September 4, 2016


New and Views


http://associatedmediacoverage.com/idaho-mother-sentenced-prison-multiple-citations-public-breastfeeding/

Idaho Mother Sentenced To Prison After Multiple Citations For Breastfeeding In Public
By George Drivas
September 3, 2016

Photograph -- Original photo by Bradfordst Via Flickr (CC BY 4.0)
Breastfeeding map, Image Source: The Huffington Post

Heather Watson, a 32-year old mother and Baker County, Idaho, resident has been ordered to serve a 7-year prison sentence after receiving several indecent exposure citations for breastfeeding her 6 -month old daughter in public.

According to Heather’s husband, Rick Watson, his wife had received a total of 6 indecent exposure citations for breastfeeding their daughter Caylee in public. Heather most recently was arrested by officers at a nearby public park. According to police reports and statements from Watson, she had been sitting on bench supervising her 3 other children, age 2, 5, and 7, as they played with other children at the park when her baby become fussy and needed to be fed.

Idaho is currently the only state that has yet to pass a law allowing mothers to breastfeed in public without the consequences of indecent exposure. The only protection that nursing mothers have in Idaho is Jury Duty exemption. A Moveon.org petition was created by The Idaho Breastfeeding Law Coalition in effort to bring the state up to speed with the remainder of the states throughout the country that protect nursing mothers, however despite the petition’s 4,821 signatures, there is no indication that Idaho is anywhere close to passing new legislation.

In addition to serving a maximum 7-years in prison, because Watson was charged with multiple counts of indecent exposure, she will be required to register as a sex offender and will be placed on the National Sex Offender Registry.

According to Heather’s husband and close friends, she was an advocate for mother’s rights and commonly took to social media websites such as Facebook to rant about her frequent indecent exposure citations and to complain about being harassed for breastfeeding her young daughter in a myriad of public locations. The below message was posted to Facebook a few weeks ago by Heather after she received her 4th citation for indecent exposure – “I’m so frickin pissed off by the barbaric, stone-age, laws we have in Idaho. I seriously just received my 4th ticket for the “indecent exposure” of my breast while feeding Caylee in public. You can bet I’m filing this document straight to the IDGAF folder (the trash can)!”

Heather Watson Facebook Post
Screenshot courtesy of Facebook

Though Watson’s sentence is widely viewed as unnecessarily strict, Jude Walter Chapman, the sole judge presiding over Baker County and nearby Wiser, Idaho, made the following statement to reporters from a local ABC affiliate station, “We have laws in our state and due to Mrs. Watson’s repeated civil disobedience it’s is clear to me that she has little to no regard for the system our state was built upon. As a Judge, it’s not my job to create law, but to recognize and preside over it.”

As news of Watson’s sentencing has spread throughout the media, several public breastfeeding advocate groups have come together to demand change in Idaho’s current laws. They are asking anyone that disagrees with Judge Chapman’s ruling to voice your feedback by calling the Baker County Department of Justice at 785-273-0325.



I first heard this voiced as an issue in the 1970s with the Women’s Liberation Movement. I don’t know what the social view of a necessary matter like this is in Europe and other non-Muslim countries, but in the US our views are built partly from the leftovers of Puritan thinking in the US. I wonder what it is about Idaho in particular, since they are the ONLY state in the US that has no protection for the right of a woman to feed her baby when it gets hungry. One factor I’ve heard discussed is the sexualization of the female breast, as compared to most earlier centuries when it was considered to be purely for the purpose of feeding babies. Ask any mom cat what it is for? I do remember my aunt unabashedly nursing her baby. Of course she was a country woman with no social pretensions.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-hillary-clinton-leads-donald-trump-north-carolina-pennsylvania-email-questions-linger/

Poll: Clinton leads in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, as email questions linger
By ANTHONY SALVANTO CBS NEWS
September 4, 2016, 10:30 AM

Play VIDEO -- CBS News poll shows Trump trailing Clinton in key states
Images -- pabattleground.jpg, ncbattleground.jpg and battleground-map.jpg


The presidential race heads into the home stretch with Clinton in the lead, but questions linger for both her and for Donald Trump.

