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" Articles in Category: Ohio	"
Analysis of 2016 primary election numbers in three key battleground states appears to counter the allegation...
By Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. on 1/17/2020 9:35am PT
"They wanted substantive change and were willing to burn it all down to get it." These words, from a neighbor in the rural north country of New York, describe the thinking of some who voted for Donald Trump. Some of these same voters had supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary (more on that below).
Four years later, some have suggested we should shy away from Sanders, on the grounds that he cannot beat Trump. Election statistics, however, as well as current polling, reveal that he would, in fact, be a viable candidate. This is not the same thing as saying he will win. But, based on actual existing hard numbers that we can examine, he is certainly not "unelectable" as some critics have charged.
Bernie Sanders, having run for President in 2016, is the only Democratic candidate with a recent track record in presidential politics that can be used as a yardstick, unlike several of the other current front-runners such as Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg. So, let's look at what the raw numbers tell us about Sanders' electability against Trump, bearing in mind that this all could change when full-throated attacks are unleashed against him, as they inevitably will be against whoever wins the Democratic nomination...
Article Categories: Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton, Michigan, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Election 2016, Election 2020
'Green News Report' - December 19, 2019
IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Australia swelters through hottest day ever recorded Down Under; November 2019 was second hottest November on record; Ocean acidification accelerating off U.S. West Coast; Fracking costs far outweigh economic benefits, new study finds; PLUS: Goldman Sachs just says no to drilling in the Arctic... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Rich people and racing horses all made out better than renewable energy in Congress' budget deal; Coal baron Robert Murray funded climate denial as his company spiraled into bankruptcy; Puting pressure on the finance world could be one of the most effective ways to fight climate change; Trump's crude bailout of dirty power plants failed, but a subtler bailout is underway; 20 carbon majors responsible for more than 20 percent of ocean acidification... PLUS: As corals suffer around the world, those in French Polynesia thrive... and much, MUCH more! ...
Article Categories: Ohio, California, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Environment, Green News, Fracking, Natural gas, Oil, Climate change, Extreme weather, Australia, Oceans, Transportation, Arctic, NOAA, Carbon Tax, Pollution
2019 Off-Year Election Voting System Disasters and Electoral Triumphs: 'BradCast' 11/6/2019
Guest: VA Delegate Mark Levine on Dems' new, long-awaited 'trifecta'; Also: Brand new touchscreen voting systems failed in GA and PA, while Dems saw a number of big wins in VA and probably KY...
By Brad Friedman on 11/6/2019 6:35pm PT
On today's BradCast: There was much for Democrats to be delighted about in Tuesday's off-year elections around the country, though plenty for them to be remain very concerned about, including the failure of brand new voting system in several key battleground states. (Not to mention new charges of election fraud filed against Republicans in Ohio.) [Audio link to show follows below.]
We pick up today where we left off on yesterday's program, regarding disturbing voting disasters in several states, as nearly two-decade old touchscreen voting systems failed in Indiana, including flipping votes for at least the fifth year in a row, while brand-new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems being deployed in Pennsylvania and Georgia failed fantastically in several counties. Some voters were left unable to vote at all or facing long lines --- even during otherwise sparsely attended off-year municipal elections! Some candidates were left off of the electronic ballots all together and others found themselves with reportedly ZERO votes recorded on the all-new, way-better-than-the-old unverifiable touchscreen computer Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) tested in both PA and GA before wide deployment for the critical 2020 Presidential election.
In GA, voters were unable to vote in 4 of 6 counties where the new $100 million Dominion Voting Systems ImageCast machines were test run in municipal elections, before they are deployed statewide to 7.5 million voters next year. The electronic pollbook systems that creates voter cards that must be inserted into the touchscreens weren't working properly on Election Day in those 4 counties, after they had worked fine during pre-election tests and early voting.
In the critical battleground state of PA, there were all kinds of problems with the new ES&S ExpressVote XL systems deployed for the first time to Northampton County (where the systems were said to be operating incredibly slowly and results were reported as 0 for some candidates, as later confirmed by the County) and in Philadelphia, where candidate names were missing and many of the machines reportedly refused to work at all. (But this will all be fine by 2020, right?)
As to actual reported results from key contests on Tuesday, we break down a disappointing, if not completely surprising gubernatorial loss for Dems in Mississippi, a big apparent win for Kentucky Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andy Beshear and the challenge to that still-unofficial victory by the state's unpopular Governor Matt Bevin, and then the unequivocal success for Dems in the great Commonwealth of Virginia. There, a blue wave resulted in new Democratic majorities in both the House of Delegates and state Senate. The long-awaited victories, along with a Democrat already in the Governor's mansion, mean that Dems will enjoy a "trifecta" in Virginia for the first time in nearly 25 years.
We're joined today by DELEGATE MARK LEVINE, representing Virginia's 45th District (including parts of Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax County) in the House of Delegates. Levine, who ran uncontested for his third term on Tuesday, credits Trump, almost entirely for the rise of the Democratic Party in the once deeply-red state. "I like to say the only good thing Donald Trump has ever done in his life is help us win state legislative seats," he says, describing the President as "the gift that keeps on giving". He "fed our fire," he argues, adding that he believes the ongoing impeachment proceedings helped, rather than hurt, turnout for Democrats in the Commonwealth just outside of Washington D.C
We also discuss the effect that recently court-ordered un-gerrymandered maps had on flipping the two General Assembly chambers from red to blue on Tuesday, as well as the role the state's recent switch from hackable and unverifiable touchscreen voting systems to hand-marked paper ballots may have had, and whether Democrats will continue to support a state constitutional amendment for an independent redistricting commission now that they will be in control of both the Assembly and the Governor's mansion after the 2020 Census.
Levine, the longtime progressive radio host of "The Inside Scoop from Washington", breaks down a litany of long overdue policy agendas Democrats plan to undertake with their newly won majorities, including becoming the final state needed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (though legal battles await after their passage of the ERA).
"We're going to lead the way on gun safety laws. We're going to finally do something about climate change, which the Republicans have been fighting us on for decades. We're going to raise the minimum wage. We're going to do criminal justice reform. We're going to have non-discrimination for LGBT Virginians. We're going to improve education and teacher salaries, and workers' rights, consumers' rights, lower the cost of health care --- I'm really just getting started," he says, before explaining that "Democrats are unanimous" when it comes to expanding voting rights as well, including making it easier to vote with early voting, same-day registration and more.
"We're going to get past the Joe Biden wing of the party and into the Elizabeth Warren wing of the party," he vows. "Maybe some things on the further-most progressive edge, we might not have the votes for. But we're going to do a lot to change Virginia in a very blue direction"...
Article Categories: ES&S, Election Irregularities, Ohio, Mississippi, Election Reform, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Georgia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Virginia, Election Fraud, Touch-Screen DREs/BMDs, Dirty Tricks, Kentucky, Democrats, Republicans, Dominion Voting, KPFK, Donald Trump, NRA/Gun Violence, BradCast, India, Matt Bevin, Gerrymandering, Election 2019, Philadelphia, Andy Beshear, ERA
Impeachment, Syria and Trump's 'Russia First' Policy: 'BradCast' 10/15/2019
Guest: Salon's Heather Digby Parton; Also: 40k false voter purges prevented in Ohio; The return of 'GNR'!...
Our long road toward catching up with a month's worth of news continues on today's BradCast, with voting news out of Battleground Ohio, the latest on Trump's impeachment and chaos in Syria (and the thing that ties them together), as well as the latest environmental and climate news after a month away. [Audio link to show posted at end of summary.]
First up today: Some surprisingly good news for voters out of Ohio! The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that it comes, at least in part, thanks to the state's new Republican Sec. of State Frank LaRose, who had the good sense to check with voting rights groups beforewrongly purging some 40,000 perfectly active and eligible voters from the rolls who should never have been flagged for removal in the first place! Most of his fellow Republicans are likely not happy about that.
Then, we're joined by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo to discuss the latest impeachment news and Trump's deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syrian.
The impeachment inquiry over Trump's attempt to withhold nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in exchange for its President's trumped-up state investigation of Joe Biden and the 2016 election continues to gain steam, with half a dozen or more current and former Executive Branch officials now lining up to testify --- and not in favor of Trump or his lackey lawyer Rudy Giuliani --- to Congressional investigators. Trump's former Russia and Europe expert, Fiona Hill, testified for some ten hours on Monday, reportedly citing Giuliani's shadow foreign policy schemes meant to undermine U.S. foreign policy and personally enrich the President in some way.
According to reports of her deposition, her superior on the National Security Counsel, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, was so alarmed by Giuliani's efforts he described the former NYC Mayor turned Fox 'News' conspiracist as a "hand grenade who's going to blow everybody up". Bolton reportedly tried to warn White House attorneys about Giuliani's many attempts to undermine U.S. Ukraine policy. Bolton himself, the unlikeliest of heroes in this shameful saga, may soon be called to testify to Congress in coming days, along with a long list of other State, Defense and National Security officials who now seem eager to defy the White House's strategy of denying both documents and testimony in the House Democrats' impeachment inquiry. "They're defying the White House telling them not to go testify," Parton observes, "That is a change. That is different than what we've seen. Suddenly that stonewall is crumbling."
We also discuss Parton's reasonable theory as to why this matter has finally resulted in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi giving full permission to her caucus to proceed with impeachment, where clear evidence of felony obstruction of justice from Robert Mueller's report and Trump's hush-money payoffs to porn stars to help win the 2016 Presidential election did not. "This is the same kind of stuff that Trump was accused of [in 2016], that we all suspected him of doing, colluding with a foreign government to sabotage his rival's campaign. Here he is [with Ukraine] doing it in real time. I think that's really what has made the difference."
In not-at-all-unrelated news, Parton goes on to discuss her latest Salon column in which she details how Trump's Syria pullout appears to be anything but an impulsive decision after a recent phone call with Turkish President Erdogan, as many in the media are still describing the disastrous move. She explains how the U.S. abandonment of our Kurdish allies with the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Northern Syria is of a piece with Trump's feckless Ukraine policy. In both cases, she explains, there is one unavoidable fact in common --- even for those of us who may not be Russia hawks: both actions, like so many other controversial policies of the Trump Administration, are in the clear and direct interest of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Finally, we close today with the long-awaited return of the Green News Report, which we had been forced to suspend over the past month due to my family emergency. Somehow or another, Desi Doyen manages to fit in a month's worth of green news into the latest GNR in just six minutes. Buckle up --- and stay that way!...
Article Categories: Ohio, California, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Impeachment, John Bolton, Accountability, Environment, Voter Registration, Vote Caging, Rudolph Giuliani, Nancy Pelosi, Japan, KPFK, Donald Trump, Russia, Climate change, Extreme weather, Election 2016, Syria, Vladimir Putin, BradCast, Ukraine, Election 2020, Robert Mueller, Greta Thunberg, Frank LaRose, Fiona Hill
Judiciary Dem, Citing Impeachment Jurisdiction, Explains New Request for Kavanaugh Docs: 'BradCast' 8/7/2019
Guest: Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) 'hopes' newest SCOTUS Justice was 'completely forthright with U.S. Senate during confirmation', says House Judiciary 'proceeding in the nature of an Impeachment Inquiry' on Trump; Also: Prez uses visits to Dayton, El Paso to attack Dems...
Hey! Remember Brett Kavanaugh? The Donald Trump SCOTUS appointee who demonstrably lied during his sworn U.S. Senate Confirmation hearings last year before Republicans voted to ram him through to a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land, anyway? Yeah, we do too. Thankfully, so does our guest on today's BradCast who, as a member of Congress, can actually maybe --- just maybe --- do something to finally bring some accountability there. And, according to a letter signed by him and House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) on Tuesday, there is now evidence that they intend to try and do just that! [Audio link to full show is posted below.]
But, first up today, NBC News nailed it in a headline we saw only after getting off air today: "Trump turns day of grieving for shooting victims into day of grievances". That about sums it up. On Monday, in a scripted teleprompter speech, the President responded to the two weekend gun massacres that took the lives of at least 31 in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio by asking Americans "to set destructive partisanship aside...and find the courage to answer hatred with unity, devotion and love". But, just over 24 hours later, he began to unleash various attacks on Democrats Beto O'Rourke, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, former Vice President Joe Biden, and even managed to tie Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren somehow to the shooter in Dayton. All of that before, during and after what were supposed to be Presidential visits to the two recovering cities, intended to console them and help ease their pain after the twin tragedies.
On Tuesday night, Trump first broke his call for setting aside partisanship with a misfired Twitter snipe at El Paso native Beto O'Rourke's name, in which he told the former Texas Congressman to "be quiet!" after O'Rourke accurately tied the El Paso shooter's white supremacist diatribe to Trump's identical references to an "invasion" at our southern border. But on Wednesday morning, before leaving for his trips to the two grieving cities, he told reports at the White House that he felt his "rhetoric brings people together" and he "would like to stay out of the political fray." That vow didn't even last until he arrived in El Paso, with his new Twitter attacks emanating even while he was on Air Force One.
But in news today that is much less insane, we are joined by REP. HANK JOHNSON (D-GA), a member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and Chair of its Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet. That subcommittee oversees the federal court system, including the U.S. Supreme Court. On Tuesday, Johnson and Nadler sent a letter to the National Archives and Records Administration requesting records from Justice Kavanaugh's tenure in the White House during the George W. Bush Administration, when he first served in the White House Counsel's office from 2001 to 2003 and then as White House Staff Secretary from 2003 to 2006.
