DECEMBER 2 AND 3, 2018


NEWS AND VIEWS


I HAVE MORE STORIES TODAY THAN I CAN READ CLOSELY AND COMMENT ABOUT, SO I AM SIMPLY GOING TO PLACE THEM IN FOR YOUR PERUSAL. I REALLY LOVE CERTAIN OLD-FASHIONED WORDS, AND PERUSAL IS ONE OF THOSE. THE BIG STORY, OF COURSE, IS THE CEREMONIES AROUND THE DEATH OF FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE H W BUSH. I THINK MOST AMERICANS LIKED HIM AS A HUMAN BEING, AT LEAST. I CERTAINLY DID, AND HE CLEARLY DID LOVE HIS FAMILY. HIS SERVICE DOG TULLY LYING BY HIS COFFIN IS VERY MOVING. I WILL CONTINUE TO WATCH THE EVENTS OFF AND ON AS THEY MOVE FORWARD TO HIS FUNERAL AND BURIAL.


ON VOTER SUPPRESSION AND OTHER BLACK DEEDS

THIS VOTER SUPPRESSION ACTIVITY IS SO COMMONPLACE, AND SO STUDIOUSLY IGNORED, LIKE THE PROVERBIAL ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, THAT IT DOES MAKE ME ANGRY. OUR COUNTRY IS “DEMOCRATIC” AND “GREAT” ON PAPER, BUT IN PRACTICE IT IS REALLY CRUMBLING AROUND US, AND PERHAPS NEVER REALLY STRIVED FULLY TOWARD ITS’ GOALS AT ALL. THAT DEPRESSES ME SOMETIMES, AND SADDENS ME ALWAYS.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brian-kemp-stacey-abrams-elijah-cummings-voter-suppression_us_5c059a58e4b0cd916faeeeae
POLITICS 12/03/2018 04:48 pm ET
Elijah Cummings Wants Brian Kemp To Testify In Washington About Voter Suppression
Kemp is accused of using his position in charge of state elections to purge voters and reduce polling locations in African-American neighborhoods.
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By Paul Blumenthal

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the incoming chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is interested in calling Gov.-elect Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) in to testify about allegations that he aided his own campaign by engaging in voter suppression.

“I want to be able to bring people in, like the new governor-to-be of Georgia, to explain, you know, explain to us why is it fair for wanting to be secretary of state and be running [for governor],” Cummings told HuffPost.

Kemp won a narrow victory over Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams on Nov. 6 amid allegations that he used his position as secretary of state to purge voters from the rolls and reduce polling locations in African-American communities. She is suing the state, alleging a wide range of abuses by Kemp’s office aimed at reducing voting by African-Americans in the state.

“It was not a free and fair election,” Abrams said after conceding the election to Kemp on Nov. 20.

Possible hearings on voter suppression in 2018 would not be limited to Georgia. Cummings is also focused on allegations of voter suppression in Kansas and North Carolina.

Then-candidate for governor Brian Kemp (R) at a campaign rally with President Donald Trump on Nov. 4 in Macon, Georgia. 
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Then-candidate for governor Brian Kemp (R) at a campaign rally with President Donald Trump on Nov. 4 in Macon, Georgia. Kemp won a narrow victory over Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams, amid accusations that he used his position as secretary of state to his advantage.
Aside from Kemp, Cummings suggested bringing Debbie Cox, the county clerk for Ford County, Kansas, to testify. She became the focus of controversy when she moved the only polling location in Dodge City outside the city limits over unexplained concerns about safety. Dodge City is over 50 percent Latino. The ACLU sued in response to the move and Cox’s having provided only one polling location for a town of 13,000 people.

Cummings is also interested in calling officials from North Carolina in to testify about the closure of 20 percent of the state’s early-voting polling sites this year. These early voting sites were closed because of a law passed by the Republican-controlled legislature over the veto of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in June.

Hearings on voter suppression in the 2018 midterms wouldn’t just serve the purpose of exposing these practices on a national stage but would also show why it’s necessary for Congress to pass reforms to prevent such abuses.

House Democrats will push a package of reforms targeting campaign finance, ethics and voting rights laws as their first order of business in January.

This legislation will include a fix to the Voting Rights Act that would reinstate the federal preclearance oversight for changes to voting laws in some jurisdictions that was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. The bill would also make it harder for states to engage in mass voter purges as Kemp did. Holding hearings on what happened in Georgia would help Democrats build an evidentiary case in support of their legislative agenda, according to Cummings.

“One of the things about my committee, you know, it’s called Oversight and Government Reform,” he said. “Oversight, you know, you gotta research and find out what the hell is going on and then, if it is appropriate, to do those things to reform the system.”

Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? Here’s how.

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Paul Blumenthal
Reporter, HuffPost



NO MATTER HOW OFTEN THE TOO HARD RIGHT AND THE TOO WEAK LEFT TRY TO BLACKEN BERNIE’S CHANCES BY DEFLATING PUBLIC CONFIDENCE IN HIM, I’M READY TO SEE HOW THINGS SHAPE UP. I WANT SOMEONE WHO IS FULLY COMPETENT AS A THINKER AND LEADER, FORWARD-LOOKING, PATIENT, AND WHO IS VIRTUOUS ENOUGH NOT TO GET CAUGHT IN SOME KIND OF DIRTY ACTIVITY. I THINK THAT IS SENATOR SANDERS. IF THERE IS A “DRAFT BERNIE” MOVEMENT WITH ANY STRENGTH TO IT, I WILL VOTE FOR IT.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bernie-sanders-2020-presidential-run-762393/
Former Bernie Sanders Staffers Are Preparing to ‘Draft Bernie’ for 2020
The new group, Organizing For Bernie, will formally launch Monday with plans to “hit the ground running”
By MATT TAIBBI

PHOTOGRAPH -- Senator Bernie Sanders (D - VT) speaking at the J Street National Conference.
Michael Brochstein/Sopa Images/Rex Shutterstock

BURLINGTON, VERMONT — Get ready to feel the Bern again. A movement to draft Bernie Sanders to run for president in 2020 is launching today, with the aim of building an organizational structure so the Vermont Senator can start campaigning at a moment’s notice.

“We have two goals,” Rich Pelletier, one of the four main organizers of Organizing For Bernie, tells Rolling Stone. “One, we want to show the support is there. The second is to begin to do the organizing that is going to need to happen for him to hit the ground running, by the time he announces — if he announces.”

The identity of the organizers is part of what makes this campaign interesting. Organizing For Bernie is led by a cross-section of senior campaigners from Sanders’ 2016 run. Pelletier, for instance, was the deputy campaign manager for Sanders last election cycle.

The Colorado-based group includes Dulce Saenz, the former Sanders campaign director for Colorado and Washington state, as well as former Colorado Caucus Director Mandy Nunes-Hennessey and Spencer Carnes, who began as the leader of the Buffs for Bernie group at the University of Colorado in 2016.

The news comes on the heels of a three-day retreat for progressive leaders called “The Gathering” at the Sanders Institute in Burlington, Vermont. Hosted by Jane Sanders and attended by the likes of Dr. Cornel West, Nina Turner and Bernie Sanders himself, “The Gathering” felt a lot like a kitchen-cabinet strategy session, both for the progressive movement generally, and for a potential Sanders run. The weekend included the unveiling of a new plan by University of Massachusetts economist Robert Pollin to cost out a Medicare-for-All proposal.

Of course, the question of whether or not the 77-year-old Sanders would run for president again was a major topic of discussion between panels.

Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ 2016 campaign manager, was a notable conference attendee. Asked about the draft campaign led by his former deputy, Weaver acknowledged he was aware of it.

“I’ve been contacted by a number of people who are wondering, how do we demonstrate to Bernie that he’s got the support of people across the country?” Weaver says. “Without talking about any particular conversation I’ve had — because I’ve had many — I’ve tried to be encouraging to people and to give whatever advice I can that will help them move forward.”

Weaver added that groups have contacted him because “they know I’m supportive of him running,” and that there’s “a tremendous amount of grassroots energy for him.”

RELATED --
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Jay Inslee Believes a Climate Candidate (Like Himself?) Can Beat Trump in 2020

Pelletier tells Rolling Stone Organizing For Bernie doesn’t just plan on gathering names. They also want to start building the skeleton of a national organization.

“We want to have an organization in each state, territory and city,” he says.

Pelletier says Organizing For Bernie is “an unaffiliated candidate PAC,” and “we can raise money as any other federal PAC can.”

Sanders himself has already said this year that he will “probably run” for president in 2020, “if it turns out that I am the best candidate to beat Trump.” Pelletier and the rest of Organizing for Bernie obviously believe this to be the case.

“Bernie is the candidate who is offering the greatest contrast to the current administration,” Pelletier says. “We all believe that he is the right person. We also believe it’s a decision that he has to make.”

Numerous national articles have downplayed the significance of a second run by Sanders, who received over 12 million votes in 2016, representing about 43 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Many have argued that he is too old, a criticism Pelletier dismissed.