For Clinton, it is whether she can move historically high unfavorable numbers, and turn that polling lead into actual votes; for Trump, it is whether he can change the minds of enough voters beyond his durable base, and take back key battleground states in which he trails. It is a race in which at least one-third of each candidates’ voters say they’re motivated mostly by opposition to the other candidate, and one-quarter feel they’re merely settling for a choice between candidates they aren’t happy with. It is not so much that voters are undecided between the two – few actually are - but rather that they appear unconvinced by either one.

This week, Clinton leads in two new polls of states that Trump needs to win, given his current electoral map: Clinton leads in Pennsylvania fairly comfortably by eight points, 45 percent to 37 percent, and she is up four in North Carolina, 46 - 42 percent.

More broadly, when we look across all states that may be in play -- or could come into play this fall depending on the race – that’s now 13 total - Clinton holds an overall two-point lead across them.

For Clinton, doubts about her explanations of the email server continue to weigh on her. Forty-six percent across the battlegrounds say those explanations are changing and getting less believable. The same percentage say those explanations remain the same. Only 7 percent feel the explanations are getting more believable.

Voters are more apt to feel her campaign is driven a lot by her own desire to be president – 77 percent - more than by a sincere desire for a better America, at 30 percent. And 51 percent feel that her campaign is driven by doing what donors and party leaders want. Trump does a little better by comparison on motivation, with 59 percent saying it is his own desire and 37 percent -- higher than Clinton -- driven by his desire for a better country. He is much lower than Clinton on being seen as driven by donors and party leaders: just 10 percent feel he’s driven a lot by that.

In a week that saw Donald Trump’s trip to Mexico and speech on immigration, more voters (47 percent) across the battlegrounds feel his policy on immigration has not changed, while 37 percent say he has changed policies to become easier on those in the U.S. illegally. Neither of those views appears to have done much to his vote share, though it illustrates the difficulty he may have satisfying both his base and trying to broaden his appeal on the topic. Conservatives are not more likely than anyone else to see softening on immigration policy – so, if he was trying to assure them with his Arizona speech after the Mexico trip, perhaps he did. His voters who feel he has held steady are relatively more enthusiastic about him, in general, than those who feel he has changed.

More generally, both candidates’ outreach to minority groups is met with cynicism, and partisanship plays a dominant role in these views. Majorities of voters feel Clinton and Trump’s outreach to minority groups is based more on a search for votes than actual attempts to help people: 65 percent say the former of Trump, 64 percent of Clinton. Moreover, voters see each of the candidates appealing to some racial groups over others, but they don’t agree on who is doing the dividing. Democrats think Trump is while Republicans think Clinton is.

The map overall continues to favor Clinton, and the demographic patterns are the same as we’ve seen before and seen elsewhere, in this regard reflecting a somewhat stable race: Clinton relies on younger voters, African American voters, on moderates, and on doing relatively well with those with college and postgraduate degrees. The pooled battleground states include North Carolina and Pennsylvania here, and also a look at Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In recent weeks, including surveys done since the conventions, Arizona and Georgia have shown Trump with narrow leads, all the rest with a Clinton lead, including some even in double digits, except Iowa, which was recently tied.

You can find the methods for this survey below:

CBS News 2016 Battleground Tracker, Methods: North Carolina, Pennsylvania, September 4
CBS News Battleground Tracker: North Carolina, September 4
CBS News Battleground Tracker: Pennsylvania, September 4
CBS News Battleground Tracker: States, September 4



“It is not so much that voters are undecided between the two – few actually are - but rather that they appear unconvinced by either one. This week, Clinton leads in two new polls of states that Trump needs to win, given his current electoral map: Clinton leads in Pennsylvania fairly comfortably by eight points, 45 percent to 37 percent, and she is up four in North Carolina, 46 - 42 percent. …. Voters are more apt to feel her campaign is driven a lot by her own desire to be president – 77 percent - more than by a sincere desire for a better America, at 30 percent. And 51 percent feel that her campaign is driven by doing what donors and party leaders want. Trump …. His voters who feel he has held steady are relatively more enthusiastic about him, in general, than those who feel he has changed. More generally, both candidates’ outreach to minority groups is met with cynicism, and partisanship plays a dominant role in these views. Majorities of voters feel Clinton and Trump’s outreach to minority groups is based more on a search for votes than actual attempts to help people …. all the rest with a Clinton lead, including some even in double digits, except Iowa, which was recently tied.”