The request includes thousands of documents either never reviewed or never requested by then-U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) during Kavanaugh's SCOTUS confirmation process last year. While Grassley requested no documents at all from Kavanaugh's tenure as Staff Secretary --- during which many decisions were discussed and made in the run-up to Iraq War and about the torture and detention of suspect terrorists and prisoners of war --- thousands of documents from Kavanaugh's time in the White House Counsel's office were withheld from the Senate Judiciary panel last year after they were privately reviewed by Kavanaugh's own personal attorney.
Johnson explains why Democrats are now seeking all of those records, what they hope to find, and what they may do with the information they unearth from them on the Committee which has jurisdiction to launch impeachment proceedings for all federal judges, including Supreme Court Justices.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether the Trump Administration will attempt to block the records request, which asserts the rights of the Committee to review the documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1975. If they are blocked, Johnson tells me, they are prepared to take additional measures to obtain the records. The Georgia Congressman also responds in detail to a number of my questions including whether he supports an expansion of the U.S. Supreme Court in order to unpack the Republican's currently stolen majority; why he is not currently among the majority of House Dems publicly calling to open an official Impeachment Inquiry in his Judiciary Committee; and what he thinks of his home state of Georgia's current plan to move from one 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems to an all new, if equally unverifiable touchscreen voting system --- rather than a cheaper, verifiable hand-marked paper ballot system --- before next year's crucial 2020 Presidential election in a state that many believe may finally be ready to flip "blue" after years of GOP dominance in the state.
On what he hopes to find in Kavanaugh's records from the George W. Bush years: "I hope to discover that Justice Kavanaugh has been completely forthright and honest with the U.S. Senate during his confirmation process. Moreover, I hope to find that the conduct of Justice Kavanaugh, during his time as Secretary with the Office of Counsel for the President, at all times conducted himself in a way that would be in keeping with that of someone who now serves on the U.S. Supreme court with a lifetime tenure. And, of course, that is only subject to the House's ability to impeach, should there be a need for it. The American people deserve to know who we have on the US Supreme Court, what his background is, and if he was honest with the Senate in his confirmation proceedings."
On expanding the stolen SCOTUS: "It's no question that the courts have been stacked with judges with a particular political bent...They are holding the future back, and it's hurting America. So we, as the legislative branch, with the power to expand the Supreme Court --- nothing in the Constitution says that it will be a Court of nine Justices --- so we have to look at whether or not its in the efficiency of our process that we need to expand the Court. We really don't need to politicize the courts. But unfortunately the courts have been politicized. So the question is, what do we do? And how will the Supreme Court react to the fact that the legislative branch is open to looking at alternatives to the current way that it does business?"
On why Johnson is not currently among the majority of Dems in the House publicly calling for an official Impeachment Inquiry: He stands by his current position (despite my generous offer to allow him to make news by changing it on today's BradCast), while explaining, "We are proceeding in the nature of an impeachment inquiry at this time, and we're doing so without calling it an impeachment inquiry so as not to put the 31 red-to-blue winners in 2018, new Democrats, not to put them in jeopardy of not being able to come back and keep us in the majority in 2020. ... At some point we may accumulate the record that we can then pass the impeachment resolutions on and then proceed to the evidence --- not just the Mueller Report, but the evidence... take that over to the US Senate and have a trial. " After I press him a bit on his current position, he concedes: "I tell you what --- if you call me back in about two or three months, maybe I will have changed on impeachment."
And, finally, on Georgia's Republican Governor and Sec. of State defying cybersecurity experts to move from one unverifiable touchscreen voting system to another: "I think the way to go is to have hand-marked paper ballots that are then scanned into a counting machine and counted. And then you have the paper ballots that you can test the results of the tally machine against, and that way, you can have a verifiable vote. ... But we cannot do it on this new system that the Georgia legislature has authorized. I think it is a $125 or $150 million dollar expenditure that will be for a system that we can't even rely on. I think it's bad for the taxpayers, it's bad for the voters, it's bad for democracy, and it's a bad move for Georgia."
He offers much more on all of the above, so I hope you'll tune in to listen to today's BradCast...
Article Categories: Ohio, Texas, Georgia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, U.S. Constitution, Touch-Screen DREs/BMDs, Impeachment, Accountability, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, U.S. Supreme Court, Jerrold Nadler, Chuck Grassley, Bush Legacy, Hank Johnson, KPFK, Donald Trump, NRA/Gun Violence, BradCast, Sherrod Brown, Beto O'Rourke, Brett Kavanaugh
Republicans' Stolen SCOTUS Issues 'Nightmare Scenario for Voting Rights': 'BradCast' 7/1/2019
Guest: Slate's Mark Joseph Stern; Also: Biden plummets, Harris and Warren spike in new polling after first 2020 Dem debate; Callers ring in...
After our two-day Special Coverage of the first 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate last week (Night ONE here, Night TWO here), we begin on today's BradCast to get caught up with some of the important news that we were unable to adequately focus on last week. (Even it may take a few days to get fully caught up, if ever!) [Audio link to show is posted below.]
First up today, we're joined for one last time this SCOTUS term by MARK JOSEPH STERN, the great legal reporter at Slate who has helped us make sense of the Court's most recent term under its stolen Republican majority, including many of the oral arguments since last Fall in a bunch of important cases and all of the subsequent rulings handed down in the past several weeks. The last of those rulings were, perhaps, the most consequential, and both came smack dab in the middle of Nights ONE and TWO of the Dem debate last week.
Today, Stern details the Court's horrendous (if not unexpected) 5 to 4 partisan ruling finding partisan gerrymandering to be perfectly Constitutional, despite all of the lower federal courts which have found otherwise. That, even though the practice, taken to new computer-precision extremes by the Republican Party following the 2010 Census, has bastardized the notion of fair representation at both the state legislative and Congressional levels. (eg. See North Carolina, which largely votes 50/50 for U.S. House members over the past decade, but has been represented in the House by just 3 Democrats and 10 Republicans over all of those years!) Stern describes the majority ruling, penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, as a "crushing defeat for voting rights" and a "fiasco for democracy". He explains how the rightwing majority ruling debunks the Chief Justice's own claim that he is the Court's "most aggressive defender of the First Amendment" in that extreme partisan gerrymandering blatantly robs voters of their First Amendment rights by punishing Americans for their partisan leaning, stripping them of the ability to be fairly represented.
"Partisan gerrymandering is uniquely evil and difficult to fix," Stern argues, "because it attacks the foundations of democracy. It entrenches a certain political party's power almost indefinitely, and creates a map that will hold even if the state votes against that party." Now, says Stern, the legal battle to rollback rigged election maps moves to the state court level instead, since SCOTUS has now determined that federal courts have no say in the matter (even though they long ago found racial gerrymanders, if not partisan ones, to be a violation of the Constitution.) "That's why this is the 'nightmare' scenario," he tells me. "Because if the legislature can't fix it --- and why would it fix it, they love what they've done --- you really have to rely on the courts to step in and fix it. And now Chief Justice Roberts has said that the federal courts are not going to hear these claims, that they're shut out forever. That leaves few avenues for relief for voters in these states."
We also get Stern's thoughts --- and callers who ring in on the topic as well today --- on whether Democrats, in states which they control after the 2020 Census should similarly use extreme partisan gerrymandering tactics to balance the scales by keeping Republicans out of power in such states, given that the High Court has granted its blessing for such tactics.
And, speaking of the Census, the other major ruling dropped last Thursday by SCOTUS was on whether or not the Trump Administration may add a question on citizenship to the 2020 Census. In that case, Roberts joined with the Court's liberals to reject the government's claim that they were simply hoping to add the question at the request of the Dept. of Justice in order to better enforce the Voting Rights Act. That transparently false claim was rejected by Roberts who wrote that it "appears to have been contrived".
In fact, it was, as several lower courts have ruled, even before the evidence from the hard drive of a recently deceased GOP gerrymandering expert revealed the entire charade was specifically meant to decrease the response rate by Hispanic and other immigrant communities in order to shift federal funding and voting power to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites. So, that decision was the good news. The not-as-good-news is that Roberts also left the door open for the Administration to try again with a less pretextual reason for adding the question, if they can come up with one. Or, as Stern sums up Roberts' directive in four words today: "Lie better next time." Whether the Trump Administration can do so before the deadline to send the Census to the printer (which, the Admin previously argued in court was a hard deadline of July 1, but now says "well, maybe October would be fine?") remains to be seen.
Next we open up the phone lines to listeners on last week's Democratic debate in Miami. Who do listeners feel did better than expected? Who did worse? The first polling is out today from CNN following last week's debate, finding a pretty huge shift among the Dem and Dem-leaning electorate. The survey finds Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren are up 9 and 8 points respectively, while Joe Biden has fallen 10 points since the last CNN poll. That places Harris, Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (whose support dropped a few points) all now within just over 5 points from the former Vice President and perceived "front runner" for the Democratic nomination. That pretty seismic shift all comes after just one single debate...with about 11 more to come in the months ahead...
Article Categories: Ohio, North Carolina, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Maryland, Wisconsin, Dept. of Justice, Immigration, Democrats, Republicans, Michigan, U.S. Supreme Court, Joe Biden, KPFK, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, BradCast, John Roberts, Kamala Harris, Election 2020, Elena Kagan, Gerrymandering, Census Bureau, Dept. of Commerce, Andrew Yang, Julian Castro
'Happy' Memorial Day?: 'BradCast' 5/28/2019
More Trump embarrassments abroad; More deadly tornado swarms; More rightwing buffoonery; More bad news from SCOTUS; Some good news for TX; And Mayor Pete doubles-down against 'draft dodger' Trump...
Someone needs to let the President of the United States know that Memorial Day is, at least in theory, a somber remembrance for the nation's war dead. It might have been nice if that someone had done so before Trump showed up in Japan over the weekend --- for talks with that nation's Prime Minister --- and wished U.S. troops stationed with our ally and former WWII foe a "Happy Memorial Day!" It certainly wasn't a happy one around many parts of the U.S. for a number of reasons. But, once again, we try to find the bright spots where we can.
Among the swarm of stories covered on today's BradCast [Audio link posted below summary]...
The record swarm of tornado swarms continued on Memorial Day, with some 53 twisters touching down in eight different states on the same day. A man in Ohio was killed when a car flew into his living room and at least 130 were reportedly injured in the Buckeye State, where power was knocked out to more than 5 million residents as of Tuesday morning. "Catastrophic" destruction was seen across many states after Monday marked a record-tying 11th straight day with at least eight tornadoes in the U.S. according to NOAA. Whether media outlets connected the virtually unprecedented storms (and month of flooding in the Midwest and Central U.S. that preceded it) to our worsening climate crisis is another matter entirely;
Speaking of Ohio, at least before the storms, a KKK rally on Saturday brought out 9 Klansmen and between 500 and 600 counter-protesters. At least the folks in Dayton got that one right, if not some of their responses to emergency interruptions during their favorite TV programs as tornadoes swept through the state on Monday;
And, speaking of getting it wrong, there is the far-right evangelist Franklin Graham, son of the late, respected minister Billy Graham. Franklin, a Trump supporter who has attacked Indiana Mayor and 2020 hopeful Pete Buttigieg for being both gay and a practicing Christian at the same time, used his tax-exempt religious pulpit to call for "Christian leaders" to declare a "day of prayer" next Sunday for Donald Trump, who, Franklin says, has been "attacked" by his "enemies" more than "any President in the history of this nation". President Abraham Lincoln dissents;
As the loony right rises, or tries to, we move out west to Fresno, California, which, as we reportedly exclusively back in 2013, single-handedly blocked an attempted statewide "recount" of Prop 37, a state ballot initiative that would have required the labeling of GMO foods. The wingnuttery in Fresno continued over the weekend, as its minor league baseball franchise, the Fresno Grizzlies, "celebrated" Memorial Day with a video tribute that featured a speech by Ronald Reagan and a montage of Americas "enemies" that included Kim Jong Un, Fidel Castro and....wait for it....New York's Democratic freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The team eventually apologized to AOC --- hours after their initial apology for the video itself --- though they never bothered to mention that, among other "enemies" shown in the 3 and a half minute video played at the ballpark, anti-fascism and anti-KKK marchers were also singled out. 'Happy' Memorial Day!;
In voting news over the long weekend....the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday put on hold two different earlier rulings from lower federal appeals courts finding that Republicans in both Ohio and Michigan had unconstitutionally gerrymandered their Congressional maps for the past decade. The high court's action was issued without comment as we await their pending decisions on two similar cases the Justices heard earlier this year regarding unlawful partisan gerrymanders in North Carolina and Maryland. That may be a bad omen for those two cases. But, for now, the SCOTUS order blocks the lower court orders to draw new, fair Congressional maps for 2020 in Ohio by June 14 and in Michigan (where new state legislative districts were also ordered) by August 1;
There was better news, for a change, in the state of Texas of all places. The state's legislative session ended on Monday without confirmation of the nomination of Gov. Greg Abbott's Secretary of State David Whitley, thanks to all Senate Democrats refusing to support him. Whitley was forced to resign without the confirmation, which was withheld after the unqualified former travel aid to Abbott had falsely announced in January that 100,000 non-citizens were registered to vote in Texas, with 58,000 of them having illegally cast votes since 1996. As it turns out, most of those voters had become naturalized citizens over that period. But that didn't prevent Whitley from instructing the state's County Clerks to purge voters in 30 days unless they could prove their citizenship or from referring the case to the TX Attorney General who promptly ordered criminal investigations for his own part in the attempted purge. The state was sued by three different voting rights groups and a number of naturalized citizens. They were forced to settle by changing voter roll purge rules for the future and paying some $450,000 to plaintiffs for their legal costs and fees;
