text:
Women of Influence…What About the U.S.?
Posted on March 16, 2012 | by Annmarie Kelly
During this month we typically acknowledge and honor women who have positively distinguished themselves and made a difference in people's lives. Few women can do that as powerfully as those who are presidents and prime ministers.
Yet until less than a hundred years ago, the women who ruled their countries were from monarchies, that is, they inherited their queenly positions. But not all queens were actual rulers of their kingdoms. Some were the propitious ceremonial heads of state while a parliament handled the lawmaking (as it with England's Queen Elizabeth). But, whether ruling or ceremonial, the queens of monarchies had power.
Not until the 1940's did the world have its first female president, Khertek Anchimaa-Toka, a Chinese woman. She was the first woman head of state who didn't inherit her office. Anchimaa-Tok ruled the People's Republic of Tannu Tuva from 1940-44. She served until Tuva became part of the Soviet Union in 1944 and Anchimaa-Tok's position was eliminated.
Here are some interesting "firsts" for women heads of state:
Isabel Martínez de Perón of Argentina was the first western woman who was a head of state and not part of a royal family. She was the vice-president when her spouse, Juan Peron, was president. When he died, she became president and served from 1974– 1976. Sadly, she was arrested for corruption.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike was the first elected prime minister of Ceylon (which became, during her tenure, Sri Lanka). She ran for office after her spouse, the prime minister, was assassinated. She served from 1960 to 1965, when she was defeated. However, in the late 1960′s, she decided to run for office again and was reelected. On her second time around, Bandaranaike served from 1970-1977, when she was again defeated in a national election.
Indira Ghandi was India's first female prime minister, and the daughter of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Ghandi was also the longest serving prime minister. She held office from 1966-1977 and again from 1980-1984.
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was Iceland's and the world's first elected female president who did not follow a father or husband into office. She was the country's fourth president and served from 1980-1986.
Margaret Thatcher was Britain's first woman prime minister and the first woman to lead a major western power, which she did from 1979-1990. Her legacy is that she ruled Parliament with an iron fist, and thus got the name "Iron Lady." Note: She was recently portrayed by Meryl Streep in the The Iron Lady.
Mary Robinson was the first female president of Ireland and served from 1990-1997. Mary McAleese succeeded her, from 1997- 2011. McAleese is the first woman president born in Northern Ireland and the first ever to succeed another female president; Robinson and McAleese are the seventh and eighth presidents of Ireland.
Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, prime minister of Iceland since 2009, is the first lesbian world leader. After a long marriage with two children, Sigurdardótti divorced and started a civil union with a female partner. When Iceland legalized same-sex marriage, Sigurdardótti was still in office and she and her partner were one of Iceland's first same-sex married couples.
Angela Merkel is the first woman to hold Germany's highest office. Chancellor Merkel has been instrumental in the management of the European Union's financial crisis and, in a fashion similar to Margaret Thatcher, is known as a take-charge woman. Some consider her to be the most powerful woman in the world.
In my country, the United States, it seems that women are not yet considered viable candidates for president. In 2008, for all the pandering talk about equality from Democrats, they dissed and then abandoned Hillary Clinton in favor of Barack Obama. In 2011, presidential contender Michele Bachman was vilified by Democrats and mostly unsupported by Republicans. As a result, she lost votes in the early primary elections and dropped out of the running.
In truth, it isn't that I'm pining away for a woman president and want one elected just because she's a woman. I don't. But I really want women to get a fair shake. I don't want the media focusing on her weight, clothes, make-up, hair or voice. It isn't done to men, many of whom could do themselves some good to get help in some or all of those areas. But the media doesn't seem to care if this man is going gray or has a terrible haircut, that one has big ears and the other one could lose fifty pounds. If it doesn't matter with the men, it shouldn't matter with the women.
Given the chauvinistic and degrading language of men who seem to hate women, like Bill Maher on the left and Rush Limbaugh on the right, nothing will change in this 2012 election cycle. And it's a disgrace! But maybe 2016, the media boys and girls will grow up and act like the men and women they're supposed to be. Then they can give everyone – men and women – a fair chance to vie for my country's top spot.
Posted in blog: Victory Tips, Insight | Tagged Friday Happy Hour, Halloween Fun, Marriage Partnership, Victorious Woman Contest, Women and Goals
Happy 100th Birthday, Girl Scouts!
Creating Influence: What's in the Way?
What is the Victorious Woman Project?
Founded by Annmarie Kelly, the Victorious Woman Project is a female empowerment resource containing articles, classes, books, podcasts and other tools for women over 40.


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Lexus Previews All-Electric SUV, New Direct4 EV Drivetrain
by Paul A. Eisenstein | Dec 14, 2020
Much like Toyota, its mainstream sibling, Lexus has been reluctant to enter the battery-car market, beyond the likes of the little UX 300e now offered in Europe and other select markets. But the Japanese automaker appears to be reversing course and, like Toyota, it's...
Cadillac's 2022 Blackwing Models Get Manual Transmission
by Michael Strong | Dec 10, 2020
Cadillac's transformation from a purveyor of floaty, barge-like cruisers to a producer of performance-oriented luxury sedans and utes is now complete — a Caddy with a manual transmission is now available. The 2022 CT4-V Blackwing and CT5-V Blackwing models are aimed...
New Bentley Division Builds a 90-Year-Old Bentley Blower
by Larry Printz | Dec 10, 2020
In what is becoming a new trend among major automakers with a legendary past, Bentley Mulliner Classic, a new division within Bentley Motors, has built the first new Bentley Blower in 90 years. "To drive the first new Blower in 90 years was a privilege," said Adrian...
GMC Sierra Will be First Hands-Free System to Let Motorists Tow with Updated Super Cruise
by Paul A. Eisenstein | Dec 9, 2020
General Motors has big plans for the rollout of its hands-free Super Cruise system which, until now, has only been offered by the Cadillac brand – and that includes launching the first version of the technology capable of towing on the GMC Sierra pickup. The updated...
First Look: 2022 Acura MDX
Acura – like its mainstream parent, Honda – likes to tease major product updates, and we got a first look at the "Acura MDX Prototype" back in October. Now, the Japanese luxury brand has rolled out the official production model. As you might have guessed, the 2022...
A Week With: 2020 BMW X3 xDrive30e
by Joseph Szczesny | Dec 8, 2020
The BMW X3 compact crossover has been one of the brand's most popular vehicles in the United States in recent years because it offers a hard-to-beat combination of prestige, sportiness and versatility. It's done all of this in an highly competitive...
GMC Begins Real World Testing of New Hummer – and Other Good News
The debut of the GMC Hummer EV, the automaker claims, was the most-watched product introduction in automotive history. One thing you might not have realized, however, was the fact that all those images of Hummers racing through forests and across deserts were about as...
Genesis Fills In Some Blanks About New GV70
Genesis took its time finally entering the SUV market. Now, however, it's racing to fill up that gap in a big way, the GV70 set follow big brother GV80 to market next year. And, after giving us a first, cursory look at its second utility vehicle back in October, the...
Chicago Auto Show Postpones 2021 Gathering Due to Pandemic
by Michael Strong | Dec 7, 2020
In what has become an all-too-familiar scenario, the coronavirus pandemic claimed another automotive event: the 2021 Chicago Auto Show. The pandemic has forced nearly every major show since the 2020 Chicago Auto Show in February to either reschedule, cancel all...
Jaguar's SUV Line Muscles Up With 2021 F-Pace SVR Debut
There was a time when Jaguar planners couldn't stomach the idea of a station wagon, never mind an SUV. These days, however, the British marque's utility vehicles handily outperform its traditional sedans, coupes and sports cars. That's been the case on the sales...
New Vehicle Sales Hold Up in November Under Weight of Pandemic
Aided by special incentives during the Thanksgiving weekend, sales of new vehicles held up in November, remaining a bright spot in an economy hobbled by the rising number of COVID-19 cases reported across the country. On the surface, sales will appear as if they...
2022 Acura MDX Set to Make Its Debut
While the new 2021 TLX helped usher in an all-new design language for Honda's luxury division, it's the next-generation Acura MDX that will really give the brand some much-needed momentum. Acura has been teasing the fourth-generation SUV for several months, starting...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Do you really want conflict resolution in your workplace? By definition, the word resolution means that something is resolved, that there's an end. That end, however, is not necessarily a positive outcome. In many resolutions, there's a winner and a loser. Of course, the winner is happy, and the loser is certainly not.
It's conflict resolution vs. conflict management.
In my opinion, the real goal for the business owner is conflict management, not conflict resolution. A goal of eliminating, avoiding, and suppressing conflict is an unrealistic dream. Rather, the focus should be on managing the conflict and providing tools and methods for employees to effectively engage in conflict.
Conflict costs businesses an excessive amount of time, money, and energy. In order to manage the conflict, your focus should be on developing employees' abilities and providing methodology to raise and address conflict efficiently, effectively, and respectfully.
Skills – Providing training that improves basic communication, interpersonal, and conflict management skills.
Structure – A set of procedures that establish methods for reporting conflict, for investigating a complaint, and for discovering solutions.
Support – The business or organization needs to provide support for the system by modeling and mentoring conflict management skills as well as following the procedures fairly and completely.


