Is your head spinning yet? The tangerine tool and his side kick Stephen, the vampire white nationalist, Miller have been quite the busy little evildoers. We get it now, your whole mantra is brown people are bad. Coming in after that, the rest of his corrupt kindergarten class is disobeying court orders, dismantling environmental protections, defunding research at National Parks still making lovey dovey with the rich and powerful, buddying up with foreign adversaries and in general just being outright narcissistic human air horns. On top of that the orange blowhard cannot remember where his father was born, does not know how to say origins, and let’s face it he is a downright deeply disturbed fuzzy orange loon (I do not think loons are orange or fuzzy but meh, that is all I could think of at the moment), and now apparently he thinks he is Batman, so there is that. Oh BTW do not really watch that, really.
You may be asking yourselves, isn’t this a place for good news? Why yes, yes it is. And what is that good news. Well this, keep it coming donald dump and your gang of temper tantrum throwing toddlers because you are just ticking us off and you know what happens when you tick us off? We win and the rethug party will lose and become of a thing of ancient history.
I know it’s hard to keep up with constant barrage of udder bull this “administration” is trying to implement in OUR country, but even with all the noise and distractions, I believe the people are paying attention and will make their voices heard through their votes. And for those who are not or even those who cannot (I get that, sometimes it is easier to tune it all out) we will be there to shine the light, spread the word, make sure the good news gets out there too, self-care ;) am I right W, and of course get out the damn vote!I
Before I move on I have to admit that I am ticked off. Ever since the Mueller report landed in the hands of the barrstard it seems donnie doo doo has been emboldened to do anything inhumane he can on all fronts. BUT I am going to use that anger to ensure there is an end to this and that it never happens again! I nor you should you fall into the trap they are laying to make us hide under the covers, no way. Now let’s talk about the good news.
Onward!
First some news from the House.
House forms first Black Maternal Health Caucus
Reps. Alma Adams (D-NC) and Lauren Underwood (D-IL) officially launched the first-ever Black Maternal Health Caucus on Tuesday, in hopes of tackling one of the widest racial disparities in health care today. Back women are 243 percent more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes than their white counterparts.
The public health crisis has been getting more national attention recently, thanks in part to an award-winning ProPublica/NPR series on the soaring maternal mortality rate and celebrity testimonies from Serena Williams and Beyoncé on their own harrowing experiences.
The new health caucus will be working with advocates like Black Mamas Matter Alliance, which has been discussing the maternal mortality crisis for some time. The group has outlined a list of priorities for members of Congress to consider: include black women leaders and black-led organizations when writing legislation, eliminate abuse and mistreatment in health care, and push for financial access to high quality care. The group also urges members of Congress to actually cite racism as the reason why black women are dying during or shortly after child birth.
“When you are not centering black women, and that means black mamas, in programs and policies then you are not going to address the disparities and we are going to continue to have a problem,” said Dawes Gay.
That was good news 1, here comes 2.
Time's Up for Abusers in the Workplace: Rep. Ayanna Pressley Introduces Sweeping Anti-Harassment Legislation
Joined by workers, survivors, and advocates from across the country, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and other congressional Democrats have introduced new, comprehensive legislation that tackles harassment in the workplace. The multifaceted “Be HEARD Act” is aimed at bolstering protections for workers, particularly those in lower wage and entry-level jobs where employees tend to be most vulnerable.
The bill was authored by Rep. Pressley and four other Democrats, all women: Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Congresswoman Katherine Clark (D-MA), Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), and Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL).
The Be HEARD in the Workplace Act stands for “Bringing an End to Harassment by Enhancing Accountability and Rejecting Discrimination,” and includes a sweeping array of proposals. This includes provisions that workplaces adapt formal strategies to prevent harassment (including nondiscrimination policies and trainings). The bill also clarifies protections for LGBTQ workers, eliminates the tipped minimum wage, and strikes the caps on compensatory and punitive damages workers win when they file harassment suits against their employers.
The Be HEARD act also expands current protections to include workers at small businesses, independent contractors, interns, fellows, volunteers and trainees, and makes it easier for workers to file harassment claims in court.
Keep them coming.
House Democrats demand Trump administration disclose Obamacare legal strategy
House Democrats are demanding the Trump administration turn over documents related to its refusal to defend Obamacare in court, in an escalation of the political battle over a case that has put health care at risk for millions.
The chairmen of five House committees sent letters to the White House, Justice Department and top Trump health officials seeking information on the administration's recent decision to support the health care law's full elimination in court. They called it a “sudden and significant reversal” that violates the federal government’s longstanding precedent of defending its own laws.
Their letter seeks the DOJ’s legal justification for declaring Obamacare unconstitutional and internal communications about the case. It also demands that DOJ make four of its attorneys available to testify.
Those signing the letter included Judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler, Oversight chairman Elijah Cummings, Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal, Energy and Commerce chairman Frank Pallone, and Education and Labor chairman Bobby Scott.
House Democrats say they need to know whether the administration's new legal position was influenced by Trump’s newfound desire to make health care a central plank of the 2020 campaign.
