat
Trump tells White House Hanukkah party that if SCOTUS judges have 'courage and wisdom' he will win election as Texas senator John Cornyn slams his AG's case to overturn the defeat saying states shouldn't interfere in each others elections
President Trump told a White House Hanukkah party on Wednesday night that he is going to 'win this election' with help from 'certain very important people'
He appeared to be referencing the Supreme Court judges who he said needed to have 'wisdom and courage'
It came after he submitted a motion to join a case filed to the Supreme Court on Monday by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
The case, which has been joined by 17 other Republican-led states, is trying to sue four battleground states to invalidate Joe Biden's victories there
Paxton claims election results in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia are 'tainted' due to the elections processes in those states
Yet Texas senator John Cornyn hit out at the case on Wednesday night
He said it appeared to have no legal basis and that states should not interfere in each other's election, as he was backed up by Jeb Bush
Legal experts have said the Texas AG's case is doomed and pointed out that Paxton is himself under FBI investigation
The only Republican effort to make it to the Supreme Court so far was dismissed without being heard by the justices
By Frances Mulraney and Geoff Earle, Deputy U.S. Political Editor For Dailymail.com
Published: 05:27 GMT, 10 December 2020 | Updated: 05:44 GMT, 10 December 2020
President Donald Trump on Wednesday night told a White House Hanukkah party that he is going to 'win this election' if Supreme Court judges have 'courage and wisdom' to overturn results.
The mostly maskless crowd chanted 'four more years' after Trump told them that the help of 'certain very important people' was needed to prevent him from having to leave the White House.
He appeared to be referencing the case filed by the Texas Attorney General on Monday and later joined by 17 other Republican-led states that is calling on the Supreme Court to overturn the results in four states.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump had filed a motion demanding to join the law suit and asked Texas Senator Ted Cruz to argue the case.
Yet, Texas senator John Cornyn spoke out against his AG Ken Paxton on Wednesday night, stating that he could not see the legal basis to the challenge.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday night told a White House Hanukkah party that he is going to 'win this election' if Supreme Court judges have 'courage and wisdom' to overturn results, referencing a case brought by the Texas AG and 17 other states to overturn results
VIDEO: Trump tells the crowd at the Hanukkah party that with the help of ¿certain very important people, if they have wisdom and if they have courage, we are going to win this election.¿ ¿ remarks followed with loud chants of ¿four more years.¿ pic.twitter.com/FjCyFGOqPC
— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) December 10, 2020
Texas senator John Cornyn, pictured above, spoke out against his AG Ken Paxton on Wednesday, stating that he could not see the legal basis to the challenge. Paxton filed the case on Monday, claiming that the election results in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia are 'tainted' due to the elections processes in those states
Paxton has claimed that the election results in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia are 'tainted' due to the elections processes in those states.
Cornyn, who faced criticism in late November for saying the Senate is not obligated to confirm Biden appointees, told CNN that he believed states should not interfere in each other's elections.
'I read just the summary of it, and I frankly struggle to understand the legal theory of it,' he said of Paxton's case.
'Number one, why would a state, even such a great state as Texas, have a say so on how other states administer their elections,' Cornyn added.
'We have a diffused and dispersed system and even though we might not like it, they may think it's unfair, those are decided at the state and local level and not at the national level. So it's an interesting theory, but I'm not convinced.'
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, pictured, claims that election results in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia are 'tainted' due to the elections processes in those states
Cornyn has previously refused to acknowledge that Biden has won the election yet as also spoken out about Trump's failure to prove that there was any voter fraud.
On Wednesday morning, he appeared to acknowledge Trump's loss for the first time, referring to Biden as president-elect in a tweet, but he and his aides later claimed that it was simply because he was quoting straight from an article.
'It's a quote from the article. Not news,' he said on Twitter after the reference was called out.
Cornyn on December 3 told Texas news outlets that he saw no valid reason for Congress to overturn the outcome in the Electoral College, yet has also remained critical of Biden and the personnel choices that he will be sending to the Senate to be confirmed.
Only three Texas Republican members of Congress have acknowledged Biden's win and two of them are retiring, according to Dallas News.
After Cornyn took a hit at AG Paxton on Wednesday, he was commended by Jeb Bush, who echoed the claim that the case has no legal base.
'Thank you Senator Cornyn. There is no legal theory and the conservative majority Supreme Court will reject it out of hand,' he wrote.
Yet Trump is firing ahead with the Hail Mary attempt to change the results of the election telling the crowd gathered at the White House on Wednesday night that it was a 'historic fight'.
Cornyn said that he does not believe Paxton's case has any legal basis
'It's really for the soul of our country — because if somebody wins an election by a lot and they take the election away and they give it to people that shouldn't be there, I think that's a problem for our country,' he said.
This came after Trump's new lawyer produced a filing claiming there is something 'deeply amiss' in the election results.
The lawyer, John Eastman, had also penned an op-ed this summer doubting whether Vice President-elect Kamal Harris was eligible for office despite her being born in California.
The new legal brief with Trump's name on it, included a motion for Trump, identified as the president, 'to intervene in his personal capacity as candidate for re-election'.
The brief includes many of the same arguments Trump has put forward on his Twitter account – including Wednesday, when Trump tweeted no candidate has ever lost the White House while carrying Florida and Ohio.
'The fact that nearly half of the country believes the election was stolen should come as no surprise,' according to the filing. 'President Trump prevailed on nearly every historical indicia of success in presidential elections. For example, he won both Florida and Ohio; no candidate in history—Republican or Democrat—has ever lost the election after winning both States.'