If you are considering cardiovascular medical travel surgery to avoid extensive waitlists in Canada, you are not alone. Cardiovascular disease is the #2 killer of Canadians, for both men and women. Most people suffering from this disease would prefer to have their condition addressed as soon as possible.
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We have carefully chosen facilities which not only perform surgery on adults but also deal with pediatric cases. As part of your medical travel itinerary for cardiovascular surgery we ensure all of your (or your child's) medical records are safely and securely transferred directly to the institution you will be visiting.
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Ecosia: Your chance to be a superhero
Written by Staff Writer
Written by Staff Writer 19 Sep, 2019 | 2:31 pm
COLOMBO (News 1st) – Have you ever heard of Ecosia? A search engine, almost similar and convenient as google and yahoo, but with a huge difference, they plant a tree somewhere in the world for every 56 searches we make on Ecosia.
Yes, you heard it right, when we search for something on Ecosia, Ecosia allocates half a cent to plant trees across the globe. Like any other search engine, Ecosia generates revenue via the ad suggestions that come up with each search result. According to their calculations, it costs USD 0.28 to plant a tree and that's 56 searches for a tree !!
German-based Ecosia was founded by Christian Kroll following his tour around the world in 2009. During his tour, he realized the importance of reforestation in a dying Earth and he came up with the brilliant idea to globally bring everyone together for a just cause.
"The work of NGOs is important and there are many traditional businesses that donate to charity on a regular basis. But to tackle one of the most pressing issues of our time, we need to scale up and harness the power of a global community." Kroll added.
During the period of 2009-2011, the company won several awards for its clever concept and the impact on lives on a universal scale. In 2014, Ecosia was recognized as the first German company to reach B Corporation status.
CEO of Ecosia, Christian Kroll states "Deforestation causes many of the global issues society and the environment are suffering from. Poverty, famines, political and economic instabilities, droughts, pollution and mass extinction are just a few of them."
Ecosia spokesperson Jacey Bingler states that it not merely growing trees around the world and their intention is to paint a bigger picture. "It's about reviving drought-ravaged landscapes, nurturing, educating and empowering people, slowing the spread of disease and even reducing the likelihood of extremism and violent conflict" she added.
Ecosia is primarily powered by Bing and is enhanced with Ecosia's own algorithms and technologies in their searches. For your information, I did my own comparison between Ecosia and Google search results.
Apparently both of them come up with identical search results. All the more reason to use as your go-to day search engine.
Statistically, Google alone processes more than 40,000 search queries every second which is about 3.5 billion searches per day. Do the math, if we do all these searches on Ecosia its 62,500,000 trees per day !!
Ecosia has been true to their word and they have planted millions of trees in the world's most environmentally threatened areas such as Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Madagascar, and other regions.
In addition, they believe in total transparency with the users regarding what they do. That's why their site contains a tab called Financial Reports for any user to access and examine their finance management along with the tree planting receipts.
If you have a doubt about whether Ecosia is true to their word, you can always access their Financial Reports.
Ecosia's goal is to sprout 1 billion trees by 2020. and they are already at 6.7mn and we have four more months to help them get there.
Believe me as a Google user myself, I know how hard it is to adapt to a new search engine, but with the righteous cause of saving our planet and Amazon burning up, it is worth going the extra mile, isn't it?
In case you are wondering, Ecosia is both available on PC and Mobile via app store.
Former President Sirisena asks for forgiveness from Easter Attacks victims
Kim Kardashian is the most searched celebrity of 2014
COLOSSAL WASTE MARKS SRI LANKA'S 75TH YEAR OF INDEPENDENCE
India stuns the world at Davos
Moscow and Kyiv's foxtrot with diplomacy
South Asia's transgression of dynastic politics
The Taiwan Game
South Asia's transgression of dynastic politics


Larry - add to an internet search NOVA 23062, and you will find retailers who sell this product.
Did you get my reply. Miles tool is out of stock.
Yes, the chuck. I'm in MN. Mikes tool Is out of stock according to web. I could call them.
Who has what, the chuck? I gave a link. Are you in the States?
Thanks. I've tried to find a source for the sku23062 but not successful. Can I purchase directly from Teknatool?
Convinced my lathe is 33m, 3.5 pitch. Who has it??


APT Mold offer the service of Low-volume & Quick parts for injection molded parts and metal parts.
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APT Mold offers stamping, from prototypes to low-volume production, we offer a variety of manufacturing methods, materials, and finishing options for all your sheet metal needs.
APT Mold offers the one stop service including Creative Product Design and Design For Manufacturability.
They can count on APT to meet deadlines.
They can count on APT for great parts every time.
They can count on APT for the best pricing.
Simply put, our success is due to putting the needs of our customers first—100% of the time. We go the extra mile, work the extra hours, and treat every customer just like we would want to be treated. We trust you will find this approach to customer care refreshing.
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ACCEPTED

#### According to
International Plant Names Index

#### Published in
null

#### Original name
Galeopsis filholiana Timb.

### Remarks
null

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/yoavram/myzcat.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/yoavram/myzcat)

This is an example of a Python project.

The structure of the project is:

```
.
├── LICENCE.txt
├── MANIFEST.in
├── README.md
├── build
│   ├── bdist.macosx-10.9-x86_64
│   └── lib
│       ├── myzcat
│       │   ├── __init__.py
│       │   ├── cli.py
│       │   └── gzip_reader.py
│       └── tests
│           ├── __init__.py
│           ├── test_cli.py
│           └── test_gzip_reader.py
├── dist
│   ├── myzcat-0.1.0-py3-none-any.whl
│   └── myzcat-0.1.0.tar.gz
├── myzcat
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── cli.py
│   ├── gzip_reader.py
│   └── version.py
├── myzcat.egg-info
│   ├── PKG-INFO
│   ├── SOURCES.txt
│   ├── dependency_links.txt
│   ├── entry_points.txt
│   ├── requires.txt
│   └── top_level.txt
├── setup.py
└── tests
    ├── __init__.py
    ├── test_cli.py
    └── test_gzip_reader.py
```

- The package source code is contained in `myzcat`.
  - `gzip_reader.py` has a single function that given a filename, opens it, decompresses the gzip compression, and returns the content as a string.
  - `cli.py` leverages `gzip_reader.py` to create a CLI using [`click`](http://click.pocoo.org), which allows to view gzipped text files from the command line by calling `myzcat <filename>`.
  - `version.py` contains the version info in a single variable, `__version__`.
- The tests are in `tests` and can be run with `nosetests tests` after installing `nose` or by calling `python setup.pt test`.
  - `__init__.py` defines utility functions for the tests
  - `test_gzip_reader.py` tests `gzip_reader.py`
  - `test_cli.py` tests `cli.py`
- `setup.py` is the package installer:
  - to install run `python setup.py install`
  - to install in developer mode, so that every change you make to the code will be reflected in the installed package, run `python setup.py develop`.
- `myzcat.egg-info` is the result of running `python setup.py install` and contains package definitions
- `dist` contains package distribution files, the results of running `python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel`
- `build` contains files related to building the package into a distributable file

Additional `setup.py` tasks can be found in the [docs](https://packaging.python.org) or if you use _PyCharm_, in the `Tools` menu, under `Run setup.py task...`.

## Dependencies

- To install, you might need `setuptools`
- To run, you will need `click`
- To test, you'll need to install `nose`; for a test coverage report also install `coverage`
- To build a wheel binary distribution, you will need `wheel`

## Installing

You can [download the code as a ZIP file](https://github.com/yoavram/myzcat/archive/master.zip) or clone it with git using `git clone https://github.com/yoavram/myzcat.git`.

If you downloaded a ZIP file extract it and open a terminal window in the extracted folder.
If you cloned the repository, open a terminal folder in the repository folder.

Then run `pip install .` (with a dot at the end) to install the package, or `pip install -e .` to install it in developer mode. You can also do the same actions with `python setup.py install` and `python setup.py develop`, but then you must install dependencies on your own.

You can also install directly from GitHub without downloading or cloning using `pip install git+https://github.com/yoavram/myzcat.git`.

## Developing

When continuing development, it is best to install in developer/editing mode (`pip install -e .` or `python setup.py develop`) so that any changes in the source code are reflected when importing the package in Python.

## Versioning

The package version is set in `myzcat/version.py` and is imported in `__init__.py` to the package namespace.

From `setup.py`, the version is evaluated by reading `myzcat/version.py` and executing the code.

For other methods of versioning Python packages, see the [packaging docs](https://packaging.python.org/single_source_version/#single-sourcing-the-version).

## Packaging & Distributing

To distribute the package, run `python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel` to create a source distribution (`sdist`) and a wheel binary distribution (`bdist_wheel)`); the latter requires the `wheel` package to be installed.

To upload the package to [PyPI](http://pypi.python.org), register a username and password, install `twine`, then use `twine upload dist/*`.

## Testing

The easiest way to test the app is to call
```
nosetests tests
```

If you want a test coverage report, run:
```
nosetests tests --with-coverage --cover-package=myzcat
```

Additional tests should be added in the `tests` folder.
Follow the same format as in the existing files, only functions with names starting with `test` will be used as tests.

## Logging

See the [logging](https://github.com/yoavram/myzcat/tree/logging) branch.


This exercise works latissimus dorsi, teres major, biceps brachii, brachialis and a little bit trapezius (middle and lower portion), rhomboid and pectoralis major.
This exercise can be included in a program specific to the arms.
If you have difficulty to lift yourself with your bodyweight, you can do this exercise with the cable machine « lat pulldowns ».
Share this article you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.


text:
Video: How to Design like Apple [Design has to complement usability, NOT detract from it]
Steve Jobs was a notorious perfectionist. Apple engineers and designers went through hundreds of revisions on every prototype that made it into his hands. But Jobs' maniacal obsession paid off. No gadget on the market is as instantly recognizable nor as coveted as the latest iteration of an Apple product. The company's dedication to sleek design and intuitive, user-friendly technology has made each iPad, iPhone and Macbook launch an enormous success.
And how did Jobs and Apple do it? The company follows a set of simple but strict rules to ensure that every product meets Jobs' standards for clean and flawless design. First, design must complement and improve the product's usability, never detract from it. And of course, Apple's sleek and uncomplicated aesthetic must be reflected by every component of the product, no matter how small (via).


