#interesting what cnn chose for the headline

[kerishaharris]

Going, going, (not quite but almost) gone: the sad state of local newspapers

True story: As a young, would-be journalist, I applied at the behest of my high school journalism teacher to the Hugh N. Boyd Minorities in Journalism Workshop. The program was a two-week intensive workshop open to high school students across New Jersey with an interest in journalism. It promised to provide the 15 or so selected participants with real-world experience in the field absolutely free of charge, as local newspapers across the state sponsored the event, covering all expenses for selected students. Having always been rather introverted and somewhat shy, I didn’t think my writing was good enough to make the cut. But to my surprise, I ended up being selected and was sponsored by my hometown newspaper, The Record of Bergen County, aka The Record (or, so it was called at the time). The experience was transformative for me, and gave me my first insight into life as a journalist. I’d go on to study journalism as an undergraduate student at the University of Florida, starting off in print but switching to broadcast, and working professionally in the field for more than a decade for CNN, NBC, ABC, Univision, and more. And for a time, I briefly took a job as the lead social media editor for none other than the local newspaper that helped give me my start in the business: The Record of Bergen County.

(fun fact: The Record broke the 2013 George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal which made national and global headlines) This week, I chose to take a closer look at local newspapers, and in doing so, briefly examine why they’ve struggled to remain relevant in a changing industry (I’ll only scratch the surface, because I could probably write an entire dissertation on this topic). It’s actually quite sad, as I firmly believe that local newspapers and beat reporters are critical to freedom of the press and unbiased, balanced, and fair reporting. Sadly, the digital age has done irrevocable damage to this industry. And I hate to say it, but digital and social media are almost solely responsible for the demise of newspapers, and sadly, I’m a part of that problem too. As a tail-end millennial who came of age with the internet, if the news isn’t on my smartphone or easily accessible via an app or a free website, I quickly lose interest and seek my information elsewhere. I can’t remember the last time I had a newspaper subscription, or even purchased a newspaper. I recognize how important they are, I just have so many other options for news consumption now that I just don’t turn to newspapers anymore. Freedom of the press

Local newspapers have been part of the fabric of this country since as early as the 1600’s. Every journalism student remembers studying the great circulation wars of the 1800’s between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. If not, everybody remembers how fun it was when instead of class, our teachers took a day off from teaching and instead showed “Newsies” on VHS in history class. It never gets old. 

(truer words have never been said, Jack Kelly) But the rise of television news, and eventually digital and social media, pushed local newspapers aside, as audiences had a quicker, easier way to access news on-demand instead of waiting for the morning paper. According to a recent report by researchers at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 300 more newspapers failed since the fall of 2018 bringing the death toll to 2,100. That’s 25 percent of the 9,000 newspapers that were being published just 15 years ago. It also noted that there are about 200 “news deserts,” or communities without any local newspapers. Most of those news deserts are in economically challenged rural areas, but more and more, even the economically advantaged suburbs are feeling the pinch too. 

(via UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media) The danger here? Local papers highlight and elevate local stories we might not otherwise know about, but we absolutely need to care about. What’s going on in our schools, with our local elected officials, within our communities, local zoning and budget decisions that impact our daily lives. They provide a micro-level guide to the things that impact us every single day. So if nearly all of your news is coming from social and digital media and their sometimes questionable algorithms, or television news that’s almost undoubtedly biased (at least in the U.S.), you really have to question whether you’re receiving fair, unbiased coverage. Dying, but not (quite) dead It was encouraging to see that while the industry is undoubtedly suffering, there are still some people who often consume their news via local newspapers. According to the Pew Research Center, people aged 65 and older account for most of the existing newspaper audience, roughly four in 10 of whom say they still often get their information from newspapers. This is about what I would expect from the older generation, but this sadly doesn’t say much for younger generations and their newspaper consumption. Only 18 percent of people age 50-64, 8 percent of people age 30 to 49, and a mere 2 percent of people age 18-29 say that they often get their news from newspapers. 

And even among those 65 and older, newspapers are a pretty distant second in terms of the source they visit most often for news, as 81 percent of people in this age group cite television as the source they often use for news.

If you can’t beat them, join them In my brief time as social media editor for The Record, it was obvious to me that the paper was trying hard to adapt to a changing world, opening themselves up to methods they’d never had to use before. The same was true of most newspapers, even national newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. It has been interesting to see the ways in which these newspapers have branched out into new forms of media to adapt to the way people consume news today. I highlighted this in a previous post, but I’ve been impressed by the NYT’s foray into LinkedIn Live, creating immersive, engaging conversations on key stories, and giving the audience the chance to actively participate with the media. At its core, I’ve always said that the best thing about social/digital media was that it took what were always one-way conversations, and made them into two-way experiences for the audience and the content creator. And speaking of the Times, their efforts on Instagram are among my favorite. Beautiful portraits that would once only live on paper are now shared in a beautifully curated feed that is always so pleasing to the eye. Often, these are stories that wouldn’t typically make the front page of the paper, but the visuals are so stunning that they tell a story in and of themselves.

(via the New York Times on Instagram) Using local newspapers as a communications professional

Part of my renewed interest in newspapers came about when I was a communications manager for a small nonprofit organization. Our primary goal was to engage in state level advocacy on behalf of the state’s charter schools. Effectively that means, catch the eyes and ears of lawmakers and state your case so that when budget time comes around, they’ll make sure to enact a budget that ensures the survival of these schools. I learned that these lawmakers and influencers pay close attention to newspapers, perhaps even more than other forms of media, and so getting our agenda into the local newspaper was a large part of the work that I did. I would write (well, ghostwrite) opinion pieces for senior leadership, students and parents, and pitch them for placements in the local papers in the districts of the lawmakers we needed to reach, I would develop relationships with local education reporters, invite them to press events, give them quotes for their stories, organize editorial board meetings and more. Newspapers became a critical part of the work that I did, as were the relationships I built with members of the newspaper industry, and I’d imagine the same is true for other communications professionals. Much to my (pleasant) surprise, there are still some brands doing important work with traditional print newspapers. According to FORBES, “MasterCard placed a two-page spread in The New York Times, almost unheard of these days, to articulate its support for the LGBTQIA+ community and MasterCard’s support for GLAAD’s NEON Legacy Series, a photo and video collection produced by Black LGBTQIA+ creators. The ad states MasterCard’s commitment to equal treatment, equal opportunity and equal rights. The ad features both the MasterCard logo and the GLAAD logo.” I can’t find a photo of the ad anywhere, but I’m sure it was great! Of course, this is very different from the way the general public engages with newspapers, as they’re looking for unbiased updates on what’s going on in their communities. But it’s still nice to know there are still some communicators out here tapping into the power of local newspapers to promote their brands, and I was one of them.

(sigh. a beautiful sight)

A sad future for local newspapers Sadly, none of the statistics point to a revival of newspapers anytime soon, although I’m holding out hope. With fewer local papers, and increased reliance on (often biased) television and (often wrong) social media for news, I worry that this is just one of the unfortunate ills of the digital age we’re living in. Sadly, many local papers are unable to stay afloat despite employing every possible adaptation in the book, often succumbing to major buyouts by huge conglomerates, resulting in newspapers that are controlled by corporate interests and offer no true local, unbiased reporting. 

And as for The Record? It suffered a similar fate in 2016 after it was ultimately bought out by Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain. For folks like me from northern New Jersey, it was the end of an era. I still remember being saddened when I learned the news, even feeling a tad guilty that I didn’t stick around long enough to perhaps contribute to a more favorable outcome. While my time there was brief, I worked alongside some of the smartest, most passionate and hard-working people I’d ever met. They lived and breathed northern New Jersey, and they put their heart and soul into every letter of every story that went to print. But what happened with The Record has sadly happened to so many local newspapers with no signs of slowing down. As communications and marketing professionals, we certainly can play a role in trying to help revive the industry, but my fear is that any efforts we make would be too little too late.

[jemimaboultonmessagesmultiverse]

News Articles

For this project I needed some news articles to work from and create art based around. As an overarching theme for these articles I chose for them to all be scientific. Many of them are about connections between humans and technology and robots, but not all of them as i found articles revolving around other topics which were interesting to me.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/06/844908/a-new-implant-for-blind-people-jacks-directly-into-the-brain/amp/

This article is about finding a cure to blindness. The supposed cure is an implant to the brain. This article in particular intrigued me as it is an example of scientists trying to cure the incurable, and also an example of technology being connected to humans. My ideas for portraying this are to show a journey from dark to light to represent the lifting of the blindness. I also think it would be compelling to show some connections between robotics and the human brain somehow. This implant is different to the other one i have a news article I have as it is to help cure a disability, whereas the other one is to connect disabled people to the online world.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200910110857.htm

The previous article I discussed is about connecting robotics to the human body, which is juxtaposing to this one, which is about how robots can show emotions similar to the human body. I wanted to include this one in this project as I feel it could be fun to try and represent it with some “uncanny valley” like faces, almost human but not quite, just like these robot’s emotions. During my research I discovered how much I am interested in portraying a link between humans and robotics as they are two very contrasting things. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/sunday/brain-machine-artificial-intelligence.amp.html

This article is the first one I found and it revolves around some technology that is being created so humans can control the internet in their mind. There are many issues with security in this idea but it could really be a glimpse into the future of phones and social media. A phrase used a lot surrounding this topic is “brain hacking” which I think is possibly something I could include in type on my work. This implant into the brain is different to the one previous as it is completely unnecessary but could create a connection between humans and technology that we have never seen before. At the forefront of the idea is Elon Musk, which also means this idea could just be an example of rich people doing fancy technological stuff for no reason, but this is something that people have been trying to do for decades and failing at. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/30/health/botox-for-depression-treatment-wellness/index.html

Slightly different to my other articles but still fitting the science theme, this is about Botox possibly being a cure for depression. My first thoughts when i saw this headline is that beauty could actually equal happiness, and that is one way I could try and display this article, despite the actual content of it being that the Botox could make certain muscles in your face contract n therefore making you happy. In my visual representation of this I will probably use lots of needles and distortion, as that is what Botox makes me think of. https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/drones/a30795266/cia-robot-dragonfly/

This article is about the CIA making a robot dragonfly spy in the 70s, and people have only just figured out how it works. This could be portrayed in my art as a connection between robots and nature. I could also discuss in my work that the government is spying on us. Something spectacular to me is how it took nearly 50 years to figure out how this technology works, which is obviously just as old as that and therefore cant be that developed, and yet it was so difficult to understand.   https://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/

I found this article about scientists trying to bring back the woolly mammoth and thought it was interesting as it is yet another example of science going too far and trying to change the natural timeline of things. It also fits in with the idea of doing the impossible. I could portray it by showing something dead coming back to life, possibly documenting something rotting and then displaying the images in the reverse order

[jessgartner]

Leaving Facebook Part III: Goodbye to All That

Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point. 

I'm in the final countdown to deleting Facebook, and not a moment too soon.

TL;DR:

Primary posts will be here

I'll be sending out a monthly Life Olympics newsletter

If you want email, mail, and/or newsletters, let me know where to find you

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.

The Wind-Down

I've backed up my data, I've collected contact info, and I've explored a variety of new platforms with varying degrees of success.

I've reached a tentative consensus on my plan for moving forward. It's a little more complex than I would have liked, but I'm settling into some new habits and I'll continue to iterate and refine over time. Here's where I've landed:

Nothing was irrevocable; everything was within reach. Just around every corner lay something curious and interesting, something I had never before seen or done or known about. 

Consuming

I chose: Apple News. I slept on this for a while, for reasons I can't totally remember. I revisited it and spent some time customizing it and decided it's the best newsfeed for me for now.

