"For some young N.H. voters, Joe Biden doesn’t share their progressive values" By Aidan Ryan Globe Correspondent, July 13, 2019
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Speaking outside to hundreds of young N.H. voters, state leaders, and volunteers enjoying craft beer and a barbecue buffett, Lucas Meyer, the president of the New Hampshire Young Democrats, told the crowd it’s important to elect young people “to make sure there’s sense of urgency” behind issues like climate change and student debt.
The first thing the kid can do is put down the beer, for the fermentation process generates significant amounts of carbon emissions which contribute to climate change as well as lots of dirty water.
Hey, so you have to pay a little more.
“Young people in office will lead on those issues,” Meyer said at the group’s annual summer barbecue, at Cisco Brewers in Portsmouth. “That’s why we elect young people.”
The headliner of the event? Joe Biden, the 76-year-old former vice president who many young voters worry doesn’t share their same progressive views.
“Biden got into national politics in the 1970s. The Democratic Party was a very different animal then,” said Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. “It’s far more progressive.”
Even before announcing his campaign for president, Joe Biden was leading polls in New Hampshire, well ahead of the field of two dozen candidates. Some younger Granite State voters, however, have expressed hesitancy.
At Friday’s event, Biden spoke about his time as a young organizer in the Democratic Party in Delaware, and repeatedly attacked President Trump.
“What you’re doing here, what you guys have done here, is happening all over the country,” Biden said, referring to the increase in N.H. Young Democrats holding office in the state. “You’ve been awakened, awakened by Donald Trump.”
His forceful opposition to Trump and his administration was well received by the crowd of more than 400.
“We shouldn’t be separating families,” Biden said of Trump’s controversial policy to crack down on illegal immigration, particularly at the US-Mexico border. “This nation is big enough that we could have absorbed every single child in this country and not in any way been negatively affected but positively affected,” Biden said to thundering applause.
And if they keep on coming and coming?
Biden has so far enjoyed a top spot in national polls. Recent surveys from ABC News/Washington Post, Quinnipiac University, and CNN show him leading the race for the Democratic nomination.
For younger voters, however, that changes.
Among voters ages 18 to 49 in national polls, Biden slips to second and even fourth behind Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, California Senator Kamala Harris, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Hailey Brown-Bloom, who said she will turn 18 soon, said climate change is a top issue for her, and she questions whether Biden is the candidate to tackle it.
“I’m really intrigued by the idea of a younger president — putting a new generation in office, I think that’s something we really need at this point, especially with the issue of climate change and some of the older presidents maybe not staying around long enough to see the full effects of what might be going on,” said Brown-Bloom, who is also undecided.
Rachel Florman, 20, said she isn’t “thrilled” about Biden’s record of “interacting with female supporters” and flipping his position on the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion.
Biden last month reaffirmed his support for the measure, but changed his position a day later, amid intense criticism from his Democratic rivals.
That got flushed pretty quickly.
“I would love to see someone who is certain in what they believe in, also who listens to their constituents, but that seemed like a case of wishy-washiness to me,” Florman said.
Biden is the second-oldest candidate in the race behind the 77-year-old Sanders.
The two white men do not reflect the gender and racial diversity of many Democratic candidates and swaths of the electorate, and that is how they stole the 2018 midterms.
Young voters in New Hampshire played an increasingly influential role in the 2016 election. The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University reported that 18-to-29-year-olds represented 19 percent of the state’s Democratic voting bloc in the 2016 primary election, the highest percentage in at least 20 years. During that election, 83 percent of New Hampshire’s 18-to-29-year-olds voted for Sanders.
While candidates like Warren have made policy plans a centerpiece of their campaign, Biden has focused on rebuking Trump.
Biden used his time at the first Democratic debate to attack the president. Asked by moderator Chuck Todd what candidates would do first if elected president, Biden focused on Trump. “The first thing I would do is make sure that we defeat Donald Trump. Period,” Biden said.
He dodged the question!
Some young Granite State voters are backing the former vice president, including New Hampshire’s youngest state representative, 19-year-old Denny Ruprecht, who endorsed Biden Friday and said he is supporting him because “he’s running on values” and doesn’t see that from a lot of other candidates.
“The current occupant of the White House has defied all norms. We need somebody who is as honorable, as dignified as experienced, who has a steady hand and a cool and a level head to bring us back to a normal spot in our country,” Ruprecht said. “And there’s nobody better than Joe Biden to unify our country and bring us back to those norms and those values.”
Maybe we should get away from touchy-feely, especially in light of Epstein.
Rebecca Sanders-DeMott — a 33-year-old scientist who studies global changes and is undecided — said she wants a candidate who has a “healthy mix of both” anti-Trump rhetoric and policy rollouts.
“I agree with all of the rhetoric against Trump . . . but I don’t know that it’s a winning message necessarily,” she said. “And I think we need to do more than just be against what’s currently happening.”
Michael Parsons, 21, president of the New Hampshire College Democrats, said Biden brings an “interesting dynamic” to the race.
“Even if his support is not as great with young people, I think it would be a disservice if we didn’t at least talk to him,” said Parsons, who is neutral due to his role as president. “And he if he didn’t listen to us.”
Following the first Democratic debate — after Harris criticized Biden for his views on school desegregation — the CNN and Quinnipiac polls showed a drop in support for Biden, who fell 10 and 8 points, respectively, from previous polls from the two groups.
Biden has continued to defend himself and has pointed to his time working in the Obama White House to defend his record on race, climate change, and other policy areas.
For some N.H. voters, that’s not enough.
“I liked him going in, but I think he kind of lives in Obama’s shadow a little bit too much,” 19-year-old Dylan King said. “I’m a little bit off Joe Biden for now.”
UH-OH, JOE!
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He is just Biden Time until you drive over the border -- which is no shortcut to debt relief:
"Cory Booker, on swing through New Hampshire, says ‘it’s not about partisanship’" by Jeremy C. Fox Globe Correspondent, July 13, 2019
Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey made a return visit to New Hampshire this weekend, one of a half-dozen 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls heavily courting voters in the all-important first-in-the-nation primary state.
On Saturday, Booker visited Manchester, Nashua, and Exeter, N.H., attracting large crowds with a message grounded in values of community, faith, and a rejection of the politics of divisiveness.
The first votes are six months away and this campaign is already vacuous and vapid.
Booker had been drawing big crowds in New Hampshire even before he announced his candidacy in February, but so far his campaign hasn’t caught fire in national polls or fund-raising tallies.
