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Here’s Pelosi calling out #MoscowMitch

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Ongoing story: 6 officers shot in active shooter standoff in Philadelphia, shooter still at large, barricaded in building:

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I love summer news, check out the bite the shark took out of his surfboard. Epic :raised_hands:

(I’m including this because Trump is afraid of Sharks, we know this because Stormy Daniels the famed porn star told us after he paid her off. Totally qualifies for this forum. :smirk:)

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Russia’s response to nuclear disaster: lie, cover up — and put the world at risk

And now, on Aug. 8, a nuclear explosion at the Nenoska weapons-testing range has killed at least seven people, including senior scientists. This latest catastrophe appears to have arisen from a testing failure with the so-called Burevestnik — “Thunderbird” or “Stormy Petrel” (NATO reporting name: SSC-X-9 Skyfall) — nuclear-powered cruise missile.

With radiation levels spiking in the region, Russian officials initially ordered the evacuation of one village — six days after the incident — and then reportedly canceled it. They have closed a portion of the nearby White Sea to civilian ships.

This new disaster, as in preceding cases, strongly underscores the enduring pathologies of Russian governance, pathologies deeply embedded in Russian political culture even before the October 1917 Revolution and revived by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state.

They don’t only endanger Russians. Sooner or later, they will put much of the world in danger, as they very nearly did during the Chernobyl disaster.

The first common denominator of these nuclear crises is instinctive, pervasive official mendacity and secrecy. These behavioral reactions to crises are ingrained in Russian bureaucracy, where one survives by avoiding responsibility and hiding the truth from the boss. In all cases — Chernobyl, the Losharik, and now the Nenoska debacle — local and central authorities not only hid critical details from domestic and foreign audiences, they actively lied as to what was going on.

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This worries me as I have a grandson in ninth grade and gets exposed to stuff like that. I worry mostly because my daughter and husband are Republicans.

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Yes…who are protecting their gun rights?

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Mmmm… :thinking:

And a telling infographic from the same poll:

For more results, including stats on support for free trade and the most recent rankings of 2020 presidential candidates, see:

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Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of Trump

How he became a heartland evangelical—and the President’s most loyal soldier.

Before surviving Trump’s purges to become his lapdog, Pompeo warned Trump would be

“an authoritarian President who ignored our Constitution.” American soldiers “don’t swear an allegiance to President Trump…They take an oath to defend our Constitution.”

A former American ambassador told the author,

“He’s like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass.”
Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of Trump | The New Yorker

‘We are dropping like flies’ — Former fighter pilots are pushing the Pentagon for earlier cancer screenings

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Trump cuts off one of his closest friends

Inside the president’s feud with Tom Barrack.

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More than five years after the death of Eric Garner was captured on cell phone video, the officer responsible for causing his death was terminated from New York City’s Police Department.

Since July 17, 2014, NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo has waited to learn whether he can remain on the force with the plainclothes anti-crime unit, lose vacations days or lose his job entirely.

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Planned Parenthood said it will pull out of a federal family planning grant program rather than stop referring patients for abortions — as required by a new Trump administration rule that takes effect at midnight.

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@dragonfly9
This is interesting,

There are significant age gaps among Republicans in these views. Older Republicans are much more likely than their younger counterparts to point to ideological factors, such as professors bringing their views into the classroom and too much concern about political correctness on campus. For example, 96% of Republicans ages 65 and older who think higher education is headed in the wrong direction say professors bringing their views into the classroom is a major reason for this. Only 58% of Republicans ages 18 to 34 share that view.

I wonder why that number is so high? Doesn’t that demographic overlap with a majority of Republicans that didn’t have to go college and are now retired? How would they know what kids are learning in schools these days?

Here’s a helpful graph of what Republicans don’t like about higher education. :joy:

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It might be easier to insert a thought bubble of what Archie Bunker ALL IN THE FAMILY might say - example “Why college never made anyone smarter, you just hear all the libs talking their nonsense.” (I know I am making a sweeping generalization here, but there may be some truth to the open and closed mindset separating the two POV’s)

But it is a good question…The fundamental reasoning would not make sense to a liberal point of view because it is reasoned, questioned, dissected. I assume then that the R perception would stay the same… my examples “why expose your kids to an expensive education where all you will hear is 'nonsense.” And also “what a waste of money…it is way too expensive.”

The article I posted from Danna Young, (and @Pet_Proletariat - your post with her interview) has a comment which talks about the “perception gap” and the unique tribalism that is built-in.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans are also prone to caricature Democrats. For example, Republicans approximated that only about half of Democrats are “proud to be American” despite the country’s problems. Actually, more than four in five Democrats said they are. Similarly, Republicans guessed that fewer than four in 10 Democrats reject the idea of open borders. Actually, seven in 10 said they do.