Pros:

Free

UX is good and it's easy to follow publications/topics

iCloud syncing across devices + desktop app is hard to beat. The next best product I looked at (Thread News) only had a mobile app, which was a dealbreaker for me.

I follow mostly mainstream-is publications and there's a full database of sources that are easy to follow.

I haven't tried News+ yet but I like the option of it - a while ago I had a similar magazine aggregator from Conde Nast that I loved and this seems similar or better.

Cons:

Initially, I didn't like the Top Stories on the home page. I don't really love the CNN/ABC/CBS-type focus on 24-hour headline news and wish this was better curated from my interests and favorite publications. I finally figured out that you can limit the Home Page to publications that you follow, but it's not an obvious setting.

I hate that share/copy link produces an apple.news url instead of the native url; this is obnoxious.

Runner Up: Thread News had a really nice Daily Digest feature that curated from your favorite publications.

I chose: Pocket for random articles that I come across on Twitter, in Slack, or recommended through text messages, I save them to Pocket to read later.

Pros:

Free (with premium paid option)

Syncs across desktop, mobile, iPad app; app UX is nicely optimized across devices

Tagging (good for saving favorites)

"Article view" that clears out web junk for a streamlined reading experience

Chrome extension for easy clipping/adding

Cons:

None yet; it's simple and works the way I want it to

Runner up: Instapaper. It has very similar functionality to Pocket, I just slightly prefer the design of Pocket. If you like a really minimalist reading experience, Instapaper is for you.

Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

Creating

This one was a beast. I struggled for weeks to parse out exactly what I wanted on this front and which criteria were most important to me, because it became clear quickly that I wasn't going to get everything I wanted in one place.

I chose: Tumblr I initially wrote this off because the homepage/discovery can be nauseating without the right default settings. A tour of the mobile version convinced me to give this a second look: the mobile app is great and the posting experience is (pardon the cliche) delightful. I decided to give it a deeper dive behind the scenes and found that I was able to customize a lot of what I initially disliked. The auto formatting for photo, quote, link, and chat posts is charming and simple.

Pros:

Customizing themes is simple and there are a lot of choices.

I can use my personal domain

The posting experience is easy and relatively error-free

The tagging! I love my tags and they work so nicely. I was also able to find a theme that features tags so you will always have easy access to the latest photos of Darwin.

Great for multimedia posting

Built-in share buttons

Cons:

Not very good at importing content from other platforms; I manually recreated a few favorite posts, but otherwise pretty much had to start from scratch on content

No built-in analytics, aside from follower counts, which is not something I expect to care about or track. I set up tracking on Google Analytics, but I'll miss the built-in analytics that WordPress had. Since WP bought Tumblr, I'm hoping that they may eventually add these features to Tumblr

I just don't care about the social/discovery components here and I wish I could turn them off

Ads. I wish I could pay to make them go away.

Runner up: micro.blog For the first couple of weeks, I thought this was going to be my choice. I had a solid experience importing and archiving a lot of my content from WordPress, Instagram, and Medium. Unfortunately, once I started trying to use the platform on a daily basis, I ran into a lot of issues and challenges that gave me pause on using and recommending the platform. To be clear, a good number of these issues were either user-error or bespoke preferences due to my personal quirks on how I want to organize and share content on the Internet. Some of this is a result of it being a new-ish platform that still has some blind spots for non-developers; it's not a mainstream product yet and I'm not sure it's trying to be. Based on my personal preferences, I felt Tumblr was slightly better equipped for my use case. I'm still going to keep using micro.blog for a while in tandem with Tumblr to see if my preferences change and/or if the platform adopts some of the feedback I shared with regard to cross-posting and UX.

I chose: Drafts. One big challenge for me in this process was the desire to cross-post some content in multiple places while limiting where I post other content. I didn't want to fill my Twitter feed with cat pictures, but I wanted some little corner of the Internet for Darwin's biggest fans (my mother). Drafts is basically a universal text editor that pushes drafts of text to a variety of services, including micro.blog, Twitter, Day One, Google Drive, Evernote, WordPress, Gmail, and even text messages. It's highly configurable and I'm only just scratching the surface of its power. Creating text drafts here allows me to easily push drafts to a variety of different places with just a few keystrokes. It syncs with iCloud, has really robust tagging and filtering, and has mobile, iPad, and Mac apps. It's very cool.

He laughed literally until he choked, and I had to roll down the taxi window and hit him on the back. "New faces," he said finally, "don't tell me about new faces.” 

Engagement

I chose: Twitter I've increasingly found Twitter to be a place where my friends/followers care about what I care about. The messages I care most about sharing are amplified. I can choose to unfollow, mute, or block people who are harassing or distressing me. I can follow people whose expertise I value. It can still be a cesspool at times but Twitter leadership seems to be taking steps to improve the platform - identifying misinformation, a conversation feature that limits replies, etc. For now, it stays.

Coming Soon: Substack I haven't officially started this yet, but I'm going to start a monthly newsletter that (allegedly) goes out the first Sunday of every month. I'm going to use roughly my annual Life Olympics format except there will be fun and exciting recommendations. Teaser: new Life Olympics categories will make their debut in the first installment on July 5! If you want it, make sure you give me your email address and you'll receive the first edition.

It’s easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.

All quotes by Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Many, many thanks to Jason Becker for his recommendations, patience, and tech support on this project.

[whoopwhoopwhoopwhoop123]

THE MATURING OF THE FLOWER BOY

(it’s for my english class, so lol)Tyler the Creator yet again fill the headlines with his fourth solo album Flower Boy. People believe that this American rapper chose the title Flower Boy to represent him coming to terms with his sexuality and embracing his feminine side. This Alternative Hip-Hop album features fresh, up and coming artists like Rex Orange County, Kali Uchis, Anna of the North, and Steve Lacy, and also some familiar faces like A$AP Rocky, Jaden Smith, Estelle, Lil’ Wayne and his fellow Odd Future member, Frank Ocean.

Foreword, the first song off of the album, acts as the introduction to Tyler’s new era. The song starts with basic beats and clock-ticking sound effect, followed by a psychedelic guitar progression and Rex Orange County’s distinctive vocals right after Tyler’s deep raspy rapping. The melancholic minor scale and psychedelic vibe continue until the seventh song off of the album, Garden Shed, featuring well-known British singer, Estelle.

The happier side of Tyler showed in the other half of the album. Boredom has the same beat as Foreword, but with a more blissful guitar progression which includes most major and flat chords. While listening to this particular song, I can visualize how bright and happy the song is. This song is the type of songs millennials would listen while gazing at the clouds or watching the sunset, which I really love.

911/Mr. Lonely is most definitely a fan favorite. It has a catchy bass line and catchy melody. The “call me, call me” part has stuck in my head for weeks now and I am not mad about it.

Droppin’ Seeds is one of my favorites. The jazzy instrumentals fit so well with Lil’ Wayne’s chain-smoker voice. With the saxophone and trumpets, nothing on this album can beat its catchy-ness.

Glitter and Enjoy Right Now, Today are the last two songs from the album. I must say, these last songs are the most gleeful songs he ever produces.

I can say it is definitely different from what he produced from his 3 last albums. But songs like Who Dat Boy and I Ain’t Got Time! still, have some similar elements like the heavy bass and hip-hop beats.

In Where This Flower Bloom, Tyler talked about his life before he rose and bloom into someone “famous”. He talks about how people act in his surroundings, but he also talks about his femininity and police brutality in the second verse; “Tell these black kids they could be who they are. Dye your hair blue, s***, I’ll do it too. Look, I smell like Chanel, I never mall grip with my manicured nails.” “Went from statistic to millionaire, CNN doubted ‘cause my skin is dark. But they forget when I get in my car.”

Following the melancholic theme, See You Again have one of the most depressing lyrics in the album. It is a love song about someone imaginary. “You live in my dream state, relocate my fantasy. I stay in reality. You live in my dream state. Anytime I count sheep, that’s the only time we make up. You exist behind my eyelids. I don’t wanna wake up.” I also love the fact that he romanticizes brown colored eyes because not often people write about or admiring brown or dark colored eyes. “It’s them rose-tinted cheeks, yeah it’s them dirt-coloured eyes. Sugar honey iced tea, bumblebee on the scene. I’d give up my bakery to have a piece of your pie.” Tyler really breaks the stereotype of black boys being insensitive and aggressive. With these lyrics, Tyler shows that black boys are able to love as tenderly as boys or girls of other race.

For his happier songs, Glitter really captures the concept of Black Boy Joy. It is about him attempting to leave a voicemail for a crush. It is written beautifully yet so satiric. “Ayo, mirror mirror on the wall, who the brightest of them all? I never been the darkest one ‘cause my self-esteem is tall…… They ain’t build me up so I block ‘em like Lego.” The song ended with a cold “We didn’t get your message, either because you were not speaking or because of a bad connection.” and Tyler cursing under his breath after that makes me chuckle.

And of course, as a rapper, Tyler’s style of writing is not like a poet trying to write for their lovers, it is definitely not formal or conventionally “swooning” but he uses a lot of beautiful and thought-provoking sentences and metaphors to describe how he feel about something and it is what makes it so interesting.

I think that this album is his best album yet, lyrically and musically. You can clearly see that is Tyler growing and maturing as a person through the choice of words and the instrumentals that he used.  I admire the artistry and the meaning behind the album and can’t wait for him to produce more albums like this. I think that he really captures the visuals through his album cover, because every time I give the album a listen, my mind always goes to the album’s color scheme and the sunflowers shown on the cover. Overall, Flower Boy is an album that deserves a four-star rating from everyone and if you don’t like Tyler the Creator’s previous style of music, I would suggest you give Tyler a chance and listen to the album, I promise it would not disappoint you.

[hrjerry-me-blog]

Stop an Addictive Habit – And Replace it With an Inspiring One

Other than substance abuse, what is the most destructive habit or addiction?

I would argue that since mid 2015 the top destructive addictive habit for many Amercians has been following national political news.

And I’m not just throwing around the word addiction casually. According to the American Society of Addictive Medicine:

“Addiction is characterized by an inability to consistently abstain (from a substance), impairment in behavioral control, craving, diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors and interpersonal relationships, and a dysfunctional emotional response.” 

Are you addicted to national political news?

Here are a few telltale signs:

If you don’t read, listen to, or watch some political news every day, you feel anxious and deprived.

Political news draws your immediate attention and it’s hard to pull yourself away.

You can spend hours reading, listening to or watching political news, even if there’s a lot of repetition.  

Your involvement in political news takes you away from more productive and rewarding life activities (not to mention moving your business and marketing forward).

You can find many thoughtful articles on political news addiction online, Just Google: “political news addiction” and read a few.

Here’s my perspective, and it’s a very personal one.

As a political news addict myself for the past three years, I’ve seen the costs, and I’d like to share what I’m doing to combat this addiction – and how I’m substituting it for something more inspiring.

Step 1. My first step about two years ago was to cut my cable TV subscription. I was watching as many as three hours of political news shows every evening. It was becoming toxic.

I substituted cable TV with subscriptions to Amazon Prime, Netflix, Acorn, and CBS All-Access. My wife and I now watch quality programming on our time schedule with no commercials and zero political shows. (Yeah, even this is a little addictive, but much less toxic.)

It can be challenging to eliminate CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc. but in a week or two you’ll notice a big difference in your well-being.

Step 2. More insidious perhaps, is the preponderance of political news online. On my iPad I had bookmarks to 12 different political websites, and would scan through them daily, reading the most current articles – sometimes for-hours-on-end.

Ultimately, this wasn’t much better than watching TV. I’d often read several articles before I started work each morning. What a downer, and what a great way to suppress my creativity and productivity. It was really starting to show.