While Booker spoke to a crowd of more than 200 Saturday afternoon at Nashua Community College, his campaign announced that his polling numbers now qualify him to participate in the next big Democratic debate, set for September — after Booker received 3 percent in a recent Fox News poll of South Carolina Democratic primary voters.
That's about half the crowd of Biden, and he's going nowhere if he is only drawing 3% of Democrats in South Carolina.
Voters in Nashua said they appreciated the optimism of Booker’s message, which also touched on the nation’s complicated history of racial and social injustices, recalling divisive figures of earlier generations, such as Senator Joseph McCarthy, author of the Communist scare of the 1950s.
Booker said the nation’s Founding Fathers “knew we were going to be a diverse country united by values,” and that the president needs to be someone with empathy for all Americans.
“I don’t think you can lead the people if you don’t love the people — all the people. . . . You cannot love your country if you don’t love your countrymen and women,” he said.
They were slave-holding aristocrats and conservative property owners, not corporate liberals.
I guess some history can be revised to fit the current times; others, not so much and beyond question.
Booker, elected to the Senate in 2013, spoke generally of civic engagement and community interdependence with a quasi-religious fervor before tackling more specific policy proposals in a question-and-answer period with voters.
He thinks he is the second coming of Martin Luther King Jr.
He then spoke of his plans to use the federal tax code to create economic opportunities that would help level the playing field, creating tax breaks for renters paying large portions of their paychecks for housing and for people providing at-home care for relatives.
Booker said he would change laws to enable the refinancing of student loans and make them dischargeable through bankruptcy, increase funding for federal Pell Grants, and expand loan forgiveness programs for public servants, such as teachers.
He knows that is the job of Congre$$, right?
I mean, I wouldn't want a Democratic dictator, either.
He would treat health care as a human right; make prescription drugs more affordable; guarantee universal prenatal care, preschool, and paid family leave; and offer a public option for health insurance, Booker said.
Okay, that's his platform.
I wonder what are his foreign policy positions.
Has he been vetted by AIPAC yet?
Chris Maloney, 33, of Ayer, Mass., said he thought Booker was “a very sincere, passionate person,” after the senator took a difficult question during the forum from Ayer’s 8-year-old daughter, Scout. She said her family homeschools her and 4-year-old brother, Huck, in part because of concern for their safety.
“My question is, ‘What do you plan to do about school shootings?’ ” she said.
Booker compared the nation’s issue with gun violence to past crises of public safety and told the child he had “the boldest plan to end the epidemic of shootings in our country” of any of the Democratic candidates.
Maloney said he appreciated that Booker was “making a point to talk about how he doesn’t have all the answers, and that we can’t just sit back and rely on him to fix everything, but it’s more of a call for a movement, for everybody to get involved.”
Scout said she would have liked for Booker to go into more detail on his plan, but she was relieved that “he definitely said that he would stop it.”
“Some of my friends go to regular school, and I worry about them a lot,” she said.
Look at what those mind-bending, staged and scripted crisis drills presented as live have done to the kid's psyches, all to further the gun-grabbing agenda.
Amy Maloney said she appreciated the answer Booker gave her daughter.
“You could tell he was passionate,” the 32-year-old said, adding that she was reassured by Booker’s voting record on gun laws.
Both parents said they liked Booker’s message and that he’s in their top tier of candidates — but agreed he’s not their first pick.
“Bernie [Sanders] and [Elizabeth] Warren are still my top two,” Amy Maloney said. “But there are so many that I would be happy with. It’s kind of like picking the best among the best.”
OMG!!
As if this lame-ass field is the best of the best!
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As for Sanders and Warren, I was told it is too late for the liberal lions of the left even though Trump has lost its mojo after a rough few weeks on the road tackling the issues (they are comparing Al Sharpton to Martin Luther King Jr.).
Warren named a new chief of staff, but despite an onslaught of negative coverage, Trump continues to be the one to beat and the press never lets extreme miscalculations from a previous election cycle get in the way of judging future prospects. Warren missed her moment, and there's reason to be skeptical of her in 2020 (that's why the Globe wanted Deval Patrick to run, but he won’t pursue the White House because of the “the cruelty of our elections process.”).
Of course, his America no longer exists, and calls for centrism, such as the Globe’s, work for those who are already doing well.
Then before you know it, it will be on to California and Super Tuesday, where the voters' diagnosis will be made clear (had something to do with the 911 calls and the chosen victim).
That brings the school shootings back to the fore:
"Youth activists push gun control to forefront of 2020 campaign" by Laura Krantz Globe Staff, July 13, 2019
LAS VEGAS — An issue Democrats have, for decades, avoided like electoral poison in presidential campaign years is back on center stage. Polls show that most Americans, including gun owners, support universal background checks on gun purchasers and have for years. Most voters also favor a ban on military-influenced semiautomatic weapons, but Congress has failed to pass legislation on either topic since the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired after 10 years. For many young people, the issue is urgent because it is so personal. Active shooter drills, to train students in how to react if a gunman enters their classroom, are a constant reminder of the potential danger.
Kamala Harris is one of a few Democratic presidential candidates who mentions gun violence prevention in her stump speech. A former prosecutor, she has said that if elected president Congress would have 100 days to pass a gun control overhaul including universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and a repeal of laws that shield gun manufacturers from lawsuits. If it doesn’t, Harris promised to take executive action to implement universal background checks.
Democrats have largely avoided campaigning on gun control after the experience of President Clinton. During his tenure, Congress passed the last two major pieces of gun control legislation — the Brady Bill, which mandated background checks and waiting periods, and a ban of assault weapons, but the reaction in the heartland to those laws contributed considerably to the Democratic Party’s loss of congressional majorities in 1994.
And they are doing it again.
Gun politics are a wedge between Democrats and voters in regions the party needs to win to regain the White House and congressional majorities, and for decades, the financial and lobbying power of the NRA has outrun the efforts of gun control supporters, but now, longtime gun control advocates say, youth activism and the threat of school shootings have pushed Democrats to address the issue with fervor. That, coupled with a leadership crisis besetting the National Rifle Association, advocates say, creates a powerful opportunity for stricter laws.
The South also rises!
There is still a long climb. Gun control is not the top or second-most important issue for most voters, said Robert Spitzer, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Cortland who has written several books on gun policy, but gun control now cracks the top five, he said.
Still, the Democratic candidate who wins the party’s nomination will have to appeal to more moderate voters, many of whom feel strongly about gun rights. That will be difficult after a primary in which Democrats are trying to “out-flank” each other with “radical” gun control plans, said Mandi Merritt, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
“Voters across the country will see these proposals as more big government grabs on our constitutional rights and reject these ideas and candidates,” she said.