Cornyn as not yet fully acknowledged that Biden has been named president-elect
He appeared to acknowledge Biden's win Wednesday but then said he was quoting an article
Jeb Bush commended Cornyn for speaking out against his AG's Supreme Court case
It also relies on statistical claims about the vote, in a race Trump has claimed was 'rigged' despite Joe Biden getting 7 million more votes than he did.
'This, despite the fact that the nearly 75 million votes he received—a record for any incumbent President—was nearly 12 million more than he received in the 2016 election, also a record (in contrast to the 2012 election, in which the incumbent received 3 million fewer votes than he had four years earlier but nevertheless prevailed).'
'These things just don't normally happen, and a large percentage of the American people know that something is deeply amiss,' according to the filing, which comes after passage of the 'safe harbor' deadline and after enough states certified their vote for Joe Biden to win the Electoral College.
Trump has asked Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to argue the case if the Supreme Court decides to listen to its merit.
Cruz argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court before he was elected to the Senate and been a loyal Trump defender, although he also ran for president in 2016.
By way of remedy, Trump asks that the vote be thrown out and for the high court to 'direct' that state legislatures 'have the authority to appoint a new set of Electors in a manner that does not violate the Electors Clause, or to appoint no Electors at all' – which would have the result of nullifying millions of votes in the four states.
It also seeks to award costs to the plaintiff for the intervention, as well as 'such other relief as the court deems just and proper.'
It says the high court should 'direct the defendant States to review their election results in compliance with pre-existing state law and count only lawfully cast ballots and thereby determine who truly won the contest for President of the United States.'
Federal judges overseeing cases by Trump allies in Michigan and other states have scoffed at remedies that would wipe away millions of votes. 'The people have spoken,' ruled U.S. District Court Judge Linda V. Parker in Michigan as she dismissed a suit.
President-elect Joe Biden won 306 Electoral College votes compared to 232 for Trump, while winning 81 million votes nationwide compared to 74 million for Trump.
Attorney John Eastman, pictured above, who filed the motion for Trump to intervene in the Texas lawsuit, penned an op-ed this summer doubting whether Vice President-elect Kamal Harris was eligible for office despite her being born in California
Amid the rush by Republicans to back Trump, even after all 50 states and D.C. certified their votes, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah blasted the idea of having state legislatures overturn the will of voters.
'It's just simply madness. The idea of supplanting the vote of the people with partisan legislators is so completely out of our national character that it's simply mad,' Romney said.
'Of course the President has the right to challenge results in court, to have recounts. But this effort to subvert the vote of the people is dangerous and destructive of the cause of democracy,' he added.
The Electoral College meets Monday, in the next milestone toward Inauguration Day on January 20th.
The case led by AG Paxton has also been joined by seventeen other state attorneys general – all Republicans and all hailing from states that Trump carried in November.
'Encroachments on the authority of state Legislatures by other state actors violate the separation of powers and threaten individual liberty,' wrote the states, who are seeking to have the court step in to overturn the vote in four other states.
'States have a strong interest in ensuring that the votes of their own citizens are not diluted by the unconstitutional administration of elections in other States,' they write.
Signing on were the top law enforcement officers of Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.
The attorneys general joined Trump's effort at a time when House Republicans were circulating a petition to support it – the latest sign of how the president maintains his grip on the Republican Party despite losing to Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes and having just weeks left in office.
In the suit, filed late Monday in the name of the State of Texas, Paxton argues that the Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia violated the Constitution's Elections Clause with their dramatic expansion of mail-in ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The case has already been called 'insane' by one University of Texas law professor, and follows a series of legal defeats for Team Trump. Paxton is himself under FBI investigation over alleged bribery and abuse of his office.
The case does not attempt to show the 'massive' fraud claimed by Trump and his legal team, claims which have taken a beating in state and federal courts, instead saying election changes makes it 'undetectable.'
'Despite the chaos of election night and the days which followed, the media has consistently proclaimed that no widespread voter fraud has been proven. But this observation misses the point. The constitutional issue is not whether voters committed fraud but whether state officials violated the law by systematically loosening the measures for ballot integrity so that fraud becomes undetectable.'
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court declined to take up a challenge to another case seeking to overturn the certification process in Pennsylvania by voiding its mail-in ballots. No justice registered a dissent – suggesting that the decision could have been 9-0 against Republican Mike Kelly, whose case would have also voided the presidential election result if it had succeeded.
And in Nevada late Tuesday, the state Supreme Court slapped down Trump's bid to overturn the election unanimously, ruling he had provided no evidence of significant fraud.
Just over 12 hours later, Trump wrote on Twitter that his legal efforts continue, despite the passing of a 'safe harbor' deadline, and the two lawyers leading the effort – Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis – being sidelined after testing positive for the coronavirus.
'We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!' Trump wrote. He later tweeted 'RIGGED ELECTION!'
It is a case with a severely limited chance of success, legal observers said.
It features an affidavit by Mellissa Carone, whose wild and antagonistic testimony went viral and got treated to a sketch on Saturday Night Live. It references a case filed in Michigan supported by the affidavit, and it includes her sworn statement in the appendix for the case.
Mellissa Carone, the star witness in Trump's 'voter fraud' case in Michigan, used to work as a stripper at a now closed gentlemen's club called the Bada Bing, named after The Sopranos, sources told DailyMail.com. The Texas attorney general includes her affidavit in Supreme Court suit seeking to overturn the vote in four states that went for Joe Biden
Trump called a case where Texas is suing four states that went for Joe Biden over their election laws 'the big one'
Trump wrote after a big setback the Pennsylvania case was 'not my case,' while calling a Texas case filed this week 'very strong.' A University of Texas law professor called the case 'insane'
Trump approvingly tweeted a link to a story by pro-Trump outlet Justthenews.com featuring her testimony. He also tweeted: 'Melissa is great!'