With the help of a coach, I chose a new online activity to substitute for reading political news articles.

It was a simple and easy switch, actually. I replaced all my political bookmarks to links to articles and information that inspires and uplifts me and helps me feel more creative, and productive.  

Of course, there are endless sources for material like this online, but I have two that I find to be especially potent antidotes to political news addiction.

Medium.com – For me, Medium is the best place for general interest articles, with tons of great ideas on personal growth and business.

My favorite current Medium writer is James Clear who writes on: “…topics like health, happiness, creativity, productivity, success and more. The central question that drives my work is, ‘How can we live better?’ To answer that question, I like to write about science-based ways to solve practical problems.”

In my estimation, his articles are tremendously insightful and always leave me pondering new and exciting possibilities.

Right now, my main substitute to checking political headlines every morning is to read one or two James Clear articles – even before I get up. Before long, my brain has clicked into “creative productivity mode” and my day takes a more positive, energetic shape.

If James Clear, doesn’t float your boat, just use the search function on Medium to find articles on any topic under the sun. Just avoid the political ones! (However, even on that topic, you’ll find more interesting, thought-provoking articles than on most news sites.)

This certainly beats, the, “Oh, crap, what are they doing now, we’re all screwed!” mindset that is generated by reading political articles that tend to quash creativity and productivity.

Another great source for inspiration are Ted-Talk videos. Most are under 20 minutes; all are thought provoking, and many are inspiring enough to trigger new ideas and possibilities. You might start with the 25 All-Time Most Popular Ted Talks.

Political news addiction is real. And if you have it, it’s damaging you in some way, either subtly or obviously. And the best way to change an addictive habit is to replace it with a positive one. I urge you to give this approach an honest try.

The inspiration for writing this article came from a James Clear article I read this morning on how to change a bad habit. Thanks James!

Cheers, Robert

Action Plan Marketing helps self-employed people attract more clients through action-oriented marketing strategies that get you in front of prospective clients. Get our free report on how you can attract more of your ideal clients at this link: http://actionplan.club/free-stuff.

[teeky185]

Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on Sunday chastised Republican senators who claimed to be bothered by President Donald Trump’s Ukrainian actions as they voted against impeachment witnesses, saying it doesn’t do justice to the president’s behavior to merely call it “inappropriate.”Appearing on CBS News’ Face the Nation, the House Intelligence Committee chairman was asked what the impeachment trial had accomplished as the Senate is poised to acquit Trump after voting against hearing from witnesses about his actions. “What's remarkable is you now have Republican senators coming out and saying, yes, the House proved its case,” Schiff told host Margaret Brennan. “The House proved the corrupt scheme that they charged in the articles of impeachment. The president did withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from an ally to try to coerce that ally into helping him cheat in the next election. That's pretty remarkable when you now have senators on both sides of the aisle admitting the House made its case.”Schiff went on to say that the Senate now needs to move to the next step and find the president guilty and remove him from office since he’s “threatening to still cheat in the next election by soliciting foreign interference,” prompting Brennan to note the votes aren’t there for that to happen.“As you said, Senators Rubio, Alexander, Portman have all said in some way or another they found the actions of the president inappropriate, but not enough to oust him,” she added. “So the bottom line here seems to be that the president will get away with what they're calling inappropriate. What are Democrats going to do? What do you do next?”“Well, first of all, to call solicitation, coercion, blackmail of a foreign power, an ally at war, by withholding military aid to get help in cheating in the next election merely inappropriate, doesn't begin to do justice to the gravity of this president's misconduct,” Schiff answered. “Misconduct that I think undermined our national security as well as that of our ally and threatens the integrity—the integrity of our elections.”The California Democrat further noted that he’s “not letting the senators off the hook” for not acting against Trump even though they’ve acknowledged his behavior was wrong, saying he’s still going to make the case Trump needs to be removed.“It will be up to the senators to make that final judgment and the senators will be held accountable for it,” he stated.To Schiff’s point, GOP senators appeared on the Sunday news shows and attempted to have it both ways by arguing that Trump behaved inappropriately with his Ukraine pressure scheme but that it isn’t an impeachable offense. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who voted against calling additional witnesses last week despite saying Trump made an ��error in judgment,” told Meet the Press’ Chuck Todd that Trump’ Shouldn’t have done it” and “it was wrong” but that Trump’s fate should be left to the ballot box and “the people.” The conservative senator also confirmed that he’d vote to acquit the president.On CNN’s State of the Union, meanwhile, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said that the president acted inappropriately but that she would inevitably vote to clear Trump of all charges.“He's done it now,” she told anchor Jake Tapper. “The president has a lot of latitude to do what he wants to do. Again, not what I have done, but certainly, again, going after corruption, Jake...Maybe not the perfect call.”After Tapper wondered aloud what she meant by saying it was something she wouldn't have done, Ernst added: “He did it—he did it maybe in the wrong manner… But I think he could have done it through different channels. Now, this is the argument, is that he should have probably gone to the DOJ. He should have worked through those entities, but he chose to go a different route.”Senate Republicans weren’t the only ones trying to thread the needle on Sunday regarding the president’s Ukrainian actions. Trump defense team member Alan Dershowitz, who argued last week that Trump could engage in a quid pro quo with Ukraine since his re-election is in the “public interest” and he has “mixed motives,” conceded on Fox News Sunday that the pressure campaign could be “troubling.”“On Election Day as a citizen I will allow that to enter into my decision,” he told host Chris Wallace when asked if he was troubled by the allegations. “Of course any citizen would find that troubling if it were proved, troubling is not the criteria for impeachment.”“If a president linked aid to an ally to personal benefit that was not in the public interest, that would be wrong, that would be a reason for him not to vote for him,” Dershowitz added.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[usuallyleftnight]

* Democratic presidential candidate says US on ‘edge of war’ * Anti-Isis coalition suspended as Iraqi MPs vote to expel USElizabeth Warren has suggested Donald Trump ordered the drone assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani to distract the American public from his own impeachment, taking the country “to the edge of war” for his own political purposes.“We know Donald Trump is very upset about this upcoming impeachment trial,” the Massachusetts senator and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination told NBC’s Meet the Press. “But look what he’s doing now. He is taking us to the edge of war.”Observers were quick to say Warren was accusing Trump of “wag the dog” tactics, meaning an attempt to distract public attention by launching a military strike.A 1997 film satire starring Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman used the phrase as its title and similar charges were levelled against Bill Clinton in 1998, when he ordered strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan while embroiled in the scandal which led to his own impeachment.Trump ordered the strike against Suleimani, which happened in Baghdad on Friday. It followed a rocket strike in Iraq that killed an American contractor and wounded US troops, US airstrikes in response and a siege of the US embassy in Baghdad by Iranian-backed militias.(December 28, 2019) A rocket attack on an Iraqi military base near Kirkuk kills an American contractor and injures US and Iraqi soldiers. The US blames Shia militia group, Kata’ib Hizbullah (KH)(December 30, 2019) The US conducts retaliatory airstrikes against five KH bases in Iraq and Syria, saying there had been 11 attacks against Iraqi bases hosting coalition forces in Iraq over the past two months(December 31, 2019) Protesters storm the US embassy in Baghdad, trapping diplomats inside while chanting ��Death to America” and slogans in support of pro-Iranian militias. At one point they breached the main gate and smashed their way into several reception rooms. The rampage was carried out with the apparent connivance of local Iraqi security forces who allowed protesters inside the highly protected Green Zone(January 3, 2020) In a drone strike ordered by US president Donald Trump, the US kills Iranian general Qassem Suleimani while he was being transported from from Baghdad airportOn Sunday Iran called Trump a “terrorist in a suit” and told US media outlets retaliation would hit US military targets.Warren told CNN’s State of the Union it was “reasonable” to ask if the strike was meant to be a distraction, “particularly when the administration, immediately after having taken this decision, offers a bunch of contradictory explanations for what’s going on.“There was a reason that he chose this moment, not a month ago, not a month from now, not a less aggressive, less dangerous response.”Echoing the terms of the articles of impeachment, Warren accused him of using foreign policy or “whatever he can to advance the interests of Donald Trump”.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told ABC’s This Week the evidence for an “imminent” Iranian attack provided by the administration after the Suleimani strike was “very unsatisfying”.“We don’t know the reasons that it had to be done now,” he said. “They don’t seem very clear. The documents they sent us last night” – notification of the strike as required by the War Powers Act of 1973 – “is very unsatisfying as to that, even though I can’t talk about it because the whole thing is classified.”In Washington, House speaker Nancy Pelosi is withholding articles of impeachment from the Senate, in the hope of forcing concessions over the rules of Trump’s trial. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has said Trump will not be convicted and removed and said he is co-ordinating closely with the White House.Moderate Republicans who Democrats hope will pressure McConnell to call witnesses potentially damaging to the president show little sign of shifting but Pelosi has placed Trump in constitutional limbo, the third president to be impeached but not yet the third to be acquitted.The articles of impeachment concern abuse of power, in the withholding of military aid from Ukraine amid pressure for investigations of Trump’s political foes, and obstruction of Congress.Warren told NBC: “The administration can’t keep its story straight and in the case of Ukraine, it was all about protecting Donald Trump’s skin. We know that Donald Trump was very upset about this upcoming impeachment trial, but look what he’s doing now. He is taking us to the edge of war.“We’ve been at war for 20 years in the Middle East and now, he’s talking about expanding that war. This has been something that has cost thousands of American lives. It has cost us enormously in many ways both at home and around the world and at the same time, look what it’s done to the Middle East – millions of people who’ve been killed, who’ve been injured, who’ve been displaced.“The job of the president is to keep us safer. The job of the president is not to move us to the edge of war.”Senior Democrats backed Pelosi, whose tactics could push Trump’s trial into February, when the presidential primary will be in full swing.The speaker, Schumer said, “has said that she will send the articles of impeachment when she believes she can – she will maximize sending them to get the fairest trial possible. If she had sent them right away, McConnell could have well just voted for dismissal the day before or after Christmas.“Now, in the last two weeks, where we haven’t had the articles, lots of new evidence that bolsters our case for witnesses – for witnesses and documents – has come out. So the bottom line is very simple. We need the truth, not a coverup, not a sham, not to have some nationally televised mock trial where there’s no evidence.”Asked how long Democrats might be willing to hold the line, House intelligence chair Adam Schiff told CNN: “I don’t think it’s going to be indefinite, no … The desire is to get a commitment from the Senate that they’re going to have a fair trial, fair to the president, yes, but fair to the American people.”Schiff said holding back the articles had the effect of “flushing out senators”.“Withholding the articles has thus far flushed out where Mitch McConnell is coming from,” he said. “It’s required senators to go on record..”The South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a key Trump ally, poured cold water on Democratic hopes. Speaking on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Graham called Pelosi’s move as a “political stunt” and threatened to “change the rules of the Senate so that we can start the trial without her if necessary”.“If we don’t get the articles this week,” he said, “then we need to take matters into our own hands”.