Finally today, with at least 24 candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and debates set to begin next month, voters have been sizing up how the hopefuls might take on Donald Trump next year (presuming he's the GOP nominee) if they win the nod. Last week, during a Washington Post forum, South Bend, IN Mayor Buttigieg, who was deployed to Afghanistan in the Naval Reserves, cited Trump's draft dodging due to a claimed "disability" during the Vietnam War. When asked about his comments over the weekend on ABC's This Week, rather than backing off of them, Buttigieg doubled-down, revealing a) Trump was, indeed, a draft dodger who now pretends to revere the military, but who was willing to let someone else take his place in Vietnam and b) Mayor Pete is not afraid to stand up, at least rhetorically, to the bully who has become the President of the United States, even after some in the media attempted (as they do) to try and call him out for it...
( 10 so far... )
Article Categories: Ohio, California, Texas, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, U.S. House, Voter Registration, Draft, Vote Caging, Michigan, U.S. Supreme Court, Election 2012, Japan, KPFK, Donald Trump, Climate change, Extreme weather, Greg Abbott, GMOs, BradCast, Ken Paxton, Amy Klobuchar, Election 2020, Vietnam, KKK, Gerrymandering, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, David Whitley, Pete Buttigieg, Franklin Graham
GOP's Amash Declares Trump 'Impeachable'; Gerrymandering Allowed Radical Abortion Bills: 'BradCast' 5/20/2019
Guest: Dave Daley of FairVote: Also: Tornado swarms erupt across U.S. amid climate crisis; Ford to fire thousands of workers...
Our guest on today's BradCast, argues that representative democracy is facing a "major crisis." And he wasn't even talking about the Constitutional Crisis we are now seeing as Trump turns up his obstruction measures against the U.S. Congress to 11. But partisan gerrymandering underscores that crisis as well. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]
First up today, however, much of Texas and Oklahoma are under tornado watches and warnings today, as 10 million Americans were under flash flood warnings as of airtime today, following as many as 67 tornadoes over the weekend in in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas and Nebraska. That, after more than a month of record flooding along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers in many states. There is good reason that the UK's Guardian newspaper updated its style-guide last week to reflect the existential climate crisis humanity now faces, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels. The Guardian is now recommending "climate change" be referred to by its journalists as "climate emergency, crisis or breakdown", and that "global warming" is better described as "global heating", with "climate science denier" to be used instead of the inaccurate "climate skeptic". It will be nice when US media decides to do the same.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., Ford Motor Co.'s CEO --- who personally received a 6% raise last year, bringing his total compensation package to nearly $18 million --- announced plans for a "smart organizational redesign process" on Monday. That's a nice way of describing the company's decision to lay off as many as 7,000 workers by the end of summer. So much for the $1.5 trillion GOP tax cut assuring jobs, jobs, jobs and putting our economy "on rocket fuel", apparently, as Trump promised.
But the biggest news over the weekend, no doubt, comes from conservative Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, who announced and explained on Twitter why he believes "President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct" and why even the redacted version of the Mueller Report reveals Trump "engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment."
The courageous, staunch libertarian Tea Party Republican and co-founder of the hard right Freedom Caucus in Congress, also charges that Trump's new Attorney General William Barr "deliberately misrepresented Mueller's report", that "partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances," and that "the risk we face in an environment of extreme partisanship is not that Congress will employ [impeachment] as a remedy too often but rather that Congress will employ it so rarely that it cannot deter misconduct." He went on to warn, as we long have as well, that "When loyalty to a political party or to an individual trumps loyalty to the Constitution, the Rule of Law --- the foundation of liberty --- crumbles."
Trump's impressive response was to call Amash "a total lightweight" and "loser". Ours is to bestow him with our much-sought after, if rarely bestowed, Intellectually Honest Conservative Award
Of course, there are other reasons that so few (exactly zero, at the moment) other Congressional GOPers have joined Amash in standing up for what they used to pretend to believe in. One is that Democrats have yet to present the case for impeachment to the American public, even as the Trump Administration invokes every form of unlawful obstructive measure to try and keep them from doing so. (Breaking news during today's program, for example, includes a federal judge finding Trump's accounting firm Mazars must turn over Trump's financial documents as lawfully subpoenaed by Congress, despite a lawsuit from Trump attempting to block them from doing so; and news that the White House has now ordered former White House Counsel Don McGahn to defy a Congressional subpoena requiring him to testify to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.)
The other reason many Republicans in Congress feel no need to hold Trump to account is that the GOP's extreme partisan gerrymandering in state after state following the 2010 census has resulted in members of Congress who feel --- with no small amount of justification --- that they cannot be removed from office by voters in a general election. The radical imbalance of such obscene district maps have resulted, for example, in Democratic House candidates winning almost 50% of the vote last year in North Carolina, but ultimately taking just 3 of the state's 13 U.S. House seats. In Ohio, essentially 50/50 splits by voters for members of Congress have resulted in just 4 of 20 seats going to Democrats, year after year, over the past decade. We've similar stories in other key states such as Wisconsin, Maryland and Pennsylvania, with courts finding House Districts and state legislative districts alike to have been unconstitutionally gerrymandered, and orders by federal courts to draw new, fairer maps repeatedly blocked by the GOP's stolen U.S. Supreme Court.
That decade-long scam, as our guest today, DAVID DALEY of FairVote argued last week at New Republic, is precisely why GOP-controlled state after GOP-controlled state in recent weeks, have been able to adopt radical, extremist and even unpopular anti-abortion restrictions. Daley, author of the book RATF**KED: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy, lays out his argument, updates us on the recent partisan gerrymandering cases in North Carolina and Maryland now before SCOTUS (with a ruling due next month), and why, as he argues, the fight for fair maps, fair elections and democracy itself "is not going to be saved in this country by any given election," but needs to be "engaged and fought every single day" as we are now in "a war for the future of this country"...
Article Categories: Ohio, North Carolina, Mainstream Corporate Media, Texas, Georgia, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Maryland, Missouri, Rights And Freedoms, Impeachment, Accountability, Intellectually Honest Conservative Award, U.S. House, Democrats, Republicans, U.S. Supreme Court, Jerrold Nadler, Economy, KPFK, Donald Trump, 'Tea Party', Climate change, Extreme weather, Oklahoma, Justin Amash, BradCast, Election 2018, Donald McGahn, Robert Mueller, Gerrymandering, Brett Kavanaugh, William Barr
FL's Ion Sancho Has 'No Confidence At All' 2020 Will Be Secure After New 2016 FBI Disclosures: 'BradCast' 5/15/2019
Leon County's 30-year veteran Election Supervisor tells us FBI lied about hacks in 2016; Rubio covered up in 2018; FL ballots will be unverifiable in 2020; calls NSA 'leaker' Reality Winner a 'heroine'; warns new GOP law means 'Jim Crow' has returned to the Sunshine State
Also: Trump's Iran war threat; AL bans almost all abortions; NC-9 do-over candidates set...
It seems that even Republicans in Florida have finally been forced to notice/admit what we've been pointing out about the 2016 election for years now. And our guest on today's BradCast, a longtime county elections chief from the Sunshine State, is none too happy about any of it. He offers several serious-as-a-heart-attack warnings about 2020 in the bargain. [Must-listen audio link to show is posted at end of article.]
But, first up today, the nation and world continue to pay a dangerous and painful price for whatever did or didn't happen that resulted in the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The Administration continued to ratchet up their threats of war against Iran on Wednesday by ordering all nonessential U.S. Government staff out of Iraq, citing unspecified and publicly unsupported claims of threats from Iran. The face-off clearly comes from Trump's ill-considered decision to pull out of the 2015 Obama Administration-brokered, seven-nation nuclear agreement which had effectively ended Iran's nuclear program. Though even the Trump Administration conceded Iran has been faithful to the anti-nuclear pact, Trump withdrew the U.S. and re-imposed crippling sanctions. He's now threatening war, for reasons that nobody seems to understand, and has deployed war ships and bombers to the tinder-box region.
Back at home, Trump's stolen U.S. Supreme Court has inspired dozens of new anti-abortion laws in state after state. On Wednesday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the most draconian measure yet, a bill that would outlaw almost all abortions, including in cases of rape and incest, while jailing doctors who perform the (currently) Constitutionally-protected procedure for up to 99 years. The new law, adopted on Tuesday by the male-dominated state Senate and signed less than 24 hours later, would not only force women to carry the child of their rapists, it could also penalize doctors more harshly than the rapists. The ACLU has vowed to challenge the law which would require even pregnant 11-year old rape victims to carry their baby to term.
In North Carolina on Tuesday, Republican primary voters selected their candidate to run against Democrat Dan McCready in the do-over election for the state's 9th U.S. House Congressional District after the Republican candidate and Baptist Minister Mark Harris was discovered to have hired a GOP contractor who carried out a massive Absentee Ballot Fraud Scheme last November. The 10-candidate GOP primary resulted in hard-right, Trump-loving state Senator Dan Bishop being selected to run against McCready in September's do-over election. Bishop is the author and lead sponsor of NC's infamous 2016 law restricting bathroom access for transgender people.
But, as the nation and world continue to pay the price for Trump's nightmarish Presidency, new questions emerge (or, at least, are finally being noticed by Republicans) regarding his own supposed 2016 election victory. On Tuesday, Florida's new Republican Governor Ron DeSantis acknowledged the FBI notified him that election systems in at least two different Florida counties were infiltrated by by Russian intelligence in advance of the 2016 election. He says the FBI has barred him from publicly stating which two counties those are.
The news comes on the heels of similar (and similarly vague) allegations detailed in the redacted Special Counsel report [PDF] from Robert Mueller (see Volume II, page 50, "Intrusions Targeting the Administration of U.S. Elections"), as well as public claims in 2018 made by Florida's then Democratic U.S. Senator Bill Nelson. Nelson's assertions about Russian access to the state's elections systems were publicly ridiculed at the time by then Gov. Rick Scott and other GOPers, even though Florida's Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio was told about the same information at the same time as Nelson in the Senate Intelligence Committee. Scott would go on to narrowly defeat Nelson for the Senate seat in 2018 and Republican DeSantis is said to have narrowly edged out Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum on the same day. Both races were so close they resulted in unprecedented statewide "recounts".
However, as our guest today, 30-year veteran Leon County, FL Supervisor of Elections ION SANCHO explains, "recounts" in Florida amount to little more than running the same paper ballots through the same optical-scan computers which tallied them --- either correctly or incorrectly --- in the first place. Sancho, the legendary elections chief in Tallahassee, the state's capital, was so well-respected by all sides that he was tapped in 2000 to oversee FL's notoriously aborted Presidential recount that year. He is furious today about DeSantis' announcement, the secrecy behind which are the counties that were penetrated (he retired after the 2016 election), and explains that he was lied to by the FBI when he was told, during a then confidential conference call with Bureau officials in 2016, that "no county had been hacked" in the run-up to the election.
"The Justice Department has continued to obfuscate and lie about this situation from the very beginning. I was on a confidential call on September 30, [2016] in which all 67 election officials here in this state, and the state election officials, were informed by the FBI that no county had been hacked. The state hadn't been hacked. They told us that. And we now know, from the documentation that's been released through The Intercept and Mueller, that was false. We now know from the documentation, some time in early August [of 2016], the successful penetration occurred."
Sancho also now questions whether there were more than two counties penetrated and says he has no reason to trust the claims by either DeSantis or federal officials that election results were unaffected by the attack. "Here's the crazy thing about it," he tells me, "the Russian GRU knows which counties they've penetrated. The only people that don't know are the election officials and the citizens and voters of the state...it's time the American citizenry, particularly Floridians, figured out that information."
He also hails NSA whistleblower Reality Winner as a "heroine" for alerting the world to documents revealing that the Russian GRU had penetrated elections systems in Florida (and possibly elsewhere) via coordinated spear-phishing attacks that allowed them access to voter registration and website election results reporting systems made by VR Systems, a private election systems vendor with contracts in dozens of U.S. states. Winner is currently serving 5 years in federal prison for having leaked those documents to The Intercept in 2017.
Sancho demands to know "why Homeland Security decided to keep critical information from state and local election officials" for so many years. "Why weren't we told?" He also furious at Rubio and other Republicans for their treatment of Nelson when he tried to blow the whistle himself last year. "Nelson was vilified as being old and senile for saying such a ridiculous thing. And actually he was right...And quite frankly, the individual whose stock falls in my eyes is Senator Rubio, who confirmed what Sen. Nelson said, only after the election. He could have told the truth, and said that Sen. Nelson is raising a valid point. He kept his mouth shut. He put his party over this nation, and we are poorer for it today."
As to the security of the state's election systems as we head into 2020, he warns that "Florida is not well protected," adding a chilling note: "You do a reconnaissance before a major attack," he tells me, "and I don't think we've had the major attack yet."
Sancho has plenty more to say regarding Florida's move to unverifiable computer-marked paper ballots in advance of the upcoming Presidential election, and much more that I hope you'll click below to tune in for. There's simply too much to fully summarize here.
But one last point for now. Sancho also offers his thoughts today on the recent measure passed by GOP state lawmakers to undermine Florida's Constitutional Amendment 4 which was adopted by nearly 65% of statewide voters last November, allowing some 1.5 million former felons in Florida who have completed their prison sentences as well as all parole and probation, to have their voting rights restored. The new GOP measure, which awaits DeSantis' signature, would bar those newly-eligible voters --- including more than 20% of the states African-American voting-age population --- from registering to vote unless all court-imposed fines and fees are paid.
"What the Republicans did was reprehensible," Sancho rails, arguing that the bill contradicts "the overwhelming, clear language" of the statewide constitutional ballot measure. Many have described the new GOP bill as a poll tax. Sancho calls it more "cash register justice", as it will allow those with money to vote, but not those without. "This is clearly restricting the right to vote based upon who can afford to pay. Jim Crow has been reestablished in Florida."
Article Categories: Election Irregularities, Ohio, Florida, Election Reform, North Carolina, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Election Fraud, Alabama, Rights And Freedoms, Iran, Paper Ballots Legislation, Dept. of Justice, FBI, Voter Registration, Democrats, Republicans, Bill Nelson, KPFK, Donald Trump, Russia, Rick Scott, Election 2016, Marco Rubio, BradCast, VR Systems, Election 2018, Election 2020, Robert Mueller, Reality Winner, ACLU, Andrew Gillum, Ron DeSantis, Election 2019