Carone testified as a star witness for Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who attended a hearing in Michigan last week where her appearance went viral after she went after lawmakers and made unsupported claims. Saturday Night Live also did a sketch where they skewered her testimony.
As DailyMail.com revealed, she was recently let off probation after initially being charged with obscenity and computer crimes. She also used to work at a Sopranos-inspired strip club in Michigan called 'Bada Bing,' according to sources.
Despite her prolonged, unmasked contact with Giuliani, who is being treated at Georgetown University hospital for coronavirus, she told the Washington Post she does not intend to quarantine or get tested.
She also made a series of bizarre claims to SarahPalin.com, a website that contacted her after she burst onto the scene.
She denied being drunk during her testimony. 'This is what they do to Trump,' she said. 'It's not going to work with me. I won't back down because I am very religious and I know God is watching over me.'
Then she spoke about the origins of the virus, and tied it into voting machines that Trump lawyers have claimed were rigged in a conspiracy that involves Venezuela, Cuba, and China.
'This started with COVID. The Obamas funded that Wuhan lab to make COVID. Then the impeachment process. They've used every avenue possible to cheat, they used Dominion. Dominion software was created to cheat. I have a binder from Dominion that proves this. There's so much more that will be exposed,' she said.
Top election lawyer Ben Ginsburg told CNN following Trump's tweet about joining the case: 'There's no basis for it. I don think the Supreme Court for an instant will consider taking up this case.'
University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck called the suit 'insane,' quipping on Twitter: 'It looks like we have a new leader in the 'craziest lawsuit filed to purportedly challenge the election' category.'
The suit charges the four battleground states that went for Joe Biden with 'rampant lawlessness' for their 'unconstitutional acts,' although the Constitution grants the states authority to conduct federal elections. Pennsylvania voted in 2019 to create no-excuse mail-in voting when the state's Democratic governor signed bipartisan legislation.
Trump also blasted the media for its coverage of the high court's decision not to take the Pennsylvania case.
'This was not my case as has been so incorrectly reported. The case that everyone has been waiting for is the State's case with Texas and numerous others joining. It is very strong, ALL CRITERIA MET. How can you have a presidency when a vast majority think the election was RIGGED?'
But the Supreme Court's decision Tuesday was seen as a crushing blow to Trump's efforts.
Within minutes of the justices' ruling, Trump's campaign blasted a text appeal to supporters effectively admitting defeat in the courts and saying: 'Everything Pres. Trump has achieved is on the line on Jan 5' – the day before Congress meets to certify the Electoral College's result.
That is now Trump's last chance to overturn the election result, by somehow persuading Congress to void Biden's victory in enough states to cut his Electoral College total to under 270, making it up to the House to decide on who is president. If the House gets to decide, each state delegation gets one vote, and Republicans have a majority in 26 state delegations – which Trump appears to think would mean him being made president.
The blow from the Supreme Court means that its 6-3 conservative majority, with three Trump judges on the bench, has – so far – refused to help him.
The rebuke came shortly before the House ignored a veto threat by Trump and voted overwhelmingly to pass a Defense bill. Trump was demanding change to a communication law and objecting to a provision on renaming military bases named after Confederate officers. The $741 billion bill passed on a bipartisan 335-78 vote.
How the Trump 'campaign' reacted: January 5 is the day before Congress meets to certify the Electoral College result and therefore Joe Biden's victory. The SCOTUS ruling means Trump has effectively abandoned hope of conservative justices coming to his aid
Pennsylvania reaction: Josh Shapiro, the state's attorney general, slammed the suit as a 'circus'
Wisconsin reaction: Josh Kaul, the state's attorney general, compared its chances in court to Texas' in the Ice Bowl
ADULTERY AND AN FBI PROBE: MEET THE AG BEHIND HAIL MARY BID TO VOID ELECTION
The FBI is investigating allegations that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton broke the law in using his office to benefit a wealthy donor.
Federal agents are looking into claims by former members of Paxton's staff that the Republican committed bribery, abuse of office and other crimes to help Austin real estate developer Nate Paul.
The investigation was reported in mid-November by the Associated Press.
Paxton has denied wrongdoing and refused calls for his resignation since his top deputies reported him to federal authorities at the end of September.
Trump ally: Ken Paxton with Eric Trump and his wife Angela – who he admits cheating on
It's unclear how far the FBI is into investigating the allegations against Paxton. An agency spokeswoman in San Antonio declined to comment.
Paxton is accused of using his position as Texas' top law enforcement official to benefit Paul in several ways.
Central to their claims is the fact that Paxton hired an outside lawyer to investigate the developer's allegations that the FBI improperly searched his home and offices last year.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (right, with Trump in the Beast in 2018) has filed suit against four states that went for Joe Biden, asking the Supreme Court to have Republican-run state legislatures appoint electors and hand the presidency to Donald Trump
Each of Paxton's accusers has resigned, been put on leave or been fired since reporting him. Last week, four of them filed a state whistleblower lawsuit against the attorney general, claiming he ousted them as retribution.
The full nature of Paxton and Paul's connection remains unclear. In 2018, Paul donated $25,000 to the attorney general's reelection campaign. The developer also said in a recent deposition that Paxton recommended a woman for her job with his company.
Two people previously told The Associated Press that Paxton acknowledged in 2018 having an extramarital affair with the woman, who was then a state Senate aide. The people spoke on condition of anonymity due to fears about retaliation.
Paxton has spent most of his tenure in office maintaining his innocence in the face of an indictment on unrelated securities fraud charges. The case has been stalled for years over legal challenges.
The case turned down by the justices was the only one to even make it to them. Justice Samuel Alito, who is responsible for Pennsylvania's federal courts, had moved up a deadline for submissions by a day, a move which apparently brought hope to the president and his supporters.