Those Democratic gun control views were on display in the first presidential debates last month.
Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, the former mayor of Newark, has one of the most detailed and liberal platforms on gun control. Some of the loudest voices on the issue are farther back in the Democratic field of candidates. Eric Swalwell, the California representative who dropped out of the race last week, had a plan that called for a national program in which the government would buy back assault weapons and suggested the government criminally prosecute anyone who refused to comply, and John Hickenlooper, former Colorado governor, has also advocated for universal background checks, as well as a ban on high-capacity magazines, measures enacted in his state after the 2012 shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., that killed 12 people.
Swalwell flamed out, Steyer was met with folded arms, and Aurora was the beginning of the bullshit regarding the false flag fakery and scripted and staged crisis drills of the strategy of tension being foisted on the American people.
The growing power of the issue has showed itself most clearly in local elections. In the 2018 midterms, several Democrats ran on strong gun control platforms and won seats from Republicans. After the Democrats took control of the House this year, lawmakers passed a background check bill, the first major gun legislation in more than two decades. It is now stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate.
In Colorado, first-time candidate Jason Crow, a Democrat, ousted five-term Republican Mike Coffman with a campaign that focused heavily on calls for stricter gun laws. The district includes Aurora.
Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and a member of the House Democratic leadership, who campaigned extensively for fellow Democrats during the 2018 congressional midterm elections and witnessed signs of the change, campaigned for Crow. “Even for the Democratic Party over the years, there’s been a hesitation to really engage with voters on this issue, to call it what it is, which is a public health crisis, and that has definitely changed,” Clark said.....
Teenagers are now filled with “hope” as New Zealand begins its gun buyback program that was prompted by mosque massacres on March 15, when a lone gunman stormed two mosques and killed 51 people in an attack that rattled the nation and prompted calls for dramatic changes to gun laws over the “widespread availability of weapons of such destructive nature and force.”
Never mind the killing machine you will be serving, kids.
Ten-hut!
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Related:
"Police arrested two men on illegal gun and drug charges within two hours Friday evening, the department said. Maximo Shimada, 21, was apprehended around 5:30 p.m. as he left a hotel in the area of 64 Arlington St., where police received a report of a man selling drugs out of a room. Police confiscated a semiautomatic rifle loaded with 11 rounds of ammunition from Shimada. Inside his hotel room, police confiscated 50 grams of methamphetamine, hundreds of prescription pills, and a small bag of heroin, they said. He is due to be arraigned in Boston Municipal Court. About two hours later, police arrested Greg Altenor, 29, of Dorchester, after pulling him over on Harrison Avenue Extension. Police had previously seen his vehicle illegally parked in front of a fire hydrant near Beach and Washington streets. The car then took off, crossing several lanes of traffic, before police pulled him over, they said. An unlicensed loaded handgun was found in the vehicle, along with six clear plastic bags containing marijuana, police said. Altenor is also due to be arraigned in Boston Municipal Court, police said."
Looks like Buttigieg is leading the revolution!
"Shunning united fronts, political parties wage public internal wars" by Peter Baker New York Times, July 13, 2019
WASHINGTON — On the night he conceded defeat in 1992 after the most successful independent presidential campaign of the last century, Ross Perot made it clear that he was not done shaking up the established order. “Believe me,” he declared, “the system needs some shocks.”
How ironic that a billionaire who $old health $oftware $y$tems to the government became the most $ucce$$ful independent pre$idential campaign of the la$t century, huh?
So perhaps it was only fitting that on the same week that Perot died nearly 27 years later, both of the two major political parties were being rattled by the aftershocks of the earthquake that his campaign represented. President Trump was busy quarreling with former speaker Paul Ryan while the current speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was bickering with first-year House Democrats.
Good thing the ground has been stable since last Monday, huh?
Ryan barely escaped with his hide, while the catfight between the House Democrats prove that Pelosi is failing her party and that George Washington was right as Democrats remain in search of a progressive challenger to business-as-usual.
In both cases, those who represented the institutional order — Ryan and Pelosi — found themselves at odds with rabble-rousers within their own parties agitating for change from outside the traditional system through the power of social media. This was not a week that showcased the competition between the parties but within them. The stress fractures that Perot identified a generation ago are tearing at the foundations of the Republican and Democratic parties.
“Usually fights are Democrats versus Republicans, one end of Pennsylvania Avenue versus the other, or the left versus the right,” said Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic former Chicago mayor, congressman, and White House chief of staff. “Today’s squabbles are internal between the establishment versus the people that are storming the barricades.”
So says the Mossad mole in the Clinton White House, and former mayor of the most violent city in America with the toughest gun control laws.
Emanuel saw up close Perot’s campaign in 1992 (and then again in 1996) as an aide to Bill Clinton, and today he identifies that moment as “the beginning point of the crack-up of the parties.” In the years since, the Bushes and Clintons have given way to Twitter-armed outsiders such as Trump and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and “the squad” of her fellow Democratic insurgents in Congress.
The difference is that Trump successfully staged a hostile takeover of the Republican Party in 2016 and has since brought much of its old establishment to heel, driving the likes of Ryan out the door or into hiding. Ocasio-Cortez and her compatriots have not taken over the Democratic Party, but they are driving the conversation within it to a degree that few first-year House members have ever done, thanks to their online armies of like-minded disrupters tired of what they see as the corrupt status quo.
That last group sounds like a bunch of Russian trolls, and how do you stage a hostile takeover of a party when its voters decided to nominate the man?
The choice to describe it as such exposes the New York Times as nothing more than a mouthpiece for the elite narrative and that's all.
There is, of course, no little irony that Pelosi and Ryan are now the beleaguered defenders of the old order, given that both of them were once seen as champions of the ideological extremes of their parties — she as a radical San Francisco leftist, he as a Medicare-destroying right winger, but they both came up within the system that is now under pressure from impatient newcomers who see no virtue in spending years in the backbenches waiting for their turn when they can be empowered by Twitter to wield influence in ways that would have been unthinkable in the past.
The politicians promise to change Washington and drain the swamp, then they become it. The place changes them, not the other way around.
“Because of social media and because people can be their own stars, they don’t need to work through leadership or through hierarchy,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey, a leader of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group seeking to find consensus in a House where that is a dirty word.
Depends on what is the consensus.
Ending any wars soon?
