#Republicans want to reinstate the draft

[observerpix]

The Best Worst Movie Ever

Hi! I don't know if I'm going to spend much time here, but I thought I would announce my time by sharing with you a review I wrote WAY back in 2008 about a movie that is still so wonderfully terrible, that I try to get everyone to watch it. Flashback Review! Southland Tales

There are many levels of bad movie. There are good bad movies that you love watching because you enjoy making fun of them. There are bad bad movies that you are so mad you wasted your time and money seeing that you are offended by the thought of them. Then there’s Southland Tales. It’s the kind of bad movie that you want every single one of your friends to see so that you can all discuss the atrocity to which you’ve just subjected yourselves.

I believe the only way to truly enjoy Southland Tales is to be tripping on some pretty good acid. Even then, though, I think you might get bored after about thirty minutes and resort to watching static on television.

It’s truly not a boring movie; that’s definitely not what’s wrong with the film. It’s got nuclear war, Big Brother, political corruption, crazy drugs, time travel, and little people in SWAT gear. What bored me is that I didn’t care what the hell anyone did or didn’t do.

In 2005, a nuclear bomb was dropped on Texas. This, of course, led to World War Three. Now, three years later, the government has reinstated the draft, issued nationwide identification cards, and controls the Internet. The Republican Party has a good chance of winning the election, and there’s an extremist Marxist group that doesn’t want that to happen.

Dwayne Johnson is Boxer Santeros, an action star who’s married to Madeline Frost (Mandy Moore), the daughter of Senator Bobby Frost (Holmes Osborne) who happens to be on the Republican ticket. Senator Frost’s wife is Nana Mae Frost (Miranda Richardson) who is not only the head of the NSA (I think), but she also runs the USIdent office, a Big Brother operation that controls the Internet and every other thing going on in America.

Still with me? I’m not done yet.

So Boxer gets kidnapped and taken into the desert. Somehow, he gets back into California with a case of amnesia and has been shacking up with porn star Krista Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar). He and Krista write a screenplay that oddly emulates what’s going on in the world, and they get wrapped up in what I believe to be a conspiracy that involves the Marxist movement, a German who’s created a power station operated by ocean water (played by the hilarious Wallace Shawn), and some strange time-space continuum whatnot. Oh, and a drugged-up war veteran played by Justin Timberlake narrates.

The movie plays as if too many ideas crawled onto the page, and Richard Kelly didn’t want to let any of them go. There are scenes that actually had my attention. I thought, finally, this movie is going somewhere and getting interesting, but no. As soon as some semblance of a storyline would show itself, the film would stumble and fall right back into an immature statement about American politics and war.

Richard Kelly definitely has ideas buried in the muck that is Southland Tales. Peppering the film with news footage that looks like it was plucked directly from C-SPAN is perfect. He’s poking fun at our country’s need for sensory overload in every sense of the word. Having one of your main characters be a porn star who is trying her hand at singing, television, and her own energy drink is spectacular. But either he concentrated too much on jamming every concept in, or he didn’t let the actors in on the joke.

Mandy Moore is surprisingly interesting as the whiny senator’s daughter, but I know for a fact she can do better work. Christopher Lambert, Miranda Richardson, and hell, even John Laroquette should be ashamed of themselves. I wouldn’t think it was so sad to see them play such horrible characters if it didn’t look like they were trying so hard.

Dwayne Johnson is the only one who gives a convincing performance. And it’s really only because he’s playing a confused, half-wit of a man who can’t quite figure out what his purpose might be. He does know one thing, though. He’s a pimp, and pimps don’t commit suicide.

Yeah, I don’t know what it means either, but it was the funniest damn line in the entire movie.

[tcm]

Sammy Davis Jr.: Civil Rights Activist and Natural Born Entertainer By Susan King

Sammy Davis Jr. was an exceptional talent. He could sing (you’ll get chills up your spine listening to his recording of “I Gotta Be Me”), dance, act and lest we forget, he was a member of the Rat Pack. He and Harry Belafonte made history in 1956 when they became the first African Americans to earn Emmy nominations.

But most people forget Davis was also very involved in the fight for civil rights in the 1950s and ‘60s. In January 1961, he joined Rat Packers Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, as well as Harry Belafonte, Mahalia Jackson and Tony Bennett, for the Carnegie Hall benefit concert Tribute to Martin Luther King. He also performed at the Freedom Rally in Los Angeles that year and at the March on Montgomery in 1965.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. even wrote Davis a thank you note: “Not very long ago, it was customary for Negro artists to hold themselves aloof from the struggle for equality… Today, greats like Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Mahalia Jackson and yourself, of course, are not content to merely identify with the struggle. They actively participate in it, as artists and as citizens, adding the weight of their enormous prestige and thus helping to move the struggle forward.”

In 1968, Davis received the prestigious Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for his 1965 autobiography Yes, I Can. Nevertheless, considering his work for the late Dr. King, Davis shocked the world in 1972 when he supported Richard Nixon, who had a poor track record when it came to civil rights and would refer to African Americans in derogatory terms behind closed doors. But there was Davis, attending the opening night of the Republican convention in Miami Beach and then performing a concert for Republican youth. And it was during the concert that he hugged Nixon.

The backlash in the African American community was loud and strong. Wil Haywood stated in his biography In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr., “Sammy failed to understand Blacks’ distrust of Nixon’s ultraconservative views. The hug at the Republican National Convention, in the glare of the nation’s spotlight, seemed too to minstrelsy.“

Davis later said: “By their definition I had let them down. In their minds there were certain things I could do, certain rules I could break. I married a white woman and I hardly got any heat. But by going with a Republican president I had broken faith with my people.”

In a 1976 Ebony interview, Davis reflected that working with Nixon was not a betrayal to African Americans but a way to help Black citizens. “When my wife, Altovise, and I were invited to the White House after the November elections, I repeated [my recommendations],” he noted. “We started to rap, and he asks, ‘What can I do?’ Come on Sam, tell me what I can do.’ So, I laid it down again.”

He told Nixon that the funds cut from anti-poverty programs needed to be reinstated and that Martin Luther King’s birthday should be made a national holiday. But he soon realized Nixon wasn’t listening to him. He regretted supporting Nixon.

Davis was born in Harlem on December 8, 1925 to vaudevillians Sammy Davis Sr. and Elvera Sanchez, who was of Afro-Cuban descent. The couple separated in 1928, and Sammy Jr. lived with his father and his grandmother, Mama. He was just three when he joined the Will Mastin Trio with his father and Mastin. Davis never went to school. In a 2014 Los Angeles Times interview, his daughter Tracey Davis recalled her father telling her, “What have I got? No looks, no money, no education. Just talent.”

As a youngster, he appeared in short films, including Rufus Jones for President (’33). He toured with the Mastin Trio until he was drafted into the Army during World War II, where he suffered so much abuse from white soldiers that his nose was broken three times. “How did he make it and so many others not make it?,” Tracey Davis reflected. “He had talent. But what he went through would have killed a lot of people or make them bitter or just messed with your life so bad you couldn’t get over it.”

In 1954, Davis survived a car crash on his way home to Los Angeles after performing in Vegas. He lost an eye. He wore an eye-patch for six months and then was fitted with a glass eye. Two years later, he opened on Broadway in the musical Mr. Wonderful.

It was announced in August 2020 that a film is in pre-production about the ill-fated relationship in 1957 between Davis and Kim Novak. The relationship was quashed, as it would have killed Novak’s career and supposedly, it quite literally would have killed Davis – a hit was allegedly put out on his life. To keep the heat off of him, Davis was briefly married in 1958 to dancer Loray White.

In 1960, Davis married striking Swedish actress Mai Britt. According to Tracey Davis, her mother, who had appeared THE YOUNG LIONS (‘58) and THE BLUE ANGEL (‘59), was dropped by 20th Century-Fox because of her marriage. Tracey said her parents “didn’t regret being together. My mom loved my dad like crazy and my dad loved my mother. My mother was so lucky because her parents didn’t care.” Though they divorced in 1968, she said they never fell out of love. Before his death of cancer in 1990 at the age of 64, Davis told his daughter why they broke up: “I just couldn’t be what she wanted me to be. A family man. My performance schedule was rigorous.”

Tracey said that her dad and Sinatra were great friends offstage. “He was like a good cushion for dad.” And, if Davis ran into trouble due to his race, Sinatra was there to fight the good fight for his friend. “He’d say, ‘Oh, Sammy can’t come in here? Then I’m not coming in.’ I think it gave my dad such comfort knowing he had this big brother out there that would go to the mat for him.” Davis, who was a chain smoker and was rarely seen without a glass of vermouth, had a falling out with Sinatra in the early 1970s, because the performer was using drugs. “Frank was mad he was squandering himself, doing stupid things. He let dad know about it and dad was kind of well, I don’t care.’’ Eventually, Davis did care and apologized to the Chairman of the Board.

Being a member of the Rat Pack gave Davis a certain visibility, especially in the films they made together, including OCEAN’S 11 (‘60) and ROBIN AND THE 7 HOODS (‘64), but all of the actors were just having a good time on screen. These vehicles didn’t show Davis’s strength as a dramatic actor. But occasionally, he got the opportunity, such as in ANNA LUCASTA (‘58) opposite Eartha Kitt, CONVICTS 4 (‘62) and A MAN CALLED ADAM (‘66). And in 1964, he returned to the Broadway stage in the Charles Strouse-Lee Adams musical Golden Boy, for which he earned a Tony nomination.

“He was very representative of a time and place,” said Strouse in a 2003 L.A. Times interview. “He was created from a lot of forces, like the Earth coming in and ‘whoop,’ here comes Sammy Davis. He was brilliant along with everything else. He was the biggest star of the day and in the theater, he had no peer. We sold out all the time.”

But Davis also missed a lot of performances of Golden Boy. “He got himself very tired or perhaps depressed or nervous,” reflected Stouse, adding that Davis stretched himself thin “the way lemmings go to the edge of the cliff and then they go off. He didn’t go off, but he was always on the end of the cliff. He was very driven and yet very mild-mannered and almost submissive to Sinatra. He had to be loved. He wouldn’t get off the stage.”

As he got older, Davis stopped wearing flashy clothes and jewelry and got back to basics as a singer and performer. And, he is the best thing about his last film, TAP (‘89), with Gregory Hines. Their tap dance will make your heart beat a bit faster. Tracey Davis said though her father was “incredibly driven,” he had a “huge heart, a zest for life. He had more energy than anyone I had known.”