No Cow will be at the studio offering samples of these tasty treats during evening classes on Wednesday, 5/16.
How to Book: Check out our schedule online and choose the Single Class option under Barre Classes. Enter promo code: DFW18 at checkout.


text:
Julie Hollar
Corporate media needs to look at their own role in how we got here: media critic
Media seem to have finally found the line they won't abide crossing. After both sides–ing the political situation for four years of Donald Trump, the storming of the Capitol by an armed rebellion incited by Trump himself has brought out swift and strong words.
Washington Post (1/6/21): "Those who sought to benefit from Mr. Trump's mob-stoking rage…will always bear the stigma of having contributed to the day's shameful events."
"Trump Caused the Assault on the Capitol. He Must Be Removed," declared the Washington Post editorial board (1/6/21). "Responsibility for this act of sedition lies squarely with the president, who has shown that his continued tenure in office poses a grave threat to US democracy," they wrote. "He should be removed." They continued:
The president is unfit to remain in office for the next 14 days. Every second he retains the vast powers of the presidency is a threat to public order and national security. Vice President Pence, who had to be whisked off the Senate floor for his own protection, should immediately gather the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, declaring that Mr. Trump is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."
The Post deplored GOP lawmakers like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley who continued to press their baseless attempt to overturn the election, and praised Mitch McConnell, who "to his lasting credit" did not join them, even if, as they noted, "almost all" GOP members "bear some blame for what occurred on Wednesday." The Republicans, the paper wrote, have an "overriding responsibility to the nation: stopping Mr. Trump and restoring faith in democracy."
It's a surprisingly forceful position. At the same time, imagine if the paper—and the rest of the establishment media—had taken the GOP's threat to democracy seriously before it reached the point of the president inciting an armed insurrection on Capitol Hill. Yesterday's events were the logical outcome of years of the GOP and Trump casting aside institutional rules and norms one by one with increasing boldness, as the press corps described this increasingly authoritarian behavior as "us[ing] all of the levers of his power" (FAIR.org, 10/15/20), and years of giving Trump and his allies space to make their bogus claims of election fraud (FAIR.org, 9/15/20). The media's long history of both sides–ing the issue of purported election fraud (Extra!, 11–12/08, 10/12; CounterSpin, 10/21/16) paved the way for Trump's mythology that has seduced a breathtakingly—and dangerously—large proportion of the public.
Imagine if corporate media didn't praise McConnell, Lindsey Graham or any other Republicans who propped up Trump's dangerous lies for so long, for finally turning on him. Do they really believe we could have gotten to this point if McConnell and the rest of the party hadn't gone along with Trump's dangerously escalating lies–not just for the last several weeks, but for the last four years? If you keep your foot on the gas as the car speeds toward a cliff, but jump out a few seconds before you reach the edge, do you really deserve "lasting credit" for that?
The real test of corporate media will be not whether they are able to forcefully condemn a president's seditious acts, but whether they go back to business as usual after Trump is gone, pretending that the GOP, a disturbing number of whose members in Congress still pushed to overturn the election after the armed insurrection, is a democratic party that can be counted on to restore faith in democracy.
New York Times (1/5/20): "More than 150 Republican lawmakers have signed on to reject the votes of tens of millions of Americans."
The Times editorial board, while silent so far after the events of yesterday, did publish a fairly benign opinion the day before ("Trump Still Says He Won. What Happens Next?"—1/5/20), whose optimism clearly didn't take seriously the extensive planning underway in broad daylight on right-wing websites: "The Republican effort to derail Congress's electoral vote count on Wednesday will fail, and President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in at noon on January 20, as the Constitution commands."
The Times could only muster the courage to say that "there is a strong argument" for impeachment (linking to an op-ed they published on January 4) without actually making that argument themselves; the piece concluded by praising Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for resisting Trump's corrupt attempts at overturning the election results, and lamenting, "If only that weren't extraordinary in the Republican Party today."
What's missing so far is a mea culpa from the media for its own role in normalizing the GOP's long-term efforts to drag this country toward authoritarian rule—and their cynical enjoyment of the ratings bonanza provided by the enthralling spectacle of Trump's assault on democracy (FAIR.org, 3/1/16). Instead, we have the editor of Columbia Journalism Review (11/4/20) castigating the press for spending too much time in the past four years on Trump's "infinite faults," and not enough trying to understand Trump supporters (FAIR.org, 11/16/20).
Kudos to the Washington Post for finally calling for a political reckoning. Now it's time for you to call for a media reckoning.
Right-Wing Media Is Using Hurricane Harvey to Push a New Racist ... ›
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Centrists lose again — and mainstream media blames the left again
Joe Biden hadn't even been declared the victor of the 2020 election before establishment Democrats, in the face of poorer-than-expected results in House and Senate races, began pointing fingers at the left—with corporate media giving them a major assist.
Democrats had been hoping for big wins on election night, with the possibility of winning not only the presidency but also the Senate, and increasing their majority in the House. But while Biden has come out on top, the party's most optimistic outcome in the Senate would be a 50/50 split (if they win both Georgia runoff seats), giving them a majority with the vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. And rather than gaining in the House, Democrats lost several seats.
In the wake of these disappointments, the right wing of the party immediately blamed its left wing for the poor showing, airing their grievances in a private conference call among House Democrats that was leaked to reporters.
In a write-up about the call, the Washington Post's Rachael Bade and Erica Werner (11/5/20) quoted and paraphrased 14 sources blaming those who "endorse far-left positions" for Democrats' losses, counterbalanced by only four sources defending the left. All of the progressive sources were named; half of the establishment sources were either quoted anonymously or presented as unspecified "moderates"—or, twice, simply as "Democrats," committing the exasperatingly common journalistic sleight-of-hand that erases progressive Democrats as legitimate members of their party.
In addition to quoting a handful of participants on the call, Bade and Werner interviewed numerous "moderates" for the article ("Several moderate Democrats said in interviews…"), but only managed to interview two progressives: Alexandra Rojas, head of the leftist PAC Justice Democrats, along with Rep. Jared Huffman, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus—who took the side of the centrists.
Huffman's contrary position, while perhaps surprising to some readers, and serving to portray the "centrist" view as even more of a consensus position, would have been less surprising to Bade, who had quoted Huffman just a few days earlier (11/1/20) about his opposition to leftists' efforts to exert more influence within the party. In other words, the reporters appeared to seek out only one source who could have been expected to offer a forceful defense of bold leftist ideas, to balance a whole parade of attackers.
In its piece on the dust-up, in which "Democrats traded excuses, blame and prognostications," the New York Times (11/5/20) quoted South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, who "cautioned against running on 'Medicare for all or defunding police or socialized medicine,' adding that if Democrats pursued such policies, 'we're not going to win.'" What the article didn't mention was that Clyburn has taken more money from the pharmaceutical industry in the past decade than any other member of the House or Senate (Post and Courier, 12/16/18).
The piece then quoted Rep. Marc Veasey, who "warned his fellow members against anti-fracking talk." Veasey ranked fourth among House Democrats in taking oil and gas industry money in the 2020 election cycle, and got 70% of his total campaign contributions from PACs. (To put that into perspective, the two progressives quoted in the Times piece, Pramila Jayapal and Rashida Tlaib, got 13% and 3% of their campaign contributions from PACs, respectively.) Readers might have found such information useful in analyzing the motivations behind those quotes.
CNN's Chris Cillizza (11/6/20) jumped into the fray as well, praising Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA official (another piece of relevant context not mentioned by Cillizza) who had some of the harshest words for progressives, for speaking "some hard truth to her party"–like, "We need to not ever use the words 'socialist' or 'socialism' ever again," as if the McCarthy era had never ended (FAIR.org, 10/9/20).
After quoting Spanberger extensively and then printing some of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's rebuttal ("You can't just tell the Black, brown and youth organizers riding in to save us every election to be quiet or not have their reps champion them when they need us"), Cillizza wrote:
What's beyond debate is that Republican strategists took comments made by liberals within the Democratic Party and used them to blast everyone from Spanberger on down.
Though all of these pieces offered plenty of suggestions that the left wing's vocal support for things like socialism, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and defunding the police cost the party seats in 2020, they failed to provide any actual data that might have helped readers evaluate the veracity of those statements.
It's an important point, because understanding Democrats' lackluster performance should help guide their platform and messaging moving forward. But these articles aren't shedding light on the data—perhaps because it would thoroughly undermine the anti-progressive framing.
As the New York Times' Jim Tankersley (10/14/20) reported just last month in an unusually frank assessment of the popularity of left-wing ideas, the right's wall-to-wall attempts to bring down Democrats with the "socialist" label haven't been very effective, despite Cillizza's suggestion to the contrary. That's in part because Biden and other centrists deny them so forcefully, but in part because "many of the plans favored by the most liberal wing of Democratic leaders remain popular with wide groups of voters, polling shows." Tankersley pointed to a recent Times poll that found 2 in 3 respondents support a wealth tax, 3 in 5 favor Medicare for All (including 2 of 3 independent voters), and even higher numbers support free college tuition.
The Green New Deal is likewise broadly popular: One poll specifically of swing House districts (YouGov/Data for Progress, 9/19) found that respondents supported the idea by a 13-point margin, 49% to 36%—even when informed that it will cost trillions of dollars.
And with some races still not called, it's safe to say that Medicare for All and the Green New Deal didn't sink the Dems. Ocasio-Cortez pointed out (Twitter, 11/7/20) that every Democratic co-sponsor of Medicare for All in a swing district won re-election. And Gizmodo's Brian Kahn (11/9/20) found that of 93 Democratic incumbents who co-sponsored the Green New Deal—including five in swing districts—only one lost their race.
On the question of calls to "defund the police," it's important to clarify—as did the Intercept (11/6/20), but none of these establishment media reports—that such calls grew out of the Black Lives Matter protests, not the platform of progressive congressmembers, and that that movement led to a massive spike in Democratic voter registration. In other words, without the movement that gave us the slogan "defund the police," the Democrats would almost certainly have witnessed even greater losses– including, quite probably, the White House.
As the Intercept also pointed out, it appears likely that left-wing organizing in Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania resulted in decisive Democratic gains in key cities and suburbs in those swing states. And Ocasio-Cortez named many other problems with the establishment's campaign strategies, running from underinvestment in digital campaigning to a lack of a ground game to a lack of recognition of or outreach to communities of color.
Clearly the 2020 election contains many lessons for the 2022 midterms, but it's unlikely the right conclusions will be drawn from the fact-free centrist narrative presented by corporate media.
Julie Hollar is the managing editor of FAIR's magazine, Extra!. Her work received an award from Project Censored in 2005, and she has been interviewed by such media outlets as the L.A. Times, Agence France-Presse and the San Francisco Chronicle. A graduate of Rice University, she has written for the Texas Observer and coordinated communications and activism at the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas. Hollar also co-directed the 2006 documentary Boy I Am and was previously active in the Paper Tiger Television collective.
Here's why the 'political center' is a dangerous myth — and how it ... ›
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For WaPo's centrist sources, progressive politics are 'purity tests ... ›
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Corporate Democrats provoked congressional losses — so naturally they're blaming progressives - Alternet.org ›
Voters should be wary of USA Today's false balance on Election 2020
One thing readers can count on every election season is false balance in the press (FAIR.org, 12/9/16, 10/3/12; Extra!, 11–12/08; FAIR.org, 9/30/04), and despite the current threats to democracy (FAIR.org, 9/15/20) that one might hope would lead journalists to up their game, this year is no different.