The outsiders are, in their own ways, tapping into the same disenchantment with the two-party system that Perot did. When he attracted 19 percent of the vote in 1992 against Clinton and President George H.W. Bush, it was the most any independent presidential candidate had generated since Theodore Roosevelt’s unsuccessful comeback bid in 1912 and the most any independent candidate who had not previously served as president had received since the advent of the two current parties just before the Civil War.
Since then, even more Americans have chosen to dissociate from the two parties. As recently as July 2004, only 27 percent of Americans called themselves independent in Gallup Polling; today, 15 years later, 46 percent do, but Perot’s experience offers a cautionary tale. For all his money and easy access to television — “Larry King Live” was his Twitter — he still could not crack the duopoly. By the time he ran in 1996, again targeting the two-party system, his share of the popular vote fell to 8 percent. The Reform Party he created was ultimately taken over by marginal figures — Trump ran for that party’s 2000 nomination before dropping out — and faded from the scene.
He was like a shooting star.
What Trump took from Perot’s experience was that breaking the two-party system from the outside did not work; instead, he had to take over one of the parties from the inside.
And then placed a bunch of neocon warmongers into positions of power.
“The two-party system has been bankrupt for at least a decade,” said former representative Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican, but “the barriers to entry in this space are extremely high,” and only Trump has figured out how to harness Americans’ frustration. “If the two-party system remains incapable of addressing our nation’s greatest challenges and most controversial issues, younger generations of Americans will find a third way,” he said.....
Sure they will, making it a bad environment for Republicans.
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Sorry to sell you ladies short, but at least a "three-judge panel of the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia upheld a lower court order that blocked the Trump administration from enforcing rules that allow more employers to deny insurance coverage for contraceptives to women."
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro hailed the ruling by US Circuit Judge Patty Shwartz, and New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said he was ‘‘proud to have a great partner’’ in Shapiro.
"Police kill man allegedly attacking Tacoma immigration prison" Associated Press July 13, 2019
TACOMA, Wash. — A man armed with a rifle and throwing incendiary devices at an immigration jail in Washington state early Saturday morning died after four police officers arrived and opened fire at about 4 a.m., authorities said.
If this event actually occurred, I expect protests. Another cop killing of a citizen.
The shooting took place about six hours after a peaceful rally in front of the detention center, police spokesman Loretta Cool said. Cool said all four officers fired their weapons, but she didn’t have specific details of what took place. She said the officers weren’t wearing body cameras, but the area is covered by surveillance cameras from the detention center. She said she didn’t know if the man fired at the officers.
After the gunfire, officers took cover, contained the area, and set up medical aid a short distance away, police said.
Officers then located the man and determined he had been shot and was dead at the scene. His name hasn’t been released.
A motive for the man’s actions hasn’t been determined, Cool said.....
Does any of that make sense to you?
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HO-HUM, huh?
Related:
Boston immigration advocates come together to plan
After a vigil, the a diverse crowd learned in small group settings on the porch, although Boston is not on the list of cities where raids are expected to be carried out.
Also see:
"The Moxie Festival dedicated to the quirky soda got underway in earnest on Saturday with a parade, music, and a chugging contest in town. The creator of the quirky beverage was a Maine native, Dr. Augustin Thompson, whose brew was originally marketed ‘‘Moxie Nerve Foods’’ in Lowell, Mass. It’s now the official beverage of Maine. The polarizing soda is an acquired taste. The late Frank Anicetti said people may want to spit it out on the first try but that those who stick with it are rewarded ‘‘the true flavor of Moxie.’’ (AP)
They were toasting Kraft:
"New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has pledged to donate $100,000 to help the families of seven motorcyclists killed in a collision with a truck last month. Kraft joined thousands of bikers from across the country outside of Gillette Stadium on Saturday for a memorial service organized by the Jarheads Motorcycle Club, to which the victims of the crash belonged. Manny Ribeiro, the Jarheads president, said the event took two weeks to organize and would not have been possible without Kraft. Ribeiro said bikers from as far as Louisiana and Arizona rode in for the event to pay their respects. George Loring, another Jarheads member, said the unwavering support the group has received since the June 21 crash is helping the group heal (AP)."
Did you know his license was suspended because of what happened in Florida?
"A Providence woman died Friday afternoon after her vehicle went off the highway and rolled over in Johnston, R.I., officials said. Rosa Garcia Almonte, 21, was identified by Rhode Island State Police as the victim on Saturday. The crash occurred at about 3 p.m. on I-295 southbound just south of Exit 10, according to a statement. She was ejected from the vehicle and was pronounced dead at the scene. The cause of the crash remains under investigation."
Preliminary reports indicate she bought some CBD at a gas station just before the crash, but surveillance cameras showed a bear in the road:
"The Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife said a game warden shot and killed a bear that was seeking food from people on the Appalachian Trail in town. The department said the bear, which was put down Friday morning, had continued to approach people on the trail and ransack property, including two tents, in an effort to find food. The bear had taken backpacks, entered at least one occupied shelter, and charged at least one hiker. Game Warden Lieutenant Dennis Amsden said the bear had become accustomed to finding food among humans and had lost its fear. Vermont bear project leader Forrest Hammond said it’s fortunate no people were hurt. Officials urged campers and others to keep food away from bears (AP)."
Kill it! That seems to authority's answer to everything.
Don't they have signs that say "Don't Feed the Bears?"
NEXT DAY UPDATES
They are throwing the book of racism at Trump today, and deservedly so:
"Ayanna Pressley hits back at Trump: ‘This is what racism looks like’" by Gal Tziperman Lotan Globe Staff, July 14, 2019
Democratic leaders from across the country reacted with outrage after President Trump said Sunday that four progressive freshmen congresswomen who have been at odds with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should return to the countries where they “originally came from.”
What that tells me is that Trump has been spending too much time around supremacist Jews, and Helen Thomas got the same treatment when she said something similar.
Trump did not name the congresswomen but was apparently referring to a group that includes Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, along with Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. The lawmakers — three of whom were born in the United States — have clashed with Democratic House leadership over how to protect migrants on America’s southern border.
“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” Trump said in a series of tweets.
He added: “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
Pressley said she was not surprised at the attack, which she noted came the same weekend as planned deportation operations by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“This is just another example and demonstration of the bigotry, the xenophobia, the hatred of this administration,” Pressley said in an interview with the Globe Sunday.
She also fired off a tweet: “THIS is what racism looks like. WE are what democracy looks like. And we’re not going anywhere. Except back to DC to fight for the families you marginalize and vilify everyday.”
The reaction was swift from Trump’s critics, who characterized his comments as racist and un-American.
Campaigning for president in New Hampshire, US Senator Kamala Harris of California decried the president’s language.