“What we’ve seen of him barnstorming around the country helping candidates get elected this last fall, he has the energy. He has the desire,” says Pelletier, noting that media speculation about the Vermont Senator has consistently underestimated his chances.

“The press were all discounting him [in 2016],” he says. “So I say: let them discount him.”

This piece has been updated to clarify that Mandy Nunes-Hennessey served as Bernie Sanders’ Colorado Caucus Director in 2016.

In This Article: 2020 election, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump


THIS ARTICLE BRINGS BACK TO MY MIND SOME OF THE STRANGEST POLITICAL EVENTS THAT I CAN REMEMBER, AND IT ISN’T JUST TRUMP HIMSELF, EITHER. HIS CABINET MEMBERS HAVE BEEN REAL PRIZES ALSO. I WANT THIS ADMINISTRATION TO BE OVER SOON. FAT CHANCE OF THAT, THOUGH.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/12/03/after-latest-mueller-news-these-corrupt-trump-moves-look-much-worse/
The Plum Line Opinion
After the latest Mueller news, these corrupt Trump moves look much worse
By Greg Sargent
Opinion writer
December 3 at 9:54 AM

PHOTOGRAPH -- (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

The latest revelations in the Russia saga should refocus our attention on a critical period during the 2016 presidential campaign. I’m talking about the seven weeks or so that began in June 2016, when Donald Trump Jr. planned the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russians, and ended in late July, with GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump publicly calling on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.

What we now know is this. During much of that period, the Trump Organization was secretly pursuing a business deal in Russia that required Kremlin approval — even though the most senior members of Trump’s own campaign, and possibly Trump himself, knew at the time that Russia was waging an attack designed to sabotage our democracy on Trump’s behalf, which they eagerly sought to help Russia carry out.

On at least one occasion, Trump publicly absolved Russia of any blame for this attack — while apparently carrying on private financial dealings that involved the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Over the weekend, the legal team working for Michael Cohen, President Trump’s estranged fixer and personal lawyer, filed a new document requesting leniency, now that Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress to conceal efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow that continued at least into June 2016, around when Trump clinched the nomination. The new filing says Cohen was in “close and regular contact” with White House advisers and Trump’s legal team while he prepared to lie to Congress — raising the possibility that they were actively consulted on this plan.

Why would Cohen want to conceal that timeline, which Trump, too, lied about? Because as Democrats pointed out on the Sunday shows, revealing it would show that Trump was likely compromised, because the Russians knew that Trump had concealed that he had pursued lucrative financial dealings with Russia even as he publicly called for an end to sanctions on them, giving them potential leverage over him.

To get a sense of just how corrupt this really was, we need to look at those seven weeks. With the help of this great new timeline of the Russia scandal by The Post’s fact-checking team, I’ve isolated these key occurrences:

June 3, 2016: Donald Trump Jr. learns by email that Russians want to give the Trump campaign “very high level and sensitive information,” provided by the Russian government, that could “incriminate Hillary.” He responds: “If it’s what you say I love it.”

June 7: Donald Trump promises a “major speech” about “all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.” Trump sets the speech for the following week.

June 9: The meeting takes place, but by most accounts, nothing of value on Clinton is offered. Still, the fact that it did take place — and was attended by Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort — confirms the campaign’s eagerness to conspire with Russian attempts to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf.

June 14-15: It becomes public, thanks to reporting in The Post and a statement from the cyber-sleuth firm hired by the Democratic National Committee, that Russian government hackers penetrated the DNC’s network.

June 15: Trump puts out a statement claiming that the DNC faked the hacking — in effect absolving Russia of any role.

July 22: WikiLeaks releases the stolen emails, shedding light on all sorts of embarrassing internal details involving Clinton and the DNC.

July 24-25: Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. both once again absolve Russia of any blame for the hack. Trump Jr. dismisses the idea as a “lie,” and his father dismisses it as a “joke.”

July 26: Donald Trump tweets that he has “ZERO investments in Russia.” According to BuzzFeed News, the Russian-born developer working on the project takes this as the signal that the deal isn’t going to happen.

July 27: Trump says this about Clinton’s emails: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” By coincidence or not, that same day, according to an indictment filed by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Russian intelligence tried to hack Clinton’s personal servers.

One of the big unknowns of this whole affair remains whether Trump himself was informed of the Trump Tower meeting at the time. His vow of a “major speech” suggests he might have been. This is now potentially more serious: Trump might have known that the Russian government was trying to sabotage our election and then after this kept up his pursuit of a lucrative real estate deal in Moscow (one that according to Cohen’s plea agreement involved direct talks with Putin’s office) that he kept concealed.

At a minimum, Trump’s family members and top campaign officials knew of this sabotage effort. And according to Cohen’s plea deal, he kept them abreast of the real estate deal.

The new revelations also make Trump’s statement absolving Russia of any blame for the DNC hack look much worse. Trump had self-interested political reasons for absolving Russia of this blame, obviously, but now we learn he appears to have had self-interested financial reasons for doing so — again, which he concealed from American voters.

Finally, in light of the new revelations, Trump’s exhortation to Russia to hack Clinton’s emails becomes an even more emphatic exclamation point on this stretch of events. His openly proclaimed desire to politically benefit from a hostile foreign power’s efforts to undermine our democracy was bad enough. In retrospect, it looks even worse, now that we learn that up until that point, he’d been trying to reach a lucrative deal with that foreign power — while keeping that effort hidden from the voters.

All of these things “look a lot less random against a backdrop where there was this ongoing negotiation over the Trump Tower Moscow,” Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told me. “They certainly look more corrupt. It’s increasingly difficult to believe that this was all a coincidence.”

It remains to be seen whether Mueller will establish a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign that amounts to criminality. But whatever is to be on that front, we now know that not only does this confluence of political and financial self-dealing with a foreign adversary appear much worse than we thought, but also Trump actively tried to keep it concealed by denying its existence.

As Vladeck put it: “If there are innocuous explanations for why these things were all happening at the same time, what are they?”

Read more:

Randall D. Eliason: Mueller may uncover a conspiracy — or just a coverup

The Post’s View: The Mueller investigation keeps offering important revelations. It must continue.

Jennifer Rubin: Manafort’s plea deal collapse isn’t the biggest development in Mueller’s probe

Nelson W. Cunningham: If Matthew Whitaker hinders the Mueller inquiry, would we even know?

Jennifer Rubin: Trump should be freaked out right about now

Greg Sargent
Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog. He joined The Post in 2010, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer. Follow


HOWEVER THOROUGHLY MUELLER CAN DIG INTO THESE RELATED BIZARRE SUBJECTS, I WANT HIM TO DO THAT UNTIL IT’S OVER, NOT JUST UNTIL REPUBLICAN POLITICIANS ARE GETTING TIRED OF IT. OF COURSE, THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN “WHINING” ABOUT IT NON-STOP.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-count-on-mueller-to-uncover-a-vast-collusion-conspiracy/2018/11/30/1feb7020-f4d0-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html?utm_term=.e5795c24f5b0
Opinions
Mueller may uncover a conspiracy — or just a coverup
By Randall D. Eliason November 30

PHOTOGRAPH -- Michael Cohen outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Thursday. (Julie Jacobson/AP)

It was a dizzying week for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation. The election is over, and after more than a year of haggling, Mueller finally received written answers from President Trump — not as good as testimony or a live interview, but better than nothing. With these milestones behind him, it feels as though Mueller is rapidly moving toward a resolution of his ultimate questions : What were the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and were any of them criminal?

The latest development was Thursday’s guilty plea by Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, who admitted to lying to Congress about Trump’s efforts to develop a 100-story tower in Moscow. Negotiations over the project took place during the spring of 2016, just when Trump was locking up the Republican nomination. But Cohen had told Congress the deal was abandoned in January, before the Iowa caucuses.

Cohen was the latest in a string of Trump campaign officials — including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former adviser George Papadopoulos — to plead guilty to lying about their contacts with Russians. When prosecutors see people lying to investigators, the obvious question is: What are they trying to hide? As Mueller’s inquiry enters the final stages and prepares to answer that question, there are two main possibilities.

The first is that Trump officials conspired with Russians in illegal efforts to affect the 2016 election and then lied to conceal their Russian ties. This would be the grand conspiracy, or “collusion,” that has always been the central question in Mueller’s investigation. It would mean, for example, charges that members of the campaign knowingly collaborated with foreign agents in an effort to damage Hillary Clinton by illegally deploying stolen Democratic emails during the fall of 2016. Mueller’s apparent recent focus on possible connections between WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and Trump cohorts such as Roger Stone seems directed toward investigating whether there was any such conspiracy.

But executing a complex criminal conspiracy with foreign accomplices would require a level of sophistication and ability that was not generally on display in the Trump campaign. It remains to be seen, but the campaign’s documented contacts with Russians may prove to have been naive, bumbling, reckless, sleazy, unpatriotic or some combination thereof — but not criminal.

