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godlymvmi · 3 years

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Donald Trumps racism through the years

Since there's always Trump supporters arguing on my post, I thought I’d make a nice post they'd be able to understand :)

1973: The US department of Justice sued the Trump Management Corporation for violating the Fair Housing act. Evidence was found that Trump had lied to black tenants about available apartments and refused to rent to black tenants.

1980s: According to a former employee, Trump would have all the black people in the casino ordered off the floor when Ivana and himself came to visit.These black employees would be moved to the back. In 1992 a $200,000 fine was issued towards the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino for moving black men and women off tables. This was to accommodate a gamblers views and prejudices.

1989: During the infamous Central Park Five case, Trump ran an ad in a local paper stating they needed to “bring the death penalty back.” Even after the release of all five males, a settlement of $41 million paid by the city and DNA evidence proving they could not be guilty of this crime, Trump still believed they were guilty as late as October 2016. Oh, did I mention? Four of these teenagers were black and the fifth was latino.

1991: A former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, John O’Donnell, quoted Trumps comments on a black accountant. “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Later on, Trump claimed “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true,” while doing an interview for Playboy in 1977.

1993: In a confessional testimony, Trump stated he didn't think some Native American reservations should be allowed to operate casinos as “they don't look like Indians to me.” In 2000, Trump secretly ran a series of ads after the St. Regis Mohawk tribe proposed a casino that he deemed to be a direct financial threat to his own establishments in Atlantic City. In these ads, Trump suggested the tribe had a “record of criminal activity (that) is well documented.”

2005: After season two of Apprentice where Trump famously fired Kevin Allen, a black man, for seemingly being too educated, Trump publicly pitched the idea for what was essentially The Apprentice: White people vs black people.

2010: “Ground Zero Mosque” caused a lot of controversy during the year of 2010. This was a plan to build a Muslim community centre in Lower Manhattan, this being near the area of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Trump offered to buy out one of the investors, claiming that this plan was insensitive and publicly opposed to the project. Later, on The Late Show with David Letterman, Trump argued his point further and said, “Well, somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.”

2011: Trump, among others, played a huge role in pushing the false rumours that Obama, the first black president, was not born in the United States and still reportedly continues to push and believe this theory in private despite Obama releasing his birth certificate. In the same year, Trump also argued that Obama wasn't a good enough student for Columbia or Harvard Law school to accept him. “I heard he was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”

2015: When Trump started his campaign in 2015, it was largely focused around his desire and promise to build a wall to keep Mexican immigrants out of the United States and he called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and that they were “bringing drugs” and “bringing crime” to the United States.

Also in 2015: During his time as a candidate 2015, Trump called for a ban on all Muslims coming into the US. Eventually, his administration did implement a watered down version of this policy.

2016: Judge Gonzalo Curiel was overseeing the Trump University lawsuit in 2016 when Trump argued he should step down from the case. This was due to his Mexican heritage and his membership in a Latino lawyers association.

Also in 2016: “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?” Trump said as he tried to get black voters on his side.

During this year, he also tweeted a picture of Hillary Clinton in front of a pile of money and a Jewish Star of David that said “Most corrupt candidate ever!” Despite the obviously anti-semitic imagery, Trump insisted the star was a sheriffs badge and maintained his campaign should not have deleted it.

He has repeatedly referred to Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas;” using her controversial and then walked back claims that she had Native American heritage as a punchline.

2017: Trump attacked NFL players who chose to take the knee during the national anthem numerous times.

Also in 2017: Following the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump claimed “both sides” were to blame for the violence and chaos that occurred. This suggests that the counter protestors protesting against racism and white supremacy were morally equivalent to the white supremacist protestors. He also claimed there were “some very fine people” among the white supremacists. White nationalist, Richard Spencer praised Trump for defending the truth.

Also in 2017: Trump reportedly claimed everyone who came to the US from Haiti “all have AIDS” and that people who came from Nigeria to the US “would never go back to their huts.” The following year (2018), Trump reportedly asked “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He has since denied these comments but some senators attending the same meeting did claim this happened.

2019: Trump mocked Elizabeth Warren and her presidential campaign, calling her Pocahontas again in a 2019 tweet before adding “See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!” The capitalisation of “Trail” is seemingly a reference to the Trail of Tears. This was a horrific ethnic cleansing of the Native Americans where they were forcibly relocated. This caused thousands of deaths.

Also in 2019: Trump took to twitter to tweet that several black and brown members of Congress: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), are from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” and that they should “go back” to said countries. Three of the four members of Congress targeted by Trump were, in fact, born in the US.

2020: Trump has referred to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.” This is highly offensive and large numbers of Asian Americans have reported hateful incidents targeting them due to the virus.

Also in 2020: Trump suggested that Kamala Harris, a black and south asian woman, “doesn't meet the requirements” to be Vice President.

Trump has always been slow to condemn white supremacists who endorse him and during his 2016 campaign he retweeted multiple tweets from Neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

This is not even the full list and the article itself states its not a comprehensive list. But it does speak to his pattern of racism and bigotry. The article this list is from is linked below, I’d recommend everyone to read it and educate yourself using other resources as well. This isn't even the tip of the iceberg. I will also be making a post of his inappropriate, problematic and vile behaviour towards women.

The article: https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history

#lets educate and be more aware #this is the man you voted for.#and you can't deny this u mings #donald trump #election 2020 #blm

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leanybeany09 · 5 years

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Fuck trump

Whenever a Trump supporter asks you to "name one time Trump was racist," feel free to show them this....

1973: The Nixon administration sued Trump for refusing to rent to black people.

1980s: Trump's casinos were accused of hiding the black staff when Trump visited.

1989: Trump took out a full-page ad, arguing for the death penalty for a group of black men (The 'Central Park Five'), effectively putting a bounty on their heads, and plaguing them with a lifetime of death threats. He was sued by the Justice Department for discrimination.

Trump said this in1991: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kinds of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day… I think that the [black] guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is.”

1992: Trump's casino was fined $200,000 for transferring black dealers off certain tables to appease racist patrons.

1993: Trump said Native American casinos shouldn’t be allowed because “they don’t look like Indians to me.”

2000: Trump ran a series of attack ads against Native American casinos alleging (with no proof) that they were guilty of crimes.

2004: Trump fired a black contestant from 'The Apprentice' for being over-educated.

2010: Trump argued in favor of segregating Muslims in Lower Manhattan.

2011: Birtherism. Trump alleged that Obama was Kenyan based on nothing but skin color. He never apologized nor renounced that claim.

2015: Trump called Mexican immigrants "rapists" who are "bringing crime and drugs" to the U.S.

2015: Trump called for "a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S."

2016: Trump called for a Mexican judge to recuse himself based on nothing other than his race. Paul Ryan said this was “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

2016: Trump regularly retweeted material from white supremacists and neo-Nazis during his campaign.

2016: Trump tweeted a picture alleging that Hillary was Jewish, or controlled by Jewish people.

2016: The Trump campaign adopted Nixon's "Law and Order" rhetoric which was based in racial fearmongering.

2016: Trump told black voters "What do you have to lose?"

2017: Trump asked a reporter to set up a meeting with the black caucus simply because she was black.

2017: ...some very fine people on both sides" said Trump of a violent Nazi rally.

2017: Trump said people from Haiti "all have AIDS" and people from Nigeria would never “go back to their huts” after seeing America.

2018 Trump called Haiti and African countries shitholes.

2018: Trump referenced the trail of tears to mock Elizabeth Warren.

2019: Trump tweeted that four black and brown congresswomen should go back where they came from. Then attacked Elijah Cummings. Then Baltimore. Then Al Sharpton.

There. That ought to about cover it.

#trumpracist

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pkstudiosindia · 4 years

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Biden vs Trump Live Updates – The New York Times

Here’s what it’s essential know:

Joseph R. Biden Jr. has stepped up his efforts to unveil populist insurance policies aimed toward serving to American staff.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

WARREN, Mich. — Joseph R. Biden Jr., taking over President Trump over defending American jobs, traveled to Michigan Wednesday and introduced he would change the tax code to discourage shifting jobs abroad and to reward firms for investing in home manufacturing.

But earlier than sketching out his plan, he took purpose at Mr. Trump over new revelations from a forthcoming ebook by the journalist Bob Woodward that the president knowingly minimized the dangers of the coronavirus to the American public.

“He had the information,” Mr. Biden mentioned, accusing Mr. Trump of mendacity to the general public. “He knew how dangerous it was. And while this deadly disease ripped through our nation, he failed to do his job on purpose. It was a life-and-death betrayal of the American people.”

“It’s beyond despicable,” Mr. Biden added, detailing the crises the nation faces on account of the pandemic that go far past the staggering public well being prices. “It’s a dereliction of duty. It’s a disgrace.”

Mr. Biden went on to tear into the president’s file on the economic system, suggesting that Mr. Trump has not stored his guarantees to American staff a few vary of points, lashing his file on issues from job creation to protecting work within the United States fairly than abroad.

“He’s failed our economy and our country,” he mentioned.

Mr. Biden additionally promised to take a collection of government actions to make sure the acquisition of American items within the federal procurement course of.

As a part of the brand new plans, Mr. Biden would create a tax penalty aimed toward American firms that transfer jobs to different nations, generally known as offshoring. Mr. Biden has already proposed elevating the company tax fee to 28 %, from 21 %. The penalty would apply to “profits of any production by a United States company overseas for sales back to the United States,” bumping up the tax fee to just about 31 % on these earnings.

Mr. Biden would additionally create a tax credit score for firms that make home investments, resembling revitalizing closed manufacturing vegetation, upgrading amenities or bringing again manufacturing from abroad.

“Make it in Michigan, make it in America, invest in our communities and the workers in places like Warren,” Mr. Biden mentioned. “That’s what this is about.”

