SunSeeker
SunSeeker's JournalHow these Los Angeles-born pink hats became a worldwide symbol of the anti-Trump women's march
Krista Suh plans to attend the womens march in Washington, D.C., this week to protest Donald Trumps presidency, and she wanted to make a statement. But she also had a more primal goal: staying warm.
I wanted to do something more than just show up, said the 29-year-old screenwriter who lives in downtown Los Angeles, recalling how her professors at the all-female Barnard College in New York City urged her to think about problems. How can I visually show someone whats going on? And I realized as a California girl, I would be really cold in D.C. its not tank-top weather year-round. So I thought maybe I could knit myself a hat.
And so the pussyhat project was born. Knitters mostly women started crafting handmade pink caps with cat ears, a reference to Trumps vulgar statements about grabbing womens genitals, which were revealed in a leaked video shortly before the election.
What started as a project among Suh, Jayna Zweiman and other friends at the Little Knittery in Atwater Village has turned into a global movement. Knitting groups at yarn stores, cafes and coffee shops from Seattle to Marthas Vineyard have been churning out hats, and craft stores have reported a run on pink yarn. As word spread on social media, thousands of hats knit with skeins of thick magenta or fuchsia yarn have been made around the world, including in Australia and Austria. Theyre all being sent to collections spots around the country and a basement in Virginia ahead of the Saturday march.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-pink-hats-womens-march-20170115-story.html
Here's step by step instructions on how to knit one yourself:
Trump Meets With Physicist Who Says Benefits Of Climate Change Outweigh Any Harm
Happer, who served as director of energy research at the Department of Energy in the early 1990s under President George H.W. Bush, has championed the notion that we humans should increase rather than curb carbon dioxide emissions.Happer has also argued that todays warming seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide, that children are being force-fed propaganda masquerading as science and has compared the demonization of carbon dioxide to the suffering Jewish people endured during the Holocaust.
Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews, he told Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBCs Squawk Box in 2014.
E&E News was among the first to report on Fridays meeting at Trump Tower. Although it remains unclear whether Trump is considering Happer for an administration position, the climate skeptic would be a fitting pick given the Republicans previous choices.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_587957e7e4b09281d0eafc70
Comparing carbon dioxide to Jews really shows what a nut this guy is.
Happer has a scientific background but is not a climate scientist. He just wrote an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal. If he wants to dispute mainstream science, he should do so in a peer-reviewed science journal, not The Wall Street Journal. He has never published any peer-reviewed articles on climate science. He disputes that global warming is a problem by mentioning that CO2 levels were much higher in the distant past... when alligators roamed the Arctic, and most of Florida was underwater.
How Putin Played the Far Left
...
Perhaps the starkest case in point is Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her constituency. In December 2015, the Kremlin feted Stein by inviting her to the gala celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Kremlin-funded propaganda network RT. Over a year later, it remains unclear who paid for Steins trip to Moscow and her accommodations there. Her campaign ignored multiple questions on this score. We do know, however, that Stein sat at the same table as both Putin and Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Trumps soon-to-be national security adviser. She further spoke at an RT-sponsored panel, using her presence to criticize the U.S.s disastrous militarism. Afterward, straddling Moscows Red Square, Stein described the panel as inspiring, going on to claim that Putin, whom she painted as a political novice, told her he agree[d] with her on many issues.
Stein presents herself as a champion of the underclass and the environment, and an opponent of the surveillance state and corporate media, and yet she seemed to take pleasure in her marriage of true minds with a kleptocratic intelligence officer who levels forests and arrests or kills critical journalists and invades foreign countries. Their true commonality, of course, is that both Putin and Stein are dogged opponents of U.S. foreign policy.
Indeed, her pro-Kremlin stance wasnt limited to merely praising Putins amicability. Stein joined the Russian president and Kazakhstani dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev in describing Ukraines 2014 EuroMaidan revolution as a coup, and claimed, bizarrely, that NATO is currently fighting enemies we invent to give the weapons industry a reason to sell more stuff.
For good measure, she also asserted in September that Russia used to own Ukraine, by way of defending its colonization. She even selected a vice-presidential candidate who, when asked whether the downing of Flight MH17a massacre almost certainly caused by Russian-supplied separatists in eastern Ukrainewas a false flag, responded, [T]hats exactly what has happened.
Green Party officials across Europe slammed a delusional Stein for her views, with leading Russian environmental activists saying they were deeply shocked by her comments during her Moscow trip.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/13/how-putin-played-the-far-left.html
Kellyanne Conway's husband on short list for top US lawyer job
Source: CNN
George Conway declined to comment, but one of the sources said he would accept the position should Trump tap him to be the government's top litigator. The other source said he has been interviewed by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's attorney general-designate.
...
George Conway is a partner at the corporate law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he has worked for 28 years. He is currently a partner in the firm's litigation department, where he has honed his talents in securities, contract and antitrust litigation, according to his firm's website.
...
Throughout his career, he has represented high-profile clients, including the National Football League and cigarette giant Philip Morris, whom he represented in a successful defamation lawsuit against ABC News.
...