Which leads us to the second possibility: The president and his associates have lied about contacts with Russia not because they were illegal but because they would have been politically disastrous. After all, standing alone, it’s not illegal for Trump to pursue a branding deal involving a tower in Russia, even while running for president. It’s not even necessarily illegal to meet at Trump Tower with Russians who promise compromising information about your opponent (depending on what, if anything, was agreed upon or done as a result of the meeting). The president himself has repeatedly and emphatically denied any connections to Russia but, even if some of those statements are untrue, lying to the public or the press is not illegal. If politicians could be jailed for that, we might as well just erect bars around the Capitol building and call it a day.

But news that, during the Republican primaries, Trump was actively pursuing business negotiations with our global adversary would have been political dynamite. Reports of events such as the Trump Tower meeting would have contradicted Trump’s claim that he had no Russian ties and fueled concerns that Moscow might have some leverage over the president. And any suggestion of possible complicity with Russians threatened to undermine the legitimacy of his election — one thing that Trump clearly cannot tolerate.

During his guilty plea, Cohen said he lied to Congress about the Moscow real estate deal to be consistent with Trump’s “political messaging.” Others already charged or yet to be charged may have lied for the same reason: not to conceal other criminal conduct, but to shield the president and his administration from the political consequences of the truth.

If it’s primarily about the coverup, then one question becomes who else was involved. Did the president or other administration officials direct Cohen or others to lie? The president’s tweets themselves may not be criminal, but anyone who encouraged or instructed others to lie could be implicated in a coverup conspiracy.

The other question becomes the political consequences. Mueller is expected to write a report detailing what he has found. Business and campaign ties to Russia that were concealed from the public may fall short of criminal conduct but still yield politically disastrous results for Trump.

But as far as criminal charges are concerned, Mueller’s investigation may well end not with charges of an international conspiracy but, instead, with a number of Trump associates convicted on charges of lying about Russia for political reasons. It’s common for defendants to be convicted for covering up conduct that was not necessarily illegal — just ask Martha Stewart or the freshly pardoned Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

In Washington, of all places, people should know that, sometimes, it’s the coverup that gets you.

Read more:

The Post’s View: Trump’s denials about his business ties in Russia are not credible

Eugene Robinson: Trump won’t go down without a fight

Michael Gerson: Trump’s inner circle has always been a cesspool

Irvin B. Nathan: Be warned, Congress. Subpoenas may not uncover the Trump administration’s secrets.

Randall D. Eliason
Randall D. Eliason teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School. He blogs at Sidebarsblog.com. Follow


I AM SO GLAD TO SEE THAT THE SENATE IS COOPERATING WITH THE MUELLER PROBE RATHER THAN HIDING AND SHELTERING THE GUILTY ONES.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mark-warner-on-face-the-nation-says-the-senate-intelligence-committee-has-made-a-number-of-referrals-to-mueller/
By CAMILO MONTOYA-GALVEZ CBS NEWS December 2, 2018, 1:18 PM
Warner says Senate Intel has made "a number of referrals" to Mueller

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said his committee has made "a number of referrals" to special counsel Robert Mueller's office for prosecution, and vowed to do the same for anyone who lies to congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election.

"If you lie to Congress, we're going to go after you. We're going to make sure that gets referred," Warner said on "Face the Nation" Sunday.

On Thursday, Michael Cohen, President Trump's former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his involvement in an effort to build a "Trump Tower" in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. In the plea agreement, Cohen admitted to lying to the Senate and House intelligence committees about the project and the extent to which then-candidate Trump and his family were involved.

Transcript: Sen. Mark Warner on "Face the Nation," December 2, 2018

Warner declined to say whether Mueller obtained transcripts of Cohen's testimony from the Senate committee in which he lied under oath. Cohen admitted to misleading investigators "out of loyalty" to Mr. Trump and to remain in line with his "political messaging." On Thursday, Mr. Trump downplayed the plea and accused his former attorney of lying to "get a reduced sentence."

Warner said Cohen's plea contradicts Mr. Trump's multiple denials during the campaign in which he said he did not have any business links to Russia. Cohen alleged the president was actively involved in the Moscow project and claimed he discussed with Mr. Trump a possible trip to Russia as a candidate in 2016.

"I do think it would have been a relevant factor, frankly, for Republican delegates to know that during that time period when [Mr. Trump] was saying only good things about Vladimir Putin as a candidate for president he was still trying to do business with that very same government," Warner said Sunday.

Warner said he did not know whether Cohen was instructed to lie to Congress, but said it was a "very relevant question that the American people need an answer to."

Warner did not specify who else has been the subject of criminal referrals, but said the committee has an "ongoing relationship" with Mueller's office. He said the committee is still probing the question of whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, which Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied.

"That is something both Chairman Burr and I are reserving judgment until we see all of the witnesses and we've got more folks to see," he said.

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


MORE INTERNET PERIL, AMONG THE TRUSTED STAFF IN HOSPITALS THIS TIME. I DO WANT MY RECORDS TO BE SAFE. THESE PEOPLE WEREN’T EVEN COMPUTER “GEEKS,” SO GETTING INTO THAT INFORMATION PROBABLY WASN’T EVEN DIFFICULT. THE INFORMATION STORAGE SYSTEMS MUST BE VERY FAULTY TO ALLOW THIS. RIGHT? WHY WOULD THIS GROUP OF PROFESSIONALS DO THAT? SIMPLE MINDLESS CURIOSITY? OR WOULD THEY DO IT IN ORDER TO MARKET THE INFORMATION TO NEWS SOURCES OR OTHER INTERESTED PARTIES? SOMEHOW THAT LOOKS THE MOST LIKELY TO ME.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-46419646
Sir Alex Ferguson: Probe after medical records reportedly accessed
DECEMBER 2, 2018 3 hours ago

PHOTOGRAPH -- BBC SPORT
Image caption -- Sir Alex Ferguson thanked medical staff following his treatment in May

Staff at a Greater Manchester hospital are being investigated over reports they accessed Sir Alex Ferguson's medical records while he was there.

The former Manchester United manager had an emergency operation at the Salford Royal Hospital in May after suffering a brain haemorrhage.

Several staff are under investigation "in relation to an information governance breach", the hospital said.

"We have apologised unreservedly to the patient and their family," it added.

The Sunday Times reported two doctors, a senior consultant and at least two nurses accessed Sir Alex's records despite not being responsible for his care.

Sir Alex, 76, was admitted to the Salford Royal on 5 May and was in intensive care prior to his discharge in June.

He later released a video message thanking hospital staff for his treatment.

"Without those people who gave me such great care, I would not be here today," he said.

Image caption -- Salford Royal Hospital is investigating an alleged "information governance breach"

A spokeswoman for the Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust declined to confirm the identity of the patient involved but said an "HR process" was under way.

The trust had also "reported the alleged breaches to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)", she said.

Dr Chris Brookes, chief medical officer for the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group, which runs Salford Royal, said: "We can confirm that a number of staff who work at Salford Royal are currently subject to investigation in relation to an information governance breach.

"All of our patients have the right to expect that their information will be looked after securely and accessed appropriately.

"We take patient confidentiality extremely seriously ... and will take the appropriate action to ensure staff understand the seriousness of unauthorised access," Dr Brookes said.

Last year, the ICO publicly warned NHS staff about the "potentially serious consequences of prying into patients' medical records without a valid reason".

Since then four NHS staff have been prosecuted or fined in relation to accessing patients' medical information without authorisation, according to the ICO.


THIS IS THE ISSUE THAT WON’T STAY HIDDEN; AND THE FACT THAT IT ISN’T JUST HOMOSEXUALITY BUT PEDOPHILIA AS WELL MAKES IT MUCH WORSE. THERE ARE MEN I’VE MET IN THE PAST WHO SEEMED ATTRACTIVE, BUT NOT PAIRED WITH A WOMAN, OR EVEN DATING ANYONE. IN ONE SUCH CASE I NOW KNOW THAT “ON THE SIDE,” HE WAS A CLOSET PEDOPHILE, AND MANY OTHERS ARE GAY. YES, THEY SHOULD ALL BE OUT OF THE CHURCH, BUT UNTIL THE WHOLE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY IS DISBANDED, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE GAYS AND LESBIANS INVOLVED IN IT. IT’S SO EASY TO SATISFY THEIR TRUE PREFERENCES IN THE CLOISTERED COMMUNITIES AND HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT FROM PEOPLE WHO WOULD HATE THEM FOR IT IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD AND POSSIBLY PHYSICALLY ATTEMPT TO HARM THEM.