But it meant that the justices slapped it down on the day of 'safe harbor' when all state election litigation must be concluded.
That means that Trump and his Republican and legal allies, including COVID-stricken Giulaini and Ellis and conspiracy theorists Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood failed to change a single state's result or win all but a single case which affected less than 2,000 votes.
It also means that when the Electoral College meets next week it will certify Biden's win – leaving the January 6 Congressional session Trump's only hope.
By targeting the four swing states, Paxton's lawsuit aims to either get their Republican-majority state representatives to appoint electors to the Electoral College, flipping its majority to Trump, or invalidate their electors entirely, reducing Biden's electoral college majority under 270 and handing the decision on the presidency to the House of Representatives.
The Supreme Court does not have to take up the case and could simply ignore it. The attorneys general of Michigan and Wisconsin – both Democrats – mocked the legal bid and accused Paxton of running a 'circus.'
Paxton claims that the four states acted against their own constitutions to make voting easier in the pandemic, and that this hurt the voters of Texas by violating the federal constitution's equal protection clause.
'Whether well-intentioned or not, these unconstitutional acts had the same uniform effect—they made the 2020 election less secure in the Defendant States,' according to the suit.
'Those changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures. The acts of these officials thus directly violated the Constitution.'
Trump retweeted demands that other Republican states join the suit and a list of when their state attorneys generals' terms are up – implying that they should face primaries if they do not join in.
The suit claims that the four states should be ordered by the justices to pass the power of picking the Electoral College electors back to the legislatures, under Article 1 of the Constitution.
The Constitution's Elections Clause in Article 1 states that the 'Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof' – establishing each state's role in running its elections.
This is why some states allowed for universal mail-in voting years ago and some took a different course.
But the suit claims the four swing states 'flooded their citizenry with tens of millions of ballot applications and ballots in derogation of statutory controls as to how they are lawfully received, evaluated, and counted.'
It calls out 'non-legislative changes to the Defendant States' election laws' through state courts and election officials.
The suit asks the Supreme Court to delay the December 14 meting of the Electoral College to allow for investigations. It accused the states of 'rampant lawlessness' and trying to 'usurp' powers from their legislatures.
The suit seeks to remand the appointment of electors to the states' legislatures – which are all Republican-run – for appointment by the legislators rather than the popular vote that occurred.
It explicitly says that if that does not happen, the Texas AG wants the election to be thrown to the House on January 6. Each state delegation gets one vote, which would put Republicans in the majority if there was a vote.
The Texas suit claims 'rampant lawlessness' and cites some of the same claims that have either been debunked or thrown out of court already.
For example, it cites 'suitcases full of ballots being pulled out from underneath tables after poll watchers were told to leave' in Georgia, although an official from the Republican Secretary of State's office in Georgia provided an affidavit to say that there was no wrongdoing.
'Our investigation and review of the entire security footage revealed that there were no mystery ballots that were brought in from an unknown location and hidden under tables as has been reported by some,' investigator Frances Watson wrote.
Texas itself allows mail-in voting, but sets out categories and requires a reason: travel, being over 65, incarcerated, or with a disability.
Pennsylvania's legislature voted in 2019 to create no-excuse mail-in voting, before the pandemic. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf signed the legislation, which was passed on a bipartisan basis.
The plea to the Supreme Court comes despite judges having been among the harshest critics of the legal arguments put forth by Trump's legal team, often dismissing them with scathing language of repudiation.
A DARING LAWSUIT – OR DOOMED TO HIT THE TRASH?
Texas AG Ken Paxton lawsuit makes a legal Hail Mary by going straight to the Supreme Court – meaning he can either win big, or he could simply be ignored.
The Supreme Court is the correct place for disputes between states to be played out, but usually such disputes are long-running, such as over water rights. In 2014, Oklahoma and Nebraska asked the Supreme Court to stop Colorado's marijuana legalization – but it declined to hear the case.
That could be well be the justices' first response to Paxton.
To convince them to take the case, he has to convince them that the people of Texas – whom he represents – suffered harm from the election's outcome, and that the four states either breached the Article 1 clause establishing how elections are run, or the Equal Protection clause, by making the votes of the people of Texas somehow less important than those of the swing states.
The states themselves can point out that election law is dealt with in individual states, and that cases there have universally lost. They can also point to the results in federal circuit courts and – in Pennsylvania – federal appeals courts which have dismissed claims too.
Even if the justices are convinced that they should take the case, it remains a severe uphill task for the Republican attorney general to win.
The usual approach the justices take to disputes between states is to set up their own special court, under a 'special master' to investigate both sides' cases, take evidence, and approach the case like its own trial.
That is because, unusually, the Supreme Court is starting from scratch rather than dealing with a case which has already made its way through the courts system and is very well defined. This time, however the clock is ticking and the justices could opt to hear the case themselves.
Either way, Paxton would have to present voluminous evidence to back up his demand, that millions of ballots be voided and the results of four swing states' elections be overturned.
The core of Paxton's case is that the four states changed mail-in ballot rules before the election, then used those to fraudulently switch the result to Biden from Trump.
The Supreme Court would have to rule both that the four states acted unconstitutionally, and then that the way to deal with those actions is by voiding their elections. Such an extreme act runs in the face of the Supreme Court's ruling earlier this year on 'faithless electors,' which allowed states to punish or remove those who planned to vote against the states' winning candidate.
During the case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh spoke about 'the chaos principle of judging' saying if it's a 'a close call…we shouldn't facilitate or create chaos.'
