Demovictory9
Demovictory9's JournalTrump goes full racist. blasts 'breeding' in sanctuary cities. That's a racist term.
But it's the next part of the tweet that is more difficult to understand.
"Sooo many Sanctuary areas want OUT of this ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept," according to the President.
What exactly does he mean by "breeding concept?" It appears to be a new addition to his rhetoric on immigration. He doesn't appear to have used it before on Twitter or in recent public remarks on sanctuary cities.
There is great danger in trying to dissect every word of a Trump tweet, but in this case it is worth trying to figure out. CNN has reached out to the White House to figure out exactly what he meant.
The tweet has not been deleted at the time of this writing, so he means for those words to remain out there. In other words, it's not likely to be at typo. He has been known to correct those in the past.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/18/politics/donald-trump-immigrants-california/index.html
Pruitt upgraded to a larger, customized SUV with bullet-resistant seat covers
Recent EPA administrators had traveled in a Chevrolet Tahoe, and agency officials had arranged for Pruitt to use the same vehicle when he joined the administration in February last year. But he switched to a larger, newer and more high-end Chevy Suburban in June.
One former EPA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said Pruitt remarked that he wanted the larger car because it was similar to ones in which some other Cabinet officials rode. The first year’s lease of the vehicle cost $10,200, according to federal contracting records.
The records show the EPA administrator’s office signed a lease in June on the Suburban, paying more than $300 extra per month for upgrades such as a leather interior, bucket seats in the second row and WiFi and GPS navigation. A representative at the Maryland-based company who provided the lease said the LT model that the EPA requested represents an upgrade from the LS model that is typical on government leases.
The monthly payment on the vehicle is $839, according to the contract.
The head of Pruitt’s security detail, Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, subsequently approved the addition of Kevlar-like seat covers to the vehicle at a cost of hundreds of dollars, according to one official, on the grounds that it served as a security precaution. Two current EPA officials confirmed both the rental of the Suburban and the seat covers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/04/17/pruitt-upgraded-to-a-larger-customized-suv-with-bullet-resistant-seat-covers/?utm_term=.c0608a4f2845
new Bureau of Land mgt cards for employees to wear features pic of cattle ranching and oil rig
The Bureau of Land Management has distributed an unusual new accessory for some of its employees to wear: A card with an image of an oil rig on one side and cattle ranching on the other.
The cards, which feature artwork then-acting director Mike Nedd commissioned after President Trump took office, reflect the bureau’s renewed focus on energy and agricultural development on public lands.
Under the Obama administration, the BLM had promoted recreation and conservation on public lands, but this imagery has receded from the agency’s official messaging over the past year.
On the side with the oil rig, the cards state the agency’s mission is to “sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.” On the other side, above two men riding horses with herding dogs and cattle in the background, BLM says its goal is to “improve accountability to our stakeholders, and deliver better service to our customers.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/03/15/oil-rigs-and-cowboys-interior-agency-gives-employees-new-cards-to-wear/?utm_term=.64b012c6be3f
The latest Pruitt revelations are the swampiest. He should be long gone.
ON MONDAY, two independent watchdogs released reports detailing abuse and, in one case, violation of the law at Scott Pruitt’s Environmental Protection Agency in pursuit of perks for the administrator and his staff. President Trump should have fired Mr. Pruitt a long time ago. The latest reports underscore the swampy behavior Mr. Trump appears willing to tolerate and excuse.
The Government Accountability Office found that the EPA broke the law when it installed a $43,000-plus privacy booth in Mr. Pruitt’s office, vastly exceeding the $5,000 cap Congress imposed on buying furniture or making improvements to the private offices of federal agency heads. The EPA should have informed Congress it wanted to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an unnecessary security upgrade. By failing to do so and spending the money anyway, it violated two federal laws, the GAO concluded.
The EPA says Mr. Pruitt required access to a secure telephone line in an appropriate setting. But there already were two secure facilities at the EPA available for just such a purpose. Moreover, as the New York Times reported this month, members of Mr. Pruitt’s staff argued that the administrator needed only a $10,000 upgrade to obtain the privacy he desired, one of many objections they raised to the administrator’s lavish spending. The Times found that these staffers were punished, and $43,000 was spent on “a special chamber with sound-dampening privacy products and ceiling baffles that would prevent anyone from intercepting voice or data transmissions.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-latest-pruitt-revelations-are-the-swampiest-he-should-be-long-gone/2018/04/16/0f0d1aae-41b3-11e8-ad8f-27a8c409298b_story.html?utm_term=.e6173b86f259
Donald Trumps corruption means he'll never be a normal commander in chief
The corruption and shady financial dealings that landed much of Trumpworld in legal hot water are so vast and all-encompassing that virtually no aspect of Donald Trump’s presidency can escape untouched — and American policy toward Syria is no exception.The Syrian civil war has become a maelstrom of competing factions, each with its own regional backers pursuing their own agendas both inside Syria itself and in the Middle East more generally. These countries compete for influence on the ground but also inside Washington.