[orbemnews]

Biden, With Powerful Allies and Foes, Targets Climate Change WASHINGTON — As President Biden prepares on Wednesday to open an ambitious effort to confront climate change, powerful and surprising forces are arrayed at his back. Automakers are coming to accept that much higher fuel economy standards are their future; large oil and gas companies have said some curbs on greenhouse pollution lifted by former President Donald J. Trump should be reimposed; shareholders are demanding corporations acknowledge and prepare for a warmer, more volatile future, and a youth movement is driving the Democratic Party to go big to confront the issue. But what may well stand in the president’s way is political intransigence from senators from fossil-fuel states in both parties. An evenly divided Senate has given enormous power to any single senator, and one in particular, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who will lead the Senate Energy Committee and who came to the Senate as a defender of his state’s coal industry. Without doubt, signals from the planet itself are lending urgency to the cause. Last year was the hottest year on record, capping the hottest decade on record. Already, scientists say the irreversible effects of climate change have started to sweep across the globe, from record wildfires in California and Australia to rising sea levels, widespread droughts and stronger storms. “President Biden has called climate change the No. 1 issue facing humanity,” Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington said. “He understands all too well that meeting this test requires nothing less than a full-scale mobilization of American government, business, and society.” Mr. Biden has already staffed his government with more people concerned with climate change than any other president before him. On his first day in office, he rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change. But during the campaign, he tried to walk a delicate line on fracking for natural gas, saying he would stop it on public lands but not on private property, where most of it takes place. A suite of executive actions planned for Wednesday does include a halt to new oil and gas leases on federal lands and in federal waters, a move that is certain to rile industry. But that would not stop fossil fuel drilling. As of 2019, more than 26 million acres of United States land were already leased to oil and gas companies, and last year the Trump administration, in a rush to exploit natural resources hidden beneath publicly owned lands and waters, leased tens of thousands more. If the administration honors those contracts, millions of publicly owned acres could be opened to fossil fuel extraction in the coming decade. The administration needs to do “much, much more,” said Randi Spivak, who leads the public lands program at the Center for Biological Diversity. Also on Wednesday Mr. Biden is expected to elevate climate change as a national security issue, directing intelligence agencies to produce a National Intelligence Estimate on climate security, and telling the secretary of defense to do a climate risk analysis of the Pentagon’s facilities and installations. He will create a civilian “climate corps” to mobilize people to work in conservation; create a task force to assemble a governmentwide action plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and create several new commissions and positions within the government focused on environmental justice and environmentally friendly job creation. The real action will come when Mr. Biden moves forward with plans to reinstate and strengthen Obama-era regulations, repealed by the Trump administration, on the three largest sources of planet-warming greenhouse emissions: vehicles, power plants and methane leaks from oil and gas drilling wells. It may take up to two years to put the new rules in place, and even then, without new legislation from Congress, a future administration could once again simply undo them. Legislation with broad scope will be extremely difficult. Many of the same obstacles that blocked President Barack Obama a decade ago remain. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, will very likely oppose policies that could hurt the coal industry in his state, Kentucky. So will Senator Manchin, who campaigned for his seat with a television advertisement that featured him using a hunting rifle to shoot a climate change bill that Mr. Obama had hoped to pass. In the decade since, he has proudly broken with his party on policies to curb the use of coal. The New Washington Updated  Jan. 26, 2021, 6:15 p.m. ET “I have repeatedly stressed the need for innovation, not elimination,” Senator Manchin said in a statement. “I stand ready to work with the administration on advancing technologies and climate solutions to reduce emissions while still maintaining our energy independence.” Senator Manchin also opposes ending the Senate filibuster. But, to change Senate rules, Democratic leaders would need every Democratic vote. Without Senator Manchin, Mr. Biden would need significant Republican support. “There is wide scope for the executive branch to reinstate what Obama did and go beyond,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. But, he added, “if you want something that will stick, you have to go through Congress.” To Mr. Biden’s advantage, some corporations have turned to friend from foe. Mr. Biden’s team is already drafting new national auto pollution standards — based on a deal reached between the state of California and Ford, Honda, BMW, Volkswagen and Volvo — that would require passenger vehicles to average 51 miles per gallon of gasoline by 2026. The current Trump rules only require fuel economy of about 40 miles per gallon in the same time frame. And just two weeks after Mr. Biden’s electoral victory, General Motors signaled that it, too, was ready to work the new administration. “President-elect Biden recently said, ‘I believe that we can own the 21st century car market again by moving to electric vehicles.’ We at General Motors couldn’t agree more,” wrote Mary Barra, the chief executive of GM, in a letter to leaders of some of the nation’s largest environmental groups. If enacted, a fuel economy rule modeled on the California system could immediately become the nation’s single-largest policy for cutting greenhouse gases. Mr. Biden’s team is also drafting plans to reinstate Obama-era rules on methane, a planet-warming gas over 50 times more potent than carbon dioxide, though it dissipates faster. Last summer, when Mr. Trump rolled back those rules, the oil giants BP and Exxon called instead to tighten them. The new president has also found broad support for rejoining the Paris Agreement, a global accord under which United States pledged to cut greenhouse emissions about 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. Rejoining the accord means honoring commitments. Not only must the United States meet its current target (right now it’s about halfway to that goal) but it will soon also be expected set new and more ambitious pledges for eliminating emissions by 2030. ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron all issued statements of support for Mr. Biden’s decision to rejoin. So did the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, which once supported a debunked study claiming the Paris Agreement would lead to millions of job loses. “As policy is being developed by the administration, by members of Congress, we want to have a seat at the table,” said Neil Bradley executive vice president and chief policy officer at the chamber of commerce. Other energy industry executives said action by Congress on climate change was long overdue, with many pressing for some kind of tax on oil, gas and carbon emissions to make climate-warming pollution less economical. “Having a clear price signal that says ‘Hey, it’s more cost efficient for you to buy an electric car than another big truck’ is exactly what we want happening, not somebody in government deciding that they’re going to outlaw something,” said Thad Hill, the chief executive of Calpine, a power generating company based in Texas that also supports the Paris Agreement goals. The Democrats’ razor-thin majority is no guarantee of action. In the Senate, Democrats are 10 votes short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster that would almost certainly come with legislation that would replace coal and oil with power sources such as wind, solar and nuclear energy, which do not warm the planet. In a Monday night interview on MSNBC, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, acknowledged how difficult a strong legislative response will be. Instead, he called on Mr. Biden to declare climate change a “a national emergency.” “Then he can do many, many things under the emergency powers of the president that wouldn’t have to go through — that he could do without legislation,” Senator Schumer said. “Now, Trump used this emergency for a stupid wall, which wasn’t an emergency. But if there ever was an emergency, climate is one.” Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, the nation’s largest coal-producing state, fired back, “Schumer wants the president to go it alone and produce more punishing regulations, raise energy costs, and kill even more American jobs.” Senator Thomas Carper of Delaware, chairman of the Environment Committee and one of Mr. Biden’s oldest friends, said he would do what he could to insert climate-friendly policies into larger pieces of legislation. Democrats hope a pandemic recovery bill will include hundreds of billions of dollars for environmentally focused infrastructure, such as Mr. Biden’s plans to build 500,000 electric-vehicle charging stations and 1.5 million energy efficient homes and housing units. Senator Carper also said he hoped to revive modest legislation that has in the past received bipartisan support, such as extending tax breaks for renewable power sources, supporting the construction of new nuclear power facilities, and improving energy efficiency in buildings. “You may call it incrementalism,” Mr. Carper said. “But I call it progress.” Christopher Flavelle contributed reporting. Source link Orbem News #Allies #Biden #Change #Climate #Foes #Powerful #targets

[junker-town]

What was most popular the last time the Chiefs and 49ers won a Super Bowl

The last two times these two won the Lombardi Trophy, things were pretty different.

It’s been quite a long time since the Kansas City Chiefs won a Super Bowl. In fact, it’s been a whole 50 years — the Chiefs won Super Bowl IV in the 1969 season. Kansas City had the fourth-longest active drought without a Super Bowl appearance until it earned a bid this season.

The San Francisco 49ers, on the other hand, have won a championship more recently. Their last Super Bowl win came in the 1994 season, when the Steve Young-led 49ers defeated the San Diego Chargers in Miami.

This year’s Super Bowl is also in Miami, but that’s about all that remains the same. A lot has changed in the world since the last time these two won championships.

Let’s take a look at what was happening in sports, TV, movies, pop culture, and technology the last time the Chiefs and 49ers won the Super Bowl.

1969 vs. 1994 in sports

1969

The New York Mets won the World Series, 4-1, over the Baltimore Orioles. Nicknamed the “Amazin Mets,” the victory was one of the biggest upsets in World Series history. The Mets it had a losing season each year before that.

The Boston Celtics were the NBA champions, as they defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in seven games. We saw the Celtics-Lakers rivalry heat up during this decade, and the two played in the finals six times — Boston won them all.

In college football, the Texas Longhorns won the national title, beating Notre Dame, 21-17, in the Cotton Bowl, and thus, Texas was truly back. What’s also interesting about this season is after the Longhorns defeated No. 2 Arkansas in December earlier that season, President Richard Nixon presented Texas with a plaque claiming the Longhorns to be the No. 1 team in the land.

1994

Major League Baseball strike: 1994 was a chaotic year for the MLB. Owners wanting to implement salary caps led to a players’ strike in August. It didn’t end for 232 days, the longest stoppage in MLB history, and there was no World Series. The strike cost management close to $1 billion, and players lost millions. It effectively ended Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson’s MLB careers, too.

The Nebraska Cornhuskers won the college football national championship by beating then-No. 1 Miami in the Orange Bowl. It marked head coach Tom Osborne’s first national title, though he’d go on to win two more in the 90s.

The Houston Rockets won their first-ever NBA championship, taking the seven-game series against the New York Knicks.

The O.J. Simpson chase: During Game 5 of Knicks-Rockets, NBC’s telecast was interrupted for the police chase of Simpson in his white Bronco:

Tonya Harding won the U.S. Figure Skating Championship. As you probably know, that was before she was later stripped of her title for her role in the attack on her competitor, Nancy Kerrigan, which happened that same year.

1969 vs. 1994 in music

1969

The Billboard No. 1 song in 1969 was “Sugar, Sugar,” by a cartoon band named The Archies, from the animated TV show The Archie Show. Yes, this is incredibly weird to me, too.

Other big hits during this year included “Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones, “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” by the 5th Dimension, and “I Can’t Get Next To You” by the Temptations.