“Congress is entitled to understand the communications that took place and pressures that were applied to achieve these troubling results, including whether this decision was in any way related to plan to replace the ACA,” the five Democrats wrote to Cipollone.
Take that you followers of the dark night and his...dark night?
Is this good news, I don’t know. The hearing was a disaster but this is just a great big FU by Lieu, who I think has no F’s left to give at this point.
Do you see that look on his face?? Classic.
Do you miss John Kerry? I do.
John Kerry: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Shows More Leadership Than Trump
Former Secretary of State John Kerry dismissed criticism of the Green New Deal, telling naysayers its proponent, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), had already shown more leadership on the matter than President Donald Trump.
Kerry delivered his rebuke of the GOP’s inaction on the environment to Rep. James Comer (R-K.Y.). Comer questioned whether there was a reasonable way for the U.S. to afford the ideas entailed in the resolution, which was introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in February.
“There are a lot of different proposals about how to proceed,” Kerry said Tuesday during a House Oversight Committee hearing. “I don’t know that any of them are coming from your party or your side of the aisle.”
Kerry added that his “focus is on how we’re going to move forward” despite varying positions on legislation, adding that regardless of differences among politicians, “Ocasio-Cortez has in fact offered more leadership in one day or in one week than President Trump has in his lifetime on the subject.”
In other words, duh, donnies a dumbarse and AOC is an intelligent human being.
Here are two articles that I know will shock no one here.
Most Americans agree Trump has made race relations worse
Most Americans agree: President Donald Trump has made race relations in the US worse.
That finding comes from an extensive survey and report by the Pew Research Center on race in America published on Tuesday. Analyzing a survey of more than 6,600 adults conducted over two weeks in January and February, the report, by Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Anna Brown, and Kiana Cox, details Americans’ views on race relations, the n-word, discrimination by the police and criminal justice system, racist jokes, and much more.
The findings are not good for Trump, showing that a majority or plurality agree that Trump has made race relations worse, that people are more likely to express racist views since Trump was elected, and that racist views are more acceptable since Trump’s election.
Immigration makes America great
As the Trump administration purges the senior staff at the Department of Homeland Security to lay the groundwork for a new round of sweeping and very possibly illegal restrictions on immigration, Axios reports that a top official behind the changes “described previous U.S. practice as ‘charity toward all, malice toward none.’”
The fact that the Trump administration is positioning themselves in opposition to one of the most famous turns of phrase of Abraham Lincoln, America’s greatest president, is a good indication that this approach is backward and wrongheaded. Lincoln, like George Washington before him, was a proponent of a strategic approach that made this country the wealthiest and most powerful country on the planet — immigration as a path to national greatness.
Washington embraced a vision for an open America that could almost be read today as a form of deep idealism or altruism. “America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions,” he told newly arrived Irishmen in 1783. He assured them they’d be “welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.”
But Washington’s vision wasn’t primarily about charity or helping others. It was about building the kind of country that he wanted the United States to become. Greatness would require great people. America would need more than it had.
And for those who believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the value of America’s ideals, accepting a future of decline and retreat in the name of ethnic purity should be unacceptable. That the more homogeneous America will be not just smaller and weaker but also poorer on a per capita basis only underscores what folly it would be to embrace the narrow vision. That hundreds of millions of people around the world would like to move to our shores — and that America has a long tradition of assimilating foreigners and a political mythos and civil culture that is conducive to doing so — is an enormous source of national strength.
It’s time we started to see it that way.
It is a long read but well worth it.
Some State level news.
New York State Democrats make their own push for Trump's taxes
New York legislators are making a new push for the release of President Donald Trump's taxes under state law, a move that could offer Democrats an end run around fights in Washington over the President's federal returns.
A bill introduced on Monday in the New York State Senate would authorize the state's tax commissioner to release state tax returns to Congress upon request.
Trump is a New York resident, and the state is home to the headquarters of his family business, the Trump Organization.
Though the legislation would only enable the release of the President's state returns, the fact that much of the President's business has been conducted in New York means that such returns could be nearly as telling as his federal returns.
NY is on it.
Governor Charlie Baker Monday signed into law a proposal banning so-called gay conversion therapy for minors, making Massachusetts the latest state to outlaw the practice.
The proposal bars health care providers from attempting to change “the sexual orientation and gender identity” of any patient younger than 18. Critics have compared conversion therapy to child abuse and at least 16 other states have banned the practice.
Arline Isaacson, co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, said in a statement that the group was grateful to Baker and lawmakers for “moving so quickly to ban conversion therapy for minors.”
“Being LGBTQ is not an illness or a disease that needs to be cured,” Isaacson said in a statement. “These fraudulent treatments are cruel and barbaric. And now thankfully, they are banned in Massachusetts.”
Don Dumberdorf can keep trying to stop progress but “it” will lose in the end.
Climate committee disbanded by Trump re-emerges with new report aimed at local governments
A climate change committee disbanded by the Trump administration has been quietly working under a new guise and has now released its first report in an effort to carry through on its mandate.