I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE CATHOLIC CHURCH STOP THE COMMUNAL LIVING AND STOP REQUIRING THAT THE PRIESTS AND NUNS BE UNMARRIED. GOING ENTIRELY WITHOUT SEX FOR ONES’ WHOLE LIFE IS UNLIKELY TO HAPPEN, IF WE ARE HONEST ABOUT IT, OR WILL BE TERRIBLY DIFFICULT. WHY DON’T WE STOP CALLING GENUINELY LOVING SEX A SIN? IT’S A DEEPLY SEATED INSTINCT. IF THEY’RE MARRIED THAT IS NO LONGER A PROBLEM FOR THEM AND THEY CAN PERHAPS CONCENTRATE ON A HEALTHIER RELIGIOUS LIFE AS A RESULT.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46420146
Pope Francis 'worried' about homosexuality in the priesthood
DECEMBER 2, 2018 9 hours ago

PHOTOGRAPH -- REUTERS
Pope Francis has said that homosexuality in the clergy is a "serious matter" that "worries" him.

The comments were made in an interview about religious vocations, given to a Spanish missionary priest as part of an upcoming book.

The pontiff described homosexuality as "fashionable", and urged clergy to observe their vow of celibacy.

Italian daily Corriere della Sera ran excerpts of the interviews on its website on Saturday.

Pope Francis said that the Church had to be "demanding" in choosing candidates for the priesthood.

"The question of homosexuality is a very serious one," said the pontiff, adding that those responsible for training priests must make sure candidates are "humanly and emotionally mature" before they are ordained.

"For this reason, the Church urges that persons with this rooted tendency not be accepted into ministry or consecrated life."

This also applied to women who wanted to become nuns.

Pope tells gay abuse victim 'God loves you'
How Pope Francis became a movie star
Pope changes teaching on death penalty
The comments made by the pontiff reiterate past Vatican statements about the selection of candidates for religious life.

"In our societies, it even seems homosexuality is fashionable. And this mentality, in some way, also influences the life of the Church," he went on to say.

The head of the Catholic Church stressed there was "no room for this" in the lives of priests and nuns.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image caption
The interviews were conducted in mid-August

In 2013, Pope Francis reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's position that homosexual acts were sinful, but homosexual orientation was not.

The 'fallible' Pope strikes a new chord

Archbishop 'in hiding' over Pope letter

"If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" he said.

"The Strength of Vocation", by Father Fernando Prado, is based on four hours of interviews with the pontiff on the challenges of being a member of the clergy. It will be published next week.


ON THE “FALLIBLE” POPE: THIS IS ANOTHER EXCELLENT ARTICLE ABOUT THE POPE. EVERYTHING IS SEE ABOUT HIM, I LIKE. IT’S LIKE THE FRESH APPROACH OF A MARTIN LUTHER WITHOUT THE NEW FORMS OF STRANGLING DOGMATISM THAT WE HAVE IN THE EVANGELICAL, FUNDAMENTALIST PROTESTANT PRACTICES.

FUNDAMENTALISM IS A KILLER OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT, AND CREATES WARPED AND DANGEROUS PEOPLE. NO, I DON’T MEAN EVERYBODY, BUT THE NUMBER OF MURDERERS WHO TURN OUT TO BE HIGHLY “RELIGIOUS,” AND ESPECIALLY IN SOME ECCENTRIC CULTLIKE RELIGIONS INDICATES THAT THERE IS A PATTERN INVOLVED. THERE WAS ONE SUCH GROUP IN THE NEWS A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO WHO BELIEVED IN BEATING THEIR CHILDREN UNMERCIFULLY AND CAUSED INJURIES. THE IDEA IS TO PURIFY THEM. THAT DOESN’T WORK. IF THEY SURVIVE IT, THEY WILL NEVER ENTER THE DOOR OF A CHURCH AGAIN.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24210906
The 'fallible' Pope strikes a new chord
By David Willey
BBC News, Rome
24 September 2013

PHOTOGRAPH -- The Pope has said he needs to "live his life with others" AP

On the eve of a crucial first meeting with a group of eight cardinals from around the world who are to be his permanent consultants, Pope Francis has pointed the way towards a less authoritarian future form of Church government, criticising "small-minded" Catholic rules.

The Pope has granted his first in-depth post-election interview to the editor of a prestigious Jesuit magazine published in Rome, Civilta Cattolica.

The interview reveals not only a remarkable change of tone at the Vatican, but an important shift of key. Pope Francis has added sharps and flats to papal teaching which show that, far from claiming infallibility, he is a person of great humility who has grown accustomed to living with his own past personal failings and mistakes.

In this, he offers a fresh vision of his currently beleaguered Church. He explains that he is following the will of the College of Cardinals who elected him Pope last March.

His forthcoming meeting with the "Group of Eight" is going to be a "real consultation", not a mere talking shop, he says.

"There are ecclesiastical rules and precepts that were once effective, but have now lost value or meaning," he told his Jesuit interviewer, Father Antonio Spadaro.

The Pope's language is unlike anything heard coming out of the Vatican during recent papacies

"The view of the church's teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong."

He continued with unexpected candour: "My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative."

In this six-hour interview, Pope Francis explained quite vividly the reasons why, when he first set eyes upon the papal apartment on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace, he decided he could not live there.

"The papal apartment is old, tastefully decorated and large, but not luxurious.

"But in the end it is like an inverted funnel. It is big and spacious, but the entrance is really tight.

"People can come only in dribs and drabs, and I cannot live without people. I need to live my life with others."

Instead, the pope chose to live in the Domus Marthae, a residence for clerics and official Vatican guests close by Saint Peter's Basilica where he occupies a modest, three-roomed suite.

He takes his meals in a common dining room, using the formal papal quarters only for official receptions and meeting heads of state.

"The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials," Pope Francis said.

"I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds.

VIDEO -- Media caption Pope 'determined to carry out reform'

"Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds... And you have to start from the ground up."

The Pope's language is unlike anything heard coming out of the Vatican during recent papacies. It may not please some Catholics, and is certainly causing some degree of consternation among Vatican administrators accustomed to running things their way.

"The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent," Pope Francis concludes.

"The church's pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.

"We have to find a new balance. Otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards."


DO WE NEED TO RETAIN THE KNOWLEDGE OF NONFARM FOODS IN CASE OF SEVERE CLIMATE CHANGE OR OTHER DISASTERS WHICH COULD SEND OUR “CIVILIZATIONS” CRASHING TO THE GROUND. HERE IS ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING, ALONG WITH THE COMMON EARTHWORM AND WITCHETTY GRUBS FROM AUSTRALIA (ALSO MEXICO). THIS IS A BIT OF A JOKE, BUT AMERICANS ARE NOT ONLY PRONE TO RULE OUT SUCH THINGS, WHEN IF WE WERE TO BE GENUINELY AT THE POINT OF STARVING WE SHOULD KNOW WHAT CAN BE EATEN AND DIGESTED WITHOUT OUR BEING POISONED.

I ALSO WANT TO POINT OUT THAT PEOPLE WHO HAVE GROWN UP EATING GRASSHOPPERS SAY THEY’RE ACTUALLY GOOD – SALTY AND CRUNCHY IF FRIED OR ROASTED. KEEP IN MIND THAT LOBSTERS, SHRIMP, AND CRABS ARE THE MOST CLOSELY RELATED SPECIES, AND IF GRASSHOPPERS TASTE LIKE THOSE, I WOULD BE GLAD TO EAT THEM. YOU WILL PROBABLY REMEMBER THE “MANNA,” USUALLY DESCRIBED AS BREAD, WHICH FELL DOWN FROM THE HEAVENS IN SUCH ABUNDANCE THAT THE ISRAELITES PICKED IT UP AND FILLED BASKETS WITH IT/THEM.

MY ANTHROPOLOGY PROFESSOR SAID THAT IT WAS MOST LIKELY GRASSHOPPERS (LOCUSTS). I FEEL SURE WE HAVE EATEN THEM SINCE BEFORE WE BECAME “HUMAN,” AND WITH GREAT PLEASURE. ON ONE OF THE NATURE VIDEOS SOME YEARS AGO, IT SHOWED A TRUE “PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS.” WHEN THE WEATHER HAS BEEN WET ENOUGH, GRASSHOPPERS WILL BREED PROFUSELY AND THE HATCHLINGS CAN BE IN THE MILLIONS. WHEN THEY MATURE AND RISE UP INTO THE AIR AS ONE BODY TO FIND NEW FOOD, THEY ARE SHOCKING TO SEE UNLESS YOU ARE TRULY FREE OF ALL FEAR OF CREATURES WHICH HAVE TOO MANY LEGS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNsCpRZXq68.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46357020
The Ugandan love of grasshoppers - and how to harvest them
2 December 2018

PHOTOGRAPH -- During grasshopper season they can be bought by the handful across Uganda

It is grasshopper season in Uganda, where they are seen as a nutritious delicacy - either boiled or deep-fried. They are so popular that some are worried about declining harvests, as the BBC's Patience Atuhaire reports.

It is dusk. Rusty oil barrels are lined up in rows. Wooden scaffolding holds up unpainted iron sheets. The blindingly bright lights are rigged up as if for a sports stadium. But the four young men are not preparing to play football, they are here to catch grasshoppers.