The Woodstock music festival was held in August 1969. More than 400,000 people gathered on a farm in New York to see artists like Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin.

Photo by John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

The festival is known as one of the biggest and most important music events in history, lasting four days (it was originally supposed to be only three) while heavy rains caused delays of several acts.

The Beatles recorded their final album together, Abbey Road, which included classics like “Here Comes the Sun” and “Come Together.” That year, the group gave its final live performance, which took place on the roof of Apple Records.

1994

The No. 1 Billboard single for 1994 was “The Sign” by Ace of Base, which was the title track of the Swedish group’s debut album. This one was an absolute banger:

Other hits like “Don’t Turn Around” and “All That She Wants” were on this album.

Some other popular songs from this year included Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do,” and Boyz II Men’s ���I’ll Make Love To You.” This year Mariah Carey released her Christmas album, which is the greatest holiday album in history. I’m not 100 percent sure about that fact, but I’m right, OK? Hootie and the Blowfish’s Cracked Rearview Mirror album was released, though it became more popular the following year in 1995.

This was a pretty big year for debuting artists. Some of the more notable ones, to name a few: Weezer, Outkast, Beck, Notorious B.I.G., and Oasis.

Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain sadly died in April 1994.

1969 vs. 1994 world events

1969

One of the biggest moments in both the U.S. and the world history was the Apollo 11 mission, which successfully put the first-ever man on the moon. The mission, led by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, launched on July 11, 1969, and landed on the moon on July 20.

Photo by CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

On July 18, 1969, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off of a bridge in Chappaquiddick, which resulted in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign worker of Robert Kennedy’s. Although the news made headlines in the beginning, it ultimately was largely overshadowed by the Apollo 11.

President Richard Nixon was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 1969, for his first term.

On Dec. 1, 1969, a draft lottery was reinstated, for the Vietnam War. It was the first since World War II.

1994

Bill Clinton was sued for sexual harassment by Paula Jones while serving his first term as the President of the United States. The accusations Jones brought forward were allegedly from when Clinton was the governor of Arkansas in 1991. Judges allowed Clinton to avoid trial for the lawsuit until after he left office. Jones later settled her lawsuit in November 1998 after Clinton won the 1996 election.

The Republicans took control of the House of Representatives after Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. Before Republicans took control. Gingrich signed the contract which laid out legislation that would be passed within the first 100 days of Congress.

Nelson Mandela was elected as South African’s president, in the country’s first-ever democratic election. The elections marked the end of apartheid in South Africa, and Mandela later established a commission to investigate human rights and political violations that happened during apartheid. Beyond his time in office, which lasted until 1999, Mandela is considered to be one of the greatest champions of peace and social justice, both in South Africa and around the world.

1969 vs. 1994 television and movies

1969

The No. 1 grossing movie was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. It later won four Oscars, including for Best Original Screenplay.

The children’s television show Sesame Street debuted on PBS in 1969. Sesame Street is still airing new episodes on TV to this day!

Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In was the most-watched TV show, a sketch comedy show hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. The show featured actresses like Lily Tomlin and Goldie Hawn as performers, too.

1994

Seinfeld was the most-watched television show, while Friends and ER premiered this year. Nearly 22 million people watched the Friends premiere, and ER had over 23 million viewers. All three shows were the anchors of NBC’s Must-See TV lineup.

Disney’s The Lion King was the top-grossing movie that year, and other greats like Forrest Gump, Shawshank Redemption, and Pulp Fiction were released.

Frasier won its first Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. It went on to win 112 Emmys until it last aired in 2004.

1969 vs. 1994 celebrities

1969

Celebrities born this year included: Brett Favre, Renee Zellweger, Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd (who’s a huge Chiefs fan), and Jennifer Lopez, who coincidentally is performing the halftime show at Super Bowl LIV.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Judy Garland passed away. Eisenhower died of congestive heart failure. Garland was just 47 when she died of a barbiturates overdose.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney both got married this year, McCartney to Linda until her death in 1998, and Lennon to Yoko Ono until his assassination in 1980.

1994

Lisa Marie Presley married Michael Jackson. The marriage lasted two years before the couple filed for divorce.

Time to feel old! Celebrities born this year include Justin Bieber, Harry Styles, Dakota Fanning, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Joel Embiid.

Richard Nixon and Jackie Kennedy both passed away. Nixon was 81, and he died after suffering a stroke. Jackie O passed away of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at just 64 years old.

Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley divorced after 10 years of marriage. Brinkley was said to have partially inspired Joel’s hit “Uptown Girl.”

1969 vs. 1994 Technology

1969

The first-ever ATM was installed in the U.S.: On Sept. 2, 1969, the ATM became available to the public at Chemical Bank in Rockville Center, New York.

This one could only give customers cash, though more ATM advancements came soon after.

Televisions looked a lot different!

On July 3, 1969, the internet’s first message was sent from UCLA: Two machines on campus that were linked together through ARPANET. There was an attempt to send “login” over the network to a group of Stanford students, but the program crashed after “l” was typed in.

1994

DirecTV’s first satellite digital television service launched. That year, there were just 320,000 subscribers.

Something called “Netscape Navigator” was the leading web browser at the time. I am 27 years old, and have no idea what this thing is:

Screenshot via Wikipedia

The IBM Simon debuted as the first-ever “smartphone” for sale: Thank God we have iPhones now.

Via Microsoft

There have been many changes in the 25 years since the 49ers last won a Super Bowl, and in the 25 years before that, when the Chiefs last earned the Lombardi Trophy. Fans of both teams are hoping they won’t have to wait as long to see them play in the Super Bowl again. But if they do, one thing’s for sure: the world will look a lot different.

[quitblow5-blog]

Ecological Importance and Human Rights Be Damned, Trump Admin Says Fossil Fuel Pillaging in Arctic Refuge Coming Soon

Jerri-Lynn here. Trump has pledged to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to fossil fuel drilling, and as this post describes, Interior Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Joe Balash told an industry gathering last week in Alaska that leases will be offered for sale later this year.

This move will undoubtedly be subject to a legal challenge – which would at minimum delay the administration’s  timeline to offer leases for sale.  US federal district court judge Sharon Gleason in March voided Trump’s 2017 executive order opening Arctic waters to oil drilling. Gleason’s order reinstates existing limits to offshore oil and gas leasing in the Arctic, which includes most of the Beaufort Sea and all of the Chukchi Sea, as reported by Arctic Today in Court ruling on offshore Arctic leasing creates new obstacle for planned Beaufort sale.

A bipartisan group of House members have introduced a bill to amend the 2017 tax bill to remove the section that opened the refuge to drilling, as reported by the Hill in Lawmakers introduce bill to ban drilling in Alaska wildlife refuge. This measure is not a serious obstacle to Tump’s plans.. Even if the full House passed it, the Republican-controlled Senate would likely vote it down; and in the unlikely event that Congress passed the bill, Trump would certainly veto it.

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer, Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams

Caribou graze on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. (Photo: USFWS/Flickr/cc)

Interior Dept. statement that “lease sale will happen in 2019” comes as oil companies face heat over possible extraction on previously protected public land

Environmental and indigenous activists are hoping to make sure the Trump administration’s promise to soon sell oil leases in the previously protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is never fulfilled.

Republicans laid the groundwork for the fossil fuel leases in the refuge’s 1.6 million-acre coastal plain in a “deplorable” provision in their 2017 tax law. The administration followed through in December with a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for granting the leases. And with a final draft EIS expected in August, an administration official said Thursday that an oil sale would happen before the year’s over.

Speaking at an oil industry conference in Anchorage, Interior Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Joe Balash said, “Once we have a final EIS, we will be in a position to issue a record of decision and notice of lease sale. And that lease sale will happen in 2019.”

Among the issues at hand: the land is sacred to Gwich’in; it is the site of the planet’s longest land-based mammal migration—that of the porcupine caribou herd; extraction and exploration would disrupt other wildlife; and it would add fuel to the climate crisis.

Morning read: Despite myriad internal issues and overwhelming public opposition, @Interior and Joe Balash promise to hold #ArcticRefuge lease sale in 2019. #ProtectTheArctic https://t.co/42wZvadFMz pic.twitter.com/4G50h5Isx0

— AlaskaWild 🏔️ (@alaskawild) 31 May 2019

A group of teachers and scholars wrote earlier this year about the potential threats, noting that the draft EIS failed “to address the ecological impacts of drilling”:

Fossil fuel development in the Coastal Plain would devastate an Arctic nursery of global significance. It would violate human rights, jeopardize food security, and threaten the health and safety of Indigenous communities. It would contribute to the escalating crises of climate change and biological annihilation. The Arctic Refuge is an irreplaceable ecological treasure.

Given such impacts, oil giants including BP and Chevron were targeted during shareholder meetings this week, where demonstrators demanded they not drill in the public lands. Bank behemoths that would finance the extraction have been targeted as well.

Among those who wanted to deliver a message to Exxon at a shareholder meeting this week was Donald Tritt, a representative of the Gwich’in.

In a statement shared on Twitter—the oil company didn’t let him speak—Tritt said that drilling in the Arctic Refuge would not only affect his family today, “but future generations to come.”

“The cost of drilling in the coastal plains is just too high for my people and the reputation of any company that decide to lease there,” he said. “Leasing in the Coastal Plain is bad for business at a time the world is turning away from fossil fuel[s].”

Donald Tritt, a Gwich’in leader w/ @OurArcticRefuge, traveled from Alaska to Texas to be at the #ExxonAGM today to ask @ExxonMobil to stay out of the Arctic Refuge. Exxon wouldn’t even let him speak. Here’s what he would have said. RT to #StandWithTheGwichin! #ProtectTheArctic pic.twitter.com/NxWUjJm5iP

— Sierra Club (@SierraClub) 29 May 2019

The Sierra Club agreed.

“Major banks and oil companies will continue hearing from the public and their shareholders loud and clear that the Arctic Refuge is no place for drilling,” said Ben Cushing, a campaign representative for the group, on Thursday.

“Pursuing drilling in this unique wilderness would be bad for the environment, bad for human rights, and bad for their bottom line,” he added. “The public is watching and demanding that these companies commit to staying out of the Arctic Refuge.”

The Wilderness Society, which also opposes drilling the refuge, suggested the leasing decision is a likely outcome given the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s record as a former oil industry lobbyist.

“We said it once and we’ll say it again,” the group said. “We can’t trust an oil lobbyist to manage #PublicLands.”