Mr. Biden gave his speech in Warren, a metropolis in Macomb County — a spot related to white working-class voters who historically voted Democratic however embraced Ronald Reagan and, later, Mr. Trump. He has intensified his efforts in current months to unveil extra populist insurance policies aimed toward boosting American staff.

“I don’t accept the defeatist view that the forces of automation and globalization mean we can’t keep good-paying union jobs here in America, and create more of them,” mentioned Mr. Biden, talking at UAW Region 1 headquarters, the place he made direct appeals to autoworkers. “I don’t buy for one second that the vitality of American manufacturing is a thing of the past.”

Thomas Kaplan reported from Warren, and Katie Glueck from New York.

President Trump in Florida on Tuesday, the place he appeared earlier than a crowd of largely maskless supporters. “I wanted to always play it down,” Mr. Trump mentioned of the coronavirus, in accordance with Bob Woodward’s new ebook.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump acknowledged to the journalist Bob Woodward that he had knowingly performed down the coronavirus earlier this 12 months regardless that he was conscious it was “deadly” and vastly extra severe than the seasonal flu.

“This is deadly stuff,” Mr. Trump informed Mr. Woodward on Feb. 7 in one in every of a collection of interviews he performed with the president for his upcoming ebook, “Rage.” The Washington Post and CNN got advance copies of the ebook and printed particulars on Wednesday.

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump mentioned. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”

That was a vastly completely different story than Mr. Trump was telling the general public.

“I wanted to always play it down,” Mr. Trump informed Mr. Woodward on March 19. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, excoriated the president over the report. “He knew and purposely played it down,” Mr. Biden mentioned throughout a speech in Warren, Mich. “Worse, he lied to the American people.”

The nationwide safety adviser, Robert O’Brien, warned the president on Jan. 28 that the coronavirus represented the “biggest national security threat” of his presidency, in accordance with CNN’s account of the ebook, however Mr. Trump later mentioned he didn’t keep in mind the warning.

At the White House press briefing on Wednesday, shortly after the ebook’s contents have been made public in press experiences, the press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, claimed that the president, who deliberately misled the general public in regards to the virus, had not lied.

“This president does what leaders do, good leaders,” she mentioned, saying “The President has never lied to the American public on Covid.”

In public, Mr. Trump repeatedly claimed early on that the virus would disappear. On Jan. 22, requested by a CNBC reporter whether or not there have been “worries about a pandemic,” the president replied: “No, not at all. We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

On Feb. 10 he was predicting that by April, “when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” And on Feb. 26, at a White House information convention, commenting on the nation’s first reported circumstances, he mentioned: “We’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.”

But by mid-March he was claiming publicly that “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” By then, consultants mentioned, the nation had already fallen behind on the steps it wanted to take to fight the virus, from ramping up testing functionality to distributing protecting gear to well being care staff.

Elsewhere within the ebook, in accordance with CNN, the previous protection secretary, Gen. James Mattis, is quoted calling Mr. Trump “dangerous” and “unfit.” He mentioned he mentioned with the previous director of the workplace of nationwide intelligence, Dan Coats, whether or not there must be “collective action” to talk out publicly in opposition to Mr. Trump. And Mr. Woodward consists of an anecdote about Mr. Trump being heard in a gathering saying, “My fucking generals are a bunch of pussies” who care extra about alliances than commerce offers.

Parents picked up their kids from elementary faculty in Detroit this week. Voters surveyed by Monmouth mentioned that Joseph R. Biden Jr. was extra seemingly to assist the nation get better from the pandemic than President Trump.Credit…Allison Farrand for The New York Times

With simply eight weeks to go till Election Day, and early voting beginning properly earlier than then, voters proceed to disapprove of President Trump’s coronavirus response and consider that Joseph R. Biden Jr. would do a greater job dealing with the pandemic, in accordance with a brand new ballot from Monmouth University.

Only 37 % of registered voters say Mr. Trump has executed a very good job dealing with the virus, and 56 % say he has executed a foul job. More broadly, solely 27 % say the nation is not off course.

Forty-four % say they’re assured or considerably assured that Mr. Trump can put the nation “on the road to recovery” from the pandemic, and 56 % say they aren’t assured. The numbers are reversed for Mr. Biden, the Democratic nominee: 53 % of voters say they’re assured in his potential to place the nation on the highway to restoration, and 45 % say they aren’t assured.

A large partisan hole persists on the query of whether or not officers are lifting restrictions too rapidly or not rapidly sufficient, however over all, 58 % of registered voters mentioned states have been shifting too quick.

“Labor Day generally serves as a marker for returning to a more normal flow of life,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, mentioned in a information launch. “That’s not happening this year and could be leading to an increase in anxiety levels.”

The ballot, performed from Sept. three to Sept eight, surveyed 867 voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus three.three proportion factors.

Dr. Francis Collins testified earlier than a Senate committee on Wednesday.Credit…Pool picture by Greg Nash

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, took challenge on Wednesday with President Trump’s suggestion coronavirus vaccine can be accessible by Election Day, as he repeatedly sought to reassure senators and the general public vaccine wouldn’t be made accessible to the general public except it was protected and efficient.

“Certainly to try to predict whether it happens on a particular week before or after a particular date in early November is well beyond anything that any scientist right now could tell you and be confident they know what they are saying,” Dr. Collins informed the Senate Committee on Health, Education Labor and Pensions at a listening to on the hassle to discover a vaccine.

Dr. Collins is the most recent main medical professional to throw chilly water on Mr. Trump’s prediction. Last Thursday, the chief adviser for the White House vaccine program, Moncef Slaoui, mentioned it was “extremely unlikely but not impossible” vaccine might be accessible by the top of October. And on Tuesday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci mentioned the identical factor, saying that it was extra seemingly vaccine might be prepared by the top of the 12 months.

Wednesday’s listening to got here amid rising concern over whether or not Americans can be reluctant to take a coronavirus vaccine, and whether or not the president would apply political strain on his administration to rapidly approve one to offer him a lift in his re-election bid in opposition to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

On Tuesday, a bunch of drug firms competing with each other to develop vaccines pledged that they might not launch any vaccines that didn’t observe rigorous efficacy and security requirements, and a number one vaccine developer, AstraZeneca, suspended its giant-scale scientific trial of a vaccine candidate after a affected person skilled a extreme antagonistic response.

Democrats on the panel grilled each Dr. Collins and Jerome Adams, the surgeon basic, on the impact of Mr. Trump’s overly rosy statements in regards to the prospect of the vaccine, and whether or not they would erode belief within the growth course of. Dr. Collins demurred, nevertheless, as Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachussetts, requested him level clean whether or not Mr. Trump’s misinformation would discourage folks from taking the vaccine and harm the hassle to distribute it.

“I’m not sure I know the answer to that question,” Dr. Collins mentioned, including, “I just hope Americans will choose to take the information they need from scientists and not from politicians.”

Joseph R. Biden Jr. visited a neighborhood in Wauwatosa, Wis., final week. He is sustaining his lead in that state, in accordance with a Marquette Law School ballot launched Wednesday.Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times

Two nationwide political conventions and days of protests and unrest following a police capturing in Kenosha, Wis., have executed little to vary the contours of the presidential marketing campaign in that state, in accordance with a Marquette Law School ballot launched Wednesday.

The new ballot, of 688 seemingly Wisconsin voters, discovered Joseph R. Biden Jr. forward of President Trump, 47 % to 43 %. That represented solely a slight tightening from earlier Marquette polls: One in early August confirmed Mr. Biden main Mr. Trump, 49 % to 44 %. The new survey had a margin of error of plus or minus four.three proportion factors.

“Despite all those real-world events, there is very little change in this poll,” Charles Franklin, Marquette’s ballot director, mentioned in a video accompanying the discharge.

The ballot was made public as Wisconsin, a swing state that helped elect Mr. Trump in 2016, turned the middle of the marketing campaign in current days. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden traveled to Kenosha after the police capturing of Jacob Blake, a Black man, led to days of protests, and a 17-year-outdated white man was arrested on expenses of killing two protesters. The new ballot was performed from Aug. 30 to Sept. three, so it didn’t totally replicate the influence of their visits.

A majority — 54 % — of respondents mentioned that they disapproved of Mr. Trump’s dealing with of protests, whereas solely 36 % mentioned they authorized, the ballot discovered. And 56 % mentioned that they disapproved of Mr. Trump’s dealing with of the coronavirus. But Mr. Trump continues to be considered favorably on the economic system: Fifty-two % mentioned that they authorized of his dealing with of it.

A brand new ballot of one other key battleground state, Pennsylvania, confirmed that Mr. Biden’s lead there had widened. The NBC News/Marist ballot discovered Mr. Biden main Mr. Trump amongst seemingly voters by 53 % to 44 %.

Mr. Biden’s lead there was due partially to sturdy help from suburban voters — which have been key to Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016 — and voters with faculty levels, in accordance with the ballot of 771 seemingly Pennsylvania voters, which was performed from Aug. 31 to Sept. 7. Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump amongst suburban voters by almost 20 proportion factors.

Among independents, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump 57 % to 35 %. The two are tied with white voters, however Mr. Biden has a commanding lead amongst nonwhite voters, 75 % to 19 %. Mr. Biden additionally leads amongst ladies, 59 % to 38 %.

The ballot has a margin of error of four.four proportion factors.

Supporters at a marketing campaign rally for President Trump in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Tuesday.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump’s re-election marketing campaign and the Republican National Committee and their shared committees reported elevating over $210 million within the month of August, a big quantity that was nonetheless dwarfed by what Joseph R. Biden Jr. raised in the identical time-frame.

And officers declined to say how a lot money they’ve within the financial institution, which is a key marker of what they’ll spend on going ahead.

Mr. Biden and affiliated Democratic committees reported elevating $364.5 million in August. They additionally haven’t but mentioned how a lot they’ve in money readily available.