I don’t remember the last time my choice of candidates was so unpleasant. It reminds me of the classic market decision I heard mentioned in an Economics course, in which a poor citizen must choose to buy oatmeal because he can’t afford bread. I can only be grateful that Clinton is still leading. Perhaps I’m being hysterical about the “danger” of a Trump presidency, but I think I probably am not. I read that many Republicans think the same way about Hillary, though I don’t know what their fears are based upon. To me, she’s a third rate product compared to Sanders, but not dangerous. There has been a recent craze in the Right-leaning group about her mental “health” being unstable, though they have based their statement on a fall (a relatively minor fall) that she took a couple of years ago. I base mine on Trump’s lack of empathy and his yuuge desire for power and constant personal attention. I can’t wait until the election to get this matter out of the way, and hopefully to put the Dems in power for another 4 to 8 years, unless of course unless Sanders runs again for President.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/merkels-party-takes-hit-in-german-elections-amid-anti-immigrant-sentiment/

Merkel's party takes hit in German elections amid anti-immigrant sentiment
AP September 4, 2016, 2:26 PM

Photograph -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel , center, poses with supporters during an election campaign event in Bad Doberan, eastern Germany, Saturday Sept. 3, 3016. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision a year ago to open the borders to a surge of migrants is casting a long shadow over a state election this weekend in Germany’s economically weak northeast, where an anti-immigration party is poised for strong gains. Polls suggest that the 3-year-old Alternative for Germany can expect to win over 20 percent of votes Sunday in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a coastal region where Merkel has her parliamentary constituency. BERND WUESTNECK/DPA VIA


BERLIN - A nationalist, anti-immigration party performed strongly in a German state election Sunday in the region where Chancellor Angela Merkel has her political base, overtaking her conservative party to take second place amid discontent with her migrant policies, projections indicated Sunday.

The three-year-old Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won about 21 percent of votes in the election for the state legislature in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, according to projections for ARD and ZDF television based on exit polls and partial counting. They put support for Merkel’s Christian Democrats at between 19 and 20 percent, which would be their worst result yet in the state.

The center-left Social Democrats, who lead the outgoing state government, were expected to be the strongest party with about 30 percent support.

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, an economically weak region in Germany’s northeastern corner, is home to 1.6 million of the country’s 80 million people and is a relative political lightweight. It is, however, the state where Merkel has her parliamentary constituency, and Sunday’s vote was the first of five regional votes before a national election a bit more than a year away.

National AfD leader Frauke Petry celebrated “a blow to Angela Merkel.” Local AfD Leif-Erik Holm told supporters: “Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship today.”

Merkel’s refugee policies were a prominent issue in the campaign for Sunday’s election, which came a year to the day after she decided to let in migrants from Hungary - setting off the peak of last year’s influx. Germany registered more than 1 million people as asylum-seekers last year.

New arrivals in Germany have slowed drastically this year and Mecklenburg is home to relative [sic] few foreigners. Still, New Year’s Eve robberies and sexual assaults blamed largely on foreigners, as well as two attacks in July carried out by asylum-seekers and claimed by the Islamic State group, have fed tensions.

Merkel has stuck to her insistence that “we will manage” the refugee crisis, and has also said that “sometimes you have to endure such controversies.”

“This result, and the strong performance of AfD, is bitter for many, for everyone in our party,” Peter Tauber, the general secretary of her Christian Democrats, said in Berlin.

He said that the state government’s positive record had taken a back seat for many voters, “because among a recognizable part, there was an explicit wish to voice displeasure and protest, and we saw that particularly strongly in the discussion about refugees.”

Mecklenburg was the only one of Germany’s 16 states where the far-right National Democratic Party was represented in a state legislature, but it appeared to have lost its seats on Sunday. Projections put its support below the 5 percent needed to keep them, with many supporters apparently switching to AfD.

The state has been run for the past decade by the parties that currently run Germany. Popular Social Democratic governor Erwin Sellering has governed with Merkel’s party as his junior partner. Both parties lost support compared with the last state election five years ago, when they polled 35.6 and 23 percent, respectively.

The opposition Left Party - once popular with protest voters - also lost support, slipping about six points to 12.5 percent, and the left-leaning Greens were hovering around the 5 percent mark.