This entry was posted in Banana republic, Doomsday scenarios, Energy markets, Environment, Global warming, Guest Post, Politics, Regulations and regulators on June 2, 2019 by Jerri-Lynn Scofield.

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Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/06/ecological-importance-and-human-rights-be-damned-trump-admin-says-fossil-fuel-pillaging-in-arctic-refuge-coming-soon.html

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

Links 7/26/19

Digital Elixir Links 7/26/19

Bear Tries To Steal Entire Dumpster From Marijuana Dispensary CBS Denver. Legend.

Giant ticks which hunt their prey confirmed in the Netherlands Dutch News

Songbirds are being snatched from Miami’s forests National Geographic

It’s So Hot That Pigs Are Getting Skinnier, Boosting U.S. Prices Bloomberg

Don’t let vegetarian environmentalists shame you for eating meat. Science is on your side. USA Today

Strange Forest ‘Superorganism’ Is Keeping This Vampire Tree Alive Live Science (original). Fascinating story, but if the only way our culture can frame a “communal physiology” is vampirism MR SUBLIMINAL Thank you, rentiers! we’re in worse trouble than I thought.

In Roundup case, U.S. judge cuts $2 billion verdict against Bayer to $86 million Reuters

Why Tesla’s best hope may lie in robotaxis FT. “Mr Musk has promised Tesla’s cars will have full autonomous capabilities by the end of this year, and that the company will be in a position to launch a driverless taxi service in the second half of 2020.” Tick, tick, tick…

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico governor to resign, protesters warn successor: ‘You’re next!’ Reuters

Puerto Rican Artists Ricky Martin, Pur & Bad Bunny Are Agents of Change Calling for Governor’s Resignation Billboard. Before Rossello’s resignation, still germane.

In Puerto Rico, taking it to the streets takes down a leader. Why can’t that happen here? Will Bunch, Inquirer. “[T]he conversation is heating up in the places where they happen in 2019 — on social media and among a resilient network of resisters.” Oy.

Brexit

Brexit: Pelosi warns UK not to jeopardise Belfast Agreement Irish Times

Boris Johnson denies planning to sell the NHS in Brexit trade deal with Trump Business Insider

German manufacturing reports industry ‘in freefall’ FT

Peace in Ukraine? Stephen Cohen, The Nation

Spain’s options after Sánchez fails to form government FT

Confronting monetary imperialism in Francophone Africa Africa is a Country

China?

‘Let the police do their job’: Hong Kong stock exchange chief cautions against military intervention South China Morning Post

No external forces allowed to disrupt Hong Kong: spokesperson Xinhua

Patriotic Chinese Triads and Secret Societies: From the Imperial Dynasties, to Nationalism, and Communism Journal of Asian Affairs

Wilting bauhinias and widemouthed tigers: The evolution of Hong Kong’s protest posters Hong Kong Free Press

Hong Kong’s Despair Runs Deeper Than Protests Bloomberg

* * *

China Defense White Papers—1995-2019—Download Complete Set + Read Highlights Here Andrew S. Erickson (for example).

Tibet: What Is Happening There Now? Supchina

Sri Lankans demand UK take back rotting waste BBC

RussiaGate

The Myth Of Robert Mueller, Exploded Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone. “This is just the latest disaster. They hyped Robert Mueller for two years as an all-conquering hero, only to have him show up under oath like a man wandering in traffic. Incredible. The losses continue.”

Mueller didn’t fail. The country did. Jennifer Rubin, WaPo. I remember liberal Democrats lamenting that Obama was just too good for us; I didn’t expect to see the equivalent from a Jennifer Rubin.

Scope of Russian Election Hacking Remains Unclear Foreign Policy. The deck: “Volume one of a long-awaited Senate report on Kremlin targeting of election systems finds all 50 states may have been targeted.” Holy moley. After three years of hysteria and the collective output of a gaggle of IT grifters and bent intel community talking heads the best minds in the national security community [snort], “may have” is the best we can do? Froomkin: “If they make public persuasive evidence that ‘Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data’ then it’s a big deal. If it’s just more phishing on office networks, it isn’t.”

Trump Transition

No shower for 23 days: U.S. citizen says conditions were so bad that he almost self-deported Dallas News

AG Barr orders reinstatement of the federal death penalty NBC

The CIA Wants To Make It Easier To Jail Journalists And No One In Congress Is Stopping It From Happening TechDirt

16 Marines arrested at Camp Pendleton suspected of human smuggling, drug crimes Stars and Stripes

Trump Stands Next to Photoshopped Presidential Seal That Reads ’45 is a Puppet’ in Spanish Gizmodo and Meet the man who created the fake presidential seal — a former Republican fed up with Trump WaPo I like the eagle holding golf clubs in its claws. OTOH, is this really the best the Never Trumpers can do?

L’affaire Epstein

Jeffrey Epstein Visited Clinton White House Multiple Times in Early ’90s Daily Beast

How Jeffrey Epstein Used the Billionaire Behind Victoria’s Secret for Wealth and Women NYT

Here’s exactly how Jeffrey Epstein spent $30 million Miami Herald

Democrats in Disarray

House Republicans score fourth major procedural win with motion to recommit The Hill

Pelosi shuts Jerry Nadler down when he asks for permission to draft impeachment articles after Mueller hearings Daily Mail

2020

One donor is backing 14 candidates. Why big-dollar Democrats aren’t picking sides for 2020 McClatchy. They may not be giving to just one candidate, but there’s just one candidate they’re not giving to. So how many sides are there, really?

Everyone Claims They’re Worried About Global Finance. But Only One Side Has a Plan. NYT

Louisiana governor declares state emergency after local ransomware outbreak ZD Net

Big Brother Is Watching You

Amazon requires police departments to advertise Ring home security products to residents in return for free Ring cameras Business Insider. Where does Bezos think we live? Xinjiang?

Class Warfare

The Firm Exemption and the Hierarchy of Finance in the Gig Economy (PDF) C Paul and Nathan Tankus, SSRN

Viewpoint: As Big Three Negotiations Open, Which Way Forward for the Auto Workers? Labor Notes

New York Doubles Down on Tracking Empty Storefront Problem Bloomberg. Last time I was there, empty stores on every block, everywhere on the East Side.

John Maynard Keynes, “National Self-Sufficiency,” 1933 Marginal Revolution

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

Links 7/26/19

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[yasbxxgie]

Like 98 percent of black people, I am not a Donald Trump fan and wish he had never been elected. I think we should make that clear. I despise everything from his Vienna-sausage-sized fingers to his ethnic cleansing political agenda. But since white people a majority of Caucasian voters selected him to be the commander in chief, I think of his presidency in the same way I think of the time my daughter begged me for a pet gerbil and tired of it after a few weeks.

And I think that, instead of doing what I did (I told her I’d return it to the pet store, but I just opened the cage in the backyard, where it was likely eaten by my dog, after which he came inside and threw up on the carpet, costing me $246.19 for a visit to the veterinarian, who told me, “He probably just ate something that upset his stomach”), America should have to keep our pet Trump for four years.

Here’s why we shouldn’t get rid of him:

1. White people will be furious.

Can you imagine how mad wypipo will be if we take down Nazi Elvis? Do you know how many “Make America Great Again” hats they’d have to throw away? Do you want to go to work with Kathy and hear how unfair it is that we allowed a Muslim to serve eight years, but a true Christian white man of God was taken down by the “deep state” liberal agenda?

And who’s gonna clean up all those brain remnants mixed with Pabst Blue Ribbon when Sean Hannity’s head explodes? How is America supposed to be great again without Trump? What are we supposed to tell our kids? (I don’t actually know what that means, but I know a staple of every white argument rests on what they are supposed to tell their kids.)

2. Mike Pence will be president.

The problem with impeaching White Supremacist George Washington is that he will be replaced by Mike Pence. Remember how we thought that killing Osama bin Laden would somehow weaken the terrorists, but instead we got a souped-up version of al-Qaida instead? Well, Pence is like Trump without a Twitter account.

If you look at Pence’s record, the only difference between the two is that Pence actually knows how to play the political game. The agenda at the White House wouldn’t change, but Pence has the political experience to actually carry it out.

In fact, many of Trump’s controversial pledges that pundits doubt will become law because of their unconstitutionality are derivatives of laws that Pence actually managed to get passed as governor of Indiana. Pence banned Syrian refugees long before Trump created his travel ban. Trump’s toothless “religious freedom” executive order actually became law in Indiana. Before Attorney General Jeff Sessions reinstated mandatory minimum sentences, Pence did it in Indiana as governor. Pence authored a bill to defund Planned Parenthood seven years ago. Trump thinks it’s OK to grab women “by the pussy,” but Pence actually tried to redefine rape as “forcible rape.”

Imagine all the crazy ideas running around in Trump’s pea brain.

Now imagine if there were someone who could make them all come true.

3. I’m still waiting on the Moscow pee video.

Look, if we impeach Trump before I get to see the video of him surrounded by Russian prostitutes emptying their bladders all over his bloated orange body, I’m fighting somebody.

I don’t even want to necessarily see the video; I just want it to be seen. I want the world to see it. The anticipation of it is the only thing getting me through this dumpster fire of a presidency. All I’m living for is that when Trump has passed on into the great beyond, every story, documentary and mention of the 45th president of the United States will have to say something about how he paid a few hundred rubles to be covered in Soviet urine.

4. The Republican Party.

Republicans stood behind Trump as their nominee, but now that they realize he is a sociopathic dictator who may be losing his marbles one by one, they want to stand up to him. The crazier he gets, the more the GOP calls him out.

Nah, bruh. Y’all created this mess. Own it.

Impeaching Trump would basically be giving a do-over to the party that was willing to do anything for power—including letting Great Value Hitler lead it. They are now trying to distance themselves from someone who embraces Russia’s election tampering and white supremacy.

I don’t want Trump impeached before he destroys the entire party. He’s doing an excellent job exposing conservative ideas as bullshit. We had to sit and listen to them hate on Obamacare for seven years, but when Trump took office, the entire country saw that the Republicans didn’t even have a plan. They talked about Mexicans and Muslims but have yet to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

During the Obama years, they hated so hard, but now, even with the House, the Senate and the presidency, they can’t get shit done. The Trump presidency is proving that they are just obstructionists devoid of ideas except how to keep themselves in power. I want him to stay until their national convention is nothing but South Carolina, NRA members and Ben Carson.

5. We might have to take some people back.

I’m not sure how it works, but if Trump is kicked out of office, does that mean we have to take Omarosa back? Will we have to allow Carson to crash the cookout? I’ve read the Constitution thoroughly, but there isn’t a clause about whether we are required to invite the people who sold us out for Orange-Sherbet Stalin to the cookout.