The momentum for Mr. Biden’s marketing campaign in fund-elevating and the polls got here as a as soon as-seemingly insurmountable money benefit for Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign has evaporated.

Ad Watch

Usually, presidential marketing campaign TV promoting goals to affect voters in battleground states. But within the Trump period, extra adverts are focusing on a far narrower viewers: Washington’s chattering class and President Trump, America’s cable information watcher-in-chief.

On Wednesday morning, the Democratic National Committee and the presidential marketing campaign of Joseph R. Biden Jr. purchased TV airtime in Washington to debut an advert touting report final week in The Atlantic that Mr. Trump privately referred to American troopers killed in fight as “losers” and “suckers.”

NEW AD: Trump inherited every little thing and sacrificed nothing — as commander-in-chief, he denigrates service members who’ve made the final word sacrifice for our nation.

America deserves a pacesetter who understands the burden of those sacrifices — not one who disparages them. pic.twitter.com/smxX35neZB

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) September eight, 2020

The Message

Since The Atlantic’s story broke final Thursday, the Biden marketing campaign has executed no matter it may possibly to offer it oxygen. Mr. Biden addressed it in a speech on Friday and introduced it up once more throughout a Labor Day occasion. His marketing campaign has despatched fund-elevating emails soliciting donations off the president’s feedback and circulated different information shops’ reporting confirming the gist of the unique report.

Now, six days after it first popped, the Biden marketing campaign is making an attempt to maintain the story in Washington’s bloodstream.

The 60-second advert opens with black-and-white footage of troopers and a reminder that 1,800 Marines died on the battle of Belleau Wood in World War I.

“But when Donald Trump was asked to pay his respects, he said, ‘Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,’” the advert intones, with an on-display graphic citing The Atlantic’s reporting.

The advert goes on to quote Mr. Trump’s remarks calling Senator John McCain “a loser” and his questioning aloud “what was in it for” these buried at Arlington National Cemetery, earlier than stating, “Donald Trump inherited everything, sacrificed nothing, scoffs at the valor of those who gave it all for America.”

Fact Check

Mr. Trump did in truth name Mr. McCain a “loser” and mentioned of Mr. McCain throughout a July 2015 marketing campaign cease in Iowa: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Mr. Trump and his prime White House aides have denied The Atlantic report, however the thrust of it has been confirmed by a number of competing information organizations, together with Fox News, and no present senior navy officer has refuted it.

Where It’s Running

So far, simply as soon as: in Washington throughout the 6 a.m. hour of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, an hour at which Mr. Trump is thought to be channel browsing. A Democratic National Committee official mentioned the advert would additionally air in Arizona, Florida, Maine, North Carolina and Virginia.

The Takeaway

Every day that the presidential marketing campaign is about Mr. Trump and never Mr. Biden is an effective one for the Biden marketing campaign. Mr. Trump’s remarks about America’s veterans have been Topic A in Washington for almost per week now, and the Biden marketing campaign is blissful to maintain the dialog going.

President Trump campaigned at an airport in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Tuesday.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s main infectious illnesses professional, expressed concern Wednesday morning in regards to the instance President Trump had set the night time earlier than when he held a big marketing campaign rally in North Carolina with out sporting a masks.

Appearing on “CBS This Morning” to speak in regards to the hunt for a coronavirus vaccine, Dr. Fauci was requested whether or not the sight of such rallies was irritating for him.

“Well, yes it is, and I’ve said that often,” he mentioned. “We want to set an example.”

Some North Carolina Republicans had apparently hoped that the president would put on a masks as properly.

Before the rally, Dave Plyler, the Republican chairman of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, was quoted by The Winston-Salem Journal as saying that he believed Mr. Trump ought to put on a masks.

“It’s been ordered by the governor,” Mr. Plyler mentioned, noting the state’s virus orders. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in North Carolina, do as the governor says.”

But Mr. Trump, who has worn masks in public solely a handful of instances, and who mocked his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., for sporting one simply final week, appeared on the rally with no masks. Scott Sexton, a columnist at The Journal, wrote after the rally that “red hats outnumbered masks and face coverings by at least a 100-to-1 ratio.”

Dr. Fauci mentioned that public well being measures resembling sporting masks, protecting bodily distance, avoiding crowds and shifting actions outside fairly than indoors “are the kind of things that turn around surges and also prevent us from getting surges.”

“So I certainly would like to see a universal wearing of masks,” he mentioned.

A choose ordered Texas election officers to vary the way in which they overview voter signatures on mail-in ballots.Credit…Paul Ratje/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A federal choose dominated on Tuesday that Texas’s process for reviewing — and in some circumstances rejecting — mail-in ballots was unconstitutional and ordered the state to vary its course of earlier than Election Day.

The state’s course of for verifying signatures on mail-in ballots “plainly violates certain voters’ constitutional rights,” the choose, Orlando L. Garcia of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, wrote in his ruling, describing it as “inherently fraught with error with no recourse for voters.”

“In light of the fundamental importance of the right to vote, Texas’s existing process for rejecting mail-in ballots due to alleged signature mismatching fails to guarantee basic fairness,” Judge Garcia wrote.

In a lawsuit filed final 12 months, two voters mentioned that their mail-in ballots have been arbitrarily rejected as a result of Texas officers didn’t consider the signatures on the voters’ poll envelopes matched these on their functions. The lawsuit claimed that the state’s procedures, together with failure to offer “meaningful pre-rejection notice” to voters, violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

In his ruling, Judge Garcia ordered the Texas secretary of state to inform native election officers inside 10 days that it was unconstitutional to reject a voter’s mail-in poll due to a perceived signature mismatch if the voter will not be first knowledgeable of the mismatch and given a possibility to deal with the difficulty.

The choose additionally ordered the secretary to advise native election officers of recent necessities for rejecting mail-in ballots due to perceived signature mismatches, together with for informing voters.

Texas presently permits voters to request a mail-in poll if they’re 65 or older, disabled, planning to be out of their county throughout the election, or in jail however in any other case eligible to vote. The Supreme Court dominated in June that it might not require Texas to let all eligible voters vote by mail.

Benjamin L. Ginsberg is among the prime election attorneys within the nation, the go-to legal professional for Republicans in almost each main election legislation battle over the previous 38 years — most famously, the Florida recount in 2000 within the disputed presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Mr. Ginsberg received that one. His popularity as an professional on this (typically intentionally) sophisticated area of legislation crosses get together traces.

Which makes an op-ed that Mr. Ginsberg wrote in The Washington Post putting. Mr. Ginsberg — who maybe not coincidentally has the liberty that comes from having simply retired from his legislation agency — flatly disputed President Trump’s assertions that mail-in voting is “very dangerous” and that “there is tremendous fraud involved and tremendous illegality.”

“The lack of evidence renders these claims unsustainable,” Mr. Ginsberg wrote. “The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there’s no proof of widespread fraud. At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged.”

These are “painful conclusions for me to reach,” Mr. Ginsberg mentioned, noting his personal work in a catalog of redistricting and voter recount circumstances on behalf of his get together, and that he served because the counsel to the Republican National Committee and to 4 of the previous six Republican presidential nominees.

“The president’s rhetoric has put my party in the position of a firefighter who deliberately sets fires to look like a hero putting them out,” he wrote. “Republicans need to take a hard look before advocating laws that actually do limit the franchise of otherwise qualified voters. Calling elections fraudulent’ and results ‘rigged’ with almost nonexistent evidence is antithetical to being the ‘rule of law’ party.”

How vital is that this? Well, think about if Jerry Brown, the previous Democratic governor of California and longtime environmental warrior, wrote an op-ed for The Sacramento Bee arguing that world warming doesn’t exist.

E. Jean Carroll, a author who has accused President Trump of raping her, sued him final November, claiming that he lied by publicly denying he had ever met her.Credit…Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times

In a extremely uncommon authorized maneuver, the Justice Department moved on Tuesday to exchange President Trump’s personal attorneys and defend him in opposition to a defamation lawsuit introduced in state courtroom by the creator E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a Manhattan division retailer within the 1990s.

Lawyers for the Justice Department mentioned in courtroom papers that Mr. Trump was performing in his official capability as president when he denied ever understanding Ms. Carroll.

Citing a legislation known as the Federal Tort Claims Act, the attorneys asserted the suitable to take the case from Mr. Trump’s personal attorneys and transfer the matter from state courtroom to federal courtroom. The tort claims act provides staff of the federal authorities immunity from lawsuits, although authorized consultants say that it has not often, if ever, been used to guard a president, particularly for actions taken earlier than he entered workplace..

“The question is,” mentioned Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas legislation professor, “is it really within the scope of the law for government lawyers to defend someone accused of lying about a rape when he wasn’t even president yet?”

Ms. Carroll’s lawyer mentioned in a press release issued Tuesday night that the transfer by the Justice Department to intervene within the case was a “shocking” try and carry the facility of the United States authorities to bear on a personal authorized matter.

“Trump’s effort to wield the power of the U.S. government to evade responsibility for his private misconduct is without precedent,” the lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, mentioned within the assertion, “and shows even more starkly how far he is willing to go to prevent the truth from coming out.”

The Justice Department’s movement got here solely a month after a state choose in New York issued a ruling that doubtlessly opened the door to Mr. Trump being deposed within the case earlier than the election.

Ms. Carroll, a author, sued Mr. Trump final November, claiming that he lied by publicly denying he had ever met her. In a memoir printed final summer time, she maintained that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted her almost 30 years in the past in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman.

Robert Duncan, the chairman of the Postal Service’s board of governors, assured lawmakers final month throughout a listening to on Capitol Hill that he was dedicated to doing his job in accordance with “the public interest.”Credit…Pool picture by Tom Brenner

A robust however little-recognized group of Republican donors put in by President Trump to supervise the United States Postal Service has helped elevate greater than $three million to help him and tons of of tens of millions extra for his get together over the previous decade, prompting considerations about partisan bias on the company earlier than the November election.