California wood rosettes are carved with flower motif. These rosettes are hand carved by skilled craftsman from premium selected hardwood: hard maple, red oak and cherry, and come in four different sizes. Rosettes are carved in deep relief design to achieve the highest degree of quality and details. California wood rosettes are triple sanded, ready to accept stain or paint. These rosettes are perfect for wall applications, finishing touches on the custom cabinets or fireplace mantel.


Dr. Simin Nikbin Meydani, DVM, PhD, is Tufts University's Vice Provost for Research (VPR). Her research interests are age and nutrition induced changes in immune related diseases and their underlying mechanisms.
She is the president of the American Society of Nutrition.


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This article is more than 2 months old
Australian outback cattle station to house world's largest solar farm, powering Singapore
Electricity from $20bn farm on 10,000 sq km property in Newcastle Waters also planned to feed Northern Territory's power grid
Solar farm panels. A $20bn solar farm, to be the world's biggest, is planned for Newcastle Waters in the Northern Territory and has the backing of billionaires including Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes. Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images
Elias Visontay
@EliasVisontay
Wed 21 Oct 2020 01.21 EDT
Last modified on Thu 22 Oct 2020 11.51 EDT
A cattle station halfway between Alice Springs and Darwin is set to house the world's largest solar farm, with energy generated from the project to ultimately power Singapore.
Newcastle Waters, where casino mogul James Packer worked as a jackaroo for a year when his father, Kerry, owned the 10,000 sq km property, has been earmarked for the $20bn solar farm, according to the company responsible for the project, Sun Cable.
The 10 gigawatt solar farm, which will be visible from space if built, was granted major project status from the Morrison government in July and has attracted billionaire investors including Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes.
'Just a matter of when': the $20bn plan to power Singapore with Australian solar
Sun Cable's chief executive, David Griffin, told Guardian Australia the site would take up about 12,000 hectares, and that a referral for the project has been submitted to the Northern Territory's Environmental Protection Authority – the first stage of a lengthy approvals process that is expected to allow construction to begin in late 2023, energy production by 2026 and export by 2027.
Speaking about the reasons for proposing the Newcastle Waters site, Griffin said its location was "a meeting point of a few key criteria".
"It's on the Adelaide to Darwin rail corridor, which is brilliant for our logistics given the enormous amount of material we'll have to transport to the site," he said. It was also within 30km of the Stuart highway, the main highway running through the sparsely populated Northern Territory.
"It's a bit of a balancing act too, because it's far south enough to get away from the main patch affected by the wet season, so it's a steady solar resource throughout the year," he said. "There's plenty of sun and not many clouds."
Griffin also said the site was not so far south that it made the costs of transmitting the electricity to Darwin too high, and that the existing land was "really ideal for construction of a solar farm as it's extremely flat".
Sun Cable has entered into an agreement with the current owners of Newcastle Waters, Consolidated Pastoral Company, to use the land. However, Griffin said he could not reveal the financial details of the deal.
Overhead transmission lines will send the electricity generated by Sun Cable to Darwin and feed into the state's power grid, but Griffin said two-thirds of the power would be exported to Singapore by high-voltage direct current undersea cables.
There will be at least two cables, each with a diameter slightly smaller than a soccer ball, with Sun Cable able to provide about a fifth of Singapore's electricity needs as the country looks to move away from its increasingly expensive gas-fired power system.
Griffin has also said the solar farm could supply power to remote communities in the Northern Territory that currently rely on expensive diesel generators for electricity.
Billionaires invest in giant Australian solar farm to supply power to Singapore
Sun Cable expects the project will generate 1,500 direct jobs and 10,000 indirect jobs during construction, and about 350 permanent jobs once in operation.
Griffin said Sun Cable was working on a training and employment opportunities plan so part of the workforce could be sourced from nearby Indigenous communities, and that supplies would be produced by local businesses.
The Green Recovery: how Australia can clean up its act on energy – video
Exporting solar energy has been flagged as a way Australia can expand its energy production while significantly reducing global emissions. Australia is responsible for about 1.4% of greenhouse gas emissions, which increases by 5% if fossil fuel exports are counted.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Ninth Circuit improperly reviewed District Court's decision to quash an EEOC subpoena in discrimination investigation. District Court quashed EEOC subpoenas seeking pedigree information (names, Social Security numbers, addresses and telephone numbers) of all employees asked to take physical examination in investigation of charge by employee who returned from maternity leave, failed three times and was fired. Supreme Court explained proper standard of review was abuse of discretion rather than de novo, because whether to enforce the subpoena was case specific and more amenable to district court experience. McLane Co. v. EEOC, 197 L.Ed. 2d 500, 2017 U.S. LEXIS 2327 (April 3, 2017).
District Court denied motion to dismiss disability discrimination and retaliation complaint because complaint sufficiently alleged employee was qualified individual with a disability and employer failed to provide him a reasonable accommodation or engage in interactive process. The court could not determine whether employee exhausted remedies for retaliation claim, because the complaint did not describe content of the employee's charge. Jamile v. Island Movers, Inc., 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53653 (D. Haw. April 7, 2017).
District Court denied motion to dismiss disability discrimination complaint because allegation work injury restricted ability to lift over 10 pounds for four months sufficiently plead employee's disability. Allegations employee was hired, had no prior warnings and was performing satisfactorily sufficiently alleged employee was qualified. Allegation employee requested, was denied temporary light duty work and was terminated because he could not work without restrictions and because of his disability sufficiently alleged discrimination. Mesi v. Hoskin & Muir, Inc., 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54009 (D. Haw. April 7, 2017).