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[tendance-news]

* Democratic presidential candidate says US on ‘edge of war’ * Anti-Isis coalition suspended as Iraqi MPs vote to expel USElizabeth Warren has suggested Donald Trump ordered the drone assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani to distract the American public from his own impeachment, taking the country “to the edge of war” for his own political purposes.“We know Donald Trump is very upset about this upcoming impeachment trial,” the Massachusetts senator and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination told NBC’s Meet the Press. “But look what he’s doing now. He is taking us to the edge of war.”Observers were quick to say Warren was accusing Trump of “wag the dog” tactics, meaning an attempt to distract public attention by launching a military strike.A 1997 film satire starring Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman used the phrase as its title and similar charges were levelled against Bill Clinton in 1998, when he ordered strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan while embroiled in the scandal which led to his own impeachment.Trump ordered the strike against Suleimani, which happened in Baghdad on Friday. It followed a rocket strike in Iraq that killed an American contractor and wounded US troops, US airstrikes in response and a siege of the US embassy in Baghdad by Iranian-backed militias.(December 28, 2019) A rocket attack on an Iraqi military base near Kirkuk kills an American contractor and injures US and Iraqi soldiers. The US blames Shia militia group, Kata’ib Hizbullah (KH)(December 30, 2019) The US conducts retaliatory airstrikes against five KH bases in Iraq and Syria, saying there had been 11 attacks against Iraqi bases hosting coalition forces in Iraq over the past two months(December 31, 2019) Protesters storm the US embassy in Baghdad, trapping diplomats inside while chanting “Death to America” and slogans in support of pro-Iranian militias. At one point they breached the main gate and smashed their way into several reception rooms. The rampage was carried out with the apparent connivance of local Iraqi security forces who allowed protesters inside the highly protected Green Zone(January 3, 2020) In a drone strike ordered by US president Donald Trump, the US kills Iranian general Qassem Suleimani while he was being transported from from Baghdad airportOn Sunday Iran called Trump a “terrorist in a suit” and told US media outlets retaliation would hit US military targets.Warren told CNN’s State of the Union it was “reasonable” to ask if the strike was meant to be a distraction, “particularly when the administration, immediately after having taken this decision, offers a bunch of contradictory explanations for what’s going on.“There was a reason that he chose this moment, not a month ago, not a month from now, not a less aggressive, less dangerous response.”Echoing the terms of the articles of impeachment, Warren accused him of using foreign policy or “whatever he can to advance the interests of Donald Trump”.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told ABC’s This Week the evidence for an “imminent” Iranian attack provided by the administration after the Suleimani strike was “very unsatisfying”.“We don’t know the reasons that it had to be done now,” he said. “They don’t seem very clear. The documents they sent us last night” – notification of the strike as required by the War Powers Act of 1973 – “is very unsatisfying as to that, even though I can’t talk about it because the whole thing is classified.”In Washington, House speaker Nancy Pelosi is withholding articles of impeachment from the Senate, in the hope of forcing concessions over the rules of Trump’s trial. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has said Trump will not be convicted and removed and said he is co-ordinating closely with the White House.Moderate Republicans who Democrats hope will pressure McConnell to call witnesses potentially damaging to the president show little sign of shifting but Pelosi has placed Trump in constitutional limbo, the third president to be impeached but not yet the third to be acquitted.The articles of impeachment concern abuse of power, in the withholding of military aid from Ukraine amid pressure for investigations of Trump’s political foes, and obstruction of Congress.Warren told NBC: “The administration can’t keep its story straight and in the case of Ukraine, it was all about protecting Donald Trump’s skin. We know that Donald Trump was very upset about this upcoming impeachment trial, but look what he’s doing now. He is taking us to the edge of war.“We’ve been at war for 20 years in the Middle East and now, he’s talking about expanding that war. This has been something that has cost thousands of American lives. It has cost us enormously in many ways both at home and around the world and at the same time, look what it’s done to the Middle East – millions of people who’ve been killed, who’ve been injured, who’ve been displaced.“The job of the president is to keep us safer. The job of the president is not to move us to the edge of war.”Senior Democrats backed Pelosi, whose tactics could push Trump’s trial into February, when the presidential primary will be in full swing.The speaker, Schumer said, “has said that she will send the articles of impeachment when she believes she can – she will maximize sending them to get the fairest trial possible. If she had sent them right away, McConnell could have well just voted for dismissal the day before or after Christmas.“Now, in the last two weeks, where we haven’t had the articles, lots of new evidence that bolsters our case for witnesses – for witnesses and documents – has come out. So the bottom line is very simple. We need the truth, not a coverup, not a sham, not to have some nationally televised mock trial where there’s no evidence.”Asked how long Democrats might be willing to hold the line, House intelligence chair Adam Schiff told CNN: “I don’t think it’s going to be indefinite, no … The desire is to get a commitment from the Senate that they’re going to have a fair trial, fair to the president, yes, but fair to the American people.”Schiff said holding back the articles had the effect of “flushing out senators”.“Withholding the articles has thus far flushed out where Mitch McConnell is coming from,” he said. “It’s required senators to go on record..”The South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a key Trump ally, poured cold water on Democratic hopes. Speaking on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Graham called Pelosi’s move as a “political stunt” and threatened to “change the rules of the Senate so that we can start the trial without her if necessary”.“If we don’t get the articles this week,” he said, “then we need to take matters into our own hands”.

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[bountyofbeads]

Nikki Haley’s real disclosure: Concerns about Trump’s dangerousness went right to the top

By Aaron Blake | Published November 11 at 9:02 AM ET | Washington Post | Posted November 11, 2019 |

Ever since September 2018, we’ve been trying to figure out who the “senior administration official” was who wrote that anonymous New York Times op-ed. This official described a “resistance” from inside the Trump administration that has worked to “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” The author now has a book coming out.

So when Nikki Haley tells us that the president’s former chief of staff and secretary of state spearheaded just such an effort, maybe the story isn’t that she said no?

Haley has a new book of her own, which describes her being approached by John Kelly and Rex Tillerson to, in her words, “undermine” the president. The details of that approach are somewhat in dispute. But here’s the gist of how Haley describes it, via The Washington Post’s Anne Gearan:

“Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country,” Haley wrote.

“It was their decisions, not the president’s, that were in the best interests of America, they said. The president didn’t know what he was doing,” Haley wrote of the views the two men held.

Tillerson also told her that people would die if Trump was unchecked, Haley wrote.

Haley’s refusal is significant in that she’s perhaps the Republican Party’s brightest rising star and someone many view as a possible future presidential candidate — and maybe even a replacement for Vice President Pence on the 2020 ticket. It’s also significant because she has shown a capacity to criticize Trump when she thought it was necessary, and there were even some thoughts that she resigned in October 2018 because she was disillusioned. She has clearly hitched her wagon to Trump now, at least to some degree, which is important.

The bigger story, though, is that two even-higher-ranking officials took such an extraordinary step that allowed for Haley’s refusal. The danger of Kelly and Tillerson making such an approach is exactly what we’re seeing today: that they would be outed by other officials. They did it anyway.

(A side question: Did Haley keep this to herself? Or did she tell the president? If it’s the former, that’s not exactly a strong signifier of devotion to Trump. That could be read as her just not wanting to rock the boat.)

Tillerson has declined to comment on Haley’s allegation, but he has been critical of Trump since departing Foggy Bottom. The brief statement Kelly offered is perhaps more telling. He told Gearan that if providing Trump “with the best and most open, legal and ethical staffing advice from across the [government] so he could make an informed decision is ‘working against Trump,’ then guilty as charged.' ” He seems to be at once suggesting that Haley’s version of events is slanted while also semi-confirming it.

Which is huge. The big takeaway here is that two of the most important Cabinet officials in the Trump administration were apparently alarmed enough by the president’s actions that they were willing to go to this length. Trump allies will want to believe that’s because they were part of the “deep state,” but these are people Trump chose for these extremely important jobs and who worked closely with him. They’re also among the people we knew were out there but we were unable to locate. They were apparently so worried about Trump that one of them predicted deadly results if he weren’t at least somewhat held in check.

And Haley just came out and told us who they were — and that they weren’t some middling deputy secretaries. That’s not exactly an affirmation of the president she apparently wants to align with.

🍁 ☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕

Pompeo tries to spin himself out of a tricky situation

By Glenn Kessler | Published Nov. 11 at 3:00 AM ET | Washington Post | Posted November 11, 2019 |

“Not — not — not once — not once, George, did Ambassador McKinley say something to me during that entire time period.”

— Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Oct. 20, 2019

“Three probably.”

— former State Department adviser to Pompeo Michael McKinley, after being asked how many conversations he had with Pompeo “about this matter,” interview with congressional investigators, Oct. 16

Was the secretary of state caught in a lie? Or is he just artfully answering questions — or, more to the point, not answering questions?

This is a story of spin. See if you can keep track of the bouncing ball.

THE FACTS: Michael McKinley was the U.S. ambassador to Brazil when Pompeo asked him to leave his post early in 2018 to act as his senior adviser and liaison to the Foreign Service. McKinley abruptly resigned in October after the controversy over the administration’s dealings with Ukraine erupted, in protest of what he told lawmakers was the use of ambassadors to advance domestic political objectives and a failure by the State Department to support those officials.

In an Oct. 20 appearance on ABC, Pompeo had a long exchange with George Stephanopoulos about McKinley’s departure. Stephanopoulos asked about McKinley’s failed efforts in September to get a statement of support issued by the department about Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine.

The Trump administration had removed her from her post early, after complaints by President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. When the White House released the rough transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump was quoted as saying Yovanovitch was “bad news.”

It was a stunning statement by a president about a career diplomat, which is why McKinley thought the department should issue a statement of support.

But Pompeo chose not to answer Stephanopoulos’s question about the statement of support. Instead, he answered a question that was not asked — whether McKinley had raised with Pompeo the decision to remove Yovanovitch early from her post. We highlighted the key sections.

POMPEO: So, Mike McKinley served me well for a year and a half. I chose him. I had people tell me he was a great Foreign Service officer and in fact, he served America wonderfully for 37 years. He in fact had the office that was just — just behind mine, had a door that he could walk in any time and say whatever he wanted. You know, from the time that Ambassador Yovanovitch departed Ukraine until the time that he came to tell me that he was departing, I never heard him say a single thing about his concerns with respect to the decision that was made —

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you were never asked —

POMPEO: Not — not — not once — not once, George, did Ambassador McKinley say something to me during that entire time period.

Stephanopoulos then tried again to ask about the statement of support, and this time Pompeo refused to answer, disingenuously suggesting it would stifle frank opinions. (In this case, Pompeo was simply being asked to confirm what his former adviser has already disclosed.)

POMPEO: George, again, I’m not going to talk about private conversations that I had with my most trusted advisers. I think it’s most appropriate that trusted advisers keep these conversations precisely where they are. Imagine if it becomes commonplace that a secretary of state would talk about things that his closest advisers said to him. I think you would agree, George, that that advice would change. People would be reluctant to speak. It wouldn’t be appropriate. I don’t intend to do that.

But Pompeo’s efforts to avoid talking about the statement of support may have backfired on him by the time the House Intelligence Committee released the transcript of McKinley’s interview. Pompeo’s statement that “not once, George, did Ambassador McKinley say something to me during that entire time period” was interpreted as talking about the statement of support — not the decision to oust Yovanovitch.

“Ex-Pompeo adviser contradicts former boss in impeachment inquiry testimony,” CNN headlined its article on Wednesday.

In the congressional deposition, McKinley related that he tried hard to get the State Department to issue a statement of support after the release of the transcript with Trump’s criticism. He said he probably raised it directly with Pompeo three times — that was “the matter” he was asked about. He described three conversations, saying that each time Pompeo simply refused to respond.

“He listened,” McKinley said, recounting one conversation. “That was it. Sort of, ‘Thank you.’ That was the limit of the conversation.” He said he could not even get a sense that Pompeo was supportive of the idea of a statement.

McKinley did get more enthusiastic support from other career officials, but the idea withered on the vine without high-level backing, by his account, and so he resigned. He said Pompeo also provided no reaction when he mentioned that as a reason for resigning.

“On that subject, he did not respond at all, again,” McKinley testified.