I’m not saying these people aren’t black, but I clearly remember trading Paris Dennard in the third round of the 2016 racial draft. I even recall the conversation:

The blacks: We’d like to offer you Paris Dennard, Stacey Dash and Jason Whitlock.

Wypipo: And who would you like in return? We are prepared to offer you Justin Bieber, Iggy Azalea and a Kardashian to be named later.

The blacks: [Long pause.] You know what? We good ...

... unless y’all want this gerbil.

[auskultu]

CONGRESS CHIEFS ASK RIOT INQUIRY

John Herbers, The New York Times, 26 July 1967

Both Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress called today for the creation of a special committee to investigate riots and other civil disorders.

So disturbed were Senators and Representatives by riots in Detroit and other cities that the subject dominated debate and conversation in both houses, in Capitol corridors and in many committee meeting rooms.

The overriding feeling appeared to be that the Federal Government must act in some manner, but there was sharp division of opinion ns to what should be done. Views ranged from a proposal by Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, that riots be "put down with brutal force" and adult looters be "shot on the spot" to renewed pleas for Increased Federal aid to Impoverished neighborhoods.

The Republican leadership in both houses Intriyluccd resolutions calling for a Congressional Joint committee that would look both for the underlying causes of despair in the nation's Negro ghettos and for subversive influences suspected by some of sparking violence. Mike Mansfield of Montana, the Senate Democratic leader, said he would support a Congressional investigation, but he would prefer that an inquiry be conducted by a blue-ribbon commission appointed by President Johnson.

Mr. Mansfield told reporters he did not want an investigation to become a “political football.” On the Senate floor he defended President Johnson against growing Republican charges that the President was partly to blame for rioting that has erupted in a number of cities this summer.

Later in the day two Democratic senators, Fred R. Harris of Oklahoma and Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota, introduced a bill that would have the President appoint a commission composed of nine members representing the legislative, executive and judicial branches and the state and municipal governments.

The commission would be required to report back to Congress within one month of its formation with recommendations as to how the Federal Government could put downj rioting and also deal with its causes. A fuller report would be required within six months.

Much of the heat for today’s] debate was supplied by a statement issued yesterday by the: Republican Coordinating Committee, the party’s highest policy-making body. The report accused President Johnson of inadequate leadership in the area of public order and race relations and suggested that much of the rioting was the result of an organized conspiracy.

‘Irresponsible,” Albert Says Representative Carl Albert of Oklahoma, the Democratic leader in the House, said the Republican “attempt to put on the President responsibility for this terrible rioting is irresponsible and ridiculous.”

Senator Mansfield said that if the Republicans wanted to stop riots they should give prompt approval to President Johnson’s proposals for combating crime and poverty and controlling the sale of guns.

This debate brought into sharp focus the deep division in Congress and in the country as to the primary reason for rioting and looting.

On the one hand, Administration Democrats have insisted that the riots are largely spontaneous outbursts by deprived people who have drifted into despair as the rest of the nation has prospered.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Democrat of New York, spoke from this point of view when he appeared today before the Committee on Banking and Currency in behalf of his slum housing program.

He compared the riots to the “bonus army" of World War I veterans that descended on Washington 31 years ago this week seeking food and clothing for their families,

“Today the army of the dispossessed and disenchanted sits, not just in Washington, but in every major city, in every region and section of the country,” he said.

Dlrksen Hunts ‘Touch of Red’ On the other hand, the Republican leadership and a number of Democrats consider the rioting primarily a law enforcement problem. They see a loss of respect for authority that must be reinstated.

This view was espoused by Everett McKinley Dlrksen of Illinois, the Senate Republican leader, who sponsored the Senate bill for a Congressional Investigation, Senator Dlrksen told reporters he was not satisfied with a proposal for an investigation made by Senator Edward W. Brooke, Republican of Massachusetts, which would aim primarily at what could ba done to correct the social injustices that contribute to violence.

“I want the committee to see if there is a touch of Red behind" the riots, Mr. Dirksen said. “I want to find out where they are manufacturing these gasoline bombs and how they are being distributed."

Senator Kennedy condemned the riots, calling them “intolerable threats to our citizens, to our cities and to our way of life.”

“Those who break the law and shatter the peace,” he declared, “must know that swift justice will be done and effective punishment meted out for their deeds.

“No grievance, no sense of injustice, however deep, can excuse the wanton killing of other Americans—whether they are policemen or firemen doing their duty or innocent bystanders in the streets of their city.”

The crisis in the nation’s cities, Senator Kennedy asserted, “is rapidly becoming the gravest domestic crisis since the War Between the States." He said the Government welfare system had "broken down,” and he demanded a private enterprise attack on slums.

The Republican resolution introduced today called for a joint select committee to study not only the causes of riots and the adequacy of state policemen to deal with them but also any evidence that would "indicate the existence of any conspiracy to provoke such civil disorders and evidence which may indicate that such civil disorders have been or may be organized, instigated or encouraged by any Communist or other subversive organization.”

Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, the House Republican leader, said:

“I can’t help but believe that there is in the background some national plan. Congress should be making a total investigation of the background of these riots.”

The Administration Democrats have taken the view that if there were a national plan or timetable in the riots, the problem is still primarily for local law enforcement.

On both sides, however, there were increased demands for tougher law enforcement.

In the House, the Republican resolution will go to the Rules Committee, where it is expected to receive prompt and friendly attention. The Senate proposals will go to the Senate Rules Committee, which may draft its own plan for an investigation.

Not all Republicans agreed with the leadership position, Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois said tonight:

“If we continue to spend $66-million a day trying to ’save' the 16 million people of South Vietnam while leaving the plight of the 20 million urban poor in our own country unresolved, then I think we have our priorities terribly confused.’

[wp-yahoo-style-1042-yahoopa-blog]

How the Trump Administration’s First 100 Days Have Affected Women and Families

A look at how President Trump’s first 100 days have affected women. (Photo: Getty Images)

Saturday, April 29, marks the 100th day of Donald Trump’s presidency, and what these 100 days reveal about the Trump administration’s outlook and agenda when it comes to women, and women’s equality, is pretty grim.

“President Trump often talks about empowering women and investing in women, but so far all we’ve seen is a real disconnect with families,” Shilpa Phadke, senior director of the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress (CAP) and a veteran of the Obama administration, tells Yahoo Style.

CAP released a report — and digital interactive piece — on April 25 detailing 100 ways in which the Trump administration has harmed women and families during its first 100 days.

Phadke points out that to get a sense of the Trump administration’s supposed investment in women, or lack thereof, one need look no further than the president’s personnel choices.

“Trump’s cabinet has only four women,” Phadke says. “It is more white and more male than any cabinet since Reagan. For every three men that have been appointed, there is one woman when it comes to jobs that do require Senate confirmation. We’ve heard nothing as to what they are doing with the White House Council on Women and Girls. And when you couple the lack of women in high leadership positions with the people he is putting in power — Mike Pence, Tom Price, Jeff Sessions, Steve Miller, Steve Bannon — the people there to do the work don’t really reflect today’s families and the diverse challenges women are feeling.”

But that’s not all, Phadke says. The Trump administration has consistently made moves in every policy realm to jeopardize women’s security — physical, social, and economic.

The outline of the proposed Trump budget, for example, would lead to significant funding cuts for the National Domestic Violence Hotline and to the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women. The new amendments announced on April 25 to the Republican-proposed health care bill that aims to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would stop coverage of critical preventive care services that women rely upon, in addition to rolling back coverage for maternity care, domestic violence services, and counseling services.

“Some of the things that scare me the most are the lack of Trump’s moves to fulfill campaign promises regarding maternity leave policy proposals, childcare policy proposals. We haven’t seen any of that. What we have seen is an attack on abortion rights and women’s health broadly,” Phadke says. “We’re seeing attacks on families when it comes to the Muslim ban, immigration raids, LGBT kids being bullied more, the declines we’re seeing among Latinas, especially in reporting sexual violence and rape — women are nervous to report things because there’s this fear of being detained. The Trump administration is creating fear in communities.”

Another example of how Trump’s first 100 days have hurt women? His administration’s delay in enacting the Obama-era overtime rule that would have broadened the base of hourly employees eligible for overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week.

“Women, and women of color especially, have the biggest pay disparities and thus would be most impacted by this,” says Phadke. The Trump administration has also blocked pay transparency protections, another critical measure for women’s economic development and security.

“This is hitting people at their wages,” Phadke says. “If you’re eroding families’ economic security and they can’t pay for the health care that you have planned on, this hurts the economy overall.”

Need more evidence of the kind of policy maneuvering that quietly hurts women’s ability to support themselves and their families? Look no further than the Trump administration’s hiring freeze, which is negatively affecting military childcare programs, along with budget cuts for nurse training programs (for a disproportionately female field), to name a few.

The Trump administration’s attacks on women’s health and reproductive rights are also particularly concentrated and hard to ignore. 

On Jan. 25, just days after taking office, President Trump signed an executive order reinstating the “global gag rule,” also known as the “Mexico City policy,” thus barring U.S. foreign aid and federal funding from going to any international nongovernmental organization (NGO) that discusses abortion care or refers patients for abortion care. And he did so surrounded by a group of men, no less.

“We’ve got your best interests at heart, ladies. Believe me.” pic.twitter.com/2ZY4Sc6sKh

— Greg Greene (@ggreeneva) January 23, 2017

On Jan. 27, Vice President Pence and senior counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway both spoke at the March for Life. It was the first time a vice president had ever attended the event — a clear signal of where the administration’s priorities lie when it comes to women’s reproductive rights.

It was my honor to speak at the @March_for_Life today w/ my family & share the commitment of @POTUS to restore culture of life in America. pic.twitter.com/2ucCZBAdHj

— Vice President Pence (@VP) January 27, 2017

On Jan. 31, Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch has long asserted the rights of corporations over individuals’ rights, including in the Hobby Lobby case that gave the crafting megastore the ability to deny its employees insurance coverage for contraception because it violates the majority stakeholders’ religious beliefs. Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Trump promised to nominate a Supreme Court justice who would ensure the overturn of Roe v. Wade and end the practice of safe, legal, and constitutionally guaranteed abortion in the U.S.

Georgia Congressman Tom Price became the new Secretary of Health and Human Services on Feb. 10, bringing his long voting record of seeking to defund Planned Parenthood, criminalize abortion, and ban certain forms of birth control, along with his vehement opposition to the Affordable Care Act and the protections it affords to women.