“It is an old trope, ‘go back to where you came from,’ that — you might hear it on the street, but you should never hear that from the president of the United States,” Harris said. “This guy doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand his responsibilities, and I don’t think he understands what the American people want from their president, which is somebody who’s going to elevate public discourse and speak with a level of dignity, with a goal of unity.”
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, also a presidential candidate, called the president’s statement “a racist and xenophobic attack.”
Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who is also running for president, reacted to Trump’s statements with his own tweets: “This is white nationalism. The president thinks if you’re not white, you’re not an American.”
Their statements were echoed by numerous other Democratic lawmakers, who seemed to find unity in defending their fellow members of Congress. Trump’s tweets and the full day of angry pushback from Democrats changed the dynamic of what had been a feud among Democrats over immigration politics.
Was a real catfight until now.
The disagreement became public recently when Pelosi pushed a vote on a border spending bill without a series of amendments advocated by liberal members to further protect migrants. The legislation without the amendments, Omar said, amounted to a vote “to keep kids in cages.”
Pelosi downplayed the influence of the four freshmen — often called The Squad — in an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” she said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got.”
The rift had brought into stark relief the delicate balance Pelosi is attempting to walk: keeping control of her caucus while opposing the president on myriad fronts, but on Sunday, Democrats of all persuasions were quick and unanimous in their response to Trump.
Boston City Councilor Lydia Edwards, with whom Pressley served before winning her seat in Congress, chided the president for the way he described the lawmakers’ backgrounds, noting that Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez, and Tlaib were all born in the United States. Omar was born in Somalia and is a US citizen.
“They are US-born citizens, or naturalized citizens like his wife,” Edwards said. (Melania Trump was born in Slovenia and became a US citizen in 2006.) “I think it’s typical of the way he communicates. It makes no sense, it’s intended to be hurtful, and it’s intended to create an other-ness in perfectly patriotic Americans.
“The fact that he would tell anybody to leave and to go back where you come from because they disagree with him is not American,” Edwards said.
Peter Ubertaccio, a political science professor at Stonehill College in Easton, called the president’s tone “egregious” but said it’s “just one additional example of his behavior that ultimately has no impact among his core supporters.”
“This isn’t new,” Ubertaccio said. “The president’s views on the issue of race, and his reaction when challenged by people of color or women, have been documented for a long time.”
Some of Pressley’s other former colleagues from the Boston City Council, where she served for nine years, also came to her defense.
“This man [Trump] viciously and dangerously misunderstands what’s most special about America, that we are a country where anyone can come and reach for their dreams,” Councilor Michelle Wu said. “We can’t get distracted by tweet after tweet after tweet. There are deep structural challenges that we need to usher the political will to change, and that’s at every level. From the federal level to the city and neighborhood level.”
How was the bus ride in?
Councilor Annissa Essaibi George said she read the president’s tweets by happenstance while watching the national soccer team from Tunisia — her father’s native country — and teaching her children about their own immigrant roots.
“To hear this and to read it in our moment of celebrating our own family history, it had a certain irony to it,” Essaibi George said.
The president attacked the Democrats’ reaction with a late tweet. “So sad to see the Democrats sticking up for people who speak so badly of our Country and who, in addition, hate Israel with a true and unbridled passion. Whenever confronted, they call their adversaries, including Nancy Pelosi, “RACIST.” Their disgusting language . . . and the many terrible things they say about the United States must not be allowed to go unchallenged.....
You can't get any more racist right now than that regime.
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In the interests of equal time, I am going to let her have her say:
"Ayanna Pressley brushes off Trump’s tweets — but not his treatment of refugees" by Adrian Walker Globe Columnist, July 14, 2019
Donald J. Trump — a man who clearly has too much time on his hands in the morning — began Sunday with a characteristically xenophobic Twitter rant against a group of progressive female members of Congress.
“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly . . . and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” he wrote. “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how . . . it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough.”
Maybe he was suffering constipation when he sent it.
Which is how I came to ask congresswoman Ayanna Pressley what she thought of being a target of the president of the United States.
“I never use the word you used — president — to describe him,” she said. “I refer to him as ‘the occupant.’ He simply occupies the space. He embodies zero of the qualities and the principles, the responsibility, the grace, the integrity, the compassion, of someone who would truly embody that office. It’s just another day in the world under this administration.”
Earlier, Pressley had tweeted a screenshot of Trump’s comments, along with her response: “THIS is what racism looks like. WE are what democracy looks like. And we’re not going anywhere. Except back to DC to fight for the families you marginalize and vilify everyday.”
Pressley and I had scheduled an interview to discuss the inhumane conditions she witnessed earlier this month on a visit to detention centers on the US-Mexico border — which seemed especially timely with raids to arrest undocumented immigrants scheduled to begin this weekend, but there’s an obvious connection between a president who relentlessly attacks immigrants and these tweets, in which the worst insult Trump can think to hurl is that the representatives should go back where they came from. (Three of the four congresswomen he was referring to, including Pressley, were born in the United States. Aside from being racist, the tweets weren’t even factual.)
Pressley was part of a congressional delegation that visited three federal facilities in Texas. Though they expected terrible conditions, she was shocked to come face-to-face with the reality that incarcerated refugees are living.
“It was just sobering confirmation of my worst fears and also confirmation that the system is corrupted and broken,” Pressley said. “I hesitate to even say the system is broken . . . the design is broken, but it is doing what it was designed to do. History has proven that the most effective way to control, oppress, marginalize people is to separate families. And so the system is doing what it was designed to do, and it is painful to see up close and personal.”
She saw people desperate for hope.
“The women there, their eyes were vacant, their voices were pleading, they didn’t know us and yet they were so vulnerable immediately. And I do believe that’s because we were extending arms and words of passion and it gave them — even for a moment — some sense of security and hope,” Pressley said. “I’ve been so haunted by what I saw and what they shared.”
Pressley and her closest allies — fellow freshmen Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, known collectively as “The Squad” — have come under fire from leaders of both parties in the past two weeks — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That was for refusing to support a bill that would have sent billions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the border — as well as more funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which they all want to abolish. They opposed the bill on the grounds that it would simply give more funding to a system they view as fundamentally broken.
“At the end of the day, if we improve a child’s condition in a cage they are still in a cage,” Pressley said. “And I am fundamentally opposed to emboldening a system that criminalizes and vilifies migrant families.”
She does raise some good points, and to be honest, I have no idea how to fix so many of the Gordian-knot issues these days.
In defending her vote, Pressley noted that immigrants make up 40 percent of her district.