The largest quantity of fund-elevating has been by Robert M. Duncan, who continues to take a seat on the boards of two tremendous PACs pushing for Republicans to win in 2020, one in every of which has spent greater than $1 million supporting the president’s re-election.

But he is just one of 5 Republican members Mr. Trump has named to the board — most of whom have given generously to the get together — who’ve taken a arms-on function in making an attempt to defend the embattled company in opposition to accusations that it’s making an attempt to assist the president win a second time period by sabotaging voting by mail.

At least one of many governors expressed considerations in an interview like these voiced by the president about doable voter fraud, citing an anonymously sourced information report circulated by the Trump marketing campaign and the president’s son Eric Trump about how mail-in ballots may be manipulated.

“If any doubt is ever raised — like in the New York Post article, or by any other reputable publication — we want to get to the bottom of that,” mentioned John M. Barger, one of many Republican board members named by Mr. Trump and a participant in a newly shaped election mail process power.

Other governors have executed little to cover their loyalty to the president, even because the board meets behind closed doorways to plot a method for dealing with what is predicted to be a file crush of mail-in ballots this fall.

The post Biden vs Trump Live Updates – The New York Times appeared first on Pet Food India.

from WordPress https://petfoodindia.com/biden-vs-trump-live-updates-the-new-york-times/

#Pet Food India Featured News #aquaculture #Aquarium #aquarium india #aquatic animals #Aquatic Food

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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'Maybe all the rules are gone': Bullock tries to break through in Democratic primary

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/maybe-all-the-rules-are-gone-bullock-tries-to-break-through-in-democratic-primary/

'Maybe all the rules are gone': Bullock tries to break through in Democratic primary

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock’s argument for the presidency so far focuses less on any single policy initiative and more on his own biography. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

2020 candidate forum

“We’re over 200 days from any voter expressing their preference,” Bullock told POLITICO. “I think there’s a lot of time to have moments.”

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock on paper has a strong case for the Democratic nomination for president: He’s a twice-elected governor from a state Donald Trump won in 2016, he worked with a GOP-controlled legislature to expand Medicaid this year, and he is running against dark money in politics.

But so far, none of that seems to matter much to Democratic voters. Bullock has polled at best, at 1 percent in most national polls, and he missed the first Democratic debate last month. He hasn’t held a town hall on CNN, MSNBC or Fox News, as others in the field have. Bullock was also toward the back of the pack in fundraising, raising $2.1 million in the most recent quarter (although, unlike some others, his campaign wasn’t spending outside its means).

Story Continued Below

And while executive experience has often been a boon to would-be presidents, all the governors seeking to run against Trump — who never held elected office before moving into the White House — are struggling to break through.

“Maybe all the rules are gone. Maybe every single rule is gone,” Bullock said in a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO reporters and editors.

“But, if Iowa and the early states still remain the sort of great sorting hat to winnow the big field down, I think I have some great connections there.”

The term-limited governor ticked off the endorsements he has received from prominent Iowa Democrats, including state Attorney General Tom Miller, an early backer of former President Barack Obama’s 2008 bid, and longtime Story County Democratic chair Jan Bauer.

He’ll get his biggest chance yet to introduce himself to a national audience in two weeks, when 20 Democrats head to Detroit for the second round of debates. But he’s already downplaying the importance of that event.

“We’re over 200 days from any voter expressing their preference,” Bullock said in the Tuesday interview, which is part of a recurring POLITICO series with 2020 candidates. “I think there’s a lot of time to have moments.”

Bullock’s argument for the presidency so far focuses less on any single policy initiative and more on his own biography. He thinks Democrats are not doing enough to win over voters who backed Obama and Trump.

“We have to bring out our base and win back those places that we lost,” he said, saying Democrats need to give people a reason to support the party as opposed to just being anti-Trump.

He said he believed he could carry Montana in a general election against Trump, citing his and Sen. Jon Tester’s (D-Mont.) recent victories in the state.

But Bullock said he doesn’t think he’s the only Democrat who could carry Big Sky Country, naming former Vice President Joe Biden as another candidate who might be able to win there. He said Obama narrowly lost in Montana in 2008 after spending his July 4 holiday in Butte, showing voters that he cared about their concerns.

“If the strategy is to just microtarget and say, ‘Here are pockets of blue, and let’s get these people out to the polls,’ the results are going to be the same,” Bullock said.

He also pledged to lean into his focus on fighting so-called dark money — donations from undisclosed sources that are put to political purposes by super PACs and other groups — something that has been a constant in his career stretching back to his time as Montana attorney general.

“Everything that this field is talking about right now is not going to be impacted unless you address” public corruption, Bullock said.

Democratic presidential hopefuls have made a range of promises about their fundraising this year to try to signal their seriousness about rooting big money out of politics. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pledged to forego big-dollar fundraisers and special perks for donors, and she and others have sworn off cash from federal lobbyists, oil and gas industry employees or drug industry executives.

But while Bullock is critical of corporate PACs and wants more transparency around political donations, he isn’t eschewing help from federal lobbyists. The Center for Public Integrity reported that he’ll attend a July fundraiser hosted by a federal lobbyist, who is also a longtime friend.

“No PACs, no corporate dollars, and every single dollar that I’ll have [from large donors] is going to be disclosed,” Bullock responded when asked how he squared the fundraiser with his anti-big money argument.

“Everybody can be pure if you transfer over $8 or 10 million from their Senate accounts directly,” he said, referring to Warren and other senators who jump-started their 2020 fundraising with cash raised during earlier campaigns.

Despite the hurdles between him and the White House,Bullock was adamant that he is not eyeing running for Senate in Montana in 2020.

He sharply criticized Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) in the interview Tuesday for standing by Trump over the president’s tweets about members of Congress, saying Trump uses “racist language.” (When asked if Trump himself was a racist, he said, “If he walks like a duck, tweets like a duck, he’s probably a duck.”) But he definitively ruled out challenging Daines.

He wouldn’t endorse a Democrat to take on the sitting senator, but he said Daines was “beatable.”Asked why national Democrats and pundits seemed to think he was the only candidate who could beat Daines, he responded, “That’s because you guys don’t know a damn thing about Montana.”

“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure who we nominate can beat him,” he said.

During the hour-long interview, the Montana governor gamely answered questions on everything from why he doesn’t support a Medicare for All-type health-care system (he backs adding a public insurance option) to why he still supports the death penalty in some cases (he said he while he has deep concerns about racial disparities in its application, he wouldn’t take it off the table for limited situations like domestic terrorism).

The only question that tripped him up came at the end, and it was about what he was wearing: custom, monogrammed cowboy-style boots.

“I’m happy to answer anything else but the boots!” he said.

Pressed on where he got them, Bullock resisted before finally spilling the story: They’re alligator skin, he said, made from an alligator he hunted on a trip to Louisiana.

Will the alligator boots make an appearance on the debate stage in two weeks? “Not now!” he joked. “I’m going to wear wingtips at this point.”

#Democratic #Foreign #Politics #primary

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narrative-collapse-blog · 7 years

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Nasser Hamad lured victims to his home before shooting five people say prosecutors

New Post has been published on http://narrative-collapse.com/2017/03/23/nasser-hamad-lured-victims-to-his-home-before-shooting-five-people-say-prosecutors/

Nasser Hamad lured victims to his home before shooting five people say prosecutors

On February 25th, Nasser Hamad, a 47-year-old Arab man in Howland Township, Ohio, shot five white people as they sat in a van. Two of them died. A forty three year old woman was severely injured and remains in the hospital. When the first EMT arrived on the scene, Hamad had returned to the crime scene with more bullets and resumed shooting. The EMT had to dive for cover.

When Hamad appeared in court the first time he asked the prosecutor if he was a “Jewish Zionist.” Then he told the prosecutor “I got big family. Big attorneys, gonna make this guy look like a joke. Comin’ for you. You like that PR? I’m gonna give you PR.”

Now Hamad is playing the race card and claiming he is being prosecuted because he is an Arab. Chris Becker and Michael Burnett, assistant prosecutors, say Hamad is the only person injecting race into the case.

Prosecutors say Hamad had been feuding with several people in his neighborhood on Facebook. On February 25th, he egged a group of people into coming to his home, which is right outside of Warren, Ohio. One of the men was the son of a woman Hamad was dating. Hamad had taunted him on Facebook with crude comments about having sex with his mom.

The messages sent by Hamad on February 25th include:

“I home bring your gang I don’t need guns for u [deleted]”

“All of u and still know one showing up u [deleted] [deleted]”

“Hurry the [deleted] up u [deleted] [deleted] and beep horn [deleted].”

“Shively u [deleted] looking face think u something … U dirty broke trash … Little midget white [deleted] boy … I been still waiting for you [deleted].”

Five people arrived at Hamad’s house in a van. According to survivors, John Shively, 17, agreed to fight Hamad one on one in the front yard. After soundly defeating Hamad, the survivors say they pulled him off and let Hamad go.

That is when Hamad ran into his house to get a gun. The group got back in the van and was about to leave. Hamad came back outside and started firing into an open window. April Trent, the driver, was hit and disabled. Hamad then opened the door and fired more shots, mainly hitting April Trent repeatedly at point-blank range.

Then Hamad ran back inside. An off duty EMT was driving by and saw the van. He thought it had just been in a wreck and pulled over to provide assistance. Hamad then returned to the crime scene with more bullets. The EMT asked Hamad “what happened?” Hamad alleged responded saying “I’ll show you what happened,” and resumed firing at the victims.

At this point two of the survivors fled on foot. Court documents say Hamad confessed that he continued firing at the men as they fled.

Hamad’s only injury was a fracture of the navicular bone of his left hand.