Nevertheless, McKinley acknowledged that he was not directly involved in Ukraine policy and says he only knew about it from what he read in the media. “I never spoke about her recall with anyone in the Department,” he said.

He added that he did not know why she was recalled. “So I can sit here and speculate, but it would be speculation. I saw nothing in writing,” he said. “I heard nothing. I heard no Department official speaking about the reasons for her recall.”

So McKinley confirmed the point that Pompeo had said in the ABC interview — that McKinley had not raised the ambassador’s ouster. But given that McKinley was not involved in Ukraine policy, there’s little reason for him to do so. But he was involved in Pompeo’s relations with the Foreign Service, which is why raising the statement of support was an important issue for McKinley.

During a stopover in Germany on Thursday, Pompeo was asked again by a State Department correspondent about why he failed to back the statement of support. The reporter carefully noted that Pompeo already had said McKinley had not questioned Yovanovitch’s ouster. Nevertheless, Pompeo deflected by again ignoring the actual question and instead talking about the ambassador’s recall in May. We have highlighted the key sections below.

QUESTION: Mr. Pompeo, Secretary Pompeo, you have said that Ambassador McKinley did not make known to you his objections over the recalling of Ambassador Yovanovitch, but he has testified that three times he directly appealed to you to make a statement in her support. You did not. Why not?

POMPEO: And as for Ambassador McKinley, I clearly follow this a lot less than you do. I haven’t had a chance — it’s a pretty busy world out there — haven’t had a chance to follow this, but with respect to Ambassador McKinley, I think he said at the opening statement that he put out that he wasn’t particularly involved in the Ukraine file, so it’s not surprising that when Ambassador Yovanovitch returned to the United States, that he didn’t raise that issue with me. That’s —

QUESTION: You’re saying he didn’t raise the issue at all?

POMPEO: It shouldn’t surprise anyone that in May when that took place, he didn’t say a thing to me.

QUESTION: Or ever?

SPOKESWOMAN: Okay, thanks. Next.

The State Department declined to provide The Fact Checker with the answer to the question that Pompeo has been avoiding.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Pompeo, who is under fire for refusing to publicly support career Foreign Service officers, clearly does not want to explain why he refused to back a statement of support for a career ambassador. But sometimes you can’t spin yourself out of tricky political situations.

🍁 ☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕🍂🍞🍁☕

Live updates: Trump calls for fraud investigations into whistleblower, his lawyer and Schiff

By John Wagner and Brittany Shammas

November 11 at 12:24 PM EST

With public hearings set to begin this week in the House impeachment inquiry, President Trump lashed out anew at the investigation, claiming without any evidence that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) had doctored transcripts from closed-door depositions.

Trump’s commentary on Twitter — which also included a call to end the “Impeachment Scam” — came as he spent the day in New York and made an appearance at a Veterans Day ceremony where protesters could be heard chanting “Lock him up!”

Democrats have chosen the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., as their lead witness on Wednesday as they seek to build the case that Trump improperly pressed Ukraine for investigations of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter at a time when U.S. military aid was being withheld.

●Move by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to join impeachment testimony lawsuit rankles allies of former national security adviser John Bolton.

●The key impeachment question: What did Trump want from Ukraine — and what exactly did he do?

●Lawmakers spar over impeachment witnesses as probe enters public phase.

Who’s involved in the impeachment inquiry | Key documents related to the inquiry | What’s next in the inquiry

______

12 p.m.: Rep. Zeldin shares news report of his emergence during inquiry

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) on Monday shared an NBC News story describing his rise from a “little-known, 39-year-old lawmaker” to one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in the impeachment inquiry.

In a tweet linking to the article, Zeldin also took aim at Schiff, who is leading the inquiry.

“Parody writer Adam Schiff’s job is to creatively connect dots not actually connected to sell a fairy tale impeachment narrative with 3% of a story,” Zeldin tweeted. “I’ll do everything in my power to make sure the American public gets the other 97%.”

The transcripts released so far of depositions taken during the impeachment inquiry have shown Zeldin, who represents eastern Long Island, to be the most vocal Republican during questioning, NBC News reported. He is a frequent spokesman for the president’s defense, often going on Twitter to attack Schiff and other Democrats leading the inquiry.

In a series of tweets over the weekend, Zeldin shared sections of transcripts featuring his own questions and witnesses’ responses to them.

“The Dems aren’t just ripping our country in half w/this impeachment charade, they’re also willingly setting fire to our alliance w Ukraine,” he wrote in one.

______

11 a.m.: Democrats push back on Trump’s claim of doctored transcripts

Democrats have begun pushing back on Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that Schiff is releasing doctored transcripts from closed-door depositions.

“Why does @realDonaldTrump feel compelled to lie about the transcripts, which were all reviewed by the witnesses? Because they are devastating to him,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) tweeted. “And who has the documents? The Administration. @POTUS is preventing Congress from seeing documents.”

Lieu, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, one of three House panels involved in depositions, was referring to documents requested by House investigators that the Trump administration has refused to turn over.

______

10:50 a.m.: Protesters chant ‘lock him up’ at Veterans Day event

Signs of protest were visible Monday as Trump began speaking at the New York City Veterans Day Parade.

Whistles and chants of “Lock him up!” could be heard from the west side of Madison Square Park on Fifth Avenue near the site of his speech.

Reporters also noted that signs spelling out the words “IMPEACH” and “CONVICT” were posted in the windows of a building overlooking the park.

Trump, who was accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, made no reference to impeachment during his remarks.

______

9:20 a.m.: Trump claims without evidence that Schiff is doctoring transcripts

Trump claimed without evidence on Monday that Schiff has been releasing “doctored” transcripts of closed-door depositions conducted by House investigators.

No Republican on the three committees participating in the questioning of witnesses has made such a claim.

“Republicans should put out their own transcripts!” Trump said in a tweet in which he referred to Schiff as “Shifty Adam Schiff.”

“Schiff must testify as to why he MADE UP a statement from me, and read it to all!” Trump added.

During an Intelligence Committee hearing last month, Schiff presented an embellished version of Trump’s July call in which he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.

At the time, Schiff said he was conveying “the essence” of what Trump had relayed to Zelensky. Schiff later said it was meant as a parody, something that he said should have been apparent to Trump.

______

9:15 a.m.: Trump calls for fraud investigations of whistleblower, his lawyer and Schiff

Less than an hour before his scheduled departure for a Veterans Day event, Trump returned to Twitter to call for an end to the “Impeachment Scam” and for fraud investigations into the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the inquiry, one of his lawyers, and Schiff.

“The lawyer for the Whistleblower takes away all credibility from this big Impeachment Scam!” Trump tweeted. “It should be ended and the Whistleblower, his lawyer and Corrupt politician Schiff should be investigared for fraud!” (Trump misspelled investigated.)

Trump and his GOP allies have seized on 2017 tweets written by Mark S. Zaid, one of the whistleblower’s lawyers, in which he predicted Trump would be impeached. Zaid has said he was exercising free speech and that his tweets don’t affect the facts of the case.

Schiff, who is leading the impeachment inquiry, has been a frequent target of Trump’s ire.

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An epic ‘Meet the Press’ rant unmasks the real goal of Trump’s lies

By Greg Sargent | Published November 11 at 10:03 AM ET | Washington Post |Posted November 11, 2019 |

The public phase of the impeachment inquiry is set to begin this week, and it will shock you to learn that House Republicans are pushing for it to include testimony from numerous people who are not in a position to shed any light whatsoever on President Trump’s conduct.

Republicans want to question Joe Biden’s son Hunter and other figures at the center of a nexus of conspiracy theories and lies that Trump and his propagandists have long employed to misdirect Americans away from Trump’s own bottomless corruption.

A remarkable and important series of exchanges on “Meet the Press” — including an epic rant from a Democrat about our media’s both-sidesing tendencies — demonstrates the true nature of the game plan we’re about to see from Trump and Republicans.

It all started when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) offered a spectacularly disingenuous new defense of Trump’s corruption. First, Paul claimed Trump was right to withhold military aid from Ukraine, because Trump truly believed that Biden was, in fact, corrupt.

Then Paul insisted that in pressuring Ukraine to undertake “investigations” of Biden, Trump was doing the same thing Biden did when he withheld aid to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor. Trump’s propagandists have twisted that act into a tale of Biden-and-son corruption that is entirely fabricated. Trump extorted Ukraine to force it to somehow make that fabrication true.

Finally, Paul did concede Trump pressured a foreign country to investigate a political rival, but added that Hillary Clinton “hired a British spy to hire Russians to get dirt called the Steele Dossier,” and equated that with Trump’s conduct.

NBC News’s Chuck Todd seemed to allow Paul’s basic framing to stand unchallenged, saying at one point: “So two wrongs make a right?” That prompted this remarkable pushback from Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), which you should watch in full:

The core distinction here is between shaping foreign policy around some conception of what’s in the national interest (withholding U.S. aid to get Ukraine to battle generic corruption) and perverting foreign policy to serve Trump’s political interests (withholding aid to extort Ukraine into helping absolve Russia of 2016 electoral sabotage on Trump’s behalf and to smear a 2020 opponent).

Paul laughably tried to reconcile these things by arguing that, since Biden actually was corrupt, in withholding aid Trump was acting in the national interest, as if the fact that Biden is a 2020 rival is pure coincidence. But Biden wasn’t actually corrupt, and Trump was subverting the national interest to his own.

WHAT BIDEN DID IN UKRAINE

Fortuitously, the New York Times has a deeply reported look at what Biden really did in Ukraine during those years as vice president. Biden was carrying out U.S. foreign policy by prodding Ukraine — awash in civil unrest and corruption, getting plundered by oligarchs and under Russian assault — to undertake reforms to bring it in line with Western democratic ideals, as a bulwark against Russia.

This is the important subplot lurking beneath the scandal headlines — that in leaving Ukraine vulnerable to Russia in order to strong-arm Ukraine into carrying out his own self-interested corrupt designs, Trump retreated from the United States’ posture of siding with Ukraine in a broader battle between liberal democracy and illiberal authoritarian kleptocracy.

As Franklin Foer has shown, Biden was trying to pull Ukraine into a more democratic orbit, and Trump in effect pulled in the other direction, mingling his own corruption with Russian geopolitical interests.

Importantly, the diplomats horrified by Trump’s misconduct have also testified to this broader story. As Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. suggested, Trump betrayed a “democratic neighbor” that is “eager to join Western institutions and enjoy a more secure and prosperous life.”

Thus, the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor that Biden sought was in keeping with U.S. policy and broadly supported by numerous international institutions. What’s more, that prosecutor was failing to investigate corruption, and wasn’t even investigating Burisma (Hunter Biden’s company).

It’s legitimate to raise questions about what Hunter Biden’s Burisma work shows about the propriety of profiting off proximity to power. But this doesn’t alter our understanding of what Joe Biden actually was doing in Ukraine, which — unlike Trump’s conduct — was shaped around the national interest.

As for the comparison to Hillary Clinton’s supposed collusion and hiring of a spy, all that is based on wild exaggerations and fabrications as well. Naturally, the other witnesses Republicans want to call are supposed to shed (fake) light on that story.

HOW TRUMP’S PROPAGANDA WORKS

This episode on “Meet the Press” illustrates in a back-door way what the real aim of pro-Trump propaganda is, and how it will be employed in the inquiry’s public phase.

Remember, it was a longtime imperative for Trump and lawyer Rudolph Giuliani to get Ukraine to issue a public statement confirming sham investigations that would rewrite the story of 2016 and help rig 2020 for Trump. This scandal is all about disinformation — about getting news organizations to treat disinformation seriously, to create a miasma of doubt around Russia’s 2016 sabotage and an aura of corruption around Biden.

