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Mentionable News

I’m not sure why the ERA ratified by two states in two years didn’t make that much news. The push came out of the Women’s March, you’d think equal rights under the law would be a bigger story. :woman_shrugging:t2:

Maddow did this segment on this in 2011, after the Walmart Supreme Court case, to see how the arguments against the ERA still stand up.

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The judge’s ruling on discovery gives the plaintiffs access to any communication Jones had about the Newtown massacre and to documents that could point to the inner workings of Infowars.

The judge has scheduled a hearing next week to decide whether to allow the plaintiffs’ attorneys to depose Jones.

Just gave me a tiny shred of off-topic hope for a good outcome for these families.

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One writer I recently read who was discussing Jones and his being banned from social media sites noted he had often refrained from using his name (referring to him as what’s-his-name) as Jones strategy is to make outlandish statements in order to get them repeated, spread and attributed to him to widen the spread of his messages. I’m happy to read the court is helping these families advance their case, (what’s-his-name) will of course play the victim card I predict.

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Trump’s approval rating has been steadily trending downward since Dec. 18 and, correspondingly, his disapproval rating has been steadily trending upward. The aggregate Trump poll by FiveThirtyEight currently stands at 40.6% approval, 54.3% disapproval. While it’s appalling to me that over 4 in 10 Americans still approve of Trump after two years of his unremitting assault on our democracy, I find this recent trend to be heartening – what makes it especially encouraging to me is that the numbers are moving steadily for the first time in a very long time.

I pull up this aggregate poll almost daily and have found that Trump’s approval rating bobs up and down on a nearly daily basis within the longer term trends (you can see this in the chart if you run your cursor along it). However, since mid-December, Trump’s approval rating has been inching downward relentlessly almost every day. I’m by no means a polling expert or statistical analyst, but at a gut-level this lack of volatility appears telling – as if a significant percentage of Trump supporters are finally making up their minds to permanently abandon Trump – that is, jumping ship and swimming for shore rather than just fickly choosing to occasionally disobey the captain’s orders.

Time will tell! :crossed_fingers: :chart_with_downwards_trend:

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More polling:

The public generally is more apt to blame the President [for the shutdown], with 55% saying he is more responsible for the shutdown than are Democrats in Congress, while 32% say the blame rests mostly with the Democrats. Another 9% say both are responsible.

Quite a split – Trump blamed by a margin of 23%! :+1:

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And this poll from WaPo/ABC shows an even wider margin of blame laid on Trump (24% more fault Trump than the Democrats in Congress):

Q: As you may know, the federal government has been partially shut down because Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress and Democrats in Congress cannot agree on laws about border security. Who do you think is mainly responsible for this situation?

Trump and Republicans in Congress: 53%

Democrats in Congress: 29%

Both equally: 13%

Neither: 2%

No opinion: 4%

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This is the fall out we’ve been expecting.

But will it shake anyone who could open up the government…probably not. :unamused:

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ERA Update: Virgina could be the final state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. :crossed_fingers:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/virginia-senate-passes-federal-equal-rights-amendment/2019/01/15/9836d4fe-18f5-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html?utm_term=.822754920a7b

RICHMOND — The GOP-led state Senate voted Tuesday to make Virginia the 38th and final state to ratify the federal Equal Rights Amendment.

The measure passed with bipartisan support, with seven Republicans joining Democrats on a 26-to-14 vote. The measure faces tougher odds in the House of Delegates and beyond, including hurdles related to long-expired deadlines for passage.

The legislation died last year in committee in both chambers, even though a majority of lawmakers in both the House and the Senate had signed on as co-sponsors. The full Senate has passed it five times in the past eight years, but it has never cleared the House.

The Senate resolution now heads to the House, where comparable House legislation remains in committee.

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Can not be good…change your passwords.

Massive Collection #1 Breach Exposes 773 Million Emails

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Judge denied Rep Mark Harris being declared the winner in N. Carolina until it has been established if there was illegal vote counting (absentee ballots were compromised.)

Judge steps in and says no to Rep Harris who is not the winner as of now.

RALEIGH, N.C. — A North Carolina judge ruled Tuesday that there weren’t grounds for him to step in and declare victory for the Republican in the country’s last undecided congressional race amid an investigation into whether his lead was boosted by illegal vote-collection tactics.

Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway rejected a lawsuit by Republican Mark Harris insisting he be declared the winner. Harris narrowly leads Democrat Dan McCready in the 9th district contest, but the numbers have been clouded by doubt due to allegations that mail-in ballots could have been altered or discarded by a Harris subcontractor.

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worth mentioning

Former President Viktor F. Yanukovych committed treason by inviting Russia to invade Ukraine and reverse a pro-Western revolution that ousted him from power, a court in Kiev ruled on Thursday, sentencing Mr. Yanukovych to 13 years in prison.

The former president is a widely reviled figure in Ukraine for his over-the-top corruption — he lived in a palace with a private zoo — and because the police shot dozens of antigovernment demonstrators during an uprising in 2014. He has also been widely characterized in Ukraine and the West as pro-Russia — and even as a puppet of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.

The court’s ruling was the first to formally determine that Mr. Yanukovych was serving Russian interests while president of Ukraine.

Before his work on the 2016 Trump campaign, Paul J. Manafort was a political consultant for Mr. Yanukovych; he has been convicted of multiple criminal charges stemming from the investigation into Russian manipulation of the United States election.