At this time of year, during the rainy season, the scene is repeated in many towns across the country.

"When the season starts, we watch the cycle of the moon, and prepare. [They tend to come out at full moon]. We also keep hoping for rain. The larger numbers appear when it has rained," says Quraish Katongole, one of Uganda's most experienced grasshopper trappers.

Image caption
The trappers catch their prey using bright lights, grass smoke and metal sheeting
He is the chairman of a group that coordinates the grasshopper trade around the country.

As his workers set up the last of the barrels at a trapping site here on the edge of Masaka town, he heads off to supervise work at other locations.

Salty, crunchy flavour
As it grows darker, the slim-bodied nocturnal insects start to swarm around the lights. Most of them are green, but there are sprinklings of ashy-brown and golden-brown.

The trappers burn fresh grass and the rising smoke makes the insects dizzy. The grasshoppers smash against the iron sheets, falling straight into the drums. It sounds like fat raindrops on a tin roof. And as the numbers increase, it becomes a steady downpour.

Women, schoolgirls still in their uniforms, even children, scour the bushes surrounding the traps, picking up the escapees that have avoided the barrels, before they can burrow further into the greenery.

Image caption
The grasshoppers smash against the iron sheeting and fall into the empty oil drums

The edible insects are a delicacy in many Ugandan communities, and for the urban population, a sought-after snack.

During rush hour in the capital, Kampala, young people with baskets or plastic buckets, weave through the traffic selling boiled or deep fried ready-to-eat grasshoppers to commuters. A tablespoonful costs 1,000 Uganda shillings ($0.27, £0.21).

Others sell fresh green ones, with the wings and legs already plucked off, that can be prepared at home.

Even though most Ugandans love the grasshoppers, I last tasted them as a child, so I vaguely remember the crunchy, salty flavour.

But the idea of popping a roasted insect into my mouth has never appealed to my grown-up taste-buds.

'Eat more insects'

Ugandans, and others in the region, are among over two billion people worldwide who eat different species of insects, according to a UN estimate.

A 2013 UN Food and Agriculture Organization report urged others who were not already munching insects to consider adding them to their diet, saying that this could boost nutrition and the amount of food available.

But in Uganda, the number of grasshoppers could be falling as their feeding and breeding habitats around Lake Victoria are shrinking.

Every year between 2010 and 2015 the country lost over 46,000 hectares (114,000 acres) of its natural forest cover, according to the National Forest Authority.

In the greater Masaka area, which is the traditional hub of the grasshopper industry, 9,000 hectares of wild habitat were converted into farmland or for settlement use between 1990 and 2005.

Nearby, on the road towards Bukakata Port on the shores of Lake Victoria, large trees have been felled in a forest reserve. Large swathes of what was formerly forest and grassland are now pineapple plantations.

Image caption
Grasshoppers be sold fresh, boiled or fired [sic]

Mr Katongole has witnessed this transformation.

"There was a huge natural forest and swamps in this area, and in the islands; they were all cut down. That resulted in the numbers of grasshoppers appearing in this region each season declining," he says.

Speaking from 30 years' experience in the trade, he adds: "You'd hear people say; 'I am going to Masaka, that is where there are grasshoppers', but that has changed."

And the evidence from the night's work backs that up.

The young men empty the drums pouring their catch into white sacks. For all that frenzied swarming, they manage to fill just two sacks.

Grasshopper transport

"There was a time when I would catch 20 to 25 sacks a night," Mr Katongole comments, crestfallen.

At about 05:00 local time (02:00 GMT), he loads up a saloon car with sacks collected from around town and a colleague makes the three-hour drive to Kampala, where each sack can fetch at least $80 (£63).

But the demand for grasshoppers is not only in the capital.

The morning brings a whirlwind of activity in the main market on the outskirts of Masaka. To attract buyers, vendors call out prices, while some adopt a musical approach by singing and clapping their hands.

Image caption
Market traders can sell a cupful for 5,000 Uganda shillings ($1.34)

Some sell out of barrels, while others use large plastic buckets or trays. Grasshoppers in all forms are on display; sellers measure out cupfuls or handfuls of fresh ones into plastic bags.

Saucepans of boiling insects sit on charcoal stoves.

Agnes Nansamba is smiling as she cooks. A smaller harvest means more customers for her. She lifts a pan and shakes it, turning the grasshoppers over.

'God-given' treat

"We used to sell here all day and you would not get enough customers. But today, I've boiled just 12 cupfuls. I will sell each at 5,000 Uganda shillings ($1.35). A few weeks ago, the price was [even] higher," she says.

As we speak, a truck with sacks hanging from metal railings pulls up. Many of the traders run over to replenish their stock.

In the melee, no-one gives a thought as to where the insects appear from. They just know that they come in May and November, when the rains fall. They see them as a gift from God.

But a group of Ugandan scientists are trying to understand more about their life cycle to see if they can be harvested in a more sustainable way.

Prof Phillip Nyeko, the lead researcher, says that apart from loss of habitat, aggressive harvesting presents another threat.

"They do not swarm to be eaten, they swarm to feed and breed. But when you put up lights and collect them in the thousands, you're upsetting their life cycle.

"You don't know if you're picking egg-laying ones, male or female. So don't be surprised if there are fewer the next season."

More from Patience Atuhaire:
Inside the 'world's fittest country'
On the trail of illegal 'beauty-cream' smugglers
The city banking on more guns to make it safer
Artificial breeding

His team is researching the possibility of breeding and rearing grasshoppers in a controlled way to make them available all year round.

"We are trying to develop procedures or protocols on how you can mass-rear these insects. Developing the feeds that are nutritious, and the feeds that produce the insects that we want in terms of their quality, in terms of their taste," he explains.

Prof Nyeko says his team will experiment with mass breeding at the end of next year.

If they succeed, Ugandans will be happy to know that they can continue to enjoy a grasshopper snack and not only during the rainy season.


Patience Atuhaire
@patuhaire
Multimedia Journalist @BBCAfrica @bbcworldservice |Books | The Arts| The Road | The Wilderness| #Iam4040| My views.


BERNIE SANDERS TODAY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND MORE

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-climate-change-2020-election_us_5c05a321e4b066b5cfa4c686
POLITICS 12/03/2018 08:03 pm ET
Bernie Sanders Stakes Out Forceful Climate Stance, Leapfrogging The 2020 Field
The 2016 presidential race largely ignored climate change. The Vermont senator is banking on that no longer being possible.
By Alexander C. Kaufman

PHOTOGRAPH -- FORTUNE
Sen. Bernie Sanders gathered the climate change faithful for a star-studded town hall meeting in Washington on Dec. 3.

WASHINGTON ― Two years can be a split second in geological time and an eternity in politics, but it may also be just long enough for an issue ignored in one election to reach center stage in the next.

At least, that’s the bet Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is making.

On Monday the Vermont senator packed two rooms of the Hart Senate Office Building for a star-studded town hall meeting on climate change, demonstrating a knowledge and urgency not yet seen from any Democrat likely to challenge President Donald Trump in two years.

“Tonight we are dealing with what the scientific community tells us is the great crisis facing our planet and facing humanity,” Sanders said in his opening statement. “That is climate change.”

Speakers included 350.org founder Bill McKibben, The Green Collar Economy author Van Jones, activist and “Big Little Lies” star Shailene Woodley, climate scientist Brenda Ekwurzel, activist and musician Xiuhtezcatl Martinez and Mayor Dale Ross of deep-red Georgetown, Texas, whose pragmatic embrace of newly cheap renewable energy has made him a poster boy for how Republicans could quit climate change denialism.

Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has made championing a so-called Green New Deal her first priority since arriving in Washington, emerged as the fiercest voice on the panel Monday.

“This is going to be the Great Society, the moon shot, the civil rights movement of our generation,” she said. “That is the scale of the ambition that this movement is going to require.”

In the 2016 presidential election, Sanders staked out the most ambitious climate platform of any candidate, vowing to slash carbon dioxide pollution 40 percent by 2030, end fossil fuel subsidies and ban fracking. Despite stark policy differences with his chief rival in the primaries ― former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supported fracking and raised twice as much from the oil and gas industry as her Republican opponent ― climate change remained a policy backwater in the election.

Now Sanders seems bent on making climate change the central issue of a second White House run as his advisers openly speculate about when, not if, he declares his 2020 candidacy. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), another big-name progressive expected to run, outlined a climate policy in the form of a bill to require public companies disclose financial risk from warming or regulations to curb emissions.

The event on Monday ― broadcast live on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter ― was designed to propel the senator to the front of a crowded field of likely presidential contenders on an issue urgent to the young and to communities of color, who bear the brunt of increased air pollution and more extreme weather.