Indeed, as former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon has admitted, the way to create this sort of aura is to get the mainstream media to cover such allegations, no matter how discredited, to introduce them into the mainstream discussion and get them treated as representing one side of a good-faith political dialogue.

That’s the obvious goal behind getting the impeachment inquiry to include public testimony from people like Hunter Biden. And along those lines, this “Meet the Press” episode is a cautionary tale. It shows what it looks like when a bad-faith actor — Paul — floats this kind of disinformation and succeeds in getting it treated far too respectfully.

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13 Republicans and Trump appointees who have indicated his Ukraine call was hardly ‘perfect’

By Aaron Blake | Published November 11 at 12:21 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted November 11, 2019 |

President Trump felt the need Sunday to rally the Republican troops. In a tweet, he again urged them to defend him to the hilt on the Ukraine scandal — and suggested they weren’t quite doing it.

“The call to the Ukrainian President was PERFECT,” he declared. “Read the Transcript! There was NOTHING said that was in any way wrong. Republicans, don’t be led into the fools trap of saying it was not perfect, but is not impeachable. No, it is much stronger than that. NOTHING WAS DONE WRONG!”

So why the sudden outburst? Probably because that particular view was suddenly in vogue this weekend. No fewer than four Republicans — former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (La.) and Reps. Mac Thornberry (Tex.) and Will Hurd (Tex.) — all said that asking for an investigation of a political opponent isn’t okay.

None of them said Trump should be impeached — Kennedy suggested Trump’s request of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky might not have been so directly aimed at former vice president Joe Biden, even though Trump asked Zelensky specifically to investigate Joe Biden, and his son Hunter, who worked in Ukraine — but there seems to be an increasing willingness not to pretend the call was nearly as “perfect” as Trump claims.

We now count 13 Republicans and Trump appointees — including three ambassadors and ambassador nominees — who have offered some version of this talking point. A couple applied it to China, whom Trump also said should investigate Biden, but the sentiment is largely the same.

All of them are making it more difficult for Trump to argue there’s nothing to see here. Here’s the list:

Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley: “It is not a good practice for us ever to ask a foreign country to investigate an American.” But “I don’t see it as impeachable.”

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.): “I believe that it is inappropriate for a president to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival. ... I believe it was inappropriate. I don’t believe it was impeachable.”

Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.): “What I am telling you is that, if it can be demonstrated that the president asked for and had the requisite state of mind, that the president asked for an investigation of a political rival, that’s over the line. ... But if he asked for an investigation of possible corruption by someone who happens to be a political rival, that’s not over the line.”

Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.): “I think if you’re trying to get information on a political rival to use in a political campaign, it is not something a president or any official should be doing.”

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio): “I thought it was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign government to investigate a political opponent.” But “I also do not think it’s an impeachable offense.”

Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.): “While the conversation reported in the memorandum relating to alleged Ukrainian corruption and Vice President Biden’s son was inappropriate, it does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah): “By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.”

Russia ambassador nominee John Sullivan: “Soliciting investigations into a domestic political opponent — I don’t think that would be in accord with our values.”

European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland: “I believe I testified that it would be improper to do that.” Asked whether it would be illegal: “I’m not a lawyer, but I assume so.”

Rep Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.): “It is highly inappropriate if it was done.” (Kinzinger said this before the rough transcript of Trump’s call was released.)

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.): Trump’s conduct with regard to Ukraine is “not OK.”

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.): “Hold up: Americans don’t look to Chinese commies for the truth. If the Biden kid broke laws by selling his name to Beijing, that’s a matter for American courts, not communist tyrants running torture camps.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine): “I thought the president made a big mistake by asking China to get involved in investigating a political opponent. It’s completely inappropriate.”

[mikemortgage]

Don’t blame melting ice for polar bear attacks. Blame a bear baby boom

February 27th is International Polar Bear Day, and what interesting timing it happens to be this year. In recent weeks the media have been all over the news that the Russian village of Belushaya Guba, on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the southern Barents Sea had declared a state of emergency because more than 50 aggressive and fearless polar bears had invaded the community. Protected status for the bears meant deadly force was not an option for terrified residents, yet non-lethal efforts to get the bears to leave had been futile.

Predictably, the blame was immediately put on sea-ice loss due to climate change — not by a scientist but by a Norwegian journalist who initially reported the story, adding in his own homemade, unscientific analysis. Pundits came out of the gate later, to add further layers of hyperbole, even after the original journalist followed up with another story recanting his original theories, headlined “Well-fed polar bears are not necessarily stuck at Novaya Zemlya due to climate change, experts say.”

The primary problem was, in fact, the village’s garbage, with too many bears being a close second. There had been ice enough in late November to allow the bears to leave Novaya Zemlya as they usually do in the fall but they did not. Dozens of fat bears chose to stay for the winter because of easy access to stores of food and an open-air garbage dump.

The real story behind the famous starving polar-bear video reveals more manipulation

Polar bears keep thriving even as global warming alarmists keep pretending they’re dying

Terence Corcoran: Canadian finds polar bears are doing fine — and gets climate-mauled

A few days after military personnel arrived and got serious about running the chubby troublemakers out of town, the bears took to the ice. But a week later, CNN was still pushing the imminent climate-change catastrophe meme using video footage of fat, healthy bears.

The story was reminiscent of the trouble that Churchill, Man. had with polar bears in the late 1960s, when bear numbers were burgeoning because of new restrictions on hunting them. As polar bear specialist Ian Stirling and colleagues described in a 1977 Canadian Wildlife Service report, increasing numbers of fearless bears wandered the streets of Churchill, which had three open-air dumps that bears frequented day and night:

“…in November 1968, up to 40 polar bears at any one time could be seen in the vicinity of the Fort Churchill dump, and 60 to 80 bears were estimated to be frequenting the settlements.”

Bears attacked residents on a regular basis and a young Inuit man was killed. They broke into houses, killed dogs, and frightened people out of their wits. But at least when the ice came in the fall, Churchill bears left of their own accord.

Churchill now has its garbage under control and a Polar Bear Alert Program that is the envy of the Arctic. But it was expensive and took years to achieve such exemplary results. Few communities can muster those kinds of resources to deal with problem bears, especially Inuit hamlets in Canada and Greenland. In Nunavut, many residents of these small towns are terrified by the number of recent fatal attacks and close calls.

Two young Inuk men — one from Arviat, the other from Naujaat — were mauled to death last summer after years of Nunavut residents complaining that polar bear problems were spiralling out of control. Residents insist the spike is due to increased numbers of bears and that the bears they see (like those on Novaya Zemlya) are fat and healthy.

But biologists insist polar bear numbers are declining, especially in Western Hudson Bay, and that bears invade communities because sea-ice loss has deprived them of hunting habitat. Inuit say bears are not starving and numbers are up virtually everywhere, including Western Hudson Bay. A draft management plan released by the Nunavut government in November said, “Inuit believe there are now so many bears that public safety has become a major concern.”

As I reported in the 2018 State of the Polar Bear Report, the latest survey and research results suggest that polar bears probably number about 29,500 across the Arctic, with a wide margin of potential error. That’s up since 2005, when the count was about 24,500, despite low summer sea ice since 2007. Polar bears have proven to be more flexible in their habits and more capable in open water than scientists assumed. Long-term trends in sea ice cannot be used to explain individual events, like the mauling deaths this summer in Nunavut or the invasion of fat bears on Novaya Zemlya.

Furthermore, scientists who support the use of polar-bear tragedy porn by media and conservation activists to promote climate-change hysteria don’t do themselves any favours. Two years ago, biologist Steven Amstrup from Polar Bears International condoned the use of a now infamous starving polar bear video to spread climate alarmism: National Geographic later had to apologize for the misrepresentation. But University of Alberta biologist Andrew Derocher’s recent online comment about the Belushaya Guba bears (“it may not be climate change but it’s consistent with the predicted impacts of climate change”) suggests that some scientists still think it’s OK to mislead the public about polar bears when promoting climate change alarm.

Escalating problems with polar bears across the Arctic in all seasons are not what climate change looks like. They’re a sign of ever-increasing numbers of polar bears.

Susan Crockford is a zoologist and adjunct professor at the University of Victoria. She blogs about polar bears at www.polarbearscience.com.

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How Medical Tyranny Through Forced HIV Drugs Destroyed a Child's Life and Killed His Mother

Lindsey beat all the odds growing up, but Mayo Clinic and CPS threw her a curve ball she was not able to overcome. Photo supplied by family.

by Health Impact News/MedicalKidnap.com Staff

When Lindsey Nagel gave birth to her son Rico, she recognized that the only reason that she had lived long enough to fall in love and bear a child was because of the courage of her parents to discontinue a dangerous medication for her when she was just 2-years-old.

She was devastated when doctors insisted that the same drug be given to her newborn son. When she hesitated to comply, doctors and a social worker with the Mayo Clinic affiliated hospital called Child Protective Services.

The Nagel story is one of heartache, then triumph, followed by devastation. While no family escapes encounters with Child Protective Services unscathed, the Nagels' encounter ultimately cost Lindsey's life.

Like too many parents before and after her, Lindsey's health declined and she lost the will to live.

She is another tragic casualty in the battle for families waging in our country right now as a result of medical kidnappings.

Lindsey's mother Cheryl Nagel was a recent guest on the Victurus Libertas show. In the episode entitled, “The Lindsey Nagel Story – #1984 – The State Owns Your Children,” Cheryl shared the stunning saga of her family's eye-opening encounter with the power of the state and medical establishment combined.

Listen to the story here:

Mayo Clinic Hospital is intimately connected to the Nagels' story. In the early 90s, they had a good experience with their hospital system. Years later, decisions made by Mayo Clinic destroyed their family.

Mayo was the recent subject of a CNN story of the medical kidnapping of an 18-year-old who was ultimately able to escape. Like the Nagels, the initial experience that Alyssa Gilderhus and her family had with Mayo Clinic was positive.

In both cases, it was after they questioned the doctors and wanted to make their own informed decisions that the doctors fought back to keep control over the situations. Thankfully, Alyssa Gilderhus was able to escape before Mayo was able to follow through on securing a guardianship to seize control of her life.

The Nagels were not so fortunate.

Life-Changing Diagnosis

Their story began in 1990 in an orphanage in Romania. Cheryl and Steve adopted baby Lindsey who was the picture of health at 2-weeks-old. She passed all of the health tests, including the HIV test required by the U.S. government for all foreign adoptions.

The Nagels with baby Lindsey. Photo provided by family.

When they returned to their Minnesota home, they went to a local doctor who recommended a full battery of tests for internationally adopted babies. The couple was devastated when the doctor reported that Lindsey was HIV positive, based on different diagnostic levels for the screening test in the United States versus Romania and other countries. Doctors told her that their baby had less than a 20% chance of surviving to age 2.

Right away, Cheryl says she got the medicine that doctors told her would save her baby's life – azidothymidine, or AZT. She was so determined to follow doctors orders and do what was necessary that she sat down on the floor of the pharmacy to give Lindsey her first dose as soon as she got it.

At that time, AZT was the only treatment available, and its side effects were severe. Lindsey's health declined. There were times that she stopped growing. As she approached her second birthday, the leg cramps were so severe that she cried out to her parents multiple times in the night to rub her legs.

Doctors told the Nagels that these symptoms were all part of the progression of HIV. They weren't.

Knowledge Changes Things

It was around that time that Cheryl's father read an article that would change everything for them. Peter Duesberg, Ph.D., had published research such as this paper in scientific journals that connected the development of AIDS in HIV patients to the use of AZT. He also challenged the mainstream theory that HIV caused AIDS (See paper).