The list of dinosaur species we believe to have been feathered is expanding all of the time. After decades of hypothesis, paleontoligists literally started digging up evidence in the 90s. In 2007, the Velociraptor was confirmed to have feathers by the discovery of "quill knobs" on a well preserved fossil.
This was too late to impact the first and second Jurassic Park films, and the third just made a concession to it, redesigning the creatures to give them a few quill-ish protrusions on the head.
Not, according to today's thinking, accurate at all. Needs a lot more feathers than that.
So will Jurassic Park 4 have the baldies of parts one and two, the "lightly-coiffed" variants of part three, or more scientist-pleasing, quill-covered things?
Well, the Jurassic Park films have often been caught out by advances in paleontological understanding, and I'm sure our grasp on dinosaur biology and behaviour will only continue to evolve. I think it makes sense to just stick with the initially created rules rather than trying to keep pace with or second-guess reality.
Remember that business in the first Jurassic film about the T-Rex not being able to see its prey if they don't move? Now, nobody believes that any more, but hey, it can still be used for fun. And it's now part of the Jurassic Park "universe" because it wasn't just a theory in the film, it was how that T-Rex operated. Inside the films, it's now pretty much a rule of nature.
What's more, a feathered dinosaur just doesn't read as being "dinosaury," so the connotations that come with these scary, leathery, monsters from the depths of time would be weakened, and we don't want that.
Could Jurassic Park 4 be used to educate the masses about dinosaur misconceptions? Sure. Should it? Not necessarily.