“In 2016, Senator Sanders made addressing climate change a critical part of his bold plan for the United States, and has been talking about the very real threats presented by a changing climate for the past three decades,” Dulce Anayasaenz, an organizer with Organizing for Bernie, said by email. “Trump is investing in the millionaire and billionaire class through a corporate welfare program that reduces their fair share of taxes, while Senator Sanders will invest in working families and frontline communities.”

The effects of climate change became highly visible in the last two years. Records for everything from global temperatures to climate-related property damage were set and broken. Unprecedented storms deluged states from Texas to North Carolina and devastated Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. History-making wildfire seasons incinerated 3.2 million acres of California.

“You have a diaspora in the country moving to other states,” Ekwurzel said of the thousands displaced by wildfires and hurricanes over the past two years. “They may be temporary, they may be long term. These people are on the move, creatures are on the move, adapting to climate change. But it doesn’t have to be that bad.”

The town hall meeting took place one day after the 24th United Nations Conference of the Parties, the leading international summit on climate change, convened in Katowice, Poland. That gathering was aimed at translating the October report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into policy. The report warned that world governments must reduce global emissions by half within 12 years to avoid warming that could lead to $54 trillion in damage.

Sanders’ event also came amid a swell of grassroots support for Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, a sweeping federal stimulus package to drastically scale up renewable energy infrastructure. More than a dozen sitting and incoming members of Congress have already backed a resolution calling for a House select committee to focus on the matter.

The climate crisis and burgeoning political movement calling for action to address it hasn’t translated to coverage on the most influential medium in American political discourse.

Just 29 percent of major televised debates in the 2018 midterm elections mentioned the issue. Of the 107 news segments that ABC, CBS and NBC aired from Nov. 8 to Nov. 13 on the deadly wildfires that scorched California last month, just four discussed climate change. In 2017 the influential Sunday morning talk shows on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News aired a combined 260 minutes of climate coverage, 79 percent of which focused exclusively on President Donald Trump’s personal beliefs on science and his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.

“Unlike commercial television, this event is not sponsored by Exxon Mobil,” Sanders said. “Nor is it paid or sponsored by the Koch brothers, who made most of their fortune in the fossil fuel industry.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

RELATED COVERAGE
Bernie Sanders To Host A Climate Town Hall, Amplifying Progressive Calls To Cut Emissions
Scientists Respond To Trump’s Latest Unhinged Climate Remarks: ‘It’s Almost Satire’
‘Green New Deal’ Gains Momentum, But Few Progressive Caucus Democrats Pledge Support
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Alexander C. Kaufman
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BERNIE'S ARMY? I DON'T QUITE LIKE THE SOUND OF THAT. SOUNDS A LITTLE UNSAVORY, THOUGH IT IS A BACK-HANDED COMPLIMENT ALSO.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/paloma/the-trailer/2018/11/29/the-trailer-bernie-s-army-gathers-in-vermont/5bfee1e91b326b60d1280081/
Politics Analysis
The Trailer: Bernie's army gathers in Vermont
By David Weigel
November 29, 2018

In this edition: Bernie's allies gather in Vermont, Mississippi voters go their own way, the Louisiana governor's race kicks off before the candidates do, and Democrats' power struggles lead to more struggling.

Please, if you live in Bladen County, don't send me your absentee ballot. This is The Trailer.

VIDEO -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is followed by reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday. (Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE)

BURLINGTON, Vt. — For the next three days, some of the best-known supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential bid will come together in his city for the Sanders Institute Gathering. Academics, activists, and candidates for lower office will debate their agenda, discussing everything from housing policy to the fate of Puerto Rico. Sanders himself will gave a keynote speech.

And before you ask: No, this is not about whether the independent senator from Vermont will run for president.

“This is a discussion about policy, about facts, about how we work together as progressives to shift the framework of debate and effect real change,” said Jane O'Meara Sanders, the senator's wife, who founded the think tank last year. “It is not about electoral politics or campaigns.”

Yet the campaign is coming, with a crowded and unsettled Democratic field that looks nothing like the one Sanders competed in two years ago. No coronation is expected for Sanders — not that he wants one.

Sanders, who released a memoir this week of his “two years in the resistance,” has given every impression that he will run for president again. But after galvanizing voters by running against the party's “establishment,” and given the perception that Democrats teed up a nomination for Hillary Clinton, he has not locked up early endorsements or blocked the path for another candidate.

“It’s going to be wide open, with multiple lanes,” said James Zogby, a DNC member and Sanders ally who helped win changes to the party's primary process. “There's going to be billionaire lane, a moderate-centrist lane, an establishment lane, and then I think Bernie keeps one lane to himself. He has capacity to mobilize progressives as no one else does, and he’s a proven fundraiser.”

Sanders is careful to be clear that there's no real effort to keep other liberals or left-wing candidates out of the primary.

“I'm talking to people all over the country to get an assessment of whether I am in fact the strongest candidate,” Sanders told an audience at George Washington University on Tuesday night. There are “a number” of serious candidates, he added, and some are his friends; when pressed, in any setting, he refuses to make a negative case against them.

If there's a “progressive lane” in the 2020 race, it will probably be the busiest. Since winning reelection Nov. 6, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has, for the first time, said he is talking to his family about whether to run for president. On Thursday afternoon, while Sanders was en route to Vermont, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) delivered a high-profile foreign-policy speech, warning against “the combination of authoritarianism and corrupt capitalism” gaining political strength in other countries. That's a theme Sanders himself had been making in big-picture speeches.

Just four members of Congress endorsed Sanders before their states held primaries or caucuses; two of those Democrats, Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), are exploring presidential bids of their own. So is Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who in 2016 Sanders considered for a potential running mate. Booker and Merkley are also co-sponsors of Sanders's universal health-care bill, as are Warren and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who has been making her own moves toward a run.

In interviews before the Gathering, Sanders's supporters said that the choice in 2020 remained simple. Plenty of candidates were adopting Sanders's views; none had put them forward first. Cenk Uygur, the founder of the Young Turks news network, singled out Booker as a candidate who had climbed on board with liberal agenda items but had once criticized Democratic rhetoric about Wall Street and had taken money from business interests who were anathema to liberals.

“The question is, why would we pick someone who is barely acceptable, when we have a much better alternative?” Uygur asked. "Can someone overcome the hurdle of being less progressive than Bernie? He's been fighting for these policies for 40 years, so if someone else comes out and says, 'Hey, me too,' they better not think they're going to pull a fast one on us."

Without the binary choice that faced liberal voters in 2016, however, Democratic activists and voters are happy to shop around. That doesn't matter for the organization of Sanders's campaign or finance network; it will have an impact on how outside groups mobilize. Many labor unions require a supermajority vote from their leadership to endorse, something that was more possible in a Clinton-Sanders contest than it would be in a crowded one.

The same is true for liberal groups; MoveOn and Democracy for America, to name just two national groups that backed Sanders, make endorsements based on a supermajority vote of their membership, and in a conversation this week DFA leaders said it was hard to see that happening quickly in the race for 2020. Instead of rallying early behind Sanders, the most successful vote-getter of any recent left-wing candidate, “progressive” organizations are planning to hold more forums and vetting events to see how much they can make the entire field commit to an agenda.

The conservative movement pioneered that process, succeeding in 2012 and turning Mitt Romney from a supporter of health insurance mandates to a candidate who promised to repeal the ACA. What it did not have, that year, was a dedicated following for one candidate. Sanders has what no other 2020 hopeful does: millions of supporters, some of whom refuse to consider any other candidate for president and who cite polls to argue that no other candidate on the left is so popular. Like Sanders, they dismiss the idea that he is vulnerable to negative attacks — just one negative ad, from a pro-Martin O'Malley super PAC, was run against him in 2016 — by suggesting he has been vetted in a way no other would-be candidate has been.

Sanders, who speaks often of his disdain for “gossip” reporting about 2020 and candidate jockeying, said Tuesday that his campaign had moved Democrats toward a populist agenda that no one was rolling back: a $15 minimum wage, universal health care, massive infrastructure investments and tuition-free public college. He discussed all of that as if it had become immutable, part of the party's agenda no matter who became a nominee.

“We kind of busted the discussion open,” Sanders said. “Maybe that was the most important accomplishment of the campaign.”

TURNOUT WATCH

PHOTOGRAPH -- A volunteer takes a seat at one of the busier intersections in north Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)

Republicans won the year's last federal election Tuesday, securing two more years in Washington for Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi. While Hyde-Smith's 7.8-point win was the narrowest in any Mississippi Senate race since 1988, it was a win, and it defied some Democratic expectations about whether the new senator could excite the party's base.

It was also a revealing look at how the demographic changes that are re-sorting the parties have come even to states that aren't seeing their populations change much. Mississippi has added just 100,000 new residents since the start of the century; Georgia, by contrast, has added about 2.2 million. Yet the patterns seen in Georgia played out in Phil Ochs's least favorite state, too.