The Nagels wrote to Dr. Duesberg. As a result of what they learned, they decided to take Lindsey off of AZT and started working with a holistic doctor. The results were almost miraculous. She immediately started gaining weight and thriving. Her labs were normal.

Instead of being delighted at her progress, her regular doctors were incensed and called Child Protective Services. The family contacted their attorney, who recommended that they contact Mayo Clinic to see if there was a doctor there who would work with them.

Cheryl says that they found a wonderful doctor at Mayo who agreed to allow Lindsey to stay off of AZT as long as she could be monitored.

With Lindsey's improved health, life got much better. The parents who had been afraid that they would soon have to plan for their daughter's funeral began to be able to enjoy life as it came. (See article from LA Times).

Despite the HIV positive label, Lindsey's health improved greatly once she was taken off of the medications. Photo supplied by family.

As she grew up, Lindsey took ballet and played soccer. She was able to have a normal life as a teenager, healthy and free from medication.

Her dramatic improvement led to articles across the country being written about her. They traveled and even spoke at AIDS conferences. (See video). They were guests on the Robert Scott Bell radio show to tell their story. (See Part 1 and Part 2).

Cheryl and Steve went against the mainstream and the reward was their daughter's life.

Cheryl later learned that there were 10 children in the Minneapolis area who were HIV positive and taking AZT at the time that Lindsey was taking AZT. The only child who grew up was Lindsey. All of the other children were dead.

Bullied into Giving Dangerous Drugs to Her Baby

When Lindsey was 20, she fell in love with a young man named John. By age 22 she became pregnant. They were planning to get married. Since a Mayo Clinic doctor had treated them so well before, Lindsey chose to give birth in a Mayo affiliated hospital. This experience would not go nearly as well as their prior experience with Mayo, which is a research hospital.

According to Cheryl:

The day he was born, a doctor, a lawyer, and a [hospital] social worker appeared in the delivery room and told Lindsey that if she did not give the newborn AZT, Rico would be placed in foster care.

The young mother was stunned. She pointed out that the drug had almost killed her, so why would she want to give that to her new baby. Her father phoned their attorney after the posse left the room. When he hung up the phone, he told Lindsey:

These are some very serious people, and they're going to take Rico away from you if you don't comply.

They knew they had no choice. There was no drawn out battle. Lindsey quickly bowed to the demands of the doctors:

Ok. I'd rather give him the medication and have him in my care than have him in the care of a stranger and not ever see him.

Once her parents told the Mayo attorney their daughter's decision, the attorney reportedly said that he would call off Child Protective Services. But they had already notified CPS, and there was no going back.

Lindsey and baby Rico in the NICU. Photo supplied by family.

Rico, who had been born with respiratory and meconium issues, was whisked away to the NICU almost immediately. The drugs were started right away.

In An Open Letter From Cheryl Nagel published on Celia Farber's Truth Barrier, Cheryl wrote:

We certainly didn't know it at the time, but on the second day of Rico's life, and even possibly, the first day of Rico's life Dr. Huskins took it upon himself to treat the HIV, and administered an experimental, perhaps controversial, heavy duty drug treatment, presumably intended to shock the HIV out of Rico's body. The two drugs were Nevirapine and AZT.

But at a CARE meeting a few days later, Dr. Huskins shocked us all with this admission: “I made a mistake,” he said. Instead of giving Rico the intended dose of Nevirapine, he accidentally administered a triple dose.

John asked, “If that does cause damage, what would it look like?”

Dr. Huskins said, “It would be neurological damage.” It was a surreal moment.

It is interesting that this “mistake” was seemingly overlooked, yet we had to wonder why Rico had an MRI while in the NICU. At the time the doctors claimed they were looking for a cause for Rico's trouble swallowing, and they were wondering why his head circumference was 3% on the growth charts.

I was left wondering if they were actually trying to determine if the triple dose of Nevirapine affected Rico's brain and neurological function. By March 4, his head circumference was at 9% on the growth charts. And the trouble swallowing was diagnosed by an occupational therapist who came in with a tongue depressor and observed that Rico had a split uvula.

I couldn't help but make a comparison between what happened to Lindsey and Rico and a little girl in Mississippi, whose story was in the headlines March of 2013. Our stories unfolded concurrently and even the prosecutor questioned Dr. Huskins during the trial about the similarities. She had also been diagnosed as HIV+ and treated similarly with large doses of an experimental drug that was supposed to knock the HIV out of her body. At first it appeared to work, but the HIV reappeared months later at which point the story disappeared from the news. It was difficult to miss the similarities.

Was Rico being used as a research subject?

Lindsey was given the opportunity to willingly participate in Mayo research. She was paid $25 to fill out the form whether she was going to participate or not. She always filled out her forms, saying, “NO, I do not wish to be part of a study.”

CPS had not been involved while Rico was in the NICU for 3 weeks. The family believed the attorney who told them that they had called off CPS. That is why they were shocked when a social worker and police showed up on their doorstep 8 days after they were home with the baby. They seized baby Rico from his devastated mother, accusing her of “medical neglect” because she “might” not treat her baby with the drugs that the doctors at Mayo insisted upon.

Horrible Side Effects from CPS-Mandated Drugs

The drugs were already causing problems. Cheryl told Health Impact News that, for about an hour after each dose, Rico would be congested and his breathing was raspy. The new foster parents didn't know this, so they took him to the hospital almost immediately after they got him. He was then hospitalized for 52 days.

Lindsey and John were eventually allowed to take him home. However, CPS took medical custody away from his parents. They had no voice at all in his medical care.

Photo supplied by family.

CPS demanded that Lindsey use Skype to record herself giving three different drugs to Rico at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. every day with the social worker watching. Rico hated the medicines and would cry and arch his back, and many times he would have seizures, all while the social worker looked on.

On one occasion, “Cell biologist Dr. Andrew Maniotis witnessed a dosing of Rico in April 2013.” He described what he saw:

My observations then of this government-ordered, Skype-monitored drugging were consistent with those of his parents and grandparents in January and February, when he was still in the hospital. Rico again, in front of me, arched his back and foamed at the mouth. His mother and I wiped the foam. But because it came out in a significant amount, I was concerned about his airway clearance.

As Rico became listless as the drugs were administered, I poked the baby several times and “tweaked” his nose to check for a response to those stimuli. He didn't react and was similarly non-respondent for about two minutes. This was a sign of a small seizure, in my opinion. My own research on seizures using electron microscopy showed that the brain is damaged by each and every seizure it experiences. (Source).

This was a common reaction for baby Rico, and he went through this 2 times every day. Lindsey could not miss a day of Skyping or change the time. There were also many doctors appointments. This went on for many months.

Mother's Health Declines

The stress took a heavy toll on Lindsey's health and on her relationship with John. It is very common that parents report to us that the constant micro-managing by CPS of their every move causes a great deal of stress. They can never relax, and life is never normal.

Before CPS, Lindsey was very happy and close to her parents. Photo supplied by family.

Cheryl couldn't believe that this is really America. Her sister said:

This just sounds like a page out of hell.

The fear for their baby's health and safety was a constant cloud over their heads. The medications did indeed, as Dr. Huskins said, cause neurological damage. Even now, at almost 6-years-old, Cheryl says that he cannot talk or sit up on his own.

Cheryl told us that Lindsey gave up. She grew up feeling like she had a scarlet H on her forehead, yet she had overcome so much in her life. This chapter was one trial after another.

Every time she'd have a dream, someone would come along and squash it.

When Rico was 10-months-old, Lindsey came down with pneumonia. She developed a serious infection and went downhill from there. Was it the HIV coming back with a vengeance, or was it the stress, or simply a broken heart? The family will never know.

After more than a year of being in and out of the hospital, Lindsey passed away at 24-years-old.

Rico lives with his father and is reportedly well-cared for.

Cheryl told Victuras Libertas:

Not only did [CPS] take our grandson away, our daughter gave up on living.

Rising from the Ashes of Despair to Help Others

Cheryl Nagel refuses to let this be the end. She hopes to write a book one day. Meanwhile, Cheryl has become a social media warrior fighting for families.

She runs Mad Angel's Army Facebook page and other social media groups, and she daily works to encourage and educate parents who are fighting for the survival of their families. She cannot help with legal issues, she says, but she can help educate parents about what it is that they are facing. Cheryl Nagel is a blessing to many.

Victurus Libertas is also dedicated to helping to educate families. Host Angie says:

We started a channel just to expose corruption. We wanted to expose corruption, and CPS seems to be one of the biggest corrupt organizations out there.

Another Medical Kidnap mother, Jennifer Guskin, was also recent guest on the show. She talked about the story of the medical kidnapping of her daughter Iris, as well as some of her horrific experiences being a victim of human trafficking and experimentation as a child. See her story:

Mother Who Was Sexually Trafficked as a Child in Foster Care Has Her Own Baby Medically Kidnapped – Fears for Her Safety

Comment on this article at MedicalKidnap.com.

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[battybat-boss]

How Medical Tyranny Through Forced HIV Drugs Destroyed a Child's Life and Killed His Mother

Lindsey beat all the odds growing up, but Mayo Clinic and CPS threw her a curve ball she was not able to overcome. Photo supplied by family.

by Health Impact News/MedicalKidnap.com Staff

When Lindsey Nagel gave birth to her son Rico, she recognized that the only reason that she had lived long enough to fall in love and bear a child was because of the courage of her parents to discontinue a dangerous medication for her when she was just 2-years-old.

She was devastated when doctors insisted that the same drug be given to her newborn son. When she hesitated to comply, doctors and a social worker with the Mayo Clinic affiliated hospital called Child Protective Services.

The Nagel story is one of heartache, then triumph, followed by devastation. While no family escapes encounters with Child Protective Services unscathed, the Nagels' encounter ultimately cost Lindsey's life.

Like too many parents before and after her, Lindsey's health declined and she lost the will to live.

She is another tragic casualty in the battle for families waging in our country right now as a result of medical kidnappings.

Lindsey's mother Cheryl Nagel was a recent guest on the Victurus Libertas show. In the episode entitled, “The Lindsey Nagel Story – #1984 – The State Owns Your Children,” Cheryl shared the stunning saga of her family's eye-opening encounter with the power of the state and medical establishment combined.

Listen to the story here:

Mayo Clinic Hospital is intimately connected to the Nagels' story. In the early 90s, they had a good experience with their hospital system. Years later, decisions made by Mayo Clinic destroyed their family.

Mayo was the recent subject of a CNN story of the medical kidnapping of an 18-year-old who was ultimately able to escape. Like the Nagels, the initial experience that Alyssa Gilderhus and her family had with Mayo Clinic was positive.

In both cases, it was after they questioned the doctors and wanted to make their own informed decisions that the doctors fought back to keep control over the situations. Thankfully, Alyssa Gilderhus was able to escape before Mayo was able to follow through on securing a guardianship to seize control of her life.

The Nagels were not so fortunate.

Life-Changing Diagnosis

Their story began in 1990 in an orphanage in Romania. Cheryl and Steve adopted baby Lindsey who was the picture of health at 2-weeks-old. She passed all of the health tests, including the HIV test required by the U.S. government for all foreign adoptions.

The Nagels with baby Lindsey. Photo provided by family.

When they returned to their Minnesota home, they went to a local doctor who recommended a full battery of tests for internationally adopted babies. The couple was devastated when the doctor reported that Lindsey was HIV positive, based on different diagnostic levels for the screening test in the United States versus Romania and other countries. Doctors told her that their baby had less than a 20% chance of surviving to age 2.

Right away, Cheryl says she got the medicine that doctors told her would save her baby's life – azidothymidine, or AZT. She was so determined to follow doctors orders and do what was necessary that she sat down on the floor of the pharmacy to give Lindsey her first dose as soon as she got it.