Joshua Williams, 20, died of five gunshot wounds.

Josh Haber, 19, died of a single gunshot wound. Prosecutors say he was fatally shot in the back when Hamad returned the second time with more ammo.

April Trent-Vokes, 43, was several injured with gunshot wounds to the head, arms, chest and legs. She is reportedly still in the hospital.

John Shively, 17 and Bryce Hendrickson, 22, were both hospitalized. Local media has published wildly different accounts of their injuries.

Hamad is facing two counts aggravated murder, and three counts of attempted murder. Prosecutors say it was premeditated and he could face the death penalty. Not only is Hamad remorseless but members of his family are accused of placing a “Free Hamad” sign at the crime scene.

The family of Joshua Williams is trying to raise money for funeral expenses.

Media coverage has primarily been confined to an extremely small area. A Youngstown, Ohio FOX affiliate and some Warren, Ohio newspapers and radio stations. The larger Cleveland media market has not even picked it up.

#Howland #Nasser Hamad #Ohio #Warren #Hate Crime #Hate Crime Murder #Media

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

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The Weekend Warrior 6/4/2021 - THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT, SPIRIT UNTAMED, CHANGING THE GAME, ALL LIGHT EVERYWHERE, GULLY and More

So yeah, I can happily say that the Weekend Warrior is back to where it began and where I like it to be, which is primarily a weekend preview about box office. I’ll still do a number of reviews each week, but that was never the plan when I started this column… are you sitting down? Nearly twenty years ago, this coming October, in fact.

Anyway, this past weekend, the extended Memorial Day one, ended up being quite a boon for the box office, which had been struggling ever since theaters slowly reopened last Fall, joined by New York City and Los Angeles this past March.There had been a couple strong weekends, but it took the might of the sequel, A Quiet Place II, and Disney’s prequel, Cruella, to really kick things into overdrive and mark the start of a real summer movie season where we finally had a box office where the top 10 grossed more than $100 million for the first time since March 2020.

With that in mind, we come into June with two new wide releases, both of them franchises, but one of them a much bigger and more lasting one. THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT (New Line) is the third movie following the case files of supernatural investigators Ed and Larraine Warren, as played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. The first two movies were directed by James Wan before the series branched off into a number of spin-offs, including three movies about the haunted doll, Annabelle. This is the first movie with “The Conjuring” in the title in five years after The Conjuring 2 also opened with over $40 million and grossed $100 million total domestic.

The third movie in the initial franchise branch follows another case of Ed and Larraine Warren, this one involving a young man in Brookfield, CT named Arne Johnson (Ruairi O'Connor) who becomes possessed by a demonic presence while helping the Warrens with an exorcism on the 8-year-old brother of his girlfriend. When he brutally murders a friend, he’s sentenced to the death penalty, and the Warrens need to find out how he got possessed and prove this to the court to spare his life.

This one is directed by Michael Chaves, who also directed The Curse of La Llorona (which was sort of tangentially connected to the series), and I’ll write more about the movie in my review below, but if you like exorcism movies and the Conjuring movies, then this is a good one.

There are a couple things in play with the latest “Conjuring” movie, the first one being the fact that it’s opening on the second weekend of the super-strong A Quiet Place Part II. While John Krasinski’s horror sequel should continue to do strong business with probably $25 million or more, the question is whether strong word-of-mouth might take away from potential business for the new “Conjuring” movie. At this time, it’s hard to imagine there isn’t enough theaters and screens to handle two big horror sequels, although people who finally got out of their house to see A Quiet Place Part II might feel more comfortable about returning to theaters, and a “Conjuring” sequel is a good follow-up.

On the other hand, the “Conjuring” is a franchise that has started to peter out with only 2018’s The Nun, which tied directly into the events from The Conjuring 2, actually opening even better than the original two movies with $53.8 million. It was followed by the less-connected The Curse of Llarona and Annabelle Comes Home, both which grossed less than $100 million domestic. And those were both in the “before times.” Although A Quiet Place Part II should still be going strong, it’s likely to drop from the people rushing out to see it last weekend. Another problem this Conjuring faces is that it is available to watch on HBO Max, which to many, could be the way to see it, essentially cutting into its opening weekend potential.

I think The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It should be able to capitalize on the return of theaters and the popularity of other movies about demonic possession in general to make just a little over $26 million this weekend, although it’s likely to be a very close race for the top spot at the box office against A Quiet Place’s second weekend, depending on how far it falls.

Mini-Review: I have to admit something before getting into this review. I actually lived not too far from where the original true story on which this movie was based took place when I was 16. Being quite an impressionable teen at the time, I was fairly familiar with the actual case. Because of that, this Conjuring probably connected with me in more ways than the others, but also, I think that having had experience directing the first two movies allowed James Wan to step back and just act as producer (and co-plotter) in order for Chaves to really shine as a director.

The movie starts with the Warrens in the midst of an exorcism for 8-year-old David Glatzel (Jullian Hillard), who has been possessed and is violently tearing up the house before Ed and Larraine do their thing. David’s older sister Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook) is dating Arne, who bravely calls for the demon to take him instead. In the midst of being attacked by the possessed David, Ed has a heart attack that puts him in a coma, so he’s the only one who realizes that Arne has been possessed. Days later, Arne repeatedly stabs and kills a friend of his.

I don’t want to go too much further into where the movie goes from there, other than it’s almost like a procedural mystery movie where the Warrens end up investigating another case of a missing girl that might tie into what’s happening with Arne. The film cuts between Arne in prison and the Warrens trying to solve that other mystery.

Wilson and Farmiga are great as always but they really up the game of everyone around them including 8-year-old Hilliard, who is already a genre superstar, but really creates a lot of the terror in the opening sequence, which ties closer into the overall story than other prologues in the previous movies. I especially liked how the Warrens are clearly older now and much more vulnerable to the demons they’re trying to beat. Farmiga even gives Larraine an older woman’s hairstyle, more akin to a woman of her age in the ‘80s.

But the real selling point for this new “Conjuring” movie is that it once again uses everything possible to create some insanely great scares, and not just the hokey jump scares we see in far too many horror films. As with Wan on the first two movies, director Chaves and his team brilliantly use sound and lighting to create the eeriest situations for the Warrens to enter, and boy, is it effective at making you wonder when the next scare is coming.

As much as I enjoyed the first two “Conjuring” movies and appreciated them for the amazing work Wan and his team did in creating scares, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It offers new layers and levels to what Ed and Larraine do, including a particularly apropos nemesis that makes me that there might be a lot more cases to be explored in such a manner.

Rating: 8.5/10

The animated SPIRIT UNTAMED (DreamWorks/Universal) is more of an anomaly, because it’s a new movie in a series that began with the early DreamWorks Animation movie, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron from way back in 2002 (back in my first year doing this column!). It opened over Memorial Day weekend against the second weekend of Star Wars Episode II and the fourth weekend of Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man, and yeah, it got demolished. The movie opened with $17 million, which isn’t really bad for 2002, but it also went on to gross $73 million domestic, which is great. In 2017, DreamWorks Animation brought the animated horse back for the Netflix animated series, Spirit Riding Free, and obviously, that did well enough that they wanted to return Spirit to theaters.

I’m not going to review Spirit Untamed, because honestly, it’s not really my kind of movie, but I did enjoy it, and I think a lot of younger girls who dream of having their own ponies will love it as well. It’s just a very well crafted film, directed by Elaine Bogan that goes into a lot of nice places while staying away from some of the typical animated movie tropes -- i.e pratfalls and body humor for the youngest of kids. It’s just a sweet and exciting young person’s adventure that I would recommend to parents for sure.

This is an extremely hard movie to gauge in terms of the interest that might bring families out to theaters. Presumably, the Netflix series is popular enough, but people are learning that movies like this will eventually be on VOD and streaming. In fact, DreamWorks Animation’s NEXT movie, a sequel to the hit The Boss Baby will be both in theaters AND on Comcast streamer Peacock at the same time. Spirit Untamed will probably be available on VOD in 18 days as is the case with most Universal films post-pandemic.

I’m not sure how many theaters this will get (maybe 2,000?), so I think Spirit Untamed might still be able to pull in $4 million this weekend, but maybe it’ll surprise me and do better. Even though little girls still love horses, I’m not sure it’s enough for their parents to buy tickets rather than wait until this is on streaming.

Oh, you know what? It’s a new month, and that means that I might as well bring back a section that has lapsed in the past year …

REPERTORY!

Yes, a lot more movie theaters in New York and L.A. have now reopened, so I’ll see if I can fit in some repertory offerings in the column each week.

Exciting news at my own local theater, the Metrograph, as they’ve just announced a Metrograph TV APP, available on Fire TV, Apple TV and others. This means that you can now become a Digital member ($5/month; $50/year) and you can digitally stream Metrograph programming directly to your TV set. (Me, I’ve been using mirroring from my computer for the past year.) If you’re a member you can watch Lisa Rovner’s fantastic doc, Sisters with Transistors, which I wrote about before. If you get on board now, you’ll be able to watch the Metrograph’s upcoming “Whole Lotta Herzog” series, which features two months of the German filmmaker’s work including some quite obscure little-seen offerings as well as a number of true classics like Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Nosferatu The Vampyr . If you’ve missed some of Herzog’s great work, now’s a great time to be a Metrograph member. Oh, yeah, and the theater will be reopening its theaters to in-person audiences in September!

Uptown at Film at Lincoln Center, they’re finishing off “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2021” and showing JIa Zhangke’s latest film, Swimming Out Til The Sea Turns Blue, in its theater. Okay, fine, neither is repertory but we’re glad to have FilmLinc back!

Back downtown, Film Forum is showing Jacque Deray’s 1969 thriller La Piscine, starring Alain Delon & Romy Schneider, and Fellini’s 8 ½ only in its theaters, and similarly cool stuff streaming, so yeah, nice to have them back as well. Also, a new 4k restoration of The Ladykillers, starring Alec Guinness will open at Film Forum this Friday.