Case in point: USA Today's front-page piece on Monday (9/14/20) with the remarkable headline, "With 50 Days Till Election Day, Voters 'Anxious,' Wary of Trump, Biden Alike." On the web, the headline ran: "'Anxious, Fearful, Angry.' At 50 days Out to Election Day, Many Voters Are Wary of Both Trump and Biden."

<img alt="USA Today: 'Anxious, fearful, angry.' At 50 days out to Election Day, many voters are wary of both Trump and Biden" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="484469b4aab58261ac4a8c983e4dc9b8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="ff5e2" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQzODMyMS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MzgwNzY0NX0.gMx6k1nNeNrnvUMOotNxTNm88fK6zDnwJb9w8hoMp54/img.png?width=980"/>

USA Today's headline (9/14/20) elides a key difference between the two candidates: Generally, more people like Biden than dislike him, which hasn't been true of Trump since January 2017.

"It's 50 days until voters cast their ballots for president, and Americans are on edge," the article, by Ledyard King and Phillip M. Bailey, began:

It's not just that they have been cooped up at home to avoid a deadly contagion. Or that some downtown areas have been wracked with unrest fueled by protests over police violence and racism. Or that Americans are facing financial hardships because of the pandemic. Many voters view the White House race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden as crucial to America's future. But while the president's supporters are more enthusiastic than Biden's, many voters grappling with multiple crises are unimpressed and uninspired by the choice they will face on November 3.

This framing clearly implies that there's no clear answer at the voting booth for "many" people; the headline directly suggests that "voters" are equally wary of both candidates.

No one disputes that there is an enthusiasm gap between Trump and Biden supporters. But the idea that the choice seems like a toss-up to most people, and that the general sentiment in the country is one of equal wariness toward both candidates, is much harder to defend. Biden's favorability ratings have consistently been much higher than Trump's, and Biden has led national polling averages by a minimum of 4 percentage points (currently he's averaging almost 6 points ahead) for the last several months. And while anxiety does dominate this election year, Biden supporters are much more anxious than Trump supporters—which is hardly surprising, given Trump's clear efforts to subvert the election (FAIR.org, 9/15/20).

It's misleading to describe voters as being equally wary of these two candidates (Real Clear Politics, 9/17/20).

You get a hint at the problem with the article in the line about protest: Are Americans on edge because there has been unrest in some downtowns—or because of the conditions of police violence and racism that have spurred that unrest? USA Today seems to be talking about a particular kind of reaction, had by a particular subset of people.

And in fact, despite referring to "Americans"—and the slightly narrower "voters"—multiple times in the headline and first few paragraphs, the article soon reveals that it's actually talking about neither of the above. The anxiety referred to in the headline, it turns out, comes from a characterization of voters in swing states who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016—not exactly a representative group.

The paper then offers quotes from several "undecided voters" from swing states that they interviewed, including such statements as, "I can't with good conscience say that I have an educated enough decision to vote either way. You constantly have to filter through the fighting to hear what they're actually trying to say." The reporters return to that voters' words to conclude the piece: "Hopefully, we'll hear more about what they actually plan on doing [in the debates]" she said. "And less about how much they hate each other."

Interviewing undecided voters is one of journalists' favorite election season pastimes. It's not an irrelevant angle, though corporate reporters tend to overemphasize the white, conservative-leaning and rural swing voter to the exclusion of other crucial groups that might decide the election (FAIR.org, 5/20/14). But you have to wonder if people would remain so undecided if news media used more front-page real estate to cover candidates' plans than to publish uninformed opinions about those candidates.

And it's important that the obsession with swing state voters—while, again, justified to some extent, because of the way our Electoral College makes many voters' opinions largely inconsequential—doesn't so cloud reporters' judgment that they use those voters to stand in for "Americans" as a whole. By doing so, outlets like USA Today overstate Trump's support and create the impression of a balance that doesn't exist.

Protesters from coast to coast urge officials to 'count every vote' - Alternet.org ›
As Biden mulls VP pick, pundits vie for most substance-free forecast
As presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's search for a running mate drags on, press coverage hasn't failed to disappoint.

Useful coverage would lay out each potential pick's background and qualifications. While you certainly can find that if you look hard enough, many journalists seem quite content to avoid content. The Washington Post's Aaron Blake (7/24/20) offered a nice helping of unedifying rankings in his "12 Most Logical Picks for Joe Biden's Vice President, Ranked." At number one, Blake put Kamala Harris:

Kamala Harris is the "most logical pick," writes the Washington Post's Aaron Blake (7/24/20). His logic? "Nobody makes more sense than the senator from California right now."

Another list, another list with Harris at No. 1. While others have been jockeying to climb up, nobody makes more sense than the senator from California right now, which has been the case for a while. About the best argument against her is that her 2020 presidential campaign wasn't exactly a resounding success. But for a campaign showing a wide lead, she's clearly the safest pick. And safe might be what the doctor orders.

Why does "nobody make more sense" than Harris? Why is she the "safest pick"? Perhaps Blake assumes you remember his three-line explanation from June, when he similarly offered rankings—or perhaps he doesn't care. (For the record, she's been the "favorite from the start" because of her "high-ranking résumé," her "experience on the national stage" and the fact that "she has shown she is a capable messenger.")

Over at CNN (7/30/20), Chris Cillizza has really been milking the drawn-out process, putting out new rankings so often (he's currently at 16) you'd think he was running a gambling ring.

Much of the problem is that since the top contenders have already been fairly well-established for the last few weeks, most outlets don't have much new ground to break. So what's left? Mainly, politicians and operatives on all sides trying to create positive coverage of their team and negative coverage of their opponents—and journalists that seem happy to go along.

California representative and new short-list candidate Karen Bass took multiple trips to Cuba 40 years ago, and in 2016 called Fidel Castro's death "a great loss to the people of Cuba." Her opponents gleefully pushed out this "Cuba baggage" (AP, 8/6/20) to drum up a story about how this makes her dead in the water (because Florida!), and journalists happily complied. No matter that Cuban Americans make up only 6.5% of the population of Florida, and Cuba is for vanishingly few of them their primary motivating issue when voting.

As the response to Bernie Sanders' positive comments about Cuba's literacy program demonstrated (FAIR.org, 3/6/20), US political orthodoxy does not permit even hints at acknowledgment that longtime Official Enemies like Cuba might not be evil. Bass's supposed Communist sympathies were the subject of widespread coverage—and not only in outlets like Fox News—under headlines like "I'm Not a Communist" (NBCNews.com, 8/3/20) and "Karen Bass Eulogized Communist Party USA Leader" (Politico, 8/4/20); the Atlantic (7/31/20) saw fit to devote nearly 3,000 words to an investigation of Bass's relationship with Cuba.

Sometimes it happens even as journalists appear to be at least somewhat aware of what's going on. In a Washington Post piece headlined, "Biden's Delay in Choosing a Running Mate Intensifies Jockeying Between Potential Picks," Annie Linskey (8/2/20) describes how "Biden allies" worry that the process is "pitting women, especially Black women, against one another."