“The Massachusetts Seventh District is not only one of the most vulnerable districts from the threats of this draconian administration but has also demonstrated some of the greatest leadership in the country in staving off these threats,” she said. “So I’m going to vote my district every time. This is a representative democracy and I’m representing my district, and that is who I answer to.”
Pressley insists that the administration is walking away from fundamental American values and using a crisis of its own making to justify that.
“We must not lose sight of the fact that because of the racist and xenophobic rhetoric of this administration, we are criminalizing and vilifying migrants, families, that are fleeing extreme violence and poverty and coming here,” she said. “Because this is what America has been to the world — a beacon of light, and hope, and a place of refuge. And it is a legal human right to seek asylum. So what we need is to change the laws, to create a system that works, that supports families staying together and to settle into communities while awaiting review of their cases.”
How many Palestinians are being let in?
Pressley is rightly unapologetic about refusing to support legislation that, in her view, won’t do anything to help curb the human-rights abuses she has witnessed. Or for standing with others whose values and beliefs led them to cast the same vote, and she rejects the notion that she is part of a group of four renegades operating on the margins of respectability. She said they have plenty of company on Capitol Hill in pushing back against Trump.
“ ‘The Squad’ is big,” she said. “If you share the values and believe in working for a more equitable and just world, you are part of ‘The Squad.’ ”
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If nothing else, the ICE raids got delayed.
"Police investigate after US flag removed during protest" Associated Press July 14, 2019
DENVER — Police say they will review any available video to help them identify protesters who trespassed and pulled down the American flag in front of an immigration detention center in suburban Denver, tried to burn it, and replaced it with a Mexican flag.
Friday night’s protest in Aurora, one of many coordinated across the country, drew about 2,000 people and was mostly peaceful. However, police said Saturday that a few people passed a makeshift barrier outside the center run by the GEO Group and crossed a vehicle bridge, causing hundreds to follow. Some removed three flags — the US, Colorado, and GEO flags. The two other flags were replaced with ones with antipolice messages.
More fireworks in Aurora, huh?
Cristian Solano-Cordova, a spokesman for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, told The Denver Post that those who pulled down the flags weren’t affiliated with mainstream immigrants’ rights groups but had coordinated with them to be there.
Claudia Castillo, a 22-year military intelligence major in the Army and the coalition’s legal services coordinator, said she pleaded with the group of about 25 that pulling down the flag wasn’t part of the plan. She said that rather than pull back, members of the group spit on her, shoved her, and cursed at her.
‘‘It was disgusting and shameful,’’ Castillo told the Post. ‘‘They have compromised our movement, and they stole the spotlight and endangered our undocumented people.’’
A military intelligence major is leading the protests, huh?
In a statement on Facebook , Aurora police Chief Nick Metz said that police decided not to intervene when the flags were being removed to protect the safety of the majority of protesters who were acting peacefully as well as that of officers but that they would have acted had there been violence or damage to the property.
In other words, this was all a staged and contrived event by the authorities and the controlled opposition.
He said GEO representatives wanted to step in after the US flag was removed but police asked them not to so they could talk to the official protest organizer, who then encouraged people to disperse. Metz said that de-escalated the situation and there was no need for police intervention after that.
Metz also noted that police had urged GEO to put up water-filled jersey barriers to prevent protesters from crossing the bridge but the company only placed several traffic cones with a lightweight plastic chain taped to them shortly before the protest.
A GEO spokesman declined to comment on the security measures on Sunday. The company did provide a statement which said that, contrary to other immigration facilities that have gotten attention recently, its centers have never been overcrowded or used to hold children.
In Tacoma, meanwhile, demonstrators returned on Sunday to an immigration jail a day after an armed man threw incendiary devices at the detention center and later died.
Willem Van Spronsen, 69, was found dead Saturday after four police officers arrived and opened fire.
That event also did not make sense; however, the Globe's web version further elaborates:
Demonstrators returned Sunday to the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, KOMO-TV reported. The demonstrators were protesting the facility and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement roundups that were supposed to begin Sunday.
The facility holds migrants pending deportation proceedings. The detention center has also held immigration-seeking parents separated from their children under President Trump’s ‘‘zero tolerance’’ policy, an effort meant to deter illegal immigration.
Bullet holes riddled the scene Sunday, The News-Tribune reported. Police searched Van Spronsen’s Vashon Island home, the Tacoma newspaper reported.
Van Spronsen’s friend, Deb Bartley, told The Seattle Times she thinks he wanted to provoke a fatal conflict. She described him as an anarchist and antifascist.
Oh, he was ANTIFA, huh?
‘‘He was ready to end it,’’ Bartley said. ‘‘I think this was a suicide, but then he was able to kind of do it in a way that spoke to his political beliefs. I know he went down there knowing he was going to die.’’
So what is his next mission, because I'm not believing a word of this.
Van Spronsen was accused of assaulting a police officer during a protest outside the detention center in 2018, The News-Tribune reported. According to court documents, he lunged at the officer and wrapped his arms around the officer’s neck and shoulders, as the officer was trying to detain a 17-year-old protester June 26, 2018, the newspaper reported.
According to court documents, police handcuffed Van Spronsen and found that he had a collapsible baton and a folding knife in his pocket. Van Spronsen pleaded guilty to the charge of obstructing police, and he was given a deferred sentence in October, the News-Tribune reported.
Van Spronsen had worked as a self-employed carpenter and contractor, according to court documents. He was also a folk singer, playing shows on Vashon Island and around the Seattle area, The Times reported.
They keep on singing the same old tune!
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I seem to be suffering some sort of malaise so it will be up to you to separate myth from reality:
"Kamala Harris slams Trump in New Hampshire visit" by Kellen Browning Globe Correspondent, July 14, 2019
SOMERSWORTH, N.H. — Hundreds turned out in two small New Hampshire communities Sunday to listen to US Senator Kamala Harris of California, who was making her first campaign swing through the state since her breakout moment in last month’s Democratic presidential debate.
After her high-profile exchange with former vice president Joe Biden over busing, voters here are watching Harris with interest — and some scrutiny.
“I want a definitive policy [clarifying] what she means by ‘health care for all,’ ” said Liz Clark, a Hopkinton resident who works in the health care industry. “She flip-flops on it.”
Clark, a Democrat, said she’s leaning toward Harris and may vote for her — if the senator will spell out her position on Medicare-for-all.
Clark didn’t get an answer to that question Sunday in Gilford, where the 2020 presidential contender spoke in the backyard of former state representative Lisa DiMartino, but she was sufficiently impressed by Harris’s performance.