Black voters are mobilizing. Mike Espy, the first black congressman from Mississippi since Reconstruction, ended up getting more raw votes than any Democratic candidate for governor or Senate in decades. That was in large part thanks to blockbuster turnout in the state's 25 majority-black counties; Espy got more votes in losing his race (410,693) than Republican Thad Cochran got in winning his final term in the Senate four years ago (370,208).

Rural whites keep moving toward the GOP. Hyde-Smith struggled more than most Republicans to turn out the party's base. She won Lee County (Tupelo) and Harrison County (Biloxi), the two places where President Trump campaigned Monday, by just half the margin that Trump won them in 2016.

But in northeast Mississippi, the counties in the old Tennessee Valley Authority region, Hyde-Smith continued the trends visible in the Nov. 6 Senate race in Tennessee, with ancestral Democrats abandoning the party for good. In 2008, the closest Mississippi Senate race until this year, Sen. Roger Wicker (R) carried the counties northeast of Tupelo with 66.4 percent of the vote; Hyde-Smith, who ran two points behind Wicker's statewide margin, carried those counties with 79.8 percent of the vote.

Suburbs keep moving toward Democrats. Mississippi, so distinct from the rest of the South in many ways, was no exception here. While modern Democrats always win the state's majority-black counties, they tend to lose the greater Jackson area, composed of Hinds County (Jackson itself) and the suburban counties of Madison and Rankin. In 2008, Democrat Ray Mabus won just 49.2 percent of the vote across those counties. On Tuesday, Espy won them with 55.2 percent of the vote. In 2008, Mabus had run four points behind his statewide margin in Madison County; Espy, who lives in that county, ran slightly ahead of his statewide margin there.

Louisiana Governor. Democrats are defending just one governor's mansion in 2019: This one, captured by the socially conservative and economically progressive Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) in 2015. The pro-JBL Gumbo PAC is out with a web ad deriding the ambitions of Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R), who has said he'll decide Monday whether to run for governor. “In Washington, he talks, and talks, and talks, because that's what Washington is good at,” says a narrator, before running down JBL's record; like most governors, he has presided over strong economic growth.

Kennedy told The Post's Seung Min Kim on Thursday that he was considering a run and talking to his family. “If you believe the polls today, I’d probably win, but it’s more than just winning," he said. "You know, it’s where I think I can do the most good and what do I want to do and what’s best for my family. It’s complicated.”


2020 PLANS

PHOTOGRAPH -- Rep. Eric Swalwell speaks in May 2017. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

Mike Bloomberg. He spent part of Thursday in Jackson, Miss., announcing a grant with the city's popular left-wing Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

Tulsi Gabbard. She's speaking Saturday at the Sanders Institute Gathering, then heading to New Hampshire on Sunday for at least one meet-and-greet with Democrats.

Eric Garcetti. The Los Angeles mayor told reporters in Washington on Thursday that he will decide on a run in the first months of 2019.

John F. Kerry. He told interviewers at Harvard's Institute of Politics that he was still thinking about a run for president, 16 years after his narrow defeat at the hands of George W. Bush. “I'm not taking anything off the table,” he said, “but I haven't been running around to the most obvious states laying any groundwork.”

John McAfee. The potential 2020 libertarian presidential candidate has been getting freelance advice on how to make anime memes.

Beto O'Rourke. He's been invited to speak in New Hampshire by that state's Young Democrats, who have been holding high-profile meet-and-greets for would-be candidates.

Eric Swalwell. The California congressman will keynote Progress Iowa's holiday bash in Des Moines next month. Previous keynoters include Bernie Sanders and Bill De Blasio.

WAIT, WHAT?

Technically speaking, the 2018 election is not over until every state certifies its vote totals, and North Carolina is taking its time to do so in the 9th District. The reasons, laid out by Kirk Ross, are confounding: Rogue activists may have persuaded hundreds of voters to apply for absentee ballots and offered to deliver them, which they then failed to do.

Few states are as divided over election management as North Carolina, where Republicans capitalized on 2011 wins to draw a friendly map and used a subsequent supermajority to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes of voter ID and other election-related bills. But the board governing the 9th District voted unanimously to delay certification of that race until more became known about what happened.

It's within the board's power to call a new election if the last one appears to have been fatally flawed. It's unclear if that will happen in North Carolina. But the state is going to remain a battlefield for the voting wars in 2019 and 2020; the Republican-drawn map was overturned by courts yet kept in place for the 2018 election. Democrats, having padded their majority on the state's court, are looking at the potential of a 2020 election fought on a new map, one likely to put Harris in a far less friendly district.

DEMS IN DISARRAY

Rep. Barbara Lee, with, from left, fellow California Democratic Reps. Maxine Waters, Jackie Speier, and Mark DeSaulnier, walks from Democratic caucus leadership elections on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

It was overshadowed by the fight over whether to give Nancy Pelosi the speaker's gavel again, but the race for Democratic conference chair was galvanizing, and ultimately bitter, for the party's left. Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.) fell just 11 votes short of securing the position, which she began seeking five months ago. She lost it to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), a favorite of party leaders and a frequent TV spokesman for the party, who has a résumé that could not clash more with that of the California congresswoman: a corporate lawyer who supports education policy unpopular with the left and opposes efforts to boycott Israel.

The irony, Democrats say, is that Jeffries's chance of winning a leadership job grew after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Rep. Joe Crowley, the outgoing conference chairman, in a primary. With Crowley gone, the New York delegation, now up to 21 members, had no representation in the conference's top jobs. Lee, 72, also blamed “ageism” for her loss to a 48-year-old party star; had she won, all of the conference's top jobs would have been held by members of Congress in their 70s.

But the possibility of putting Lee into party leadership had tantalized the left, which has lionized her ever since she cast the sole vote against authorizing military force in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001. (That authorization is still in effect, used to justify interventions in the “war on terror” without new congressional approval.) Just as the cycle began with a near miss for a party leadership position by the left (Keith Ellison's defeat in the DNC chair race), it ended with that wing of the party failing to put one of its own in the new House leadership.

What will the repercussions be? We know that liberal groups such as Justice Democrats and Democracy for America were, in the weeks since the election, talking to potential challengers to incumbent Democrats in safe seats. We have also seen Indivisible and other pressure groups created or expanded since the 2016 election, protesting some of the Democrats who have resisted Nancy Pelosi's bid for speaker. The Lee defeat, if followed by any perceived moves by Jeffries to undermine the left, is going into the cocktail of reasons activists will continue to mobilize against politicians they see as “corporate” Democrats.


THESE COMMENTS BY A GREEK ECONOMIST ARE VERY NICE TO HEAR, BUT IT TAKES ME BY SURPRISE. PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE USA ARE TAKING BERNIE SANDERS SERIOUSLY, ALSO. THIS IS ANOTHER GOOD ARTICLE ON SANDERS TODAY.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/bernie-sanders-turns-focus-to-the-white-house-and-the-world/2018/12/01/dc01f7ae-f4f1-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html
PowerPost
Bernie Sanders turns focus to the White House and the world
By David Weigel December 1 at 12:52 PM

PHOTOGRAPH -- Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders gives the keynote address at the Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlington, Vt., on Thursday. (April Mccullum/AP)

BURLINGTON, Vt. — By now, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has gotten used to supporters urging him to run for president in 2020; at rallies, at airports, on his weekday walks to the Capitol. At a Friday night gathering here, Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis went further: Only Bernie Sanders could save the world.

“Let me convey a message from all of us in Europe, for all those comrades of yours who are now struggling to reclaim our cities, our world, our world, our environment,” Varoufakis said. “We need Bernie Sanders to run for president.”

The senator from Vermont, who is actively discussing whether to mount another campaign, smiled and closed the session. But over three days at the Sanders Institute’s inaugural conference, the senator and his supporters described a democracy under attack by populist right-wing forces as compromise-hungry “neoliberals” lacked a vision to defend it — a dynamic they see as leading to President Trump’s win in 2016.

Even as Democrats won back the House of Representatives last month, some high-profile left-wing candidates fell short, a dynamic Sanders struggled with; he opened the weekend conference by saying the party could have done better. For the senator and his supporters, it was clear that Democrats had squandered power when they last held it, leading to a surge of right-wing nationalism. To avoid a repeat, the left needed to organize — preferably, many here believe, with Sanders in the White House.

“Neoliberal establishments are collapsing, not just here, but around the world,” said Cornel West, a crusading academic who endorsed Sanders in 2016 and backed the Green Party’s campaign when Sanders lost the primary. “The only thing presented [to people] that has some credibility is vicious, authoritarianism fascism. If we don’t have a left populism that’s credible, we’re running down a fascist road.”

West, who has encouraged Sanders to run as a third-party candidate, said in an interview that the senator looked to be committed to his work inside the Democratic Party. And even at the conference, an invitation-only affair for around 250 people, there was speculation that another candidate could pick up Sanders’s banner in 2020.

Author Naomi Klein told a Friday audience that support for a “Green New Deal,” a jobs plan based on a transition away from fossil fuels, would be essential for “any candidate who wanted to run as a progressive in 2020,” Sanders or otherwise. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), who spoke at the conference Saturday, is actively exploring her own presidential bid. No Democrat seen as a potential nominee, said West, came with as much “baggage,” where the left was concerned, as Hillary Clinton had.