The piece refers to "nastiness," "backbiting" and "currents…many of them sexist, that have been swirling for weeks," seeming to attribute these largely to "allies of the women"—but it's not always entirely clear who is being blamed. It's certainly not the media, though, which appears merely as the vehicle for the nastiness. (Such as: "One donor implied to CNBC that Harris has too much 'ambition.' And former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a longtime Biden friend, told CNN that Harris can 'rub people the wrong way.'")

At the same time, Linskey offered her own piece as a vehicle for some sexism. Quoting Rendell on the "buzz" around Susan Rice, Linskey ate up without comment a tired trope used repeatedly in the past on women:

Her demeanor on television fueled the speculation, he said. "She was smiling on TV, something that she doesn't do all that readily," Rendell said. "She was actually somewhat charming on TV, something that she has not seemed to care about in the past."

The "Year of the Woman" has come and gone, and come and gone again (Extra!, 9/92, 4/13), and yet we keep talking—in 2020—about how female politicians need to smile more (FAIR.org, 6/14/99; Intercept, 9/26/16). Biden may be breaking the mold by only considering female running mates, but the media sure aren't straying from tradition.

Corporate media teams with Trump to disparage public health experts
To the New York Times' Michael Powell (7/6/20), what's interesting about public health experts' recommendations about protests and Covid is not whether they were accurate, but what he saw as the experts' "conflicted feelings."

Public health experts, unaccustomed to the spotlight, have really taken a beating lately. As they tirelessly work to unravel the mysteries of the Covid pandemic (and are increasingly burning out), the president of our country has constantly attacked and undermined them—and, lately, so have corporate media.

In a July 6 report, the New York Times seemed bizarrely eager to cast doubt on those experts' intentions. "Are Protests Dangerous? What Experts Say May Depend on Who's Protesting What," read the headline over Michael Powell's report. The subhead continued the framing of the experts as hypocrites:

Public health experts decried the anti-lockdown protests as dangerous gatherings in a pandemic. Health experts seem less comfortable doing so now that the marches are against racism.

Many readers wouldn't be terribly surprised at the story, since it's a curiously late addition to the small flurry of coverage around a letter circulated more than a month ago, signed by more than 1,200 public health experts, that supported the wave of anti-racist protests that erupted around the country after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The letter—which the Times notably did not link to, though it did link to two negative media responses to it—began by recognizing that many public health experts had condemned the white armed protesters who took over the Michigan State Capitol building, who were "protesting stay-home orders and calls for widespread public masking to prevent the spread of Covid-19."

After explaining that "white supremacy is a public health issue that predates and contributes to Covid-19," they wrote that while they support staying at home, social distancing and public masking, they

do not condemn [anti-racism] gatherings as risky for Covid-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States.

The letter carefully distinguished this from the protests against stay-at-home orders, which "not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives." It continued by offering guidance for protesters and allies to minimize transmission risk at protests, like wearing masks, maintaining distance where possible, staying home when sick and providing hand sanitizer to protesters.

It seems pretty clear: Black people and other people of color are disproportionately hospitalized and dying of the disease, not as a result of some biological difference but because of the ways that systemic racism has put them at greater risk. Therefore, racism is a vital public health issue—both in general, as people of color suffer worse overall health outcomes than white people, and specifically concerning Covid-19.

So it's clearly not a question of "who" is protesting, as the Times' headline suggests. It does matter very much "what" is being protested. In the case of the anti-lockdown protesters, the entire goal was to make government officials flout public health experts' recommendations for infection control. Obviously, those actions couldn't be supported from a public health perspective—not to mention that, given their agenda, most protesters were not wearing masks or keeping distance.

It's worth noting, too, that experts' understanding of the novel coronavirus' transmission has played a role in shifting recommendations. Early on, less was understood about transmission, which is why full lockdowns were encouraged: If people aren't near each other, they can't pass the virus to each other, whatever its preferred mode of transmission.

As more research has emerged showing that outdoor activities are far less dangerous, and that masks seem to make a big difference in preventing transmission, experts can make finer-grained recommendations about which activities are higher and lower risk. Since anti-racism protesters were largely compliant with mask wearing, moving around rather than staying in one place, and in many cases attempting to keep distance from others, many experts judged that their outdoor activities were relatively low risk, particularly when weighed against the potential benefits from any outcomes that worked to dismantle systemic racism.

(Note that public health experts are not a monolith—they are individuals with individual perspectives and judgments—and not infallible. The public health experts at the WHO, in the most obvious example of both of these points, clung to their recommendation against universal mask wearing until well after the pandemic was underway—CNN, 3/30/20—and likewise refused to acknowledge mounting evidence pointing to airborne transmission until just this week, under pressure from hundreds of other health experts around the world—Reuters, 7/7/20.)

But like many who came before him (FAIR.org, 6/10/20), the Times' Powell was eager to skim over all these nuances, erasing the public health distinctions between the two kinds of protests. He played up the political distinctions to paint epidemiologists and other health experts as hypocritical, feeding the media narrative that they were "politicizing science."

At the time of the letter, other outlets similarly cried foul. "Suddenly, Public Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More Than Social Distance," huffed Politico (6/4/20). "The Protesters Deserve the Truth About the Coronavirus; Public Health Experts Should Strive to Provide a Neutral Accounting of Risk," scolded the Atlantic (6/4/20). The right wing, which has been attacking public health experts since the beginning of the pandemic, went predictably nuts; Jonah Goldberg (Dispatch, 6/5/20) went so far as to accuse epidemiologists of "treason."

Some on the left, too, offered up false arguments to condemn the public health experts who supported the anti-racist protests, arguing that if they counseled everyone to stay at home in the face of the pandemic, at extreme economic and psychological cost, they certainly couldn't say it's okay for some to now go out and protest. In a widely-cited essay in the Guardian (6/8/20), Thomas Chatterton Williams (who later spearheaded a letter at Harper's decrying so-called cancel culture and the "vogue for public shaming" on the left) leaned on ideas of political correctness gone amok to argue that "two weeks ago we shamed people for being in the street; today we shame them for not being in the street." Public health experts, he wrote, are "politicizing science" and "have hemorrhaged credibility and authority."

<img alt="Intercept: The Abrupt, Radical Reversal in How Public Health Experts Now Speak About the Coronavirus and Mass Gatherings" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="11751c7044ef90e259c3b4cdd649b247" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="88fc0" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQ3OTY3NC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NjA1Njk1Mn0.OEgGsLv_EgLFHU2Vi-6ip_ybiy6YuXgLr9cUooqNL3Y/img.png?width=980"/>

According to the Intercept's Glenn Greenwald (6/11/20), "People who left their homes for any reason other than officially approved 'essential' functions were—no matter how careful they were—publicly shamed if not fined and arrested."

Glenn Greenwald in the Intercept (6/11/20) was similarly outraged, calling the letter's distinction between the two kinds of protests

plainly political judgments, not scientific ones, and the shoddy, glaring conflation of them is nothing less than a manipulation, an abuse, of public health credentials. For scientists to purport to dictate which citizens can and cannot safely choose to leave their house — based not on health judgments but on their political ideology — is repressive, and certain to erode the credibility of their profession. Yet this is exactly what they are doing: explicitly and shamelessly.

Again, it's not about "which citizens" can leave their house, it's about the purpose of the leaving: Why would public health experts not condemn efforts to pressure governments to rescind public health measures? And it expressly is about health judgments—both about the relatively low risks of sporadic, masked outdoor protests versus the high risks of people going about their normal business, and about the health judgment that protests against racism could improve health outcomes for people of color, during and beyond Covid-19.

Moreover, Greenwald, like Williams, the Atlantic's Conor Friesendorf and others, seems convinced that public health ought to be somehow objective, scientific and neutral, not political. But public health can't avoid being political. Managing the health of an entire population is done through policy decisions, many of which people will disagree about. Gun control, smoking, obesity—so many of our major public health issues are highly politicized. If we want public health experts to tell us how to maximize our health, we can't at the same time insist that they only tell us about certain narrow kinds of health outcomes, or health outcomes for certain kinds of people.

Williams and Greenwald appeared less concerned about hypocrisy concerning different kinds of protests and mostly upset about—as Greenwald put it—the apparently sudden deviation from the previous "dictate" from public health experts "that we could not go outside for any reason." Greenwald wrote:

One of two things is true; either 1) these protests will lead to a significant spike in coronavirus infections and deaths, in which case public health experts should reconcile that outcome with how they could have encouraged and endorsed them; or 2) it will not lead to such a spike, in which case it will appear that the months of extreme, draconian lockdowns—which caused great suffering and deprivation around the world—were excessive, misguided and unwarranted.

First of all, stay-at-home orders were not intended to keep people locked up inside; since the beginning of the pandemic, health experts have been recommending that people continue to get outdoor exercise while maintaining social distance (NPR, 4/1/20).

Perhaps more importantly, the economic hardship caused by lockdowns does not happen in an apolitical bubble; as public health experts Julia Marcus and Gregg Gonsalves pointed out in the Atlantic (6/11/20), they and many other such experts have long been pushing for massive economic assistance to help forestall such fallout, as has been done quite successfully in many other countries. In other words, lockdowns do not have to lead to the kind of suffering and deprivation being experienced right now in this country, and no public health expert is advocating that.