If the reasons for mutual hatred are rooted as much in mutual misunderstanding as in genuine differences of values, that suggests Americans’ divisions should in principle be easy to remedy. It’s all just a matter of education.

Unfortunately, the “Perception Gap” study suggests that neither the media nor the universities are likely to remedy Americans’ inability to hear one another: It found that the best educated and most politically interested Americans are more likely to vilify their political adversaries than their less educated, less tuned-in peers.

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Well that’s certainly true. :joy:

Come to think of it, I would enjoy witnessing a 65 year old Republican audit any 101 Cultural Studies class. That would be comedy gold. Lol.

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Alarm in Texas as 23 towns hit by ‘coordinated’ ransomware attack

China may have a new way of boosting its economy. Here’s what the central bank just did

I’ll believe it when I see it, but this could be a good thing:

The CEOs of nearly 200 companies just said shareholder value is no longer their main objective

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Internationally declines are happening, although Germany is saying it is a ‘technical’ down turn in their economy. As a trading partner to the US, we are impacted as well, and the fear of a global recession are real.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany, Europe’s industrial powerhouse and biggest economy, with companies like Volkswagen, Siemens and BASF, may be entering a recession, according to a gloomy report from the country’s central bank Monday — a development that could have repercussions for the rest of the eurozone and the United States.

A technical recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth, and Germany saw a 0.1% drop in the April-to-June period. In its monthly report, the Bundesbank said that with falling industrial production and orders, it appears the slump is continuing during the July-to-September quarter.

The overall economic performance could decline slightly once again,” it said. “Central to this is the ongoing downturn in industry.”

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What could go wrong? The Volckert Rule is amended.

You remember the Volcker Rule, don’t you? It was the brainchild of former Fed chair Paul Volcker, who wanted to prohibit banks from proprietary trading—that is, betting their own money on risky investments. Volcker figured that prop trading should be done by hedge funds and investment banks, not by regulated commercial banks using house money with an implicit government guarantee.

The FDIC and four other independent agencies have dropped their proposal to tie the rule to a strict accounting standard — a move that banks argued would have made it more burdensome by subjecting additional trades to heightened supervision. Instead, regulators will give banks the benefit of the doubt on a much wider range of trades, according to the text of the final rule. ….The inclusion of the accounting provision in the original Volcker 2.0 proposal had been key in securing the support of Martin Gruenberg, then FDIC chairman and now a regular board member at the agency. Gruenberg, an Obama appointee, voted against the revised rule Tuesday morning, saying it would “effectively undo” the Volcker rule’s ban on proprietary trading. As amended, “the Volcker rule will no longer impose a meaningful constraint on speculative and proprietary trading by banks and bank-holding companies benefiting from the public safety net” of insured deposits, Gruenberg said.

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Trump’s disrespect for other countries knows no bounds. Does he imagine for one second that the people of Greenland are laughing at his little “joke”? NOT. Every single Greenlander must be fuming at the U.S. for making them the butt of a joke like this – ha, ha – the super rich guy won’t really squash our beautiful culture and countryside. On top of that, Eric Trump tweeted the same meme, snarkily implying that his dad would indeed “modernize” Greenland.

Trump should also promise us he won’t do this:

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This is actually great. :clown_face::muscle:

In 2007, the group Anti Racist Actionstaged a full-fledged clown performance at a neo-Nazi rally in Knoxville, Tennessee. The clowns feigned confusion at demonstrators’ cries of “White power!” and called back, “White flour?” as they threw fistfulls of flour into the air.

“White power!” the neo-Nazi group shouted, and the clowns pretended they finally understood their mistake. “Oh, white flowers!” they cried out, handing white flowers to passersby, including some of the neo-Nazis themselves.

“White power!” they yelled again. “Tight shower?” the clowns called back, holding a shower head in the air and crowding together in a ridiculous attempt to follow the directions of the white supremacist group.

They tried once more: “White power!” And the female clowns exclaimed, as though they finally understood, “Wife power!” raising letters in the air to spell out the words and hoisting the male clowns in the air, running around and carrying them in their arms.

The clowns stole the show, and continued parading through the streets with the police smiling happily at their sides while the neo-Nazi group called off their demonstration several hours early. This action inspired clowns in Charlotte, North Carolina to also yell “Wife power!” at a white supremacist rally. They also held signs that said “Dwight Power!” next to photos of the NBA player Dwight Howard.

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