A Supermoon photographed in March 2011 over the North Pole. But is it real? My intuition says no, because the size of the moon and the sun in the image are totally disproportional (in nature the sun and moon appear almost the same size). Here there is a mismatch that is simply too great to be credible. If it is an undoctored image,and the reflection of the moon in the water suggests that it might be genuine, then this is INCREDIBLE.
But sure enough...doing a google search [sunset at North Pole hoax] it turns out to be the digital craft of a 22 year old German astrophysics student - Inga Nielsen.


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Harry Michael Cohen (born 10 December 1949) is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leyton from 1983 to 1997 and Leyton and Wanstead from 1997 to 2010.

Early life
Cohen left the George Gascoigne Secondary Modern school (closed in 1966) on Queens Road in Walthamstow at 15, and trained as a public service accountant at the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, as well as studying part-time at East Ham Technical College (now Newham College of Further Education).  He later gained MSc in Politics and Administration from Birkbeck College, University of London in 1995. He became an accountant and auditor for the boroughs of Waltham Forest, Hackney and Haringey, then later for the union NALGO (became part of UNISON in 1993).

He was elected as a local councillor in Waltham Forest at the age of 22, and served for 11 years before becoming an MP.

Parliamentary career
Cohen was first elected to the House of Commons at the 1983 general election as MP for Leyton, transferring to the new Leyton and Wanstead constituency after boundary changes for the 1997 general election.

He was a member of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee between 1997 and 2001, and has been a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee since 2005.

On 31 October 2006, Cohen was one of 12 Labour MPs to back Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party's call for an inquiry into the Iraq War.

Cohen was Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tibet and Secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Race and Community Group and was a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, a signatory to Jews for Justice for Palestinians, and counts Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama as political influences.

Expenses

It was revealed in March 2009 that Cohen had received £104,701 over the previous five years under the Additional Costs Allowance for his Wanstead home based upon the representation that this was his second home.  The home that Cohen represented as his primary home was a house in Colchester, despite the fact that Cohen spent very little time at that location and used it only as a holiday home. As his Wanstead home is where Cohen resides both when going to Westminster and attending to his constituency, the claim of the Additional Costs Allowance was criticised as an abuse of an expense allowance intended to help Members of Parliament who need to maintain one home in their constituency and another in London. Cohen responded to criticism by stating that the Additional Costs Allowance was intended to be de facto salary for Members of Parliament.

On 30 June 2009 he announced he would not stand for re-election. He said the strain caused by the criticism over his expenses, and the formal investigation into his claims, were the main factors behind his departure.

On 22 January 2010 the Standards and Privileges Committee of the House of Commons published its report into Cohen's expenses and concluded that he had received over £60,000 in expenses to which he was not entitled. The report did recognise that the ill-health of Cohen's wife (she suffered a stroke in 2004) had been a significant factor in the decisions he had made but maintained that he had still committed a serious breach of the rules. The report recommended that Cohen apologise to the House, which he did on 29 January 2010, and that the Resettlement Grant of £65,000, normally paid to Members of Parliament upon retirement, be withheld. The House ratified the latter punishment on 1 February 2010.