There's now been more than enough time to judge the impact of the protests on infections—and, despite nefarious police tactics that raised risks of transmission (like kettling, using tear gas, and not letting arrested protesters wear masks while they were held for long periods in police custody), there is no evidence that the protests spurred outbreaks; no increases in infection rates in places that saw some of the biggest protests, like Minneapolis, New York City and Washington, DC, and in fact an increase in social distancing in places where protests took place, which presumably helped drive down transmission (NEBR, 6/20). On the other hand, in several US states that have relaxed their "draconian" lockdowns in a manner at odds with public health experts' recommendations, infections are beginning to escalate exponentially.

So, in fact, neither of Greenwald's two things are true: Public health experts did not recklessly abet a spike in protest-related infections, nor have their recommendations for lockdowns in the face of increasing transmission been proven unfounded.

Which brings us back to the Times article, which came a full month after the letter was first published, and well after the outcome was clear. Perhaps to justify the existence of his article, Powell left open a wide berth for alternate interpretations of the data: "There is as of yet no firm evidence that protests against police violence led to noticeable spikes in infection rates." But of course, it's not just no "firm" evidence—Powell offered no evidence, period. So why run this story, framed in this way, now? With nothing new to contribute, the article serves only to further erode trust in the very people we have to rely on to get us out of the disaster we're currently in.

Can the US hold a free and fair election — especially this one — during a pandemic?
It might be easy to forget, given the crisis enveloping the world at the moment, that the United States is scheduled to hold a very important election in November. But with projections that the COVID-19 crisis isn't going away any time soon, what will this mean for voters' access to the polls, and the very legitimacy of the election? These are important questions, and journalists play a critical role in answering them.
"Expanding vote by mail for November requires careful crafting to preserve ballot access for minority and disabled voters," the Center for Public Integrity (3/23/20) notes.
Many have risen admirably to the task. For instance, the Center for Public Integrity, in partnership with Time (3/23/20), spoke with voting rights experts to lay out the possibilities and pitfalls of different responses. The primary action being floated is a bill, introduced by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., that would require no-excuse vote-by-mail options and 20 days of early in-person voting in every state, as well as offering federal funding for the implementation of those measures.

But as voting rights experts told CPI reporter Carrie Levine, the changes have to be implemented thoughtfully to avoid disenfranchisement. Mail-in ballots from communities of color, for example, have historically been rejected at higher rates, and language, ability and even poor access to reliable mail service (as on Native American reservations, for instance) can be a barrier for many.

"With gatherings of people suddenly presenting an imminent health threat, state officials and voting rights activists have begun calling for an enormous expansion of voting by mail," reports the New York Times (3/19/20).

As Politico (3/17/20) and the New York Times (3/19/20), among others, also reported, election officials warn these steps have to be jumped on immediately in order to have any chance of being ready to roll out for Nov. 3, and to work out all the potential security and disenfranchisement risks. The media must push these concerns front and center if there's any hope of pulling off a successful election.

Editorially, some are speaking out. The New York Times (3/21/20) and Washington Post (3/18/20) editorial boards used their platform to urge passage of Wyden and Klobuchar's bill. The Times (3/12/20) gave column space to Dale Ho of the ACLU to make the case as well, while the Post (3/16/20) did so for Wyden and Klobuchar. Times columnist David Leonhardt (3/18/20) urged congressional Democrats to engage in "bare-knuckle politics" to ensure it happens: "Refuse to pass any big stimulus bill unless it includes provisions to ensure that the country can hold a presidential election this fall."

But not all outlets appear equally concerned. Some simply aren't discussing it: A FAIR search of ABC, CBS and NBC transcripts turned up no on-air discussions of the impact of the crisis on the November elections.

Others have been quick to play down worries. Take The Hill, where the headline over a column by Blake Kaufmann (3/22/20) reassured: "Have No Fear, the General Election Will Move Forward." The column itself, while warning that "There is a lot to concern us about the ways [Donald Trump] could abuse executive power in the months ahead in order support his re-election efforts," concludes that, considering clear constitutional protections,

Americans should have absolute confidence that regardless of Trump's rhetorical and procedural shenanigans (and no doubt there will be plenty), the November elections will proceed as scheduled.

CNN's Chris Cillizza (3/18/20) notes that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine halted primary voting despite being told by the state's supreme court that he couldn't. But that couldn't happen in America, apparently.

Or see CNN.com (3/18/20), where Chris Cillizza argued under the headline "No, Donald Trump Can't Cancel the 2020 General Election" that such an idea should be put

in a bin with all of the other conspiracy theories kicking around the internet regarding the reverberations and impacts from coronavirus. Facts matter. And the facts make clear this ain't happening.

While it's important to dispel myths around the ability of the president to simply cancel elections, it's just as important to warn of the very real dangers to the 2020 election.

Even if such legislation is passed — still a big if — what about the legitimacy of the election? As New York's Ed Kilgore pointed out (3/16/20), since mail-in ballots take longer to count, a days- or even weeks-long delay in finalizing the general election results — particularly in the context of such new methods of voting — could leave the vote vulnerable to accusations of illegitimacy:

Is there any remote chance Donald J. Trump would fail to fire off tweets every 15 minutes alleging without a shred of evidence that the godless socialistic Democrat Party was stealing the election with millions of illegal votes from homicidal Mexicans? It's a real concern.

If the results are close (and even if they're not), what's to stop Trump from refusing to accept the outcome? Observers mapped out ways Trump and the GOP could contest the election even well before the COVID-19 crisis struck (e.g., Washington Monthly, 4-6/19); with the uncertainty caused by imperfectly implemented new voting methods, Trump will find himself with an incredibly useful justification for challenging a loss, and the country could find itself in a constitutional crisis — or worse.

For all these reasons, ensuring accessible and secure elections in November are of the utmost importance. No respectable reporter or pundit should be downplaying threats to the elections. And all media outlets should be covering this crucial story consistently and prominently from now until Election Day — from the push for federal legislation to the process of implementation in each state.

Elite media dismiss voter suppression on grounds that it's 'complicated'
Some voters—disproportionately black and brown ones—waited in line for several hours on Super Tuesday to cast their ballots in the Democratic primary, and media paid attention. But their love for a good visual doesn't always correspond with a love for connecting the dots, and so most of the coverage downplayed any suggestion that there might be voter suppression going on in 2020.

The New York Times (3/4/20) assured us that voting problems were not caused by "deliberate efforts to drive down turnout."

"Why Did It Take So Long to Vote in Texas and California?" asked a New York Times headline (3/4/20), which offered a reassuring answer in its subhead: "Some voters stood in lines for hours. But despite voter suppression concerns, the primary breakdowns apparently reflected snafus more than malign intent." Reporter Michael Wines explained:

Some critics complained on Twitter and elsewhere that the delays amounted to voter suppression in a state where Republicans have been frequently sued, sometimes successfully, for trying to minimize Democratic power. But Texas elections are tightly controlled by local officials, not state ones. And in big cities like Houston and Austin which had the biggest problems on Tuesday, those officials are Democrats with scant reason to depress turnout in Democratic urban strongholds.

And yet, in the very next paragraph, Wines reported that "voting machines were divided equally between Democratic and Republican voters—but many more Democrats turned out to vote on Tuesday," later explaining that

the imbalance stemmed from the county Republican Party's refusal to agree with Democrats to hold a joint primary election in metropolitan Houston in which voters could cast ballots on any machine. All but a handful of the state's 254 counties held joint primaries.

The article's final paragraph noted that the Houston voting site at historically black Texas Southern University, where people waited up to seven hours to vote,

allotted 10 voting machines to each party, and eventually added 14 additional machines for Democratic voters, she said. But of those who showed up on Tuesday, 1,132 voted in the Democratic primary. Sixty-eight voted for Republican candidates.

The Washington Post (3/4/20) blamed long voting lines on " a number of complicated factors."

It's a curiously stark mismatch between evidence and conclusions, a phenomenon repeated in the Washington Post (3/4/20), where reporter Elise Viebeck likewise took issue with those suggesting voter suppression was happening:

One of the remaining Democrats in the presidential field—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—seized on the episode, tweeting that it revealed a "crisis of voter suppression."
However, interviews with election officials, activists and voters pointed to a number of complicated factors that combined to produce the massive lines in Harris County.

(The print version's lead: "Voter suppression came to mind for some, but the reality was complicated.")

Like Wines, Viebeck noted the Harris County GOP's refusal to hold a joint primary, and that, after the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act, Texas closed 750 polling places—more than any other state.

A Houston Chronicle article (3/4/20) about the situation slightly complicated the question of responsibility for giving equal numbers of machines to each party (reporting that though Republicans refused the joint primary, which would have prevented the problem, they were given more machines than they asked for, because the Democratic county clerk's office worried about charges of discrimination), but it also pointed out that "almost two-thirds of the county's voting centers were in county commissioner precincts in west Harris County held by Republicans."

Sure, there were plenty of technological snafus and administrative errors—and those certainly need to be highlighted, so that pressure is put on election officials to fix them—but why pooh-pooh charges of voter suppression when voter suppression (which often masquerades as bureaucratic incompetence) is also an undeniable problem?

Lawrence O'Donnell (MSNBC, 3/3/20) on long Super Tuesday lines: "They're all kind of excited about this."

Others went so far as to celebrate the lines. On MSNBC (3/3/20), Lawrence O'Donnell reported:

My phone is filled with texts from people, friends of mine in those lines. I have one from a Hollywood polling place where the casting director is in a conversation with a cinematographer and a math teacher and someone who was an undecided voter an hour ago in that line. And she says they just realized and only just realized that they've been on the line for two hours, because it's been so much fun…. I've got one from a very affluent community in the Pacific Palisades, a director who's been in line for two hours. He's not complaining. They're all kind of excited about this.