Pence met with anti-choice leaders on March 9 to “reaffirm [Trump’s] commitment to the sanctity of life” — and plan to make abortion illegal in the U.S.

Grateful to host pro-life leaders today & reaffirm @POTUS Trump's commitment to the sanctity of life in the Obamacare repeal & replace plan. pic.twitter.com/W3yHUhOGZ1

— Vice President Pence (@VP) March 10, 2017

On March 13, Republicans revealed the first draft of the planned bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The draft contained language to not only block Planned Parenthood from serving as a Medicaid provider but also opened the door to insurance companies to not guarantee maternity care coverage in their plans. A revised version of the bill contained a clause that would force unemployed women covered by Medicaid to find employment within 60 days of giving birth if they wanted to keep their coverage.

On March 10 and March 23, respectively, Trump nominated Scott Gottlieb to head up the Food and Drug Administration and Roger Severino to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights. Gottlieb is opposed to insurance coverage for contraception, and Severino is a vocal supporter of systemic discrimination for LGBT individuals.

On March 30, Pence cast the tie-breaking vote to advance the Senate’s legislation seeking to undo the Obama-era federal family planning program, Title X, which prevents states from blocking Planned Parenthood and other abortion care providers. Without Pence’s vote, Republicans in the House would have been unable to advance the bill.

On April 3, the Trump administration announced that it would eliminate all U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the division of the United Nations that provides reproductive and sexual health care services, including family planning, HIV/AIDS screening and care, and infant and maternal mortality prevention services to those in need in more than 150 countries worldwide.

Representatives of the anti-choice organization called the Susan B. Anthony List were literally at Trump’s side on April 13 as he signed legislation rolling back former President Barack Obama’s rule that protected Title X funding for abortion providers.

Thank you @POTUS for signing H.J. Res. 43, undoing Obama's pro-abortion rule & allowing states to defund Planned Parenthood! #ProLife???? pic.twitter.com/bBguYb9WkY

— Susan B Anthony List (@SBAList) April 13, 2017

Or, as Kaylie Hanson Long, national communications director for NARAL Pro-Choice America, tells Yahoo Style, “President Trump’s first 100 days provide all the evidence needed to disprove Sean Spicer’s claim that the president is ‘committed to empowering women.’ Day after day, he has chipped away at the equality and freedom of women in the United States and across the globe. His administration poses an immediate threat to our rights, and we will keep rallying, marching, and calling in protest.”

So is there anything good that Trump has done for women in the first 100 days?

“No. There’s nothing good,” Phadke says. “We’re talking about a budget that slashes the budgets for WIC, strips public schools of funding, eliminates funding for after-school programs, endangers LGBT students and homeless kids, is proposing budget cuts for the agencies that fund AmeriCorps and the Boys & Girls Clubs and is cutting funding to prevent teen pregnancy. It feels like an all-out assault. You look at the personnel, the Supreme Court nominee, the attorney general appointee, the head of HHS, and you couple that with staffing in the White House, and it’s hard to feel that there’s any understanding of what women and families need.”

She continues, “We just came up with 100 ways that Trump has harmed women in the first 100 days, but there are probably more than that in terms of how the administration is falling short in affirming women’s progress. The first daughter is obviously representing the United States in talking about women’s empowerment, but it rings hollow. She’s not moving the ball on real, core issues for women, whether it be health care or economic security — she’s not looking at the structural impediments that limit women’s economic participation.”

Phadke adds: “What we want is to see concrete progress on something that feels like a push for women’s equality and real policy proposals to back that. There is this real disconnect — the [Trump] administration doesn’t really understand what women and families are going through and how all those challenges are connected.”

Read more from Yahoo Beauty + Style:

Ivanka Trump Says Women Deserve Equal Pay, but Some Disagree. Here’s What You Need to Know

Our Survey Shows How Women Feel in Trump’s America: Stressed, Motivated … and Happy

7 States Are Quietly Moving to Restrict Abortion Access

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty.

[liesmyteachertoldme]

Deceiving the Public on the Military Agenda

US Congressman Ron Paul (Republican Party) of Texas wrote in an article titled "The Crime of Conscription," in November 26, 2003, That Woodrow Wilson orchestrated our entry into World War I by first promising during the election of 1916 to keep us out of the European Conflict (WWI), then a few months later pressuring and manoeuvring Congress into declaring war against Germany. Whether it was the Spanish-American War before that or all the wars since, US presidents have deceived the people to gain popular support for ill-conceived military ventures. Wilson wanted the war and immediately demanded consription to fight it. He didn't have the guts even to name the program a military draft; instead in a speech before Congress calling for war he advised the army should be "chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service." Most Americans at the time of the declaration didn't believe actual combat troops would be sent. What a dramatic change from this early perception, when the people endorsed the war, to the carnage that followed. Many of our American reservists and National Guardsmen cannot wait to get out of service and have no plans of re-enlisting. The odds are that the US policy of foreign intervention, which has been with us for decades, is not likely soon to change. To get more troops, the draft will likely be reinstated. The implicit prohibition of "involuntary servitude" under the 13th Amendment to the Constitution has already been ignored many times, so few will challenge the constitutionality of the coming draft.

[go-redgirl]

Liberals Try to Derail Census Case With Fake News

Some liberals are terrified that the Supreme Court will allow the Trump administration to reinstate a citizenship question on the census. Why? Because they do not want accurate information about the number of noncitizens living in the United States. Their latest ploy is an attempt to “improperly derail” the resolution of this case, the Justice Department wrote in a letter this month. They are relying on the kind of false claim that President Trump would call fake news, arguing government lawyers “lied” about the reasons for reinstating the citizenship question on the census.

At the heart of the motion by the plaintiffs to reopen the evidence and sanction the government is their claim, which the Justice Department itself says “borders on frivolous,” that Thomas Hofeller, a Republican National Committee redistricting expert, had supposedly influenced the decision to reinstate the citizenship question through a 2015 study, and that Trump administration officials failed to reveal his involvement. The circumstances under which lawyers for the plaintiffs got hold of this study and other possibly privileged documents are highly questionable from an ethical perspective. The New York Times wrote the estranged daughter of Hofeller gave lawyers his computer files after he passed away last year.

His study, which was never published, pointed out the likely effect on redistricting. If citizen population is used to draw district lines rather than total population, Republicans may benefit, as would Hispanics, a majority of whom vote for Democrats. His conclusions are hardly earth shattering. I wrote about this likely effect in 2015, as did others, when the Supreme Court was reviewing the use of citizen population in the redistricting process in Sue Evenwel versus Greg Abbott. It is certainly no big secret.

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The plaintiffs also try to make much about Hofeller pointing out problems with the accuracy of the citizenship data from the American Community Survey sent by the Census Bureau to a limited number of households. Why? Because John Gore, former assistant attorney general for civil rights, listed the same problems when his office sent a letter to the Commerce Department in 2017 asking that a citizenship question be reinstated to assist in enforcing the Voting Rights Act. This, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs, is evidence of some secret official conspiracy.

But as the Justice Department correctly tells the Supreme Court, the problems with the American Community Survey are publicly known and have been “discussed in case law and academic literature for years.”The Justice Department says the claim by the plaintiffs that Gore relied on the unpublished study is false. It says the plaintiffs provided no evidence that Gore read or “was even aware of the existence” of the unpublished study. Such evidence “does not exist” and there is “no smoking gun" on this.

The claim by the plaintiffs is “pure speculation”due to supposed “striking similarities” between the study and the letter. But according to the Justice Department, even a “cursory comparison of the two documents” shows that they are “not strikingly similar.” In fact, the “pattern matching exercise reads more like the product of a conspiracy theorist than a careful legal analysis.”The letter is actually much more similar to the briefs filed in Sue Evenwel versus Greg Abbott. It is probably no surprise the letter bears what some may consider similarities to, for instance, the brief filed by former Census Bureau directors. Other briefs in the case also used similar language about known problems with the American Community Survey.

The Justice Department says the plaintiffs showed no evidence to support their claims, other than speculation that the study somehow got to the Justice Department through “mysterious and unidentified channels.” But the Justice Department says the study was never in possession of Gore. The plaintiffs also offered this nonsensical claim about supposedly not knowing that Gore himself had a draft letter from a private expert for the Commerce Department. But the Justice Department turned over that draft to the plaintiffs months ago. They never asked Gore about the draft letter, and their “obliviousness is not a valid basis to sanction the government.”

The bottom line is that the challengers have produced no evidence that government officials lied or hid the reasons for adding the citizenship question to the census. The Justice Department says this is a “baseless attack” on its integrity, based on “nothing more than fevered speculation” and “supposed new evidence” that the plaintiffs had known about for months. This is a last ditch effort to prevent the Supreme Court from ruling in favor of the Trump administration. That may or may not happen, since one cannot predict how the justices will rule. But it is much ado about nothing and must certainly not derail the resolution of the case.

This piece originally appeared in The Hill on 6/8/19

[thisdaynews]

Conservatives push to reinstate Steve King on committees despite racist remarks

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/conservatives-push-to-reinstate-steve-king-on-committees-despite-racist-remarks/

Conservatives push to reinstate Steve King on committees despite racist remarks

Rep. Steve King was booted from his committee assignments after making racist comments earlier this year. | Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo

A small group of House Republicans is leading a long-shot bid to get embattled Rep. Steve King back on his committee assignments after the Iowa Republican was booted for making racists remarks earlier this year.

The cadre of hard-line conservatives, spearheaded by Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), among others, has been trying to round up signatures for a draft petition that would force the GOP to consider reinstating King. The effort, however, has failed to garner enough support in the caucus. The letter needed the backing of 25 lawmakers to raise the issue with the Republican Steering Committee and 50 members to force a closed-ballot vote in the wider GOP conference.

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Republican leaders have made clear that they have no plans to reverse course after stripping King of his committee assignments for defending white supremacy and white nationalism in an interview with The New York Times in January. The House also overwhelmingly voted to condemn King, who maintains that his comments were misinterpreted.

“Steve King’s rhetoric has been a thorn in everyone’s side for years and I don’t think anyone is eager to return to the incessant headaches that lending him credibility brings,” said a GOP aide. “While there may be a very small faction of his friends that want to help him out, the vast majority of Republicans know that his offensive views haven’t changed, and that those views have no place in our party.”

While King has been ostracized in the House, the lawmaker was recently invited to attend an Iowa GOP fundraising event later this month, where President Donald Trump will be in attendance, according to the Des Moines Register.