At that time, AZT was the only treatment available, and its side effects were severe. Lindsey's health declined. There were times that she stopped growing. As she approached her second birthday, the leg cramps were so severe that she cried out to her parents multiple times in the night to rub her legs.

Doctors told the Nagels that these symptoms were all part of the progression of HIV. They weren't.

Knowledge Changes Things

It was around that time that Cheryl's father read an article that would change everything for them. Peter Duesberg, Ph.D., had published research such as this paper in scientific journals that connected the development of AIDS in HIV patients to the use of AZT. He also challenged the mainstream theory that HIV caused AIDS (See paper).

The Nagels wrote to Dr. Duesberg. As a result of what they learned, they decided to take Lindsey off of AZT and started working with a holistic doctor. The results were almost miraculous. She immediately started gaining weight and thriving. Her labs were normal.

Instead of being delighted at her progress, her regular doctors were incensed and called Child Protective Services. The family contacted their attorney, who recommended that they contact Mayo Clinic to see if there was a doctor there who would work with them.

Cheryl says that they found a wonderful doctor at Mayo who agreed to allow Lindsey to stay off of AZT as long as she could be monitored.

With Lindsey's improved health, life got much better. The parents who had been afraid that they would soon have to plan for their daughter's funeral began to be able to enjoy life as it came. (See article from LA Times).

Despite the HIV positive label, Lindsey's health improved greatly once she was taken off of the medications. Photo supplied by family.

As she grew up, Lindsey took ballet and played soccer. She was able to have a normal life as a teenager, healthy and free from medication.

Her dramatic improvement led to articles across the country being written about her. They traveled and even spoke at AIDS conferences. (See video). They were guests on the Robert Scott Bell radio show to tell their story. (See Part 1 and Part 2).

Cheryl and Steve went against the mainstream and the reward was their daughter's life.

Cheryl later learned that there were 10 children in the Minneapolis area who were HIV positive and taking AZT at the time that Lindsey was taking AZT. The only child who grew up was Lindsey. All of the other children were dead.

Bullied into Giving Dangerous Drugs to Her Baby

When Lindsey was 20, she fell in love with a young man named John. By age 22 she became pregnant. They were planning to get married. Since a Mayo Clinic doctor had treated them so well before, Lindsey chose to give birth in a Mayo affiliated hospital. This experience would not go nearly as well as their prior experience with Mayo, which is a research hospital.

According to Cheryl:

The day he was born, a doctor, a lawyer, and a [hospital] social worker appeared in the delivery room and told Lindsey that if she did not give the newborn AZT, Rico would be placed in foster care.

The young mother was stunned. She pointed out that the drug had almost killed her, so why would she want to give that to her new baby. Her father phoned their attorney after the posse left the room. When he hung up the phone, he told Lindsey:

These are some very serious people, and they're going to take Rico away from you if you don't comply.

They knew they had no choice. There was no drawn out battle. Lindsey quickly bowed to the demands of the doctors:

Ok. I'd rather give him the medication and have him in my care than have him in the care of a stranger and not ever see him.

Once her parents told the Mayo attorney their daughter's decision, the attorney reportedly said that he would call off Child Protective Services. But they had already notified CPS, and there was no going back.

Lindsey and baby Rico in the NICU. Photo supplied by family.

Rico, who had been born with respiratory and meconium issues, was whisked away to the NICU almost immediately. The drugs were started right away.

In An Open Letter From Cheryl Nagel published on Celia Farber's Truth Barrier, Cheryl wrote:

We certainly didn't know it at the time, but on the second day of Rico's life, and even possibly, the first day of Rico's life Dr. Huskins took it upon himself to treat the HIV, and administered an experimental, perhaps controversial, heavy duty drug treatment, presumably intended to shock the HIV out of Rico's body. The two drugs were Nevirapine and AZT.

But at a CARE meeting a few days later, Dr. Huskins shocked us all with this admission: “I made a mistake,” he said. Instead of giving Rico the intended dose of Nevirapine, he accidentally administered a triple dose.

John asked, “If that does cause damage, what would it look like?”

Dr. Huskins said, “It would be neurological damage.” It was a surreal moment.

It is interesting that this “mistake” was seemingly overlooked, yet we had to wonder why Rico had an MRI while in the NICU. At the time the doctors claimed they were looking for a cause for Rico's trouble swallowing, and they were wondering why his head circumference was 3% on the growth charts.

I was left wondering if they were actually trying to determine if the triple dose of Nevirapine affected Rico's brain and neurological function. By March 4, his head circumference was at 9% on the growth charts. And the trouble swallowing was diagnosed by an occupational therapist who came in with a tongue depressor and observed that Rico had a split uvula.

I couldn't help but make a comparison between what happened to Lindsey and Rico and a little girl in Mississippi, whose story was in the headlines March of 2013. Our stories unfolded concurrently and even the prosecutor questioned Dr. Huskins during the trial about the similarities. She had also been diagnosed as HIV+ and treated similarly with large doses of an experimental drug that was supposed to knock the HIV out of her body. At first it appeared to work, but the HIV reappeared months later at which point the story disappeared from the news. It was difficult to miss the similarities.

Was Rico being used as a research subject?

Lindsey was given the opportunity to willingly participate in Mayo research. She was paid $25 to fill out the form whether she was going to participate or not. She always filled out her forms, saying, “NO, I do not wish to be part of a study.”

CPS had not been involved while Rico was in the NICU for 3 weeks. The family believed the attorney who told them that they had called off CPS. That is why they were shocked when a social worker and police showed up on their doorstep 8 days after they were home with the baby. They seized baby Rico from his devastated mother, accusing her of “medical neglect” because she “might” not treat her baby with the drugs that the doctors at Mayo insisted upon.

Horrible Side Effects from CPS-Mandated Drugs

The drugs were already causing problems. Cheryl told Health Impact News that, for about an hour after each dose, Rico would be congested and his breathing was raspy. The new foster parents didn't know this, so they took him to the hospital almost immediately after they got him. He was then hospitalized for 52 days.

Lindsey and John were eventually allowed to take him home. However, CPS took medical custody away from his parents. They had no voice at all in his medical care.

Photo supplied by family.

CPS demanded that Lindsey use Skype to record herself giving three different drugs to Rico at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. every day with the social worker watching. Rico hated the medicines and would cry and arch his back, and many times he would have seizures, all while the social worker looked on.

On one occasion, “Cell biologist Dr. Andrew Maniotis witnessed a dosing of Rico in April 2013.” He described what he saw:

My observations then of this government-ordered, Skype-monitored drugging were consistent with those of his parents and grandparents in January and February, when he was still in the hospital. Rico again, in front of me, arched his back and foamed at the mouth. His mother and I wiped the foam. But because it came out in a significant amount, I was concerned about his airway clearance.

As Rico became listless as the drugs were administered, I poked the baby several times and “tweaked” his nose to check for a response to those stimuli. He didn't react and was similarly non-respondent for about two minutes. This was a sign of a small seizure, in my opinion. My own research on seizures using electron microscopy showed that the brain is damaged by each and every seizure it experiences. (Source).

This was a common reaction for baby Rico, and he went through this 2 times every day. Lindsey could not miss a day of Skyping or change the time. There were also many doctors appointments. This went on for many months.

Mother's Health Declines

The stress took a heavy toll on Lindsey's health and on her relationship with John. It is very common that parents report to us that the constant micro-managing by CPS of their every move causes a great deal of stress. They can never relax, and life is never normal.

Before CPS, Lindsey was very happy and close to her parents. Photo supplied by family.

Cheryl couldn't believe that this is really America. Her sister said:

This just sounds like a page out of hell.

The fear for their baby's health and safety was a constant cloud over their heads. The medications did indeed, as Dr. Huskins said, cause neurological damage. Even now, at almost 6-years-old, Cheryl says that he cannot talk or sit up on his own.

Cheryl told us that Lindsey gave up. She grew up feeling like she had a scarlet H on her forehead, yet she had overcome so much in her life. This chapter was one trial after another.

Every time she'd have a dream, someone would come along and squash it.

When Rico was 10-months-old, Lindsey came down with pneumonia. She developed a serious infection and went downhill from there. Was it the HIV coming back with a vengeance, or was it the stress, or simply a broken heart? The family will never know.

After more than a year of being in and out of the hospital, Lindsey passed away at 24-years-old.

Rico lives with his father and is reportedly well-cared for.

Cheryl told Victuras Libertas:

Not only did [CPS] take our grandson away, our daughter gave up on living.

Rising from the Ashes of Despair to Help Others

Cheryl Nagel refuses to let this be the end. She hopes to write a book one day. Meanwhile, Cheryl has become a social media warrior fighting for families.

She runs Mad Angel's Army Facebook page and other social media groups, and she daily works to encourage and educate parents who are fighting for the survival of their families. She cannot help with legal issues, she says, but she can help educate parents about what it is that they are facing. Cheryl Nagel is a blessing to many.

Victurus Libertas is also dedicated to helping to educate families. Host Angie says:

We started a channel just to expose corruption. We wanted to expose corruption, and CPS seems to be one of the biggest corrupt organizations out there.

Another Medical Kidnap mother, Jennifer Guskin, was also recent guest on the show. She talked about the story of the medical kidnapping of her daughter Iris, as well as some of her horrific experiences being a victim of human trafficking and experimentation as a child. See her story:

Mother Who Was Sexually Trafficked as a Child in Foster Care Has Her Own Baby Medically Kidnapped – Fears for Her Safety

Comment on this article at MedicalKidnap.com.

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[xoxogenerationz-blog]

Magical Brain

Information overload!!!! Do you ever just feel like your brain is going to explode from the amount of memes you see in a single hour? I do. In fact a lot of people do, which brings us to today’s challenge - the magical brain. Podcast host Manoush instructed listeners to refrain from reading and consuming things simply because they are viral or trending. Instead listeners must choose what is valuable and what is not. If i am being honest, I find memes highly valuable, however not valuable enough to have me succeed in this challenge.

The hardest thing I found about this challenge was figuring out what is important and what is not. I follow a lot of meme, pop culture, and youth related accounts on instagram (instagram is definitely my primary source of information) and I would definitely have to say that almost everything they post is not valuable to me in any way. Therefore I had to make a decision, do I stay off instagram and save myself the trouble of finding non-existent valuable information, or do I look for something that does not exist. Ultimately I chose to stay off the app for a few hours, and figured if anything groundbreaking happened then I’d hear about it some other way.

I decided that I could use this one day to fill my brain with things that actually matter, so I downloaded a number of news apps such as CNN and CP24 to keep up to date with political and economic news, things that I always love knowing about, but never actually take the time to seek out myself. I’ll admit that I did go on instagram to like posts and respond to messages in my DM’s but whenever I did I found myself scrolling past a lot of headlines posted by accounts that I found interesting but not valuable.

when I reflect back to my media use self assessment, I recall myself stating that I am a high consumer of all things popular culture and it is very vital in my every day life, this challenge further proved this. Although I found pleasure viewing the news apps that I downloaded, I could not help but still feel bored and felt that I was missing out on all the latest hollywood scandals. 

I constantly felt the need to search up the latest celebrity gossip or something of that sort, this feeling actually kind of scared me a little bit. I began to wonder if i’ve always been a consumer of useless pop cultural information, or if this was something new and if so- would I grow out of it? I enjoy the information that I consume, however I do realize that most of it is useless and will not allow me to grow intellectually.  But honestly, what’s the harm in reading up on the pregnancy of another Kardashian in an attempt to distract myself from the tumultuous tweets of President Trump??