A few blocks away, the IFC Center continues to show George Romero’s long-lost 1973 film, The Amusement Park, which is also available this week on Shudder.

Okay, I think that’s enough repertory. Let’s get back to the new movies.

This week’s “Chosen One” is Michael Barnett’s documentary CHANGING THE GAME, which is now playing on Hulu, a full two years after it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2019. This is an amazing and quite timely film about a trio of teen student athletes. First up is Mack Beggs, a 17-year-old transgender boy from Dallas, who by Texas rules or law has to compete in the girls’ wrestling division, because he was born female. Part of his transition involves taking steroids, so he quickly becomes the state champion, beating all the teen girls he takes on, although he’d much rather be wrestling boys, because he is a boy. Living in Connecticut, transgender runner Andraya Yearwood is allowed to compete against other girls, but even that is deemed unfair (mostly by the parents of other girls) since Andraya is much bigger and stronger than her competition. Lastly, there’s transgender skier Sarah Rose Huckman whose state of New Hampshire requires student athletes to get gender confirmation surgery in order to compete in the class of her choosing. The catch is that one has to be 18 to get said surgery.

These are three really interesting entries into the ongoing debate about whether transgender youth should be allowed to play sports. Beggs is a particularly interesting case because he WANTS to wrestle against boys but isn’t allowed to. Sarah Huckman doesn’t have quite the challenge of Andraya, because she is diminutive and better at passing as female. She’s also pretty amazing as an activist, fighting against the discriminatory laws of her state, in such a way that she really creates some inspirational moments even if Beggs gets a lot of the attention in Barnett’s film.

But the way Barnett tells these three stories is what makes it such an important one about a very complex issue, including interviews with the three kids’ parents and immediate families, all of whom are quite supportive even as their kids garner ridiculous amounts of hate from other parents.

This is the thing. Transgender boys and girls should have equal rights with their peers, and that includes playing sports. They’re already forced to go through a lot due to their gender dysphoria, so to have to, on top of that, deal with scorn and derision from jealous over-competitive parents whose own kids aren’t able to achieve the same level of competition, I mean it’s just bullshit. This movie really hit me hard in the gut, because I have close friends who have transitioned who are constantly dealing with hatred and scorn and to have politicians in states like Texas and Florida and other places making their situation worse, it just kills me. THESE ARE KIDS, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!

I’m quite shocked that it took so long for someone to release Barnett’s film, but this also couldn’t be better timing to add to a conversation where there’s just too many people in this country who do not or will not try to understand what trans kids are contending with on a daily basis. Changing the Game is the perfect conversation starter, and a great way for people unable (or unwilling) to understand the trans struggle to see it from a fresh, new perspective.

One of the fairly high profile docs out of this year's Sundance Film Festival was Theo Anthony’s ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE (Super, LTD), a really intriguing movie that seems like science fiction at first but actually is an in-depth look into surveillance cameras, taking a particularly detailed look at the Axon body camera system used by many police, cameras triggered by the use of officer’s weapons.

It takes a little time to understand what Anthony is trying to achieve with what is essentially a thesis paper done via cinema verité-style documentary (not my favorite), but it pulls you in with its look at the history of surveillance and footage that might seem disparate at first but comes together as the movie comes along.

I found this to be a particularly compelling film, especially with the music, which is a bit of a musical cacophony, though it seems to work with the robotic female voice-over that tells us what we’re watching. (Something that tends to lack in most cinema verité films.) As you can tell from the image above, the film is fairly avant garde with a lot of gorgeous images that might not necessarily fit in with the subject, but it does add to the overall narrative about surveillance and vision. I thought it was funny that my first reaction to this was similar to my reaction to last year's Oscar-nominated Time, because I went into both movies not realizing they were documentaries.

Ultimately, the film does become kind of scary because we have heard so much about the importance of body cams on police, but Anthony’s film shows how unreliable that footage is as evidence in a case. While All Light, Everywhere is a very different movie from what I was expecting, it shines a focused light (sorry for the pun) on a piece of technology that we’ve become so reliant on to achieve justice but is still clearly quite flawed.

A couple other docs that I wasn’t able to find the time to watch, both involving sports, are Graham Shelby’s CITY OF ALI (Abramorama) and Chase Ogden’s SUPER FRENCHIE (Greenwich). The first one is pretty obviously about boxing great Muhammad Ali, but it deals specifically with the week after his death when the people of his Kentucky hometown and the rest of the world came together to celebrate the greatest boxer of all time. Super Frenchie is about professional skier and base jumper Matthias Giraud, who takes on bigger challengers and more dangerous stunts just as he is about to start a family. These both sound great, and I’ll do my best to watch and write about them once I do.

Actually, I watched Super Frenchie just as I was finishing up this column, and it’s pretty great if you love amazing footage of fantastic skiing stunts. I’ve seen quite a few great docs in this vein -- Free Solo comes to mind -- and I generally liked this one, too, especially since it covers quite a long span in Giraud's life and gets into him becoming a father. I actually would have loved to see this in a movie theater, but you can, since it’s opening in theaters Friday as well as Virtual Cinema and TVOD, so lots of opportunities to watch it.

Next up is Nabil Elderkin’s GULLY (Paramount Home Entertainment), which hits theaters on Friday but then will be on Digital and VOD on Tuesday, June 8. This one also premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2019, oddly enough, and it ALSO follows a trio of teenagers, but this is a narrative film, not a doc, but it very well could be a doc with the honesty it handles its subjecet.

It follows three young L.A. friends -- Kelvin Harrison’s mute Jesse, Jacob Latimore’s Calvin and Charlie Plummer’s Nicky -- kids who are constantly getting into serious trouble and in danger of ending up in the system. As we watch them committing crime and complete chaos, it’s counterbalanced by Jonathan Majors’ Greg, a longtime friend of the boys’ families, who himself is being released from jail and trying to stay out of the life that put him there. There’s also Terrence Howard as an enigmatic street poet, who doesn’t seem to serve much purpose until the end, while Amber Heard plays Nicky’s mother, who seems to be a stripper or prostitute of some kind, I couldn’t really figure it out.

I can definitely tell why critics might not like Elderkin’s work, because he comes from the world of music video and has a kinetic style of filmmaking that keeps things moving, which might not be the case in normal indie dramas, which might involve a lot of dialogue vs. just showing these three kids and their lives. These are all kids that have been damaged by familial relationships and society as a whole, who have pretty much been left to fend for themselves. The thing is, and this might be another issue that other critics had with the film, is that Calvin and Nicky are especially unlikable due to the violent crimes they get up to, and at one point, the movie reminded me a bit of a modern-day real world A Clockwork Orange. By the way, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange is one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time.

What Elderkin has going for him is this amazing cat. This is earlier work by Harrison, an actor who is quickly becoming the dramatic actor to keep an eye on, and the same can be said for Jonathan Major. I’ve long been a fan of Plummer and this is a very different role from the nice guys he’s played in the past. Latimore also gives a really exciting performance, as well, and the only one who disappointed me a little was Heard, who at times gets a bit out of control with her performance.

Gully is a tough and challenging film, but it’s one with such a strong message delivered so well by Elderkin and his cast, that it bums me a little this might not be seen by a very big audience, competing with so much other content right now. Maybe it’s not quite as strong narratively as other films of its ilk -- Monsters and Men comes to mind as an improved version of this -- but it’s a compelling character study that ultimately delivers what’s intended.

Hitting Shudder on Thursday is Damien McCarthy’s Irish horror film CAVEAT (Shudder), starring Jonathan French as Isaac, a drifter who is hired to look after a psychologically troubled woman whose husband committed suicide in an abandoned house on an island. Once he gets there, he learns that he’s forced to wear a chain securely fastened to the basement floor to prevent him from going into certain rooms, but he soon finds out that there’s a lot more to that one simple “caveat.”

I’m always excited for a new weekly Shudder movie, and this one looks quite fantastic with a tone that makes it feel sort of period while in fact being quite modern. The way the premise is set-up is certainly quite compelling, and I wanted to see where things go, especially after the opening where we see a sullen woman walking through the house with a toy rabbit that bangs on its drum mysteriously. For some reason, I assumed that this movie would involve ghosts or spirits or something similarly scary, but no, it’s just a guy chained to the basement trying to solve some mystery of the house’s dead inhabitants. This ended up being quite disappointing even though it started from such a good premise, but it’s one that never goes quite far enough in terms of scares.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Dominic Cooper star in Michael Haussman’s EDGE OF THE WORLD (Samuel Goldwyn Films), a period drama set in 1839 with Rhys-Meyers playing Sir James Brooke, whose adventures in 19th century Borneo were the inspiration for films Lord Jim and The Man Who Would Be King. When Brooke’s ship is attacked by pirates, he teams with local princes to seize a rebel fort, agreeing to be crowned Rajah, as he joins his new allies.

I’m not going to review Haussman’s film at this time, because I wasn’t able to give it the full attention that it deserves, but it’s a pretty gripping film on par with James Gray’s The Lost City of Z and other films about explorers. It’s a beautiful film with some great action and an amazing score, and honestly, I wish I had more time to give it the attention it deserves, but that’s what happens when you’re trying to run a site full-time and continue to write reviews for this column. Some things just slip past me or don’t get the time they deserve.

It will be available on Digital and On Demand starting Friday, but honestly? This would be a great visual movie to see in theaters.

Other movies (and new series) out this week, include:

UNDER THE STADIUM LIGHTS (Saban Films/Paramount) FLASHBACK (EONE) BAD TALES (Strand Releasing) MONUMENT UPHEAVAL (Abramorama) SWEET TOOTH (Netflix)

That’s it for this week. Next week… In the Heights and Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway!