Mr. Yanukovych fled to Russia after being ousted in February 2014 and was tried in absentia. The treason case focused narrowly on one episode of his downfall: a last-ditch effort to hold onto power after he had already fled the capital by appealing to Mr. Putin to intervene militarily on his behalf.

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So it’s official: the President that Paul Manafort helped install as the leader of the Ukraine has been convicted of committing treason. That begs the question, “Has Paul Manafort helped any other Presidents commit treason?” :question::question::question:

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@Keaton_James
Yes.
Paul Manafort helped elect a guy convicted of Treason, is now a true statement.

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Roger Stone Draws the Judge Who Threw Paul Manafort in Jail - Bloomberg

Looks like Stone drew the short straw. Judge Amy Berman Jackson will brook no nonsense from the grandstanding “dirty trickster.” I’ll wager that his sidewalk mini-rallies come to an abrupt end the day Judge Jackson first bangs her gavel in this case.

Self-anointed political dirty trickster Roger Stone will have to tread carefully as he prepares to defend against charges of obstructing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and lying about his communications with WikiLeaks.

The no-nonsense judge assigned Stone’s case has already demonstrated that she’s got little patience for defendants who misbehave. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued a gag order on Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and later revoked his bail and threw him in jail.

“This is not middle school,” Jackson told Manafort’s lawyers before ordering him locked up in June for alleged witness tampering. “I can’t take his cellphone.”

She also reprimanded Manafort’s lead attorney Kevin Downing for a sidewalk speech he gave after his client’s arraignment and soon after issued a gag order barring parties from discussing the case with the press.

That kind of self-restraint could present a challenge for Stone, who is accustomed to speaking his mind. …

:woman_judge: :balance_scale:

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Trump%20Stone%20at%20hotel

Just a coincidence??!

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https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/howard-schultz-is-above-the-political-fray-so-high-above-he-usually-doesnt-vote/

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No wall is going to stop this type of tourism…Travel agents were booked in a different way.

The arrests marked the culmination of a long-running investigation by agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service into three outfits operating for years in Los Angeles, the Inland Empire and Orange County. They charged as much as $100,000 for their clandestine services — a price tag that authorities say Chinese parents-to-be readily paid to make sure their children would be citizens of what You Win USA’s promotional material called the “most attractive nationality.”

#FileUnderWTF

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This story is really interesting because it’s really about the relationship between humans and our climate. Human culture can affect climate. Has before and it can again. :herb:

When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they caused so much death and disease that it changed the global climate, a new study finds.

European settlers killed 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America, causing large swaths of farmland to be abandoned and reforested, researchers at University College London, or UCL, estimate. The increase in trees and vegetation across an area the size of France resulted in a massive decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, according to the study.

Read the study from the article here :point_down:

Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 - ScienceDirect!

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We were fortunate to hear Nancy Gertner Interviewed by Kim Hill on NZ National Radio this morning. I’m posting this here because towards the end of the interview she discusses the current situation wrt Trump and the recent
appointment of Judge Kavanaugh to SCOTUS.

Nancy Gertner is a former US federal judge who built her career around the protection of women’s rights, civil liberties and justice for all. Appointed to the federal bench of the district court of Massachusetts by President Bill Clinton in 1994, she retired from the bench in 2011 to teach at Harvard Law School. Named one of the most influential lawyers of the past 25 years by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, Gertner has written and spoken throughout the US, Europe and Asia. She has published widely on sentencing, discrimination, and forensic evidence; women’s rights; and the jury system. Her autobiography, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate, was published in 2011. Gertner is in New Zealand to speak at a conference to mark the retirement of the chief justice Dame Sian Elias.

The podcast (approx 27 mins) is contained in the link.

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Yes! A very interesting look at the effects of “colonisation” as well as the importance of forestation and grasslands for carbon sequestration. The early contacts with Europeans continued to have a disastrous impact on indigenous populations right up until the 19th C. Not only were they decimated by the spreading of disease, to which they had no immunity, but the process of land confiscation and outright murder was shameful.
I live in a country which was the last to be colonised by Europeans, being the furtherest from England, and consequently a 6 month sailing away. By then, interestingly, some in England were becoming concerned about how settlers were treating indigenous populations. William Wilberforce and co got together after having forced through the abolition of slavery in the British Parliament and worked towards creating a better understanding on colonisation. The British had a track record of colonising with little regard for indigenous peoples. However, the influence of two key men in the Colonial Office in England the 1830s saw NZ follow a different path. Lord Glenelg, Secretary for the Colonies, and Sir James Stephen, was Permanent Undersecretary. Their fathers had been MPs in Wilberforce’s group that had ended the slave trade.
Lord Glenelg and Sir James were committed to seeing Maori interests protected in the colonisation of New Zealand. In fact they initially opposed colonisation and wanted to see an independent Maori nation.
However, they eventually realised colonisation was a tide they could not hold back. Instead, they opted to try to establish British law as a restraint on land-grabbing colonists. Their influence resulted in Lieutenant-governor Captain William Hobson being dispatched with instructions to seek Crown sovereignty on the basis of the ‘‘free and intelligent consent’’ of Maori and to ensure their land and political rights were protected.
The subsequent Treaty - The Treaty of Waitangi - was signed on 6 Feb 1840. It is the funding document of our country. We again celebrate the signing on Tuesday this coming week. :slight_smile:

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