In the Trump era, several of them play a more personal game with the president — they host real estate businesses that the president is involved with, have the ability to directly funnel cash into the president’s wallet through his US businesses, or both.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/16/17238058/syria-bombing-trump-business-interests
Character is destiny, and Donald Trump's character is ours
Without undertaking a psychological inquiry into his emotional well-being, we know a lot about President Trump's character, based on what he says and writes about himself, not to mention what we've seen from him over four decades as a public figure. He is boastful (he brags about it). He's transactional. He's hypermaterialistic, and he cares a great deal about appearance. His relationship to the truth is, at best, shaky (he brags about that, too). He likes conflict and unpredictability. He believes that admitting error is a sign of weakness and that he should hit back 10 times as hard at his critics. He doesn't like to read, doesn't care much about policy details, and makes decisions from the gut.
These are not the kind of values and attributes I'd like to pass on to my children, but there's no question that they have brought Donald Trump great success, including propelling him to unlikely victory in a presidential campaign.
But these character traits are not serving Trump well as president, and they are threatening the country. It is character even more than policy that has immersed Trump in an unprecedented parade of scandals. It is character as much as policy that is most imperiling our nation.
****
Most elected officials run for office out of a sense of public service, but they also tend to have very healthy egos. Still, as he himself says, President Trump is not like other politicians. He is a character unlike others, and his character is unlike others. As a result, we're destined to lurch from crisis to crisis, peril to peril, as long as he is president.
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/04/15/character-destiny-donald-trumps-character
Too much sitting may thin the part of your brain that's important for memory, study suggests
If you want to take a good stroll down memory lane, new research suggests you'd better get out of that chair more often.
In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers have found that in people middle-aged and older, a brain structure that is key to learning and memory is plumpest in those who spend the most time standing up and moving. At every age, prolonged sitters show less thickness in the medial temporal lobe and the subregions that make it up, the study found.
The prospect of thinning in the brain's medial temporal lobe should spark plenty of worry.
Some loss of volume in this region occurs naturally as we age, and the result is poorer episodic memory — the kind which brings to mind events in one's past.
****
The study subjects reported average sitting times of three to 15 hours a day. After adjusting for their subjects' ages, the researchers found that every additional hour of average daily sitting was associated with a 2% decrease in the thickness of the medial temporal lobe.
The research suggests that, compared to a person who sits for 10 hours a day, someone of the same age who typically sits for 15 hours would have a medial temporal lobe that's 10% thinner.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-sitting-brain-memory-20180413-story.html
Gofundme as the new social safety net
GoFundMe figures reveal thousands rely on site to avoid homelessness
There have been nearly 300,000 GoFundMe campaigns in the US related to homelessness over the last three years. Some see it as a sign of a broken social system and dwindling options for those in need
****
Experts warn that such sites hardly offer a level playing field to get help to the neediest.
“It’s a shift away from distributing resources to where they will do the most good, to more of a popularity contest” said Jeremy Snyder, an associate professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, who has studied the effects of crowdfunding on medical patients and others in need. “If you have a large social network, media savvy and the ability to use computers, you tend to do well. But that might not match up with those who need the help the most.”
****
Lower-profile recipients include Jennifer Polk of Ventura, California. When her landlord gave her three days to come up with late payments or be evicted from her apartment, Polk was told she couldn’t get government housing help because she hadn’t already been homeless for 24 hours.
So Polk, 34, who was juggling several jobs and trying to break into comic book illustration, took matters into her own hands. She put up a GoFundMe page titled “Homeless Prevention” and implored her social media contacts to “PLEASE I beg of you donate! We have 3 days to get this!”
After three days, she only had half of the $3,000 she needed to avoid eviction. In the end, however, she said the donations were enough for a deposit on a new place.
“It was basically a Hail Mary,” said Polk, who now has a new rental and a new job in classic comics restoration. “At least it helped me raise the money to remain housed.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/13/homeless-crowdfunding-campaigns-gofundme
Profile Information
Gender: FemaleHometown: California
Member since: Tue Feb 27, 2018, 10:32 PM
Number of posts: 32,472