As for his evidence, Paxton faces an obvious challenge: his submission relies on a string of claims about both the constitutional actions of the states in allowing more widespread access to mail-in voting, and of fraud, which have already been slapped down by state and federal judges in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia.
Among the 'evidence' is that Republicans were not allowed to watch ballots being counted in Philadelphia, which was laughed out of court when a Trump lawyer admitted there was a 'non-zero' number of observers.
He also claims that Georgia's mail-in ballots would have gone to Trump if they had been rejected at the same rate as they were in 2016 – which the state has already ruled out happening.
In Michigan, the evidence includes the affidavit of Jessy Jacob, already dismissed by a Detroit judge, claiming that that election workers coached voters to either vote Biden or straight Democrat by standing beside them in the voting station, and that she was asked not to seek photo ID from voters. The judge dismissed her claims as 'generalized,' said she did nothing about it when she claimed it was happening, and only came forward when Trump lost.
In Wisconsin Paxton claims voting drop boxes were unconstitutional. The state's attorney general can invoke what is known as 'laches,' a defense that Paxton should have sued at the time the boxes were authorized, rather than waiting to see the outcome of the vote. It also includes a claim from a USPS sub-contractor about ballots being backdated after polls closed – even though the state had already reported its result.
And in all four states Paxton quotes a statistical analysis: 'The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin— independently given President Trump's early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000.' But its basis is undeclared and comes from an energy economist, not an elections expert.
ANOTHER DEFEAT: THIS TIME NEVADA'S JUDGES SLAP DOWN TRUMP
The Supreme Court of Nevada rejected an appeal late Tuesday from President Donald Trump's campaign to overturn the election results in the state, affirming President-elect Joe Biden's win in one of the battleground states.
'To prevail on this appeal, appellants must demonstrate error of law, findings of fact not supported by substantial evidence or an abuse of discretion in the admission or rejection of evidence by the district court,' the order read. 'We are not convinced they have done so.'
Trump says the result was fraudulent, but no court has found evidence to support his assertions.
Last week, a district court in Nevada ruled that the Trump campaign had not proven a claim that there had been a malfunction in voting devices and the contest between Trump and Biden had been manipulated.
'We also are not convinced that the district court erred in applying a burden of proof by clear and convincing evidence, as supported by the cases cited in the district court's order,' Nevada's Supreme Court said in its judgement.
Nevada's Republican Party said it was 'extremely disappointed' by the decision.
'We were not afforded an opportunity to write our brief or argue the case in front of the Court,' Nevada's GOP said in a statement.
'Full denial of legitimate due process and appellate rights is truly unprecedented, shocking and extraordinary,' it said.
One of the court's justices, Elissa Cadish, recused herself from ruling on the appeal, saying she had a personal relationship with several of the Biden electors, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Trump's campaign wanted Justice James W. Hardesty to recuse himself because he congratulated Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske on 'carrying out an extraordinary successful election,' the paper also reported.
Hardesty filed a motion saying that his comment was 'an appropriate courteous and professional response and in no way reflects any predisposition or opinion by me concerning the facts or issues raised in this case.'
The Trump campaign lost that argument too.
Biden won Nevada by a 33,596-vote margin, giving him the state's six votes in the Electoral College which choses the president.
Democrat Hillary Clinton also won the state over Trump in 2016.
This has been true whether the judge has been appointed by a Democrat or a Republican, including those named by Trump himself.
The judicial rulings that have rejected Trump's unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud have underscored not only the futility of the lame-duck president's attempt to sabotage the people's will but also the role of the courts in checking his unprecedented efforts to stay in power.
The rebukes have not stopped the litigation.
Even in the face of these losses in court, Trump has contended that, in fact, he won the election.
And he's moved out of the courts to directly appeal to lawmakers as his losses mount. He brought Michigan lawmakers to the White House in a failed bid to set aside the vote tally, and phoned Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, asking him to order a special legislative session to overturn the states results. Kemp refused.
And Trump tweeted in all caps, 'I WON THE ELECTION, BIG.'
While that is not the case, what is true is that Trump is rapidly running out of legal runway.
Out of roughly 50 lawsuits filed, more than 35 have been dropped or dismissed.
A great deal of the lawsuits highlight a lack of understanding of how elections actually work.
In Georgia, U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten, appointed by President George W. Bush, dismissed a lawsuit filed by Powell, who was dropped from the Trump legal team a few weeks ago but has still continued to spread faulty election claims.
Powell's lawsuit claimed widespread fraud meant to illegally manipulate the vote count in favor of Biden. The suit said the scheme was carried out in different ways, including ballot stuffing, votes flipped by the election system from Trump to Biden and problems with absentee ballots. The judge summarily rejected those claims.
Batten said the lawsuit sought 'perhaps the most extraordinary relief ever sought in any federal court in connection with an election.'
He said the lawsuit sought to ignore the will of voters in Georgia, which certified the state for Biden again Monday after three vote counts.
'They want this court to substitute its judgment for that of two-and-a-half million Georgia voters who voted for Joe Biden and this I am unwilling to do,' Batten said.
Much like Trump, his lawyers try to blame the political leanings of the judge after their legal arguments are flayed.
When a federal appeals panel in Philadelphia rejected Trump´s election challenge just five days after it reached the court, Trump legal advisor Jenna Ellis – who was revealed Tuesday to have COVID – called their work a product of 'the activist judicial machinery in Pennsylvania.'
But Trump appointed the judge who wrote the Nov. 27 opinion.
'Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections,' Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote as the 3rd U.S. Circuit panel refused to stop the state from certifying its results for Democrat Joe Biden, a demand he called 'breathtaking.'
All three of the panel members were appointed by Republican presidents.