Sanders, 77, has frequently praised the ways Democrats adopted his “really radical ideas” — he uses the term sarcastically — during and after the 2016 election. It started with the drafting of a more left-wing platform and continued this year as a record number of House and Senate Democrats and Democratic candidates endorsed the main planks of the Sanders movement — Medicare-for-all, free college tuition and a $15 minimum wage.

Several candidates who had lost races this year also made it to Burlington, saying they would come away thinking that the movement had been dealt a temporary defeat and was still reshaping the Democratic Party, while potentially allowing other candidates to compete in the same 2020 lane as Sanders.

“Some [potential presidential] candidates have reached out to me since the midterms,” said Randy Bryce, a union organizer who lost an expensive and closely watched House race in Wisconsin, running on a Sanders-style platform of universal Medicare and abolishing Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. “They’re interested in the message. Once people are educated on what Medicare-for-all involves, it can be popular throughout the country.”

[Take a look at the possible 2020 Democratic presidential candidates]

But for many at the conference, the only clear way to pull that off was to nominate Sanders, who ended the 2016 primaries with nearly 14 million votes and with high favorable ratings. In October, a Gallup poll put Sanders’s favorable rating at 53 percent; it has been above 50 percent ever since his primary bid gained steam three years ago. Polls that test Sanders against President Trump consistently show Sanders with a lead, though at this point in the 2016 cycle, polling showed Trump badly trailing in a matchup with Clinton.

“Since we need to take such bold steps forward, it might be that we need someone who’s been clear and consistent for 40 years,” said John Cusack, an actor and activist. “I hope to God that he runs and wins. What makes me hopeful is that when I talk to millennials and younger people, they get it. They love Bernie. They want a future.”

The risk, said Sanders’s supporters, was bigger than one more lost election. A major theme of the weekend was that the international left had failed to organize as effectively as the nationalist right. Varoufakis’s remarks Friday ended with the launch of Progressive International, an effort to build ties and share strategies between left-wing activists and parties across the world. Sanders campaign veterans, separately, had already been training left-wing parties in Europe on the tactics used in the 2016 campaign.

“After the [2008 economic] crisis, two kinds of people united internationally: bankers and fascists,” Varoufakis said in a short interview. “The only people who never bound together were progressives.”

Sanders himself has argued that the “post-World War II global order,” which in many countries responded to the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 by cutting back social services. This, he says, enabled the rise of candidates who appealed to fear of changes both economic and demographic, like Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro*, and of right-wing governments in countries like Italy and Hungary. While Sanders’s flock was gathering, Bolsonaro was at the international Group of 20 meeting in Buenos Aires, meeting with Trump national security adviser John Bolton.

Fernando Haddad, the left-wing politician who lost to Bolsonaro after courts barred popular former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from running, said in an interview that his country was “harvesting the consequences of the neoliberal project’s failure.” At weekend panels, Sanders supporters argued that Democrats had created the opening for Trump by failing to crack down on industries, like health insurance and banking, that many voters saw as exploitative.

“Right now the racist, violent, homophobic, and sexist far right is organizing,” said Ada Colau, the left-wing mayor of Barcelona. “We need to amplify all the alternatives we are building out in the world.”

The weekend gathering was by far the Institute’s biggest project since its founding last year by Jane O’Meara Sanders, who is married to the senator, and came at an auspicious moment for Sanders’s own prospects. Two weeks earlier, federal investigators closed their investigation of a land deal that O’Meara Sanders made as president of a now-defunct college, a favorite subject of the senator’s political opponents, who had watched an FBI probe sink Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

For Sanders die-hards, there was no longer any question that he would be the best possible candidate to reverse the gains of right-wing nationalists. RoseAnn DeMoro, who had turned National Nurses United into the biggest labor backer of Sanders’s 2016 bid, took every chance she could to urge the senator to run again. Asked if she had been contacted by other presidential hopefuls, DeMoro was incredulous.

“There are no other candidates,” she said.

David Weigel
David Weigel is a national political correspondent covering Congress and grass-roots political movements. He is the author of "The Show That Never Ends," a history of progressive rock music. Follow


PEOPLE DON’T COMMONLY THINK ABOUT THIS, BUT MOST OF THE OXYGEN WE HAVE TO BREATHE COMES FROM PLANTS, ESPECIALLY THE HUGE RESERVOIRS OF RAIN FOREST AREAS AROUND THE WORLD. DO WE REALLY WANT TO PUT IN ACRES AND ACRES OF FARMING FIELDS THERE? SOME OF IT SHOULD BE RESERVED FOR THE EARTH. PLANTS ALSO ARE ONE OF THE MAIN WAYS THAT CO2 IS REMOVED FROM THE AIR. PLANTS “BREATHE” CO2 IN AND EXHALE O2. WE DO THE OPPOSITE. WE’VE BEEN KILLING FORESTS FOR YEARS AS THOUGH TREES WERE EXPENDABLE. THEY AREN’T. WE CAN DO WITHOUT MAHOGANY FURNITURE.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-environment-climate-change-amazon-deforestation-a8663596.html
Brazil's far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro threatens to strip powers from government environment agencies
President-elect and renowned climate-sceptic says agencies will no longer impose 'fines all over the place'

Josh Gabbatiss Science Correspondent @josh_gabbatiss
11 hours ago

Jair Bolsonaro has criticised the Brazilian government’s environment agencies and said he will strip them of their powers to impose “fines all over the place”.

A renowned climate sceptic, Brazil’s incoming far-right president has previously said he will build a motorway through the Amazon rainforest and pull out of the Paris agreement.

Mr Bolsonaro, who himself owes 10,000 reais (£2,026) in fines for illegally fishing in 2012, said he wanted to remove enforcement powers from agencies tasked with protecting the country’s national resources.

“The party is over,” said the retired army captain, according to AFP.

Brazil reveals highest deforestation figures in a decade
He was speaking at the Agulhas Negras military academy outside Rio de Janeiro, where he studied in the 1970s.

“I will no longer allow Ibama and ICMBio to be handing out fines all over the place,” he said, referring to Brazil’s main government environmental protection bureaus.

Brazil's far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro threatens to strip powers from government environment agencies

“I want to defend the environment, but not in a Shia way, as is taking place now,” he said, using the word “Shia” to mean radical.

While he said he would pay the money he owed, the president-elect said he was “living proof of the bias and bad work of some inspectors of Ibama and ICMBio”.

“This will stop,” he added.

Show all 25 -- Extinction rebellion: Climate change protesters block London bridges

His words echo statements made during his presidential campaign, in which he said environmental regulations were holding back development in Brazil.

Mr Bolsonaro also reiterated previous pledges to “integrate Indians into society” by scrapping existing native reservations, despite the wishes of tribes to maintain their way of life.

“My plan is to make Indians our equals … They have the same needs as us; they want doctors, dentists, television, internet,” he said.

Brazil recently announced it was abandoning plans to host next year’s key UN climate talks, and on Saturday Mr Bolsonaro said he had a hand in that decision. The official reason given was “budget constraints”.

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The new government will herald a stark change in Brazil’s direction since the nation hosted the crucial UN Earth Summit in 1992 that laid the foundations for current efforts to tackle climate change.

Not only has Mr Bolsonaro aligned himself closely with fellow climate sceptic Donald Trump, his foreign minister pick Ernesto Araujo has described global warming as a “Marxist plot”.

Though the president-elect has now backtracked on his original pledge to follow Mr Trump’s lead and withdraw from the international Paris climate agreement, there are still major concerns about his plans for the Amazon rainforest.

An open letter signed by major NGOs in October indicated that if plans to expand farming and mining in the forest go ahead, deforestation of one of the world’s most biodiverse regions will “explode”.


I JUST FOUND THIS GOOD OLD FRIEND OF MINE OF THE TELLY: DAVID LETTERMAN. HE’S A COMEDIAN WHO EMPLOYS A LOOK BETWEEN LASCIVIOUSNESS AND TOTALLY LOONY TUNES JOY OF LIFE. THINKING BACK, HE REMINDS ME OF HARPO MARX. I ALSO MISS THE MARX BROTHERS – VERY POPULAR WHEN I WAS YOUNG, AND BARELY MENTIONED ANYMORE. GOOD BYE, DEAR FRIENDS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2XcBL6kWn8
David Letterman, 1995


THIS VIDEO, LIFE AFTER PEOPLE, IS VERY INTERESTING TO SOME OF US WHO DO BELIEVE THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS ALL TOO REAL. THAT IS EXPECTED, ACCORDING TO THE ARTICLE ABOVE, TO BE THE CENTRAL FOCUS WITHIN THE NEXT FEW YEARS, AND THE 2020 ELECTION. GO, BERNIE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyEUyqfrScU
Life After People