#The Weekend Warrior #The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It #Spirit Untamed #Movies #Reviews #Changing the Game #Gully #All Light Everywhere #Streaming

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tabernacleheart · 5 years

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Jesus Died of a Broken Heart

"Easter celebrates an event that proved Jesus was who he claimed to be. He was God in the flesh, and he came to Earth to save us. And that meant he had to die for us.

After a night of beatings and mocking, after being crowned with painful thorns, Jesus was crucified. Crucifixion is probably the most brutal and torturous death penalty ever devised by men. His hands were stretched out wide against the cross and nailed through the two bones in each wrist. As the nails went through this part of the flesh, they would strike the nerve that travels up the arm and cause excruciating pain. If you hang this way for any period of time, the muscles around your chest cavity become paralyzed. You can breathe in but you can’t breathe out. Death on a cross is really a simple matter of suffocation, except the Romans didn’t want to make it that easy. They’d take a person’s knees and bend them a little bit and nail the feet to the cross. So a man would hang there in absolute agony until the pain in his chest was about to explode, and then he would lift himself up on his nailed feet to grab a breath. When the pain in his feet grew unbearable, he’d let himself back down again until the pain in his lungs became unbearable. It was an incredibly torturous event. Eventually, the soldiers would break the legs of the criminal to hasten death by suffocation. In the case of Jesus, they didn’t have to break his legs, because he had already died. But just to make sure, they stuck a spear in his side. Water and blood came out of the chest cavity, which, doctors say, only happens if the heart rips. You can call it what you want, but Jesus died of a broken heart.

Why did Jesus have to die? Because he alone was able to pay for your sins. You deserved punishment, but Jesus paid the penalty for you: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Peter 3:18a NIV)."

How do you think it felt for God, as a father, to watch his Son be tortured like he was on the cross?

Why is it important for someone to understand what Jesus endured for him or her on the cross?

What is the effect on your relationship with God when you consider the sacrifice he made?

- by Rick Warren

#rick warren #this moves me to weeping #the crucifixion #reflect on this #jesus christ #the atonement #divine mercy #his most sorrowful passion #easter #holy week #sacred heart of jesus

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torentialtribute · 5 years

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Ireland 26-14 France: Ireland keep faint Six Nations title hopes alive with bonus point in home win

It looks more like that. This was a return to the death penalty that Ireland inflicted last November on the All Blacks. Rugby is a simple game when the base is governed, and Ireland was ruthlessly efficient in their work yesterday.

They dominated the collapse and dominated the collisions, and everything fell into place. There was a lot of talk about the young and daring half-members of France from Toulouse: Antoine Dupont and Romain Ntamack – they barely got a pinch on Lansdowne Road.

Like the rest of their comrades they spent the afternoon on the hind leg.

Captain Johnny Sexton scores a conversion; Ireland kicks in a 7-0 lead from outside after Best down

Ireland has suffered only one defeat in seven encounters under Joe Schmidt's watch, a 10-9 defeat on a pig from a day in Paris back in 2016. Normal service resumes yesterday.

The hosts also had an impressive record in the championship under Schmidt. Well, until England called to the capital in the opening round of the championship.

Schmidt's Ireland was unbeaten in the Six Nations at home during his six-year reign until the stoked-up Englishmen stormed their fortress.

It has all been a bit tense since then. Whether it's the experts on the box, fans on the coach or the players and management in their base team in Kildare, something went wrong before today's crash. The style and boasting of 2018 was very missing.

The shaky screenings of Sean Cronin and Niall Scannell in Rome brought only the best status of Rory as the main man at Hooker. Ditto Rob Kearney

What is the plan of Ireland as their experienced full-back the week of that potential World Cup quarterfinals against the Springboks later this year goes grounds? We got the chance yesterday to find out the standard.

Larmour would have looked at the sky during the warm-up and sighing. It was biblical during the warm-up before the game, we had hailstones and snow before the sun came out just before kick-off.

Larmour made a good start with an agile kick along the line, forcing Damian Penaud to bring the ball into contact. The French would be trapped during a claustrophobic first half.

The French were forced to take a pile. Felix Lambey, their flame-hardlock, was in the middle of it and made 17 tackles in 28 minutes.

It said everything about the pressure they absorbed. It was ruthless. The dam finally broke after 29 minutes and it was a familiar face when Johnny Sexton seeped through a trademark loop to cross the posts.

When Ireland did not send CJ Stander to the guts of France, Sexton bombed their backs three with high bombs; Garry Ringrose was then denied to try after a beautiful piece of fieldwork when he knocked the ball while he slid over the lime.

Winger Keith Earls scored his 30th try for Ireland in 55 minutes; gliding over the Dublin-turf in the celebration

It mattered little about how the besieged French were more tortured. Tadhg Furlong, James Ryan and Bundee Aki walked through tired French tacklers, Jack Conan – on for the injured Josh van der Flier, accused via Guilhem Guirado and Antoine Dupont to score. Ireland was loaded into the barns with a 19-0 lead.

It was a question, when, the bonus point-stuck attempt would end up at Keith Earls run away untouched from 40 meters. It was time to put the top dogs on ice for Wales. Next Saturday the Conor Murray, Sexton, Best and Furlong made way for the reinforcements.

Yoann Huget and deputy Camile Chat stopped for late consolation attempts, which will irritate Schmidt. Enough work for the upcoming Saturday assignment in Cardiff, where Ireland will look to derail Warren Gatland's bid for Welsh Grand Slam. That is shaped as a hell of a competition.

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#Ireland 26-14 France: Ireland keep faint Six Nations title hopes alive with bonus point in home win

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faithpeacehopejoy · 6 years

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daily devotionals

1 Peter 3:14

14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats ; do not be frightened

A Daily Prayer: God, Revive Us

By Rick Warren

”Keep me from paying attention to what is worthless; be good to me, as you have promised . . . I want to obey your commands; give me new life, for you are righteous” (Psalm 119:37, 40 GNT).

The Bible says Satan is not afraid of your plans. He’s not afraid of your budget or your strategy. And he’s not afraid of your programs.

But Satan is scared to death of your prayers, because that’s where you tap into God. And Satan knows that anytime God wants to do something really cool in your family, in your job, in your church, or in our nation, God starts by motivating you to pray.

So if you’re going to commit to learning how to pray effectively, you’d better buckle up! Our hearts need a spiritual awakening. The church needs revival. Our nation needs God. Things happen when people start praying together.PLAY today’s audio teaching from Pastor Rick >>

Talk About It

As you grow in this area, I want you to start praying two verses every day:

“Keep me from paying attention to what is worthless; be good to me, as you have promised . . . I want to obey your commands; give me new life, for you are righteous” (Psalm 119:37, 40 GNT).

“Bring us back to you, GOD—we’re ready to come back. Give us a fresh start” (Lamentations 5:21 The Message).

Pray and ask God for three things every day as you look at these verses: Revive my heart, revive my church family, and revive our nation.

God, you are a good, good Father. Even when I’m in pain, you’re still a good Father. Even when my prayers weren’t answered the way I wanted them to be answered, you’re still a good Father.

Help me to remember that your plan for my life is always good and to always choose your plan, not mine. Help me to remember that you always give me what I need, not what I deserve. Thank you that you not only forgive me but you also pour your goodness into me. Thank you for putting my good above your own good by dying for me on the cross. You didn’t spare your own Son, so you certainly give me everything else I need. Thank you for inviting me to live with you forever in heaven.

And Lord, even though I don’t always understand it, thank you that you don’t say yes to every prayer request. I realize that your ways are higher than mine, and a lot of stuff I won’t understand until I’m with you in eternity.

Father, revive my heart. Revive my small group and my church family. Revive our nation, God! Only changed people can change the world. I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Have you trusted Jesus for your salvation?

No matter what you’ve done or where you’ve been, you can have a place in God’s forever family ready and waiting for you. The invitation is wide open. Just believe and receive.

Are you ready? Here’s a prayer you can start with:

“Dear God, I know that when I die I’m going to give an account of my life to you directly. I confess that I have ignored you. I know I have sinned against you, and I have lived by my plan, not yours. I want that to change, starting right now. I want to turn away from my sins and move toward you.

“Thank you for sending Jesus to die for all that I’ve done wrong so that I don’t have to pay the penalty of being eternally separated from you. I know that I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I know that only your grace can save me, Lord. I could never be good enough to get into a perfect place.

“Jesus, thank you for loving me so much that you took all my guilt on yourself. You made me acceptable for heaven, and I humbly ask you to save me. I ask you to save me from the sins and the habits that are messing up my life right now. I believe in you, Jesus. And I believe that you will keep your promise to save me instantly and certainly and completely and eternally. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

If you prayed that prayer, please write and tell me at [email protected]. I’d love to send you some materials as you begin your journey with Jesus.

Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share....

— 1 Timothy 6:18 (NKJV)

Love Does Something

Adapted from the resource Love Out Loud Devotional - by Joyce Meyer

Our ministry has taken various people on mission trips to minister to desperately needy people, but they don't all respond the same way. Everyone feels compassion, but some individuals become quite determined to find ways to make a difference.

Indifference makes an excuse, but love finds a way. Everyone can do something!

I remember a woman who decided she had to help in some way. For a while she couldn't figure out what to do because she had no extra money to contribute and she couldn't go live on the mission field.

But as she continued to pray about the situation, God encouraged her to look at what she had, not at what she did not have. She realized she was very good at baking cakes, pies and cookies.

So, she asked her pastor if she could bake during the week, and offer her baked goods for sale on Sundays after church as long as the money went to missions. This became a way for her and other church members to be involved in missions, and it kept her active doing something to help someone else.

Another woman is a massage therapist, and she organized a special spa day and donated all the proceeds to help poor people. She raised one—thousand dollars for missions and also testified that the day of giving was life changing for her, those who worked with her, and those who attended.