And they were upholding the decision of a fourth Republican, U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann, a conservative jurist and Federalist Society member. Brann had called the campaign's legal case, which was argued in court by Rudy Giuliani, a 'haphazard' jumble that resembled 'Frankenstein´s monster.'
In state courts, too, the lawsuits have failed. In Arizona on Friday, Judge Randall Warner, an independent appointed in 2007 by Democratic former Gov. Janet Napolitano, threw out a bid to undo Biden's victory.
Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward challenged of ballots in metro Phoenix that were duplicated because voters´ earlier ballots were damaged or could not be run through tabulators.
Warner wrote: 'There is no evidence that the inaccuracies were intentional or part of a fraudulent scheme. They were mistakes. And given both the small number of duplicate ballots and the low error rate, the evidence does not show any impact on the outcome.'
In Nevada on Friday, Judge James Todd Russell in Carson City ruled that attorneys for Republican electors failed to provide clear or convincing evidence of fraud or illegality.
Nevada judges are nonpartisan. But Russell's father was a Republican governor of the state from 1951-59.
Trump has clashed repeatedly with the court this year, after suffering some high-profile disappointments despite the court's 6-3 conservative bent.
In June the court ruled against his administration's decision to end DACA, in a blistering opinion that called the administration's action 'arbitrary and capricious.' That led to a federal judge last week ordering the administration to begin accepting new applications.
Trump raged on Twitter it was "NOT FAIR!' after the 7-2 ruling.
Trump also called out Chief Justice John Roberts over the summer, after he joined with liberals in key rulings. "Courts in the past have given 'broad deference'. BUT NOT ME!' he complained.
Roberts also joined Trump appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch in applying non-discrimination laws to LGBT employees. Roberts also ruled the president should be subject to grand jury subpoenas – a matter close to Trump's interest as he is pursued by prosecutors in New York and lawmakers seeking his tax return information.
Trump could hope he might do better after the installation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett – his third pick to the court and the sixth member of the conservative majority.
He spoke about the potential that the high court might decide the election even before she was confirmed just weeks before the election, in a move that Democrats warned could be part of a plan to decide the race from the bench.
Trump retweeted a bizarre tweet Tuesday from 'Major Patriot' that featured Barrett with beaming eyes.
'They got caught because we were leading by so much more than they ever thought possible. Late night ballot 'dumps' went crazy!' Trump wrote.
The user wrote: 'The wheels are coming off. Trump's inspired massive MAGA tsunami turnout forced them to cheat so big they lost their minds in a fraud frenzy. Their Unconstitutional legal moves alone are dooming them.'
Twitter flagged it for 'disputed' claims of election fraud. The user had posted a variety of conspiracy theories.
Source Link: Texas senator John Cornyn slams his AG's SCOTUS case to overturn Trump's defeat
Field of Flags goes up at National Mall - one for each of the 200,000 Americans who can't attend the...
I didn't ask for cash to get pardons says Rudy Giuliani after convicted CIA leaker reported him to the FBI...
Bill Barr finally quit after telling Donald Trump his claims of election fraud dreamed up by 'clownish' legal team were...
Dominion Voting Systems sends cease and desist letter to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and threatens to sue him for defamation...
Donald Trump says he'll join Texas AG bid to overturn election
Donald Trump demands to join Texas' Hail Mary bid to overturn his election


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Tag Archives: Kit de Waal
Booker and Young Writer Ceremonies & Tracy Chevalier Book Club
This year I correctly predicted Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart and Surge by Jay Bernard as the winners of the Booker Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, respectively. Patting myself on the back!
(Earlier in the year, I had a feeling Maggie O'Farrell would win the Women's Prize, but wasn't confident enough to single her out; and I got the Wainwright Prizes all wrong.)
I watched both the Booker Prize (live) and Young Writer of the Year Award (pre-recorded) ceremonies online; not having to secure an invitation or pay £30 for the train into London has been an ongoing bonus of pandemic arrangements.
The Booker ceremony was nicely tailored to viewers at home, incorporating brief, informal pre-recorded interviews with each nominated author and a video chat between last year's winners, Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo. When Evaristo asked Atwood about the difference between winning the Booker in 2019 versus in 2000, she replied, deadpan, "I was older." I especially liked the short monologues that well-known UK actors performed from each shortlisted book. Only a few people – the presenter, Evaristo, chair of judges and publisher Margaret Busby, and a string quartet – appeared in the studio, while all the other participants beamed in from other times and places. Stuart is only the second Scottish winner of the Booker, and seemed genuinely touched for this recognition of his tribute to his mother.
I've attended the Young Writer ceremony at the London Library twice: in 2017, when I was on the shadow panel, and again last year. It was a shame not to be able to meet up with fellow bloggers and the shortlisted authors, but I appreciated hearing the judges' thoughts on each nominee. Tessa Hadley said the whole shortlist was "so full of young energy." Kit de Waal called Catherine Cho's Inferno "an absolute page-turner." All the judges remarked at how funny, cutting and original Naoise Dolan's Exciting Times is. Critic Houman Barekat referred to Seán Hewitt's Tongues of Fire as "unabashedly earnest." Hadley said Marina Kemp's Nightingale is just the kind of novel she loves, a "delicate, full notation," and Barekat observed that it is a timely reminder of the value of care work.
It was clear that, for the judges, all five books were terrifically accomplished and would be worthy winners. Still, the unanimous decision was in favor of Surge, which Sunday Times literary editor Andrew Holgate said is "remarkable for its passionate engagement and diversity of voices." Bernard read "Hiss" (also up on the Granta website) and said that "poems can take on another life" through performance and short films, so the poet can't predict whether they will stay in poetry or branch out into other genres.