The push to rally around King comes as Republicans have been furious over how Democratic leadership handled the firestorm surrounding Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who made comments widely seen as anti-Semitic. The House ended up voting twice to condemn anti-Semitism and all forms of hate speech, but did not call out Omar by name and allowed the freshman lawmaker to keep her seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

King, however, has a long history of making inflammatory and controversial remarks — and has shown no sign that he is toning down his rhetoric. Just last week, the lawmaker told a constituent at a town hall that all cultures do not contribute equally to society.

“If we presume that every culture is equal and has an equal amount to contribute to our civilization, then we’re devaluing the contributions of the people that laid the foundation for America and that’s our founding fathers,” King said, according to the Des Moines Register. “It is not about race, it’s never been about race. It is about culture.”

King also told constituents that he is making progress toward getting his committee seats back. King and his office did not return multiple requests for comment asking whether he has been in touch with his colleagues about their effort to help him win back his committee seats.

King has been openly campaigning for a comeback. In February, he tweeted out a letter from 200 “pro-family leaders” calling on GOP leadership to reinstate King on all of his committees.

“I’ve been Mr. Nice Guy about this all along and let the cooler heads take over and now … pretty soon I’m going to start pushing,” King said last week.

King, who has already drawn multiple GOP primary challengers, has become somewhat of an outcast on Capitol Hill since being stripped of his committee assignments.

His controversial comments — and ejection from committees — could be a serious issue for him during his reelection campaign. King once held a House Judiciary subcommittee gavel and also served on the House Agriculture Committee, which has jurisdiction over a range of issues important to his rural Iowa district.

King, however, has previously downplayed getting kicked off the two panels, telling his constituents that being on a committee means less now that the GOP is in the minority. He also predicted that Republicans would miss his presence on the Judiciary Committee, which has become the main battleground for the ongoing oversight war between Trump and congressional Democrats.

But King has struggled to raise funds since the controversy unfolded earlier this year. The Iowa Republican raised just $61,666 in the first quarter of 2019 — an ominous sign for the nine-term incumbent as he seeks to hang on to his seat.

Read More

[kansascityhappenings]

New Florida governor suspends sheriff over handling of Parkland school shooting

https://embed-prod.vemba.io/vemba-embed.js

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — New Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel on Friday over his handling of February’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, saying he “repeatedly failed and has demonstrated a pattern of poor leadership.”

The Republican governor flew to Fort Lauderdale three days after taking office to remove the Democratic sheriff, appointing a former police sergeant to serve as acting sheriff. Gregory Tony, 40, worked for Coral Springs police for 12 years before leaving in 2016 to start a company specializing in active-shooter training. He is the first African-American to serve as Broward’s sheriff.

DeSantis said during a news conference outside the sheriff’s office headquarters that Israel failed to keep families and children safe before and during the Feb. 14 shooting that left 14 students and three staff members dead inside the three-story freshman building.

“The neglect of duty and incompetence that was connected to the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has been well documented, and I have no interest in dancing on Scott Israel’s political grave,” DeSantis said. “Suffice it to say, the massacre might never have happened had Broward had better leadership in the sheriff’s department.”

During the shooting, then-Broward Deputy Scot Peterson, who was assigned to the school, drew his gun but took cover instead of charging inside. Seven other deputies who arrived within minutes also failed to enter, even as officers from neighboring Coral Springs went into the building.

Israel earlier changed the office’s policy from saying deputies “shall” confront active shooters to “may.” He said he didn’t want to deputies to undertake suicide missions. Deputies also received two calls about suspect Nikolas Cruz in the months before the massacre saying he had amassed an arsenal and was a potential school shooter, but took no action.

Minutes after DeSantis’ announcement, Israel said he “wholeheartedly” rejected the governor’s order and would fight it in court, arguing that DeSantis was making a “power grab” against the will of the county’s people who elected him. He said DeSantis was acting on behalf of the National Rifle Association, which quickly blamed the sheriff’s office after the shooting.

“There was no wrongdoing on my part. I served the county honorably,” he said. “False narratives may continue, but not in a court of law. In a court of law, only the facts matter.”

Under Florida law, the governor can suspend elected officials for criminal activity, misfeasance, incompetence or neglect of duty. If Israel challenges the suspension, the state Senate would hold a trial and could either fire or reinstate him. DeSantis’ Republican predecessor, now-U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, refused to suspend Israel, saying he wanted to wait until investigations were completed.

Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was fatally shot as she ran down a third-floor hallway, inches from the safety of the stairwell, said she and other third-floor victims could have been saved if Peterson or other deputies had gone inside immediately.

“One more second and she makes it,” Guttenberg said. “If anybody wants to know what failure means and lack of response (means), my daughter would have lived if someone had given her one more second.”

Andrew Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter Meadow died on the third floor trying to protect a younger student who also died, said “when eight BSO deputies listened to shots fired in a school and stayed outside they were following Sheriff Israel’s policies.”

A 15-member state commission that recently completed its initial report on the shooting said deputies also had about 20 contacts with Cruz as a juvenile — mostly over arguments with his now-deceased mother. Israel has said none of those contacts warranted an arrest. Law enforcement members of the state commission investigating the shooting have agreed with that conclusion.

But commissioners also concluded that the department’s active shooter training had not been effective. Still, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the commission’s chairman, and other law enforcement officials on the panel have said they didn’t think Israel should be suspended.

Israel, 62, was elected sheriff in 2012 after a long career in law enforcement. After taking office, Israel, a Republican until changing parties shortly before running in 2008, received criticism over his friendship with notorious GOP operative Roger Stone, for promoting Stone’s inexperienced stepson to detective and for accepting gifts from a wealthy benefactor.

However, community leaders praised his work with the homeless, minority and gay communities. Violent crime went down, and he easily won re-election in 2016 to oversee the county’s 2,800 deputies.

Shortly after Israel’s second term began, a man retrieved a handgun from his luggage at Fort Lauderdale’s airport and opened fire, killing five. While Israel’s deputies apprehended him within 72 seconds, the draft of a county report said Israel and others didn’t control the chaos, leaving passengers huddled in fear for hours. He criticized the draft, and the final version was less harsh — but many of the same communications problems that plagued the airport response were repeated at Stoneman Douglas.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/01/11/new-florida-governor-suspends-sheriff-over-handling-of-parkland-school-shooting/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/new-florida-governor-suspends-sheriff-over-handling-of-parkland-school-shooting/

[garkomedia1]

How the U.S. and U.K. are partners in chaos

Editor’s Note: This edition of Free Morning Money is published weekdays at 8 a.m. POLITICO Pro Financial Services subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 5:15 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Morning Money will not publish on Thursday Nov. 22 and Friday Nov. 23. Our next Morning Money newsletter will publish on Monday Nov. 26.

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HOW THE U.K. AND THE U.S. ARE PARTNERS IN CHAOS — A little thought bubble as we head into the weekend and the short Thanksgiving week. MM spent some time over the last several days in Washington and New York with a variety of executives who are sifting through the 2018 midterm election results and trying to make some sense of the path of U.S. politics.

Many are trying to figure out where America is headed with a growing schism between a metro-area dominated, more highly educated electorate trending toward the Democrats and smaller town and rural voters sticking with President Donald Trump and the GOP and embracing the president’s hardline trade and immigration policies and his culture war appeals.

Consensus among these executives (and frankly among anyone else) is that American politics is a directionless wreck with no path forward on anything from health care to education to retirement savings to climate change and gun violence and long-term fiscal deficits. One British banker mused about how he’s never seen the U.S. so screwed up or derelict on the world stage.

Then he stopped himself almost immediately to say how the U.K. was really wasn’t any better with no consensus on how to deal with Brexit, a potential end to Prime Minister Theresa May’s tenure, a civil war inside the Conservative party and a plunging pound. It remains largely unclear in the U.K. whether May’s softer Brexit plan will somehow survive or no deal will emerge leading to a hard Brexit or a new referendum will take place to reverse Brexit entirely.

Tensions in the U.S. and U.K. are different in many ways but they share commonalities of fractured politics and deep divisions on fundamental identities as either insular and nationalistic or more globally integrated and diverse. We got no revelatory insight in these conversations beyond a morbid sense that only grave and immediate crisis that cannot be ignored will jolt either nation into clarity. And maybe not even then. Happy thoughts for your Friday!

SPEAKING OF THE TWO AMERICAS… CNBC’s John Harwood writes on data compiled by Brookings’ Mark Munro that show that “districts won by Democrats account for 61 percent of America’s gross domestic product, districts won by Republicans 38 percent. That economic separation underpins cultural divisions that usually command more attention. … Residents of districts won by Democrats generate 22% more output per worker, and have a 15% higher median household income.” Read more.

** A message from The National Association of Manufacturers and U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Proxy advisory firms—secretive companies most Americans have never heard of—are putting Americans’ retirement savings at risk. These firms can give inaccurate, conflict-ridden and sometimes politically motivated recommendations that jeopardize Americans’ retirement savings. Learn More: https://proxyreforms.com/ **

MORE WILBUR ROSS DRAMA — POLITICO’s Nancy Cook and Andrew Restuccia with the details: “To hear Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and his allies tell it, rumors of his demise have been greatly exaggerated. Administration officials and close White House advisers say the 80-year-old Ross could be out of a job in a broader Cabinet shakeup as soon as January or as late as mid-2019. Ross, long said to be on thin ice with President Donald Trump, denies either scenario. ‘I’ll serve as long as the president wants and I have no indication to the contrary,’ he told an audience at a Yahoo! Finance event on Nov. 13.

“But in a sign of Ross’s perceived weakness, at least one influential Trump ally has begun speaking openly about his desire for the Commerce job if and when it becomes vacant: Office of Management and Budget chief Mick Mulvaney. …

“Other names circulating for the top Commerce slot include Small Business Administration Administrator Linda McMahon; Ray Washburne, a major Republican donor and the President and CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation; and Karen Dunn Kelly, undersecretary for economic affairs at Commerce, who is jockeying for the job internally at the department.” Read more.

Restuccia (@AndrewRestuccia) also tweeted that McMahon would meet with Trump in the Oval on Friday.

GOP INVESTORS MORE BULLISH POST MIDTERMS — Somewhat counter-intuitive findings in this E-Trade survey of investors after midterm elections in which Democrats took back the House: “Republicans skew more bullish … with 38% saying they are more bullish toward the market than they were before the election. Democrats are slightly less optimistic, with 33% expressing more bullishness.