He was part of the team of lawyers in the 1990s who represented Paula Jones in her sexual harassment lawsuit against then-President Bill Clinton. He helped write the Supreme Court brief in the case that would establish a legal precedent for a sitting president to be sued in civil court.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/30/politics/kellyanne-conways-husband-on-short-list-for-top-us-lawyer-job/index.html
Figures. He's part of that Mercer/Bannon cabal that have spent decades trying to destroy the Clintons. But oh the irony that Kelleyanne's hubby established the precedent that sitting presidents can be sued, since Trump will be getting sued...a lot.
Obama's Overtime Law Was Overturned, But Still Helped Thousands
Although a federal judge in late November blocked an update to the Fair Labor Standards Act that would have greatly increased the number of workers eligible for overtime pay beginning at the start of this month, there are indications that the rule still has benefitted some of the workers it was intended to help and could continue to do so even if Donald Trump squashes it after taking office.
The new legislation would have significantly raised the salary cap under which employees workers were eligible to earn overtime pay. In response, some large companies, such as Walmart, gave raises to workers whose pay fell just under the new threshold, making them ineligible for overtime pay. Other companies reclassified salaried overtime-exempt workers as hourly employees, which would make them eligible to earn overtime for workweeks longer than 40 hours.
...
"There's a whole set of companies that had already communicated to their employees that they were going to change their employment status or give them raises," said Brian Kropp, HR practice leader at CEB. Because the rule was halted only about a week before it was set to take effect, many companies had already made the switch.
...
Those raises could have more staying power than the legislation itself. Ross Eisenbrey, vice president at the Economic Policy Institute, said it isn't clear yet whether or not the rule and the higher overtime threshold will survive after the inauguration. Donald Trump's stated opposition to corporate regulations makes him unlikely to support defending it in court, although Eisenbray said at least one organized labor group is positioning itself to continue defending it even if a Jeff Sessions-led Department of Justice declines to do so.
This ambiguity around the legislation's fate could prompt companies to take a better-safe-than-sorry approach, Eisenbray said, since it would be hugely expensive to have to pay months of overtime retroactively.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/obama-s-overtime-law-failed-still-helped-thousands-n700121
Trump Will Be Violating the Emoluments Clause of Our Constitution on Day One.
As explained in a ProPublica piece:
...
The Emoluments Clause appears in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution. It bars any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States from accepting any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign state without the consent of the Congress. The word emolument comes from the Latin emolumentum, meaning profit or gain. The language of the clause was lifted in its entirety from the Articles of Confederation which established the structure of the government of the United States from 1781 until the ratification of the Constitution in 1788-89. The clause was derived from a Dutch rule dating to 1751.
The clause was added to the draft Constitution at the Constitutional Convention on Aug. 23, 1787 on a motion by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina. As Gov. Edmund Randolph of Virginia explained to his states ratification convention in 1788, Pinckneys motion was occasioned by Benjamin Franklin, who had been given a snuffbox, adorned with the royal portrait and encrusted with small diamonds, by Louis XVI while serving as the Continental Congresss ambassador to France. As Randolph said,
An accident which actually happened, operated in producing the restriction. A box was presented to our ambassador by the king of our allies. It was thought proper, in order to exclude corruption and foreign influence, to prohibit any one in office from receiving emoluments from foreign states.
The Continental Congress in 1786 had consented, after a debate, to Franklin keeping the snuffbox, as it had earlier with a similar gift to envoy Arthur Lee. At the same time, consent also was given to diplomat John Jay receiving a horse from the King of Spain.
The clause was part of the basis for Alexander Hamiltons defense of the Constitution, in Federalist 22, as addressing one of the weak sides of republics: that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-would-be-violating-constitution-if-he-continues-to-own-his-businesses
Two Malibu property owners fined $5.1 million for blocking access to public beach
A beachgoer walks along Carbon Beach in Malibu, also known as "Billionaires' Beach." The Malibu Beach Inn is seen in the left background. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)A gate on the Lent property blocks public access to the beach in Malibu. (californiacoastline.org)Commissioners described the Lent case as very egregious and a flagrant violation of state law because the couple had long refused a commission request to remove an unauthorized gate, fence, stairway and deck that blocked an easement required by a coastal development permit issued to a previous owner. The fine was far more than the $950,000 recommended by the agencys staff.In one of those decisions, the commission had battled for nine years with Dr. Warren M. Lent and his wife, Henny, before unanimously approving Thursdays cease-and-desist order for the couple and fining them about $4.2 million for diverting a public easement to private use at an expensive oceanfront rental they own at Las Flores Beach.
Commissioners described the Lent case as very egregious and a flagrant violation of state law because the couple had long refused a commission request to remove an unauthorized gate, fence, stairway and deck that blocked an easement required by a coastal development permit issued to a previous owner. The fine was far more than the $950,000 recommended by the agencys staff.