The report, released Thursday, offers guidance for local governments to address both climate adaptation and mitigation, in an effort to promote best practices as cities and states increasingly lead the way on national climate action.
The 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment was formed under the Obama administration in 2016. Its goal was to take the findings of the U.S. government’s National Climate Assessment (NCA), which is released every four years, and use it to produce climate adaptation recommendations and guidance for cities, states, tribes, and other local governments.
But in 2017, President Donald Trump’s administration dissolved the committee. Members regrouped months later with support from from Columbia University’s Earth Institute and other partners.
The committee has now rebranded itself with 20 expert members, including some of the original members, as the Science for Climate Action Network (SCAN). According to the report, the muddled response to established climate science that is currently playing out across the country poses a threat to U.S. residents, something that can be countered through effective planning and coordination between local stakeholders.
Going forward, SCAN intends to serve as a resource for cities and states across the country as local governments look to plan for a future in a warming world.
Well isn’t this something interesting, who knew. Okay probably everyone but me.
Everyone is asking for the Mueller report, and you can too
It’s been two weeks since Attorney General William Barr told Congress that special counsel Robert Mueller had finished his investigation.
But while people across the country hold their breath waiting for Barr to hand Congress Mueller’s nearly 400-page findings, reportedly later this month, some people are taking matters into their own hands.
The Justice Department has received 198 public records requests related to the Mueller probe since the investigation ended on March 22, the department said in a court filing Friday. That’s nearly half of the 415 records requests related to the Mueller probe that the Justice Department was processing as of March 29.
Requests for records from the special counsel’s office continue to pile up, according to Vanessa Brinkmann, senior counsel in the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy.
Learn something new everyday I guess.
Well, well, well. For the sh*ts and giggles and the cows, there is this.
Devin Nunes MOOOIN' And SUIN'
MOOOOOO! Watch your feet, Wonkers, because Devin Nunes and his amazing libelslander lawyer Stephen Biss have dropped another cowpie. Last month they sued Twitter, Republican political operative Liz Mair, and a couple anonymous Twitter handles for making so many mean words about Devin that he was forced to hide in shame under his mother's pendulous udder. This time Nunes is suing McClatchy News Service, owner of his hometown paper the Fresno Bee, for scheming with Mair to "defame Plaintiff and destroy his reputation."
So what happened? Well, McClatchy published a story last May about Alpha Omega Winery, which is partly owned by Congressman Nunes. A former employee of the winery, Alene Anase, sued the company in 2016 alleging that she and other female employees had been ordered to work an event on the company's yacht where partygoers engaged underage prostitutes and used cocaine. None of this is contested, and yet Devin Moocow Bovine Encephalitis Nunes is suing for DEFAMATION BY IMPLICATION because printing true facts about a congressman is against the law now.
It really is worth the whole read as it is hysterical. But the best part is guess what is trending on Twitter now?
#YachtCocaineProstitutes is trending all because of Devin Nunes
OMG, sorry guys but I am busting a gut, could not happen to a nicer guy.
As always from my weekly Indivisible newsletter in case you may not receive it.
Your 5 weekly to-dos
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Tell your Representative to stop throwing money at the Pentagon. This week, the House is likely to vote on a “caps deal” to raise spending limits for defense and non-defense programs. (You can learn more about what this means in our explainer here.) House Democrats have agreed to give the Pentagon billions more in funding when it can't even account for what it already spends. The deal would also leave domestic spending on things like health care and education relatively low. We oppose the bill in its current form, and urge the House to vote it down. You can use our call script to tell your MoC to vote no on H.R. 2021.
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Tell your Representative to vote to restore net neutrality. On Tuesday or Wednesday, the House will vote on a bill to restore net neutrality after Trump’s FCC voted to end it. The bill should pass easily, but there’s a strong chance Republicans will try to use a motion to recommit to split Democrats and add divisive language to the bill. You can use our call script tell your MoC to vote against any motion to recommit and for H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act!
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Keep demanding that the full Mueller report be made public!Keep calling your MoCs and demand they make Mueller’s findings public and continue investigations to hold Trump accountable. We’ve got everything you need to know here.
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Make your voice heard: do you support impeaching Trump?We’ve put together a quick survey to collect your thoughts on an impeachment campaign. We’re asking everyone to complete the survey individually this month. Click here to review the survey and share your thoughts.
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Learn more about the Dream and Promise Act. We’ve still got time before the Dream and Promise Act heads to mark-up, so in the meantime catch up on everything you need to know about the bill. Check out dreamandpromise.org for everything you need to know about this important pro-immigrant legislation.
Then this!!!
Follow Yosef52, please read, rec, tip, follow and heed his advice!
Well peeps I thank you for listening to me rant and try to bring you some sunshine for another week. Positive vibes to all. Share all of your news in the comments, you are all the best. And that was snark free. :)
Anyone watch Fosse/Verdon last night? Another part of my family history I may share one day.
Life is a Cabaret, make the best of it, enjoy it, live it, love it.
Peace!