References

External links
Harry Cohen official site
Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Harry Cohen MP
Guardian Unlimited Politics - MPs Uncovered: Harry Cohen MP
TheyWorkForYou.com - Harry Cohen MP
The Public Whip - Harry Cohen MP voting record
BBC News - Harry Cohen profile 9 March 2005

1949 births
Living people
Alumni of Birkbeck, University of London
European democratic socialists
English Jews
Politicians from London
Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
People from Hackney Central
UK MPs 1983–1987
UK MPs 1987–1992
UK MPs 1992–1997
UK MPs 1997–2001
UK MPs 2001–2005
UK MPs 2005–2010
Jewish British politicians

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


To use any use of the above modules, you need to connect your Klaviyo account to Integromat. If you do not have a Klaviyo account yet, you can create one at klaviyo.com.
To connect your monday.com account to Integromat, follow the general instructions for Connecting to services. When creating a connection, you will be requested to enter your API Key. To get the API key log into your Klaviyo account and go to https://www.klaviyo.com/account#api-keys-tab.
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Expert Insights: Can FDA Approval of Cimzia for Psoriasis Secure UCB's Position in the Immuno-dermatology Market?
Vikesh Devlia, MSc, Immunology Analyst, GlobalData, examines the implications of the FDA's recent approval of UCB's Cimzia drug
On May 28, the FDA approved the extension of the label of UCB's tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor Cimzia (certolizumab pegol) for use in adults with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. This approval marks UCB's entrance into the immuno-dermatology market, a competitive field in which Cimzia could find a niche space. However, there are a number of safe and efficacious biologics in the psoriasis market, and Cimzia could struggle if it is not well received by prescribing physicians and dermatologists.
The FDA approval of Cimzia is based on data from three Phase III clinical studies: CIMPASI-1, CIMPASI-2, and CIMPACT. Over 1,000 patients were enrolled in the trials and approximately one third of the patients had prior biological therapy. The Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI 75 and 90) was measured to assess the percentage of patients who achieved 75 percent or 90 percent disease improvement. In the CIMPASI-1 and CIMPASI-2 studies, the percentage of patients who received a 400mg dose of Cimzia every two weeks had a PASI 75 score of 75 percent and 82 percent at 16 weeks in CIMPASI-1 and CIMPASI-2, respectively, compared with 7 percent and 13 percent for patients receiving placebo.
Cimzia the first Fc-free Biologic Approved by the FDA
Additionally, for the 200mg dose arm of both studies, 36 percent and 50 percent of patients achieved a PASI 75 score compared with 0 percent and 5 percent for patients receiving the placebo, respectively. In the CIMPACT study, the percentages of patients who received 400mg and 200mg of Cimzia every two weeks and achieved a PASI 75 at 16 weeks were 69 percent and 75 percent, respectively, compared with 4 percent of patients who received the placebo. Furthermore, the percentages of patients who achieved a PASI 90 at week 16 were 49 percent and 40 percent among the patients who received the 400mg and 200mg doses of Cimzia.
Although Cimzia marks the fourth TNF inhibitor to be approved for the treatment of psoriasis, Cimzia is the first Fc-free biologic to be approved by the FDA. GlobalData anticipates Cimzia will face strong competition from the widely used branded anti-TNFs, including AbbVie's Humira, Amgen and Pfizer's Enbrel, and Johnson and Johnson's Remicade, not to mention their respective biosimilars. More recently, IL-12/23 inhibitors and IL-17 inhibitors have been approved for use in moderate-to-severe psoriasis patients, marking a challenging market for UCB to compete in.
The Potential of Cimiza for Psoriasis Patients
That being said, GlobalData believes that Cimzia could be a safe and attractive therapeutic option, as its efficacy and safety have been investigated in pregnant and breastfeeding women. This meets a significant unmet need in psoriasis patients, as there are limited safe and efficacious drugs available for this patient population. In addition, IL-17 and IL-23 inhibitors have not been tested for safety and efficacy in pregnant and breastfeeding women.
With this in mind, Cimzia has the potential to capture a share of patients who are not well suited to currently available biologics. However, UCB will need to capture a share of psoriasis patients that are pregnant and breastfeeding in order to be successful. Overall, with the approval of Cimzia being extended for use in moderate-to-severe psoriasis patients, UCB has shown that it has the potential to compete in the psoriasis market.
Trials data suggests Cosentyx from Novartis will change psoriasis market
Eligibility criteria for clinical trials report challenges in representing LN patients
Celltrion implements Veeva Vault eTMF to improve visibility into clinical trial activities
Longboat Clinical launches Patient CONNECT to ease patient recruitment process
Parexel launches integrated FPS model to drive delivery of clinical research partnerships


The rare tiger which mauled a zookeeper to death has been seen for the first time since the tragedy as the park re-opened to the public today (June 16).
Eight-year-old Cicip could be seen basking in the sun inside his large, grassy enclosure at Hamerton Zoo Park - just metres away from where 33-year-old keeper Rosa King was fatally attacked.
He paid little attention to people who had gathered on the other side of the tall metal fencing at the zoo near Huntingdon.
Attached to the bars of the enclosure was a framed letter from a tiger conservation charity, which thanked Rosa for donating thousands of pounds.
Cicip is one of two Malayan tigers at the park, and lives with two-year-old female Sahaja.
They are a particularly rare species and according to Hamerton's website, they are the first and only tigers to ever be seen in the UK.
The pair each have their own enclosures, but they share a large paddock, which has a paddling pool and is surrounded by rocks and tall grass.
Further circumstances into Rosa's death are yet to be released due to the ongoing investigation between Cambridgeshire Police and Huntingdonshire District Council.
It's thought Cicip would have had access to the feeding room used by keepers, which is situated inside a wooden hut and separated by a metal door.
The only other ways he could have left his enclosure is through one of two sliding metal panels.
One allows access into the large paddock, while the other leads into passageway which is surrounded by seven-foot tall wooden fencing.
Two-year-old Sahaja could also be seen today roaring and prowling in the enclosure, which lies next to Cicip's pen.
Staff at the zoo have now launched a campaign to build a memorial to Rosa, where visitors could go and pay their respects.
Kim May, who worked with Rosa for two years, has set up a JustGiving page to try to raise £1,800 for the project to be completed.
On it, she wrote: "Rosa was a treasured daughter and sister, a valued team member and a truly wonderful, friendly and inspirational person to all the staff at Hamerton Zoo Park and to everyone that knew her.
"She loved the big cats and was always trying to think of a ways - alongside the other keepers - to make our visitors aware of the animals' plight and that we needed to conserve our environment and raise funds for the organisations we supported and to always have fun in doing so.
"We are planning to have an area in the zoo where people can come and remember her and would like your support."
Hundreds of pounds have already been pledged.
Kim added: "When we reach our target, any excess donations will be contributed to Cheetah Conservation Foundation, which was a charity close to Rosa's heart.
"We appreciate all your kind words and memories of Rosa and Hamerton Zoo Park and we thank you for your support."
The zoo's director Andrew Swales told earlier this week how the reopening of the zoo was approved by Huntingdonshire District Council following a recent inspection.
Should the tiger who killed keeper Rosa King be on display at the same zoo?
In a statement outside the park, he described Rosa as "the life and soul" of the park and thanked members of the public for their compassion.
Mr Swales added: "The decision to reopen has been taken in consultation with police, our staff and Rosa's family and whilst this remains a very difficult time for all concerned, there has been tremendous support for this.
"As always, the safety of our staff and members of the public remains our key priority.
"Rosa was the life and soul of Hamerton Zoo Park.
"She loved working with animals, particularly the big cats, and was an inspiration to those of us lucky enough to work with her as well as the many visitors who benefitted from her incredible knowledge and passion for wildlife.
"Over the course of the last few weeks, we have been inundated with expressions of sympathy for Rosa, her family and her colleagues.
"We have also received very thoughtful notes from people all over the country and the world. We are incredibly grateful for this compassion."