It's charitable that the affluent aren't complaining about standing in line for hours (as no one should face obstacles to vote)—but they're also typically not worried about getting fired or missing a paycheck for doing so. Oblivious to this reality, O'Donnell also dismissed the idea that a city should be expected to make it possible for all of its citizens to vote:

And the infrastructure for voting in Los Angeles is a difficult one to maintain. Because on the last mayoral election, this is the election for the mayor of Los Angeles, the voter turnout was 20%. And so to build an infrastructure in Los Angeles that is capable of handling this giant surge turnout that they're getting tonight is impossible.

To be fair, most journalists were more concerned than O'Donnell about people's access to democracy, but they were still remarkably disinterested in asking how the concerted (and partisan) efforts to suppress turnout post-Shelby are playing out in 2020. In the Super Tuesday coverage, NBC (3/4/20) was the only broadcast network to air the words "voter suppression" (in a quote from a voter standing in line in Texas), in a segment less than two minutes long that noted the elimination of many voting centers in both Texas and California, but didn't mention the partisan nature of that act in Texas, instead characterizing it as simply "designed to make voting easier."

The New York Times' earlier reporting (10/24/19) on efforts to suppress the student vote did not inform coverage of lower-than-expected youth turnout in the 2020 primaries.

The failure to connect the dots extends to coverage of lower-than-expected turnout, in particular youth turnout. Plenty of reporters seized on early turnout numbers to point out that Bernie Sanders' campaign is failing in its goal of mobilizing youth and other traditionally low-turnout groups, but rarely do they look at the relationship between turnout and suppression—despite the fact that those groups typically face more obstacles to voting.

And Wines' dismissal of suspicions of voter suppression on the grounds that urban polling places are controlled by Democrats seems to willfully ignore the fact that establishment Democrats often have a strong incentive to make sure that older Democrats vote more than young ones—and have been known to manipulate the voting process to their own advantage (City & State, 11/6/18).

In fact, the Times' coverage was even more remarkable, given Wines' insightful reporting months earlier about efforts to suppress the student vote in Texas and several other states (10/24/19), in which he noted that recently enacted "restrictions fit an increasingly unabashed pattern of Republican politicians' efforts to discourage voters likely to oppose them."

There surely are multiple reasons for lower-than-hoped-for turnout that no doubt intersect with each other, including both obstacles to voting and failure (or lack) of efforts to mobilize voters; it's instructive to see where journalists instinctively turn to look for the culprit. Particularly post-Shelby, ID requirements, poll closures and voter roll purges have ramped up, inevitably taking a toll on democratic access. As Emory University's Carol Anderson recently told Counterspin (3/3/20) about voter suppression:

To see the overall pattern, and continuing to hammer it home, about what is at stake in this democracy…requires good investigative journalism, it requires going beyond the soundbite, it requires a clarion call: This nation is in danger.

Expert: 2020's biggest threat to American democracy isn't Trump -- not directly - Alternet.org ›
Voting wars: Inside the Republican Party's most overt voter suppression effort in years - Alternet.org ›
For WaPo's centrist sources, progressive politics are 'purity tests'
The Washington Post's function as a bullhorn for centrist Democrats continues full force this week, with an article (12/11/19) headlined, "As Democrats Trade Barbs on Business Ties, Some Worry Purity Tests Are Going Too Far" (or, in the print edition, "Democrats' Purity Tests Over Business Ties Could Backfire: Some Observers Worry That Voters Will Perceive a War on Prosperity"). It's a greatest-hits of an election piece, rounding up a posse of centrist sources to accuse progressive candidates of imposing "purity tests," and argue that a leftist turn by Democrats will hurt the party.

The article focuses on the Pete Buttigieg/Elizabeth Warren clash over transparency and ties to corporate America. This "growing battle" is "worrying some in the party that an escalating series of purity tests could turn off voters and convey an exaggerated disdain for business," Sean Sullivan and Matt Viser report.

As usual, "some in the party" is corporate media code for "centrist Democrats." Aside from the current candidates and their spokespeople, the piece seeks out almost exclusively the right wing of the party to judge the import and fallout from this scrutiny over corporate coziness. Sources include a fundraiser for Buttigieg and Biden, another Buttigieg backer, two Booker supporters who won House seats in swing New Jersey districts last year, former candidate Tim Ryan (who told the Post, "You can't be hostile to business, to free enterprise"), and centrist former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp. Former Chicago mayor and Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, the epitome of move-to-the-right-Democratism, was prominently featured.

They balance this barrage with one "liberal Democrat," a strategist who has donated to Warren.

But it's not just the centrist sources that do the spinning. Sullivan and Viser themselves report that "Buttigieg was being targeted by protesters labeling him 'Wall Street Pete,' though the bulk of his career has been in the military and city government." Well, then, those protesters must be loony lefties! Except that Buttigieg has raked in more Wall Street money than any other Democratic candidate.

(The Post might also have mentioned the incident that went viral earlier in the week in which a young voter asked Buttigieg, "I wanted to ask if you think that taking big money out of politics includes not taking money off of billionaires and closed-door fundraisers." Buttigieg's curt reply: "No.")

The piece uses the term "purity test" three times (four counting the headline), which—as FAIR (4/17/19) has pointed out—corporate media use exclusively to chastise the left for supporting progressive policies.

The problem, according to "many," is that "the party needs to do a better job of outlining an economic agenda that can break through at a moment when the labor market is strong." But for too many voters, the labor market doesn't feel so "strong" (FAIR.org, 11/19/19)—and for them, the Post's notion of a "war on prosperity" must seem rather ironic.

Sanders and Warren are perhaps the only ones outlining a breakthrough economic agenda—with Medicare for All, a wealth tax and a $15 minimum wage, among other ideas—but that's not the agenda the Post and their "many" friends are looking for.

Instead, you'll find the centrist answer in this week's New York Times opinion section (12/11/19), where Henry Paulsonand Erskine Bowles bash those leftist plans and explain that we "can get America to love capitalism again" by "aggressively invest[ing] in our human capital," "expanding the earned-income tax credit" and "restoring the sanity of our fiscal position" by cutting Social Security. Can't you just hear the crowds chanting those words now?

Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter@washingtonpost. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.

Centrists lose again — and mainstream media blames the left again - Alternet.org ›
Mainstream media is turning on Elizabeth Warren
Just two weeks ago, our survey of media coverage of Sen. Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign found a fairly — though not exclusively — positive tenor, with stories often contrasting her favorably to Sen. Bernie Sanders and highlighting her outspoken commitment to capitalism. But with erstwhile frontrunner Joe Biden under fierce attack from Donald Trump and Sanders recovering from a heart attack, establishment Democrats and their big donors are suddenly looking at Warren's rising poll numbers as a sign that her candidacy has very real potential — and is a very real threat to their power.

As centrist Democratic sources go, so go the media.

Among the "events of the past two weeks [that] have created huge uncertainty for the candidates who have dominated the Democratic nomination race," the Washington Post (10/6/19) lists "persistent doubts among some party leaders" about Elizabeth Warren

Under the headline, "Uncertainty Takes Over the Lead in the Democratic Presidential Race," the Washington Post's Michael Scherer and Matt Viser (10/6/19) report that recent events "have created huge uncertainty for the candidates who have dominated the Democratic nomination race." Those recent events? For Sanders, a heart attack; for Biden, an uncomfortable role in the impeachment inquiry; and for Warren, the curiously un-event-like "persistent doubts among some party leaders that she is too liberal to win the general election."

The Democratic Party has many leaders from both its left and right wings; for the Post, the adjective "some" serves to obscure the fact that its sources expressing those doubts are almost exclusively from the right.

People like former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who lost her 2018 re-election campaign (in which she emphasized how often she voted with Trump) by more than 10 percentage points — who better to turn to for an opinion about how to win an election?

Or there's consultant Donna Bojarsky, who has donated to Sens. Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker — all representatives of the corporate wing of the party. How about former Obama adviser David Plouffe, who went on to flack for Uber after his Obama years, and now runs policy for Mark Zuckerberg's philanthropy company? Then you have self-described "radical centrist" Mitch Landrieu, who told the Post:

[Warren] says she can do all these things. There's a thing called political reality…. Aspiration is wonderful, but you can't eat aspiration for lunch and send your kids to college on it. That's a fundamental decision that Democratic primary voters need to make a decision on.

The best bits come from anonymous donors, though, who are given cover to sow fear about a candidate whose policy proposals (like a wealth tax and a lobbying tax) would directly impact their own finances and political influence:

As Warren has steadily marched upward in the polls, the reality that she could become the nominee has unsettled some of the party's top donors, who worry that she would hand the race to Trump. If it starts to look like Warren will win the party's nomination, a longtime Democratic bundler said, "there will be efforts to stop that."

Another anonymous donor, who the paper tells us is "seeking a moderate as a nominee," expressed worries that if Warren is the nominee, her presence would ruin any Democratic chances to win the Senate, because voters would perceive having a Republican majority as "the only way to keep her in check" as president.

To end the hit parade, the Post reminds us that even if Biden falters, we still have centrist choices — calling up Sen. Michael Bennet and Rep. Tim Ryan, candidates currently polling below 1 percent, for some closing thoughts.

There's obviously a lot of uncertainty at the moment; it's just that the Washington Post, relying on its corporate centrist cast of characters, can't give anything like an honest accounting of it.

Julie Hollar is senior analyst for FAIR's Election Focus 2020 project. She was Extra!'s managing editor from 2008 to 2014.