AfD is now represented in nine of Germany’s 16 state legislatures and hopes to enter the national Parliament next year. Still, it fell well short Sunday of its aim of becoming the strongest party in Mecklenburg, and also didn’t match the 24.3 percent support it won in another eastern state, Saxony-Anhalt, in March.

There’s no realistic prospect at present of AfD going into government, and other parties won’t deal with it.



This German election looks a good deal like ours in that the immigration issue is the most important; and unfortunately that Merkel may not retain power. She seems to me to be an intelligent and honorable leader, and if some nationalistic and rightist people do come into office in her stead, Europe may not continue to be a good partner for the US. Of course when I say that I’m assuming that Clinton WILL win here, and the truth is that the possibility exists that Trump may win, so the whole Western world may slide downward into NeoFascist horror.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/arizona-gop-senator-blasts-donald-trumps-360-degree-pivot-on-immigration/

Arizona GOP senator: "I just don't see how I can" back Donald Trump
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS CBS NEWS
September 4, 2016, 10:30 AM


Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, who has long avoided endorsing GOP nominee Donald Trump, said Sunday that at this rate it’s unlikely he will be able to back him before Election Day.

“It becomes increasingly difficult to see that he’s going to change, so I don’t expect that I’ll be able to support him in November,” Flake told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I’d like to, he’s the Republican nominee, I just don’t see how I can.”

He criticized Trump for what he called the candidate’s “360-degree pivot” on immigration in the last few weeks, adding that his “confusing” position on the issue is problematic.

“Some people, as he said, said it was hardening, some said softening, I say it was just confusing,” Flake said. “With regard to immigration he pivots and then pivots right back — so it’s kind of a 360-degree pivot at times.”

The first-term Arizona senator said there are four key elements to an immigration plan: border security, enforcement within the U.S., a temporary worker program and a “mechanism” for dealing with people who are already in the country illegally. Trump has addressed the border security aspect with his proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, Flake said, but he’s barely touched on some of the other components of an immigration policy.

Flake said he was initially encouraged by Trump’s surprise trip to Mexico to meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, but that Trump’s hard-line speech on immigration that night made it clear no real change was coming.

“The speech in Mexico and that action, I think all of us had some hope after that that he might be changing the tone and tenor of his campaign,” Flake said. “But then when the speech was delivered in Arizona later that day, he seemed to be right back where he has been.”

Flake praised the moves of his fellow Arizona Sen. John McCain in distancing himself from Trump in his own Senate reelection race. After winning his Republican primary last week, McCain released a video saying he would be a “check” on a Hillary Clinton administration.

“He’s doing what I think Republicans need to do,” Flake said. “If we want the future of our party to be what it needs to be, we can’t associate with this kind of message and certainly with this kind of tone and the rhetoric that’s being used. Long-term I think that drives away young voters, it certainly drives away a lot of people in the minority community that we’re going to need moving ahead.”

As for his home state of Arizona, where the Clinton campaign is putting more resources for the final two months of the campaign, Flake said he thinks the usually-red state is actually in play this fall.

“It shouldn’t be up for grabs—Mitt Romney won it by I think eight points—but frankly it is,” he said. “And I think that they’re spending money because they have some indication that she might be in play. And unfortunately I think that’s the case.”



“It becomes increasingly difficult to see that he’s going to change, so I don’t expect that I’ll be able to support him in November,” Flake told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I’d like to, he’s the Republican nominee, I just don’t see how I can.” He criticized Trump for what he called the candidate’s “360-degree pivot” on immigration in the last few weeks, adding that his “confusing” position on the issue is problematic. “Some people, as he said, said it was hardening, some said softening, I say it was just confusing,” Flake said. “With regard to immigration he pivots and then pivots right back — so it’s kind of a 360-degree pivot at times.” …. “He’s doing what I think Republicans need to do,” Flake said. “If we want the future of our party to be what it needs to be, we can’t associate with this kind of message and certainly with this kind of tone and the rhetoric that’s being used. Long-term I think that drives away young voters, it certainly drives away a lot of people in the minority community that we’re going to need moving ahead.”