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Home » Breaking Legal News » Mixing Plavix With Nexium & Similar Heartburn Drugs May Increase Heart Attack Risk
Mixing Plavix With Nexium & Similar Heartburn Drugs May Increase Heart Attack Risk
A new study suggests that Nexium and other heartburn medications may keep the blood-thinner Plavix from working effectively. Consequently, mixing the two drugs may significantly increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.
The study, conducted by Medco Health Solutions, followed 16,690 people and found the risk of heart attack or other cardiac trouble to be 50 percent higher in patients taking some combination of Plavix and a heartburn medicine than in those taking Plavix alone. Two additional studies conducted within the past year found similar problems.
Plavix, also known as clopidogrel, is commonly prescribed to patients with artery-opening stents or those who have had a heart attack or stroke. Co-marketed by Sanofi-Aventis SA and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Plavix has been on the market since 1997. Nearly half the patients on Plavix also take Nexium, Prilosec or a similar heartburn drug in the class known as proton-pump inhibitors to prevent stomach bleeding and ulcers, common Plavix side effects.
The Medco Health Solutions study, combined with the two similar studies published in the last year, might solve a mystery that has puzzled doctors for several years now. In a 2003 Plavix study, Paul Gurbel, a cardiologist at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, found that close to 30 percent of patients did not process Plavix effectively, but the reasons for that were unclear. Now, doctors believe that proton pump inhibitors, such as Nexium, might interfere with liver enzymes that the body uses to process Plavix, rendering it less effective in some patients.
Still, some drug companies say it is too soon to know whether mixing the medications is dangerous. A spokesperson for AstraZeneca, which makes Nexium, said the company's own data has not raised any safety concerns with regard to taking Plavix with Nexium. Additionally, spokesperson from Bristol-Myers Squibb said that, while the company would review the data, the study's retrospective nature makes it less reliable.
Plavix Nexium Side Effect Attorney
If you or a loved one suffered serious side effects after taking a combination of Plavix and Nexium, or some other heartburn medication, you may be entitled to monetary compensation for your injuries. Contact us today for a free and confidential case evaluation.


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by Sam Cheuk
The moon is out outright, despite
halved, despite behind the tear gas.
Chinese poets have written about it
tirelessly, across history, trying to
catch its meaning, to say "I'm here"
while things happen on the ground.
That is what I am looking at,
clouds slouching to obscure it,
bear with me for a moment longer:
There was a story we grew up with, of a master archer who shot down nine suns, leaving only one to illuminate the world. Given immortal elixir for what he managed, a prize generations of emperors spent countless lives of their subjects on, our hero nevertheless either forgot to drink it, or left it with his wife, Chang'e, as a gift, or for safekeeping. On a mid-autumn day, while our hero departed for the day's hunt, his friend tried to steal the potion and his wife, in a moment of panic, drank it, became a goddess, living forever on the moon on her own, longing for the archer who had long ago become history, become dust.
That is to say: I'm not a hero,
you are not a goddess,
neither of us will live forever.
This moon will keep hanging in
the night, beyond the future
stories others will invent.
That is not to say we never existed,
a single story, among many
that happened in our small epoch.


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By Tattletott on February 3, 2022 • ( 1 Comment )
Who Is the World's Oldest Living Land Animal?
by, Jo Carol Hebert
.Here's a guessing game…
Which of these three animals do you think is the oldest animal alive on land today?
Is it Rubble, the Cat in England?
Could it be Jonathan, the tortoise, on the island of St. Helena, in the South Atlantic Ocean?
Or, maybe it is Fatou, an African gorilla in the Berlin Zoo in Germany
Happy Birthday, Jonathan!
Congratulations to Jonathan, the tortoise! The average lifespan for a giant tortoise is 150 years. But, this rare Seychelles Giant Tortoise celebrated 189 years of life in February (2021).
We're happy, too, for little Rubble, the oldest domestic cat. Rubble, an orange/white Maine Coon had his 31st birthday in June, 2019. The average age for domestic cats is 12-18 years. Rubble is doing fine, except his owner says, "he's a little grumpy." (Update: Rubble passed away before turning 32).
What about Fatou, the oldest living gorilla? She enjoyed a rice and raisins birthday cake on her 61st birthday in April, 2019. The normal lifespan of the gorilla is 30-40 years. (Update: Fatou is still alive and has celebrated her 63rd Birthday).
And, by the way, the oldest living human is Kane Tanaka, in Japan. She is 116 years old, as of March, 2019. People have an average lifespan of 70 years. (Aren't facts fun?) (Update: Kane turned 118 years-old)!
Where is Jonathan and What is He Doing?
Jonathan is happy and living a luxurious lifestyle on one of the most remote islands in the world. He strolls through the gardens of the governor's mansion, covering ground at 1/2-mile per hour. Dinner is cucumbers, bananas, carrots, and apples. He likes to play with his tortoise friends – Emma, Fred, and David.
Jonathan's caretakers say that he is a gentle and friendly fellow. But, sometimes, he 'nips' them when they feed him. His beak is made of keratin, like a fingernail, and is very sharp!
Fun Facts About Jonathan – Did You Know?
Jonathan has lived through 2 World Wars
Jonathan has lived through 39 U.S. Presidents
Jonathan was 48 when Thomas Edison introduced the 'light-bulb'
Jonathan was 71 when the first airplane took flight
Jonathan was 137 when man first walked on the moon
More Fascinating Facts!
A group of tortoises can be called a bale, or a creep!
Tortoises lay a clutch of 9-25 eggs
A baby tortoise is called a hatchling
Giant tortoises weigh from 330-500 pounds
Geography with Jonathan
Jonathan was a gift to the governor of the island of St. Helena in 1882. At that time, scientists determined that he had been hatched in the Seychelles islands in 1832 and was officially 50 years old.
St. Helena is located in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean between the west coast of Africa and East coast of South America.
The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest ocean in the world after the Pacific Ocean. It touches the continents of North and South America, Europe, and Africa.
Jonathan was brought from the Seychelles chain of islands, off the east coast of Africa, in the Indian Ocean.
The Indian Ocean is the third largest ocean in the world. It touches the continents of Africa, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica.
Jonathan's Family
The giant turtle of the Seychelles is on the brink of extinction. This makes Jonathan not
Aldabra giant tortoise
only the oldest living land animal, but one of the last of his species.
His cousin companions on St. Helena are of the Aldabra giant tortoise species from the Seychelles. With a population of 100,000, the survival status of these tortoises is listed as vulnerable.
When is a Tortoise NOT a Turtle?
Chelonions are egg-laying reptiles that are either turtles or tortoises. They have a protective bony shell called a carapace.
A turtle lives in the water most of the time and comes out on land to nest.
A tortoise lives on land and goes to water to drink.
Here's a Way to Remember 'Turt' and 'Tort'
Turt and Tort were two Chelonians.
Turt was a Turtle. Tort was a Tortoise.
Turt liked water, but Tort avoided it;
but they were friends in spite of all of it!
Do you want to learn more about turtles? Click here.
On Land, Sea, and Air!
Animals are on and under the ground (terrestrial); in the water (aquatic/marine); and in the air (aerial). There are other animals, in the ocean, much older than our terrestrial hero, Jonathan.
Scientists found an Ocean quahog clam on a seabed near the country of Iceland thirteen years ago. They called it 'Ming', and it was over 500 years old! (But that's another story . . . )
So, Jonathan continues to bask in the limelight of being a tortoise celebrity. He sunbathes on the manicured lawns of his tropical island paradise and nibbles on his favorite food, lettuce hearts.
Although mostly blind, Jonathan, with good health and excellent hearing, is enjoying his 'golden years'.
How old is your pet?
Categories: Animals, Reptiles
It's Groundhog Day!
It's Bubble Gum Day!
rawgod says:
When I was younger, and living in Winnipeg, three giant tortoises lived in the arboreum in the Pavilion at the Assiniboine Park Zoo. They were over 100 years old then, but I cannot remember just how old. I left Winnipeg in the 80s. Last I heard the Park had closed the arboreum down during Covid, snd were going to build a whole new exhibit. I was unable at the time to determine if the tortouses were still alive and thriving, but I hope they sre.


Landscape artist John Ensign has spent his life painting in many parts of the world and has made Maui his home for 30 years.
John has hiked the valleys and coasts to create vivid expressions of this tropical paradise and it's people.
He has shown his work in many galleries in Hawaiʻi and across the U.S.


LEBANON, PA, April 21, 2015 – Exhibiting at the National Wood Flooring Association (NWFA) Wood Flooring Expo, April 29 – 30, 2015, Regupol® introduces Impact Sound Control. On display at booth #756, Impact Sound Control will feature Sonus™. Sonus is designed to reduce the passage of impact transmission noise caused by people walking and can be installed under hardwood flooring.
Regupol Sonus is the ideal choice for apartments, condominiums, college dormitories, class rooms, schools, hospitals and most areas where there is a desire to reduce impact noise. Sonus is a green product, comprised of 100% post-consumer tires and has an IIC rating from IIC 50 TO IIC 75, based on the flooring ceiling assembly and floor covering. The product is available in various thicknesses from 2mm through 20 mm thick.