Back on 18 November, I attended another online event to which I'd gotten a last-minute invitation: a "book club" featuring Tracy Chevalier in conversation with her literary agent, Jonny Geller, on Girl with a Pearl Earring at 20 and her new novel, A Single Thread. In 1996 she sent Geller a letter asking if he'd read Virgin Blue, which she'd written for the MA at the University of East Anglia – the only UK Creative Writing course out there at the time. After VB, she started a contemporary novel set at Highgate Cemetery, where she was a tour guide. It was to be called Live a Little (since a Howard Jacobson title). But shortly thereafter, she was lying in bed one day, looking at a Vermeer print on the wall, and asked herself what the look on the girl's face meant and who she was. She sent Geller one page of thoughts and he immediately told her to stick Live a Little in a drawer and focus on the Vermeer idea.
Intriguingly, Chevalier stated that the deadline of her pregnancy determined the form of Girl with a Pearl Earring: she knew she had to keep things simple, with a linear narrative, one point of view, and spare prose. While the novel had a quiet publication in August 1999, a good review from Deborah Moggach helped, and it became a "word of mouth success," never hitting #1 but selling continuously. Chevalier believes this was due to a rare coming together of story and writing; sometimes good stories are hampered by mediocre writing, or vice versa. She and Geller discussed the strange coincidence of two other Vermeer novels coming out at the same time (e.g. Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland); she had the good luck of being the victor. The film version is "lovely," she said. Geller has never forgotten Scarlett Johansson, who turned 18 on set, leaving her gum in during a cast supper of spaghetti.
Chevalier's actual Highgate novel, Falling Angels, didn't borrow at all from her contemporary-set draft as it was set in 1900. Incorporating suffragette history, it felt like an untold story ripe for the plucking. Falling Angels has long been the one I consider my favorite Chevalier – as of last month, when we did The Last Runaway in book club, I've read all her work – but after this event I'm eager to reread it and GwaPE to see what I think.
Lastly, Chevalier and Geller talked about her new novel, A Single Thread, which was conceived before Trump and Brexit but had its central themes reinforced by the constant references back to 1930s fascism during the Trump presidency. She showed off the needlepoint spectacles case she'd embroidered for the novel. This wasn't the first time she'd taken up a craft featured in her fiction: for The Last Runaway she learned to quilt, and indeed still quilts today. Geller likened her to a "method actor," and jokingly fretted that they'll lose her to one of these hobbies one day. Chevalier's work in progress features Venetian glass. I'm already looking forward to it.
Like me, she moved to England from the Washington, D.C. area and has never lost the 'accent', so I feel like she's a kindred spirit.
Bookish online events coming up soon: Penguin book quiz, followed by book club holiday social (a Zoom meeting with glasses of wine in hand!), on the 15th
Have you taken advantage of any online literary events recently?
Posted in: Events, Literary Prizes | Tagged: Andrew Holgate, Bernardine Evaristo, book clubs, Booker Prize, Catherine Cho, Deborah Moggach, Douglas Stuart, Granta, historical fiction, Houman Barekat, Howard Jacobson, Jay Bernard, Jonny Geller, Kit de Waal, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Busby, Marina Kemp, Naoise Dolan, online events, poetry, Scarlett Johansson, Seán Hewitt, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Susan Vreeland, Tessa Hadley, Tracy Chevalier, UEA, Vermeer
New Networks for Nature 2019
By Rebecca Foster on November 4, 2019 | 19 Comments
This past weekend was my fifth time attending Nature Matters, the annual New Networks for Nature conference. I've written about it on the blog a few times before: last year's 10th anniversary meeting in Stamford, plus once when there was a particular focus on nature poetry and another time when it was held in Cambridge. This year the theme was "Time for Nature" and the conference was held at the very posh St Peter's School in York, which dates back to 627 and resembles an Oxford college. We have close friends in York, but our timing was off in that they were in Italy this week. However, they sent us a key to their house and let us stay there while they were away, which saved us having to book an Airbnb or guest house.
York street scene. Photo by Chris Foster.
What makes Nature Matters so special is its interdisciplinary nature: visual artists, poets, musicians, writers, activists, academics and conservationists alike attend and speak. So although the event might seem geared more towards my ecologist husband, there's always plenty to interest me, too. In particular, I enjoyed the panel discussions on nature in children's books and new directions for nature writing. This year the organizers were determined to make the speakers' roster more diverse, so some panels were three-quarters or wholly female, and four people of color appeared on the stage. (That might not seem like a great record, but in a field so dominated by white males it's at least a start.)
The Friday was a particularly brilliant day, the best day of sessions I can remember in any year. After a presentation by wildlife photographer and painter Robert Fuller, the first session was "Nature in Deep Time," featuring three archaeologists from northern universities who talked about cave art, woodcraft, and evidence of rapid climate change. "Taking a long view, we get a very different perspective," Professor Terry O'Connor of the University of York observed. The topic felt timely and tied in with a number of books that have come out this year, including Time Song by Julia Blackburn, Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie and Underland by Robert Macfarlane.
Next up was "Now or Never – Fighting for Nature," featuring three female activists: Ruth Peacey, a filmmaker for BBC Wildlife whose subjects have included bird persecution in the Mediterranean; Sally Goldsmith, a campaigner who deployed poems and songs against the mass street tree-cutting campaign in Sheffield and helped save some 10,000 trees; and Hatti Owens, an environmental lawyer with ClientEarth who has partnered with Extinction Rebellion. The panel chair and one of this year's organizers, writer Amy-Jane Beer, noted that activism is no longer radical, but an obligation.