“I was glad that she was very clear about the issues that she did address,” Clark said.
In Gilford, and later at a high school in Somersworth, Harris touched on a wide array of liberal priorities, including stricter gun regulations, a renewed commitment to combating climate change, and a need to close the gender pay gap.
Her down-to-earth approach and calm amid some technical difficulties, like a broken microphone, won her accolades among members of the audience.
Still, reservations remained over her history as a prosecutor; some progressives are turned off by what they say was a tough-on-crime approach, but Harris framed her background as the district attorney of San Francisco and then attorney general of California as a strength, saying she has experience prosecuting banks and pharmaceutical companies.
Haley Finn and Koze Wonokay, both 17, came from Georgetown, Mass., to hear Harris speak in Somersworth. Wonokay is deciding between Harris and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, she said, but appreciated Harris’s politeness and specificity on various issues — particularly the environment, mental health, and restrictions on guns.
Hunter Taylor of Alton said he’s a Republican but is planning on quitting the party because of Trump’s actions. Taylor supports Biden, because he thinks the former vice president is the most electable candidate.
Christi Ober, from Framingham, Mass., said she loves both Harris and US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. “God, I hope they’re the front-runners,” Ober said. “I just think [Harris] has the potential ability to enthuse the Democratic party and the population.”
Ober, a self-described progressive who’s in favor of criminal justice reform, said she’s hoping Harris is “able to learn from previous mistakes.”
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The kids are also concerned about climate change, so it's a good thing the rainy patch we have been in means lower than average temperatures:
"Tropical Depression Barry dumped rain as it slowly swept inland through Gulf Coast states Sunday, sparing New Orleans from a direct hit but stoking fears elsewhere of flooding, tornadoes, and prolonged power outages. Though the system was downgraded to a tropical depression Sunday afternoon and its winds were steadily weakening since it made landfall Saturday in Louisiana. Forecasters warned of a continued threat of heavy rains into Monday as the center of the storm trudged inland. Another worry is that large trees could topple because of the saturated ground. ‘‘There’s certainly water, certainly a lot of water, and as it continues to rain there’s always that concern. If this rain sits on top of us, the ground of course now is already saturated. The roots are so saturated that if any wind, or any kind of shift happens, they’re easier to come up out of the ground. It’s not snapping limbs; it’s the whole entire tree. We have 100-year-old trees back here,’’ said Carrie Cuchens, who lost power at her home southeast of Lafayette. President Trump asked people across the region to keep their guard up on Twitter Sunday....."
Thank God ‘‘New Orleans was spared.’’
"Puerto Rico leadership in turmoil amid calls for Ricardo Rosselló to resign" by Patricia Mazzei New York Times, July 14, 2019
MIAMI — A political crisis engulfed Puerto Rico over the weekend, prompting the departure of two senior members of the government and threatening Governor Ricardo A. Rosselló, who found himself increasingly isolated in office and no longer supported by leaders of his own party.
Rosselló’s administration was rocked by the publication of a trove of derisive messages sent by the governor and some of his Cabinet members and top aides in a private chat on the messaging app Telegram. The messages mocked political foes and allies alike, often with profanity.
On Saturday, the governor tried to contain the fallout of the rapidly unfolding scandal by announcing that his chief financial officer and secretary of state had stepped down over their participation in the chat, but the high-profile exits proved insufficient to quell the widespread furor on the island that mushroomed in the hours after 889 pages of Telegram messages were published by Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism.
Just wondering who funds them.
Protesters gathered outside the governor’s mansion, La Fortaleza, in San Juan late into the night Saturday and demanded Rosselló’s resignation, less than 18 months before the end of his term.
“Ricky, ¡renuncia!” they chanted.
On Sunday, Rosselló attended services at an evangelical church in Carolina, Puerto Rico, and said he had sought forgiveness.
“I humble myself before you and before the Almighty for the faults I have committed,” he said, according to a report in the El Nuevo Día newspaper. Outside of the governor’s mansion, demonstrators used a previously planned march to insist on Rosselló’s resignation.
Like Swaggart.
The messages in the private chat, which Puerto Ricans dubbed #TelegramGate and #RickyLeaks, appeared to unleash anger over grievances against the Rosselló administration that had begun accumulating even before Hurricane Maria decimated the island in 2017.
Puerto Rico’s finances have been controlled by a federal oversight board since 2016, the year Rosselló was elected, limiting his ability to govern and simultaneously making him party to unpopular economic austerity policies.
Now you know how Greece felt.
The bankrupt island has been in a recession for 12 years, but it was Rosselló’s handling of the slow storm recovery, including what many Puerto Ricans viewed as his meek approach toward President Trump, that put him under increased scrutiny. His government took nearly a year to acknowledge that thousands of people had died in Maria’s aftermath. A series of corruption scandals, including the arrests Wednesday of two former Cabinet members, further diminished Rosselló’s power. Still, he had been expected to run for re-election in 2020.
He can always go back to sharecropping.
Some of Rosselló’s critics, including Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz of San Juan, a candidate for governor, said on Puerto Rican radio Saturday that the scandal surrounding the governor would only fuel more distrust from Washington, where Trump has made clear that he does not want to send the island more federal aid.
Cruz also said she had filed a police complaint against Rosselló and his former chief financial officer, Sobrino, over a leaked message in which Sobrino had written in Spanish about Cruz: “I am salivating to shoot her.”
“You do me a favor,” Rosselló appeared to respond.
Why did Ortiz just spring to mind?
Radio and television stations on the island ran special coverage about the scandal over the weekend, extending their broadcasts into the night much as they had done during Hurricane Maria. Pundits opined that Rosselló’s departure would be imminent, whether he resigned or lawmakers convened to push him out.
Any intended transition was complicated by the departure Saturday of Luis Rivera Marín, Rosselló’s secretary of state and lieutenant governor, who would have assumed the governorship in the event Rosselló chose to resign. The next official in the line of succession is the secretary of justice, Wanda Vázquez Garced.
Rosselló, 40, apologized Thursday after an excerpt from the chat was first published by local media showing he had referred to Melissa Mark-Viverito, the former speaker of the New York City Council, who was born in Puerto Rico, using the Spanish word for “whore.” In English, he also used a profane expression in reference to the oversight board that controls Puerto Rico’s finances, followed by emojis of a raised middle finger.
I'm going to keep on flipping through the web additions.