Trump really is a dangerous man, partly because he lacks empathy with the human situation and partly because he’s so very undependable and hungry for personal attention. He has the makings of true megalomania. Those “360-degree pivots” show his instability, and lack of a grip on reality. One more sensible Republican has today turned away from him, thank goodness. May this snowball keep rolling down the hill.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-weighs-in-on-donald-trumps-appeal/

Obama weighs in on Donald Trump's appeal
By REENA FLORES CBS NEWS
September 4, 2016, 3:30 PM

Photograph -- U.S. President Barack Obama speaks on the third night of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 27, 2016. REUTERS/JIM YOUNG
Play VIDEO -- What are Clinton's and Trump's hurdles in the final stretch?


With two months to go until the presidential elections, President Obama is already reflecting on the widespread appeal of the Republican party’s nominee, Donald Trump, and attributing the billionaire’s success to those “folks who feel left out.”

“There’s a long tradition in the United States of inclusion, immigration diversity, but also people -- once they’re included in what they consider to be the real America -- worrying about outsiders contaminating, polluting, messing up a good thing,” the president said in a CNN interview that aired Sunday morning. “That’s not new. That dates back to you know, the beginning of this country.”

Trump, whose hardline immigration policies and plans to restrict Muslims from entering the U.S., has then “been able to appeal to a certain group of folks who feel left out or are worried about the rapidity of demographic change, social change,” Mr. Obama said.

The president noted that “in some cases” those groups of people “have very legitimate concerns around the economy and are feeling left behind.”

But Mr. Obama argued that those making up Trump’s base are not the majority of America.

For the “next generation,” he said, the Republican nominee’s policies don’t carry the same appeal.

“If you talk to younger people, the next generation of Americans, they completely reject the kinds of positions that he’s taking,” the president said.

“I think that anytime we hear intolerance, anytime we hear policy measures that are contrary to our values -- banning certain classes of people because of who they are and what they look like, what faith they practice -- we have to be pretty hard about saying ‘no’ to that,” he continued. “And I think America will do that this time, as well.”

Trump, Obama said, has “been able to appeal to a certain group of folks who feel left out or are worried about the rapidity of demographic change, social change, who, in some cases, have very legitimate concerns around the economy and are feeling left behind.”

In CNN’s wide-ranging interview, the president also touched on U.S. trade with China, defending his landmark Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal as a “historic agreement.”

“This is going to be the world’s largest market,” Mr. Obama said of the 12-nation pact. “And if we’re not setting the rules out there, somebody else is.”

Addressing some progressive broadsides against TPP, Mr. Obama said his administration has worked to include high labor standards in trade deals.

“Yes, there’s going to be a reaction against globalization and against trade,” the president said, acknowledging some of the criticisms from both the liberal and conservative wings. “Whether that resistance is coming from the left or the right, the prescriptions that they’re describing -- somehow cutting off global trade -- aren’t really viable.”



“But Mr. Obama argued that those making up Trump’s base are not the majority of America. For the “next generation,” he said, the Republican nominee’s policies don’t carry the same appeal. “If you talk to younger people, the next generation of Americans, they completely reject the kinds of positions that he’s taking,” the president said. …. In CNN’s wide-ranging interview, the president also touched on U.S. trade with China, defending his landmark Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal as a “historic agreement.” “This is going to be the world’s largest market,” Mr. Obama said of the 12-nation pact. “And if we’re not setting the rules out there, somebody else is.” Addressing some progressive broadsides against TPP, Mr. Obama said his administration has worked to include high labor standards in trade deals.”


I do want to see those “high labor standards” in play. Those of us who have gone through joblessness, to one degree or another, during the last ten or fifteen plus years are not viewing the joyous bonding of big business with big business -- to produce good incomes for some and intense poverty for others -- as a rosy outlook. Pardon me for not trusting TPP any more than I do NAFTA. In this country we don’t just need highly paid jobs for certain professions, but production, construction, farming and other such jobs for those who aren’t trained to program a computer or play on the stock market. Even our most important jobs, teachers for instance, have been difficult to obtain and poorly paid. Then when I see stories like the one several days ago about the meteoric rise in the price of EpiPens in direct response to a company bonus plan I simply feel sick.

Business needs to be reined in rather than freed to make more, more and yet more money with no responsibility to pay workers well and create jobs AT HOME. I really miss the good old Union days of the 1950s and 60s. I found a great photo for my Facebook, of two of those grizzled old Union era men hugging and grinning happily – Bernie Sanders and Willie Nelson. It’s not true that “real men” don’t hug!