“Yet Republicans are also less positive about the personal impact of the results: Republicans are significantly more pessimistic across every measure tested, including how the new Congress will impact their investing portfolio, taxes, savings and bond yields, inflation, debt interest, and cost of goods and services.” Read more.

FIRST LOOK: ABA ON THE CRA — The ABA has a new comment letter out this morning to the OCC in response to its request for ideas to change the Community Reinvestment Act. From the comment: “Regulators should revise the CRA framework to incorporate fully the electronic channels through which many consumers prefer to conduct financial transactions. In addition, amendments to the CRA regulations must reflect that banks of all sizes are no longer restricted to conducting business in a limited geographic location.

WARNINGS SIGNS IN RETAIL SALES? — Pantheon’s Ian Shepherdson: “The headline retail sales numbers for October looked good, but the details were less comforting. Gains in auto sales, building materials—due to the hurricanes, likely— and higher gasoline prices cannot be the foundation of solid broad growth, and the core numbers were rather weaker.

“The key message from the recent data, in our view, is that the impact of the tax cuts, which pushed sales up sharply in the spring, is fading rapidly. Our measure of core retail sales, which excludes autos, gasoline and food, rose at a mere 2.7% annualized rate in the three months to October, slowing from the 9.9% peak in the three months to July.”

TRANSITIONS— Jacqueline Corba, a POLITICO alum, has joined CNBC’s Squawk Box team as anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin’s producer. She was previously Senior Producer of special programming at Cheddar. Good get!

DEMS FLOAT POTENTIALLY BIG RULE CHANGES — Washington Examiner’s Colin Wilhelm and Laura Barrón-López on new proposed rules changes drafted by Democrats in the House: “One change would require a three-fifths majority to raise taxes on individuals outside the top 20 percent of income earners.

“The draft rules would also eliminate dynamic budgetary scoring, which takes economic growth under consideration when determining the cost of legislation in federal spending. … If agreed upon by a majority of members in the House, the new rules would also effectively do away with standalone debt ceiling votes in the chamber, reinstating a rule that deems the debt ceiling raised if a budget is passed.” Read more.

MUELLER ANXIETY GRIPS THE WHITE HOUSE — Good read from POLITICO’s Darren Samuelsohn: “Lawyers for President Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. insist they aren’t worried about special counsel Robert Mueller. But half a dozen people in contact with the White House and other Trump officials say a deep anxiety has started to set in that Mueller is about to pounce after his self-imposed quiet period, and that any number of Trump’s allies and family members may soon be staring down the barrel of an indictment.

“Then there are the president’s own tweets, which have turned back to attacking Mueller after a near two-month break. … ‘You can see it in Trump’s body language all week long. There’s something troubling him. It’s not just a couple staff screw ups with Melania,’ said a senior Republican official in touch with the White House. ‘It led me to believe the walls are closing in and they’ve been notified by counsel of some actions about to happen. Folks are preparing for the worst.’” Read more.

GOOD FRIDAY MORNING — Happy weekend everyone! Next week is Thanksgiving. Thank God. Email me at bwhite@politico.com and follow me on Twitter @morningmoneyben. Email Aubree Eliza Weaver at aweaver@politico.com and follow her on Twitter @AubreeEWeaver..

DRIVING THE DAY — President Trump at 1:00 p.m. awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to several recipients including Miriam Edelson, wife of billionaire GOP donor Sheldon Adelson … Industrial production at 9:15 a.m. expected to rise 0.2 percent with manufacturing up 0.3 percent …

BOWMAN CONFIRMED; WHAT ABOUT NELLIE LIANG? — POLITICO’s Victoria Guida: “The Senate in a 64-34 vote … confirmed Kansas State Banking Commissioner Michelle Bowman as a member of the Federal Reserve Board, the culmination of a yearslong push by community bankers to guarantee that someone who shares their experience sits at the central bank.

“Bowman, nominated in April, is the first person confirmed to the Fed seat reserved for a community banker, a position created in 2015. The seven-member Fed board now has five members, after dwindling to as low as three over the past year. The Fed’s newest governor has served as Kansas’ top bank regulator since Jan. 31, 2017.” Read more.

Trump now has two more Fed nominees awaiting Senate votes, Marvin Goodfriend and Nellie Liang, a long-time Fed staff member who played a critical role during the financial crisis. The White House continues to telegraph confidence that they can get Liang through the Senate Banking Committee and to the floor for a vote.

But banking groups and some Senate Banking members including Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have expressed significant opposition and suggested Liang could interfere with efforts to reduce regulatory burdens on large financial institutions. So far, GOP Senate leadership has mostly stayed out of it, waiting to see what happens at the committee level.

FED UNVEILS COMMUNICATION REFORM PLAN — POLITICO’s Zachary Warmbrodt: “The Federal Reserve … unveiled plans for a review of the way it conducts monetary policy. The review the Fed has mapped out for next year will include outreach to the public, including a June 4-5 research conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the central bank said. Federal Reserve Banks will host a series of public events around the country to get input, the Fed said.

“Beginning around the middle of next year, Fed policymakers will discuss the feedback received from the events. ‘With labor market conditions close to maximum employment and inflation near our 2 percent objective, now is a good time to take stock of how we formulate, conduct, and communicate monetary policy,’ Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in a statement.” Read more.

QUARLES, TAKE TWO — Cap Alpha’s Ian Katz: “Fed regulatory czar Randy Quarles put in his second consecutive day of congressional testimony on Thursday. This one before the Senate Banking Committee was barely an hour … Overall, the message was again broadly positive for banks.

“He tried to convince Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that the Fed is carefully monitoring leveraged lending, and contested assertions from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) that he’s making the stress tests too easy.”

TECH, BANKS LEAD STOCK REBOUND — AP’s Alex Veiga: “A rebound in technology companies and banks helped reverse an early slide for U.S. stocks Thursday, breaking a five-day losing streak for the market.

“Health care and industrial stocks also rose, offsetting losses in retailers, homebuilders, utilities and other sectors. Energy stocks also helped lift the market as the price of U.S. crude oil rose for the second straight day. … The late-afternoon market rebound marked the latest episode of volatile trading for the market this week.” Read more.

POUND SLIDES AMID BREXIT TURMOIL — NYT’s Peter Eavis: “Big declines in Britain’s currency, the pound, often have signaled wrenching changes for the country. Could this be the case again as … May struggles to win support for her plan to take Britain out of the European Union?

“The British pound on Thursday fell 2 percent against the dollar. That’s a large decline for a currency belonging to a developed economy and is the biggest one-day drop since the weeks after Britain’s vote in June 2016 to leave the European Union … Though the pound is down 15 percent since that vote, it remains well above the lows it hit in January 2017, when it was becoming clear that Mrs. May’s government favored a more drastic separation from important economic arrangements with the European Union.” Read more.

ECONOMISTS SPLIT ON MIDTERMS OUTCOME — WSJ’s Harriet Torry: “Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal were roughly split on whether the outcome of the recent midterm elections would dispel or increase uncertainty for the economy and financial markets in the coming months. The vote means that come January, Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives, while Republicans will retain control of the U.S. Senate.

“Nearly half of respondents in the economists’ survey, 46 percent, said economic uncertainty would increase somewhat following the midterms, while 40 percent of respondents expected it would decline somewhat after the vote.” Read more.

HOUSE PANEL TO LOOK AT FINANCE SECTOR DIVERSITY — Reuters’ Pete Schroeder: “Democrats are planning to dramatically step up their focus on improving financial services for underserved communities when they take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in January, according to several people briefed on the matter.

“Representative Maxine Waters, who is poised to take over the chair of the Financial Services Committee after Democrats won a majority in the House in Nov. 6 elections, is considering creating a subcommittee dedicated to financial inclusion and diversity in the sector, as well as a taskforce to focus on financial technology innovation, the people said. Waters had previously said the issue would be a priority.” Read more.

GOLDMAN CEO ‘PERSONALLY OUTRAGED’ BY 1MDB SCANDAL — Bloomberg’s Keith Campbell and Jennifer Surane: “David Solomon had a message for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. employees shaken by the firm’s involvement in a multibillion fraud scandal: This isn’t us.

“‘I am personally outraged that any employee of the firm would undertake the actions spelled out in the government’s pleadings,’ the firm’s chief executive officer said in a voicemail left with employees on Wednesday. ‘The behavior of those individuals is reprehensible and inconsistent with the good work and integrity that defines work that 40,000 of you do every day.’” Read more.

CREDIT UNIONS HAVE MORE WOMEN CEOs — Per new research from economists at the Credit Union National Association (CUNA): “In the financial sector where females are significantly underrepresented in management positions, credit unions create and sustain opportunities for female leaders to serve their communities.

“We measured credit union success in three key categories, and here’s what we found: Female executives are significantly more common at credit unions compared to other financial institutions: A majority (52%) of credit union CEOs are female. Accounting for differences in asset size, there is no evidence for a gender pay gap at credit unions” Read more.

ANOTHER DEM PICKUP IN THE HOUSE — POLITICO’s Elena Schneider: “Democrat Jared Golden has defeated GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin in Maine’s 2nd District, bringing Democrats’ net gain in the House to 36 seats with five GOP seats still uncalled — and with Poliquin still embroiled in a lawsuit against Maine’s secretary of state over the vote.

“Golden had 50.5 percent of the vote to Poliquin’s 49.5 percent, according to the Maine secretary of state’s office. Golden’s victory — the first House race ever decided by a ranked-choice voting system — also marked the 20th district that Democrats won that had been carried by … Trump in 2016.” Read more.

AND ONE MORE… POLITICO’s Brent D. Griffiths: “Southern California Rep. Mimi Walters was ousted Thursday night, the latest House Republican to lose their seat in the formerly deep-red Orange County. The Associated Press called the 45th congressional district race with Democrat Katie Porter leading Walters, a two-term incumbent who previously served in the California senate, by just over 6,000 votes as ballots continue to be counted.” Read more.

** A message from The National Association of Manufacturers and U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Proxy advisory firms have no obligation to look out for investors’ best interests, and the recommendations of these secretive companies can put Americans’ personal investments and retirement savings at risk. Put simply, these firms give advice that is often at odds with the best interests of Main Street investors.

That leads to bad decisions that can undermine company performance and drag down retirement account balances for American workers. Thankfully, the Securities and Exchange Commission is exploring ways to provide much-needed oversight. And Main Street investors can take action by telling Washington to look out for working Americans and their savings. Learn more: https://proxyreforms.com/ **

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