Commission officials said the couple made money at the publics expense by, in effect, converting the easement to private use. For years, the couple rented the house out to vacationers for about $1,000 a night and advertised on real estate websites that the romantic, gorgeous property has access to a private beach.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-headlines-coastal-fines-20161208-story.html
Man Motivated by Pizzagate Conspiracy Theory Arrested in D.C. Gunfire
WASHINGTON, D.C. A man fired a rifle on Sunday inside a Washington pizza restaurant that has been subjected to harassment based on false stories tying it to child abuse, the police said. No one was hurt, and the man was arrested.
The man, Edgar M. Welch, 28, of Salisbury, N.C., told the police that he had come to the restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, in northwest Washington, to self-investigate what is being called Pizzagate, an online conspiracy theory asserting, with no evidence, that the restaurant is somehow tied to a child abuse ring. He entered the restaurant shortly before 3 p.m. with a rifle and fired it at least once inside, the police said.
...
The misinformation campaign about Comet began when the email account of John D. Podesta, an aide to Hillary Clinton, was hacked and his emails were published by WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign. Days before the election, users on the online message board 4chan noticed that one of Mr. Podestas leaked emails contained communications with James Alefantis, Comets owner, discussing a fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton.
...
Sabrina Ousmaal, owner of a French restaurant called Terasol, which is across the street from Comet, said that other businesses in the area had also been targeted by threats and that the response from the authorities so far had been insufficient.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-edgar-maddison-welch.html
Trump's Carrier deal doesn't look so good if you read past the headlines
Kudos to Donald Trump on the PR win of his deal to keep somewhat less than half the jobs Carrier had planned to move to Mexico in the United States. The headlines are great for him, few people will ever know much more than the initial headlines, and
hey, around 1,000 jobs saved is around 1,000 jobs saved. Or maybe the number is only 800. It still sounds really good, and for the workers who will keep their jobs, it is really good. If, however, you are interested in more than PR wins and losses, there are some big questions about the deal.
First, lets be clear that around 1,300 jobs are still being moved to Mexico. Second, the workers who are not losing their jobs and their union are still waiting to hear if theyre going to be pushed to accept pay cuts. Third, the jobs that are being kept in the U.S. are in part a result of major tax incentivesbasically, Indiana is paying Carrier to employ people in Indiana rather than in Mexico, and Mike Pence is the governor of Indiana, so he could have done that part all along.
...
So Carrier keeps fewer than half the jobs in the United States and gets massive tax incentives, the good will of the president-elect, and possibly a little help down the line with regulations the company finds inconvenient. There are also reports that Carriers parent company, a major federal contractor, was concerned about losing its federal contracts. Note, by the way, that when President Obama signed an executive order just saying that violations of existing labor laws would be taken into account when awarding federal contracts, business groups and Republicans were outraged.
...
If these nice headlines for Trump were bought at the cost of more companies either getting big money from the government or cutting American jobs, how long will this continue to look like a win?
http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1605675
Trump's big infrastructure plan? It's a trap.
As the White House official responsible for overseeing implementation of President Obamas massive infrastructure initiative, the 2009 Recovery Act, Ive got a simple message for Democrats who are embracing President-elect Donald Trumps infrastructure plan: Dont do it. Its a trap. Backing Trumps plan is a mistake in policy and political judgment they will regret, as did their Democratic predecessors who voted for Ronald Reagans tax cuts in 1981 and George W. Bushs cuts in 2001.
First, Trumps plan is not really an infrastructure plan. Its a tax-cut plan for utility-industry and construction-sector investors, and a massive corporate welfare plan for contractors. The Trump plan doesnt directly fund new roads, bridges, water systems or airports, as did Hillary Clintons 2016 infrastructure proposal. Instead, Trumps plan provides tax breaks to private-sector investors who back profitable construction projects. These projects (such as electrical grid modernization or energy pipeline expansion) might already be planned or even underway. Theres no requirement that the tax breaks be used for incremental or otherwise expanded construction efforts; they could all go just to fatten the pockets of investors in previously planned projects.
Moreover, as others have noted, desperately needed infrastructure projects that are not attractive to private investors municipal water-system overhauls, repairs of existing roads, replacement of bridges that do not charge tolls get no help from Trumps plan. And contractors? Well, they get a 10 percent pretax profit margin, according to the plan. Combined with Trumps sweeping business tax break, this would represent a stunning $85 billion after-tax profit for contractors underwritten by the taxpayers.
Second, as a result of the above, Trumps plan isnt really a jobs plan, either. Because the plan subsidizes investors, not projects; because it funds tax breaks, not bridges; because theres no requirement that the projects be otherwise unfunded, there is simply no guarantee that the plan will produce any net new hiring. Investors may simply shift capital from unsubsidized projects to subsidized ones and pocket the tax breaks on projects they would have funded anyway. Contractors have no obligation to hire new workers, or expand workers hours, to collect their $85 billion. To their credit, the plans authors dont call it a jobs plan; ironically, it is Democrats looking to align with Trump who have given it that name. They should not fool themselves.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-big-infrastructure-plan-its-a-trap/2016/11/18/5b1d109c-adae-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html?utm_campaign=pubexchange&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=huffingtonpost.com&utm_term=.4e904003857f
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHome country: USA
Current location: Southern California
Member since: Sun Mar 20, 2011, 12:05 PM
Number of posts: 51,745