In a news conference held shortly after he returned from cutting short a family vacation in France, Rosselló insisted late Thursday that he would remain in office, but on Saturday morning, the Center for Investigative Journalism published the entirety of the leaked chat, which spanned from late 2018 to January and included Rosselló and 11 other men in his close political circle. The cache of messages showed that the governor and his current and former aides had also derided many others, including leaders of their New Progressive Party and the Puerto Rican celebrity Ricky Martin.
Martin was the last straw, and I don't think the family vacation in France was lost on the Puerto Rican people.
By Saturday afternoon, Representative Jenniffer González-Colón, Puerto Rico’s nonvoting member in Congress and a member of the New Progressive Party, said that Rosselló should not seek reelection in 2020 and the governor should “immediately reflect on his role as governor.”
“I feel ashamed by everything being said in these private communications,” she said. “The people are disgusted, disappointed by this telenovela.”
Puerto Rico’s Senate president and House majority leader, both of whom are members of Rosselló’s party and had been mocked in the chat, also said they had lost faith in the governor. So did Martin, an actor and singer. The trap artist Bad Bunny urged Puerto Ricans to take to the streets.
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Related:
"Puerto Rico’s former secretary of education and five other people were arrested Wednesday on charges of steering federal money to unqualified, politically connected contractors, federal officials said. Federal officials said that former education secretary Julia Keleher; former Puerto Rico health insurance administration head Ángela Ávila-Marrero; businessmen Fernando Scherrer-Caillet and Alberto Velázquez-Piñol; and education contractors Glenda E. Ponce-Mendoza and Mayra Ponce-Mendoza, who are sisters, were arrested by the FBI on 32 counts of fraud and related charges. The alleged fraud involves a total of $15.5 million in federal funding between 2017 and 2019. US Attorney for Puerto Rico Rosa Emilia Rodríguez said Velázquez Piñol had improperly taken advantage of contacts in the education and health insurance agencies to win federal contracts and illegally used federal money to pay for lobbying."
Also see:
"The sudden loss of power disrupted five subway lines and shut down many of the city’s most popular sources of entertainment, including Carnegie Hall and many Broadway theaters, and even cut off the performer Jennifer Lopez, midsong, during a sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden. New Yorkers and tourists flooded into the darkened streets while elected officials rushed to castigate Con Edison for failing to contain the failure before it spread. Mayor Bill de Blasio returned home from Iowa, where he had been campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president....."
De Blasio said “things are back to normal at a news conference Sunday afternoon at a Con Edison control center in Manhattan, and reiterated that there was no indication that terrorism played a part in the power failure, it was not a cyberattack, and the system was not overloaded by energy demands while Con Edison apologized for a significant electrical transmission disturbance and said it will conduct an investigation to determine the root cause of the incident.”
Indictment claims Jeffrey Epstein had extensive network to procure young victims
The important takeaway is that "Epstein’s former girlfriend, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, was described in accuser Sarah Ransome’s 2017 lawsuit as the ‘‘highest-ranking employee’’ of Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking enterprise. She oversaw and trained recruiters, developed recruiting plans, and helped conceal the activity from law enforcement."
Maxwell is reputed to have been a Mossad agent in what is looking more and more like a state-sponsored blackmail scheme.
In the meantime, Epstein is in solitary confinement in the cell next to Paul Manafort.
Related:
"Lawrence man charged with motor vehicle homicide, manslaughter after 8-year-old’s death" by Jordan Frias Globe Correspondent, July 14, 2019
A 23-year-old man is in police custody, charged with motor vehicle homicide and manslaughter following the death of an 8-year-old girl after a crash in Lawrence Saturday night, according to the Essex district attorney’s office.
They are really busy over there.
Selvin Manuel Lima is expected to be arraigned Monday, according to Carrie Kimball, a spokeswoman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett. Lima is in Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Kimball said in a statement.
Lima allegedly failed to stop Saturday night when pursued by a Lawrence officer for speeding and erratic operation of a white 2009 Infiniti G37, Kimball said. He allegedly fled the scene when an officer approached his vehicle on foot at the intersection of South Union Street and Winthrop Avenue, the statement said. The officer did not pursue Lima at that time, Kimball said.
Lima then allegedly turned onto Route 114 northbound and lost control of the Infiniti at the intersection of Winthrop Avenue and Andover Street, Kimball said. He allegedly crossed over onto the southbound side of the street, striking a black Honda Civic head-on outside 191 Parker St., Kimball said.
Five people were in the Honda, including the 8-year-old girl, who was later pronounced dead at Lawrence General Hospital, Kimball said. The four remaining people, including a 27-year-old Lawrence man, a 29-year-old woman from Peabody, and two girls from Peabody, were taken to Boston hospitals with serious injuries, according to the statement. The Honda’s occupants were not identified Sunday.
Residents helped extract a woman from the vehicle before first responders arrived, according to resident Kevin Drouin, 49, of Lawrence, who rushed to the scene after the crash.
“What [residents] did yesterday was heroic on many levels,” Drouin said in a phone interview. “Citizens got her out of the vehicle, got her on the ground and comfortable.” Drouin described the 8-year-old’s death as “the worst day since the gas explosions” in Lawrence. “Fellow citizens jumped into action and had this under control,” said the father of four. “It was the most heart-wrenching, and inspirational at the same time.” Drouin said he left a pink teddy bear at a growing memorial at the site of the crash on Sunday.
Lima sustained serious injuries and was medflighted to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Kimball said. Depending on his condition, Lima may be arraigned at Brigham and Women’s, she said. The charges he faces include operating after a license suspension, failing to stop for a police officer, speeding, a marked lanes violation, and four counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury, in addition to the charges of manslaughter and motor vehicle homicide by reckless operation.
I guess the RMV didn't get the letter out to him.
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Also see:
Hull police officer struck by truck during funeral procession
Bill would ease rules on selling used cars
It's set for a public hearing at the smoke-filled Massachusetts State House.
"A Holbrook man was arrested after State Police raided his garage Friday and allegedly found a dozen illegally owned guns, more than 3,100 rounds of ammunition, and drugs, according to State Police. Stephen Buckman, 53, was arrested at his Juniper Street home about 11 a.m., roughly three hours after State Police acted on a warrant and forced entry into a garage bay associated with Buckman’s stated occupation as a self-employed mechanic, State Police spokesman David Procopio said Sunday....."
Temporary closure of Truro beach after shark sighting
Cambridge woman dies after being pulled from Wellfleet pond
Cambridge teen arrested after allegedly knocking woman unconscious, stealing purse
He would have fared better in Suffolk County.
American Airlines extends Boeing plane flight cancellations
That leaves Bob Kraft and his new girlfriend stuck in London, and it is time to wave goodbye.