Either side of lunch, Dr. Sara Goodacre of the University of Nottingham SpiderLab demonstrated how money spiders walk on water and "sail" using two raised legs to cope with wind; and Dr. Geoff Oxford of the University of York told the successful conservation story of the tansy beetle, which has recently been celebrated with a crowdfunded wall mural on the corner of York's Queen Street and the Tansy Beetle Bar at the Rattle Owl restaurant on Micklegate. After the day's proceedings, we joined a general movement over to see the mural and toast the bar's grand opening.
Tansy beetle mural. Photo by Chris Foster.
The children's books session featured Anneliese Emmans Dean, who gave very entertaining performances of her poems on insects and birds; Gill Lewis, who writes middle grade novels that introduce children to environmental issues; and Yuval Zommer, who writes and illustrates nonfiction guides with titles like The Big Book of Bugs and The Big Book of Blooms. Panel chair Ben Hoare, another of this year's organizers and a former editor of BBC Wildlife magazine, concluded that children's books should be joyous and not preachy.
There was still more to come on this jam-packed Friday! "The Funny Thing about Nature…" was essentially three stand-up comedy routines by Simon Watt, creator of the Ugly Animal Appreciation Society; Helen Pilcher, who has written a speculative book about the science of de-extinction; and Hugh Warwick, an author and hedgehog enthusiast. The language got a little crass in this session, but all three speakers were genuinely funny. As Watt put it, "Sincerity should not be our only weapon" in the fight for nature; he's trying to reach the people who aren't "already on our side."
After free gin and tonics provided by local producers SloeMotion, we had the absolute treat of a performance by Kitty Macfarlane, whose folk songs are inspired by the natural world. The title track of her 2018 album Namer of Clouds is about Luke Howard, who created the naming system for clouds (cumulus, stratus, and so on) in 1802. Other songs are about eels, a starling murmuration and the Sardinian tradition of weaving sea silk. She often incorporates field recordings of birdsong, and writes about her native Somerset Levels. Her voice is gorgeously clear, reminding me of Emily Smith's. We bought her album and EP at once.
Saturday was a slightly less memorable day, with sessions on insects and the uplands, an interview with clean rivers campaigner (and former pop star) Feargal Sharkey, and the short film Raising the Hare by Bevis Bowden. Most engaging for me was a four-person discussion on new directions for nature writing, chaired by author and academic Richard Kerridge. Katharine Norbury is editing the Women on Nature anthology, which I have supported via Unbound; it's due out next year. She went all the way back to Julian of Norwich and has included novelists, poets, gardeners and farmers – lots of women who wouldn't have called themselves 'nature writers'.
L to R: Kerridge, Norbury, Sethi, McKenzie and Smyth. Photo by Chris Foster.
Anita Sethi, a journalist from Manchester, speaks out about inequality of access to nature due to race, gender and class. She read part of her essay "On Class and the Countryside" from the Common People anthology edited by Kit de Waal. Zakiya McKenzie, a London-born Jamaican, was a Forest England writer in residence and founded the Green & Black project to give underprivileged children trips to the countryside. Richard Smyth, the author of A Sweet, Wild Note, spoke of the need for robust nature writing – and criticism. He stressed that it's not good enough for nature writing to be "charming" or "lyrical"; it's too important to be merely pleasant. I would have liked to hear him explore this more and for it to turn into more of a debate, but the discussion drifted into praise for experimental and speculative forms.
Peregrine on York Minster. Photo by Chris Foster.
Finishing off a Bettys lunch with cake and a mocha. Photo by Chris Foster.
There's something for everyone at this conference; some of the elements that I didn't get on with or found pretentious were others' highlights, so it's all a matter of taste. Spending time in York, one of my favorite cities, was an added bonus. We managed to fit in a trip to the National Railway Museum and lunch at Bettys on the Sunday before our train back.
Next year's conference will be at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, 10–12 July. I've never been to Norwich so look forward to visiting it and attending the full conference once again. It's always a fascinating, inspiring weekend with a wide range of speakers and ideas.
Would any of the conference's themes or events have interested you?
Posted in: Events | Tagged: activism, Amy-Jane Beer, Anita Sethi, Anneliese Emmans Dean, anthologies, archaeology, Ben Hoare, Bettys, Bevis Bowden, clouds, Emily Smith, Extinction Rebellion, Feargal Sharkey, folk music, Gill Lewis, Hatti Owens, Helen Pilcher, Hugh Warwick, Julia Blackburn, Julian of Norwich, Katharine Norbury, Kathleen Jamie, Kit de Waal, Kitty Macfarlane, Luke Howard, Nature Matters, nature writing, New Networks for Nature, Norwich, Richard Kerridge, Richard Smyth, rivers, Robert Fuller, Robert Macfarlane, Ruth Peacey, Sally Goldsmith, Simon Watt, SloeMotion, Somerset Levels, spiders, tansy beetle, Terry O'Connor, Unbound, York, Yuval Zommer, Zakiya Mackenzie


General Motors has just placed a big bet on the expected growth of the electric vehicles market, investing $300 million in its Orion Assembly Plant in Michigan, USA. This is the same location where the Chevrolet Bolt EV, the Chevrolet Sonic, and the autonomous Cruise AV cars are made, but the fresh investment will add new lines that will produce the EV platforms of the future.
GM is gradually shifting its focus towards electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and combinations of both. Their take is that by 2030, the market will only support players who had prepared for this transition. The new Michigan plant line is expected to begin rolling out its first EVs by 2023, while by 2020, GM will have allocated significantly more engineering resources to the R&D for the new EV platform. Their goal is to derive a platform that will be versatile enough to be used in a wide range of different models, body styles, and transmission layouts. Rumors suggest that Bolt's architecture will be used as the basis for the next-gen platform, as it was proven very successful in terms of car handling and road behavior.
After Taking This Vitamin, You Will NEVER Get Another Bite From a Mosquito Again!