Why is the media obsessed with 'Trump supporters still support Trump' stories?
As we hurtle into coverage of a presidential election that is still over a year away, media have returned to their timeworn tradition of going to rural, white communities to take the pulse of the nation (FAIR.org, 5/20/19).

Under the web headline "These Michigan Voters Show How Trump's 'Go Back' Attack May Help Him," the New York Times (7/22/19) ventured to a Trump stronghold in Michigan to bring readers the front-page news that people who supported Trump in 2016 despite his racist attacks still support him despite his racist attacks.

The Times' Stephanie Saul and Jeremy Peters described their look into St. Clair County:

In this overwhelmingly white district an hour north of Detroit, where his popularity remains high, his comments left people in the familiar position of having to choose a side in the aftermath of another Trump-instigated outrage. And they chose his.

The article went on to talk a great deal about the importance of Michigan to the presidential election as a swing state, about counties that had swung from Obama to Trump, and about how close polls are in those counties right now. This would seem to imply that St. Clair County is one of those, where people were more ambivalent about Trump, and therefore informative about which way Michigan might go this time around. But no, St. Clair County went for Romney by 7 points in 2012—and for Trump by 31 points.

Since this fact is disguised, and the "people" in this story seem to be exclusively of a Trumpian persuasion, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the point of these person-in-the-street interviews was to give Trump supporters a platform, rather than to take a real look at what "Michigan voters" think. (Indeed, in Michigan as a whole, Trump's approval rating stands at a net -15, according to Morning Consult polling—down 23 points since January 2017.)

It's a common theme of Trump coverage that now is extending to election coverage: When people protest something Trump does or says, corporate media feel the need to also cover the people who aren't reacting as a sort of faux-balance, giving us tautological Trump-supporters-support-Trump stories.

Reuters (7/19/19) gives us another example this news cycle: "In Battleground Florida, Republicans Shrug Off Trump's Tweet 'Kerfuffle.'" Reporting from Pinellas County, Florida, a Reuters correspondent joined the monthly meeting of a local Republican club—because, as the article explains:

Pinellas is one of four battleground counties that Reuters will report from through the November 2020 election to better understand the states set to play an outsized role in picking the next president.

So why, then, seek out only Republican activists to react to the Trump attacks?

As Reed Richardson pointed out two years ago here at FAIR (2/15/17), this kind of coverage tends to just reinforce right-wing talking points. Case in point from the Times' Michigan story: The paper interviews a local Republican strategist, who comments that the Democratic congresswomen under attack "very much represent the loony left." This quote was then selected by a Times editor to feature in the print edition's subhead—"Michigan Voters Who Worry More About the 'Loony Left'"—twisting a Republican catch phrase into "voter" worries.

At times, the effort required to orchestrate these false-balance stories becomes embarrassingly apparent, as when CNN on July 16 and 17 aired a widely criticized segment that presented a panel of, in the words of CNN reporter Randi Kaye, "eight Republican women from Dallas [who] don't see anything wrong with President Trump telling four Democratic congresswomen to go back where they came from." Sharp-eyed viewers quickly pointed out that these apparently randomly selected Republican women were actually dedicated Trump activists—members of a group called Trumpettes for America who had appeared multiple times on CNN in the past, likewise identified only as Republican women.

CNN's response? It ran the segment again—for the fifth time—this time with a brief nod to the women's group affiliations. Meanwhile, the underlying premise of the segment—that viewers need to hear (five times, no less) that Republicans who have supported Trump through his racist, xenophobic campaign and his racist, xenophobic administration continue to support him after his latest tirade—remains unquestioned by most media.

BRAND NEW STORIES


Takal reworked a script by Adam Gaines for the project. The story is set on a "a crazy, scary, murderous New Year's night" and is "in the vein of hysterical women horror movies…but it's really a satirical takedown of the loathsome internet culture of today." The plot "centers on a group of old high school friends who reunite in a house for New Year's Eve, where they're forced to confront traumas from their past." Cast members include Suki Waterhouse, Carly Chaikin, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, and Melissa Bergland.
If you're unfamiliar with Takal's work, I urge you to check out her chilling 2016 film Always Shine, which is currently streaming on Shudder and Kanopy. It's like a twisted cross between Mulholland Drive and All About Eve, featuring a killer performance from Mackenzie Davis.
Also worth noting: while Sophia Takal's upcoming film is the first of the female-directed Blumhouse horror films to be released, it won't be the last. There are plenty more female-directed horror movies on the way from Blumhouse in the future, including an upcoming Into the Dark entry, All That We Destroy, directed by Chelsea Stardust. This is only the beginning. And that's exciting.
New Year New You premieres December 28 on Hulu.


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Tope Tradition
Rock Tope, now 68, warmly recalls how comfortable he felt as a child chatting with his aging grandfather over breakfast, whenever his family would travel from New Mexico to visit the big, white two-story house on Grand Avenue in Grand Junction.
Richard E. Tope was in his mid-80s by then, but Rock remembers an easy-going man with a wry sense of humor who knew how to talk to children. It was a talent he no doubt honed as an educator, first as principal at Grand Junction High School and then, from 1918-1938, as superintendent of Mesa County Valley School District 51. Tope Elementary School, built on North 7th Street in 1947, still bears his name today.
Rock's grandfather, who died in 1962, is also remembered as a co-founder of Grand Junction Junior College established in 1925, which during the last 94 years has evolved to Colorado Mesa University. This, in part, is why Richard's children, Dwight and Josephine (Rock's father and aunt), created the Richard E. Tope Memorial Scholarship at the college nearly 40 years ago.
"Our parents left their estate to my brother and me when our mother passed away six years ago, but they left almost no instructions about what they wanted done with it," said Rock, whose father retired as an insurance executive, and whose mom was the daughter of a prominent Baptist minister.
"I made a couple of significant donations in my parents' name to a local (Albuquerque) hospital, and also to the Humane Society," he said. "But last year, as I was reading CMU's Annual Report, a light bulb came on: We could create a scholarship at the university in my parents name, the same way my dad and aunt did all those years ago to honor my grandfather."
Tope's $100,000 endowment to the Colorado Mesa University Foundation created the Dwight and Carolyn Tope Scholarship, which will provide nearly $4,500 a year in scholarships for Mesa County students.
The generous gift is part of the CMU Foundation's $9.6 million fundraising effort during the past fiscal year — built largely on small and moderate gifts from countless supporters who are giving students a hand up.
"My brother and I learned responsibility and morality from our parents — those qualities were very important to them," said Rock, who currently lives in Albuquerque. "This scholarship seemed like something they really would have liked and, to me, it felt like a perfect way to give back to a community that was always very important to our family. It's got my parent's name on it, it's going to help a lot of kids get an education and it'll be around forever."


Today, the members of the judiciary were away from the courts, as they converged at the Radisson for a training workshop to strengthen the courts in Belize and the rest of the Caribbean. The workshop is organized by the Judicial Reform and Institutional Strengthening Project and UN Women. It is looking closely at how gender affects the functions of the court to deliver justice, fairly and impartially. The project seeks to re-engineer the court functions and processes to meet the demands of Belizeans in a modern and developmentally challenging world.


This episode we welcome Shellie Hutchens, Mediacurrent's Marketing Director, to talk about upcoming webinars and and the fact that Mediacurrent is hiring. Ryan picked Stage File Proxy as the Module of the Now. We discuss our first non-drupal article from Four Kitchens about Saucier (pronunciation TBD). Mark stumbles through some D8 News and of course we finish off with some great conversation during Ryan's Final Bell.
Part 1: Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3: Tips and Tricks To Start User Testing by Beth Davenport - Senior Digital Strategist - her very first post.
Schedule the testing session and do not make it to long.
Make sure you have the right testers.
Have scenarios and scripts for them to execute.
Join the call at least a minute or two before the scheduled meeting time.
Jeff from Innoppl sent us an article about assembling a Drupal 8 Development Team. PS: He addressed it to someone named Robyn.. Do we have one of those on our podcast?
Saucier is a Node.js framework that is designed to consume content provided by a Drupal API backend. It uses templating engine called Dust.js that provides both server and client side rendering.


text:
Home/Lawyers/Trump attorney Jay Sekulow to characterize South Dakota in Deliberate Parenthood v. Noem – KNBN NewsCenter1
Trump attorney Jay Sekulow to characterize South Dakota in Deliberate Parenthood v. Noem – KNBN NewsCenter1
Melantha NoleneSeptember 15, 2021
PHOTO: Jay Sekulow (lawyer, radio and television talk show host) during the Senate impeachment trial, Photo Date: January 28, 2020
Credit: C-SPAN
PIERRE, S.D. – Governor Kristi Noem has announced that she and the State of South Dakota have retained attorney Jay Sekulow to join the State's legal team in the ongoing Planned Parenthood v. Noem litigation.
South Dakota is appealing the current ruling to the United States 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. The state's appeal in Planned Parenthood v. Noem seeks to uphold the South Dakota state law requiring that a pregnant woman consult with a pregnancy help center before deciding whether to have an abortion.
As a member of President Donald Trump's legal team, Sekulow served as lead outside counsel for Trump's First Impeachment Trial in the United States Senate.
Massaquoi hearings in Liberia finish, to renew in Finland
Looming drawback for states that gained't open up
Two who challenged resort quarantine awarded their authorized prices
Veteran Wayne County prosecutor Athina Siringas dies of most cancers
Detroit lawyers assault claims of authorized group that fought the election