We all need to be loved, but I believe our personal joy is strongly connected to loving others. Something beautiful happens in our hearts when we give.

Prayer Starter: Lord, help me to not only feel compassion, but to find creative ways to express my love for others. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

Romans 12:21 KJV

https://bible.com/bible/1/rom.12.21.KJV

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investmart007 · 6 years

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WASHINGTON | The Latest: Ex-NAACP president wins Dem gov nom in Maryland

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/BwqlsY

WASHINGTON | The Latest: Ex-NAACP president wins Dem gov nom in Maryland

WASHINGTON — The Latest on primaries and runoffs in seven states (all times local):

10:45 p.m.

Former NAACP President Ben Jealous has won the Democratic nomination for governor in Maryland, setting up a battle between the liberal candidate and a popular Republican incumbent.

Jealous beat Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker. Both candidates are black, and Jealous now has a shot at becoming the state’s first black governor and the country’s third elected black governor.

Jealous faces Gov. Larry Hogan in the general election.

Jealous won support from leading liberals on the national stage, including Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Kamala Harris of California.

Jealous supports tuition-free college educations and expanding Medicare to all. He also advocates raising teacher pay by 29 percent and funding full-day, universal pre-kindergarten with tax revenue from his proposal to legalize recreational marijuana.

___

10:40 p.m.

Turnout is up significantly in Colorado’s primary, thanks in large part to a new state law allowing unaffiliated voters to participate in the two parties’ nominating contests for the first time.

According to preliminary figures from the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office, more than 32 percent of the state’s 3.2 million active voters cast ballots in Tuesday’s primary election, up from 21 percent in 2016.

Unaffiliated voters, who make up roughly a third of the state’s electorate, represent the bulk of the increase. They cast more than 250,000 votes, or about 8 percentage points of the turnout.

Preliminary voter turnout among members of the two major parties was up about 3 percentage points.

Enthusiasm is one possible factor. Turnout has been high in primary elections across the country, among Democrats in particular. This year’s ballot also had interesting races. Colorado did not have a presidential primary in 2016. This year, both parties have contested gubernatorial primaries atop the ticket.

___

10:35 p.m.

A state senator in South Carolina has won the Republican nomination for U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy’s open seat.

William Timmons was nominated after Tuesday’s runoff. He had finished second to former state Sen. Lee Bright in the June 12 primary.

Timmons was the choice of establishment Republicans, picking up a number of endorsements and quiet support. He is similar to Gowdy, who spent eight years in the House and led a highly partisan panel investigating the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Timmons was a prosecutor and successful businessman who spent more than $900,000 of his own money on his campaign.

Timmons will take on businessman Brandon Brown, who won the Democratic runoff Tuesday.

___

10:30 p.m.

Gov. Henry McMaster says he will use his relationship with President Donald Trump to bring prosperity to South Carolina.

McMaster told supporters gathered to celebrate his victory in Tuesday’s Republican gubernatorial runoff that he was glad to have a friend in the president and knew that the state would benefit from their relationship.

Trump endorsed McMaster in his pursuit of a first full term in office and campaigned for him just hours before polls opened for Tuesday’s voting.

Greenville businessman John Warren congratulated McMaster on his victory but told his own supporters he hoped they could continue their momentum in forging a new brand of conservatism in South Carolina.

___

10:27 p.m.

Mitt Romney has won the Republican primary for a Utah Senate seat, setting him on the path to restart his political career with a Senate seat left open by retiring Sen. Orrin Hatch.

Romney secured the nomination Tuesday against state lawmaker Mike Kennedy after fending off attacks on his onetime criticism of President Donald Trump.

Romney was the heavy favorite to win the race in Utah, where he moved after his failed 2012 presidential run and is a beloved adopted son.

Romney blasted Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, though the two men have largely buried the hatchet, and Romney has accepted the president’s endorsement.

He now faces Democratic Salt Lake County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson, though GOP candidates have an upper hand in the conservative state.

___

10:25 p.m.

U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley says he wishes “the best” for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the challenger who beat him in the Democratic congressional primary in New York in a highly unexpected upset.

The 10-term incumbent thanked supporters and expressed his love Tuesday for the people of the 14th Congressional District, which includes parts of the Bronx and Queens.

Twenty-eight-year-old Ocasio-Cortez has never held elected office. She worked for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

She was outspent by an 18-1 margin but won the endorsement of some influential groups on the party’s left, including MoveOn.

Crowley says, “I want nothing but the best for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I want her to be victorious.”

Crowley had been considered a candidate to become the next House speaker if Democrats win the majority.

Republican candidate Anthony Pappas is running unopposed.

___

10:20 p.m.

Oklahoma voters have backed the medicinal use of marijuana despite opposition from law enforcement and business, faith and political leaders.

State Question 788 was the result of an activist-led signature drive. It allows physicians to approve medical marijuana licenses for people to legally grow, keep and use cannabis. The proposal doesn’t list any qualifying medical conditions, allowing doctors to prescribe it for a wide range of ailments.

Opponents had argued the proposal was too loosely written, and Republican Gov. Mary Fallin said it would essentially allow recreational use. She recently warned that if the measure passed, she would have to call lawmakers into a special session to develop rules regulating the industry in Oklahoma.

It’s the first marijuana question on a state ballot in 2018. Elections are scheduled for later this year in Michigan and Utah.

___

9:50 p.m.

In a shocking upset, U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley has been defeated by a 28-year-old Bernie Sanders supporter in the Democratic congressional primary in New York.

Crowley had been considered a candidate to become the next House speaker if Democrats win the majority.

He was defeated Tuesday by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has never held elected office.

Ocasio-Cortez ran a low-budget campaign and was outspent by an 18-1 margin. She won the endorsement of some influential groups on the party’s left, including MoveOn.

Crowley has been in Congress since 1999. He represents New York’s 14th Congressional District, which includes parts of the Bronx and Queens.

Ocasio-Cortez has been a community organizer in the Bronx and worked on Sanders’ presidential campaign.

___

9:47 p.m.

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis has won the Democratic primary in the race to replace Colorado Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Polis secured the nomination Tuesday against former state Treasurer Cary Kennedy, former state Sen. Mike Johnston and Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne.

Polis is a five-term congressman, former state board of education member and self-made millionaire and philanthropist.

He supports publicly-funded preschool and kindergarten, forgiveness of college debt, single-payer health care and promoting renewable energy.

State law prohibits Hickenlooper from serving a third consecutive term.

Tuesday’s primary was the first in which unaffiliated voters, the state’s largest voting bloc, could participate in one or the other of the major party primaries.

Colorado hasn’t elected a Republican governor since Bill Owens, who served from 1999 to 2007.

___

9:45 p.m.

Former Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has defeated ex-state Sen. Connie Johnson to win the Democratic nomination in the race to be the state’s next governor.

Edmondson will face the eventual Republican nominee in November.

Edmondson’s victory Tuesday was something he was unable to do in 2010. He was upset in that Democratic primary by then-Lt. Gov. Jari Askins.

The 71-year-old Edmondson is a Vietnam War veteran from Muskogee who served four terms as Oklahoma attorney general and had a huge fundraising advantage over Johnson. The $1.5 million he raised was more than 20 times as much as Johnson, a 66-year-old former state senator from Oklahoma City.

Johnson has been a longtime champion of legalizing marijuana and abolishing the death penalty.

___

9:40 p.m.

U.S. Rep. Dan Donovan has survived a fierce challenge in New York’s Republican primary from Michael Grimm, a former congressman who resigned to go to prison for tax fraud.

Donovan represents New York’s 11th Congressional District, which covers Staten Island and part of Brooklyn.

Grimm served more than seven months in prison after pleading guilty in 2014 to cheating the government out of taxes at his Manhattan restaurant.

He was leading in at least one poll when President Donald Trump weighed in on the race last month, urging voters to stick with Donovan.

Trump said in a tweet that a vote for Grimm risked handing the seat to Democrats.

Donovan is New York City’s only Republican congressman.

He is seeking a third term.

___

9:35 p.m.

Mississippi Democrats have nominated state Rep. David Baria to challenge incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, lining up behind a party stalwart as they reject a bid by a newcomer.

Baria is a Bay St. Louis attorney. He beat venture capitalist Howard Sherman of Meridian in Tuesday’s runoff.

Many Democratic politicians backed Baria, the state House minority leader, arguing that Sherman was an unknown quantity. The husband of actress Sela Ward, Sherman voted as a Republican in California and donated to Wicker. Sherman said that was an effort to prevent a tea party conservative from winning office.

Baria says he has the experience to make the uphill campaign against Wicker and be a productive senator.

The Reform Party’s Shawn O’Hara of Hattiesburg and Libertarian Danny Bedwell of Columbus also are running in November.

___

9:30 p.m.

State Treasurer Walker Stapleton has won the Republican primary for Colorado governor.

Stapleton secured the nomination Tuesday against businessmen Victor Mitchell, Doug Robinson and Greg Lopez.

Stapleton led a field that collectively vowed to defend any attempt to tamper with Colorado’s constitutional Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which leaves it to voters to approve tax hikes. He also aligned himself with President Donald Trump on immigration, health care and the federal tax plan.

Stapleton has aired an ad in which he states, “I’ll stand with Donald Trump to get illegal aliens who commit crimes deported.” In the ad, Stapleton blames Congress for an immigration policy that separates children from their parents along the border.

State law prohibits Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper from serving a third consecutive term.

___

9:25 p.m.

Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin has won the Democratic nomination for his bid to earn a third term, beating Chelsea Manning and six others.

The popular and well-funded incumbent easily took victory in Tuesday’s crowded primary.

Cardin’s best-known rival was Manning, the convicted leaker of U.S. government secrets. She ran an unorthodox, grassroots campaign that failed to resonate with many voters.

Outside Manning’s involvement, the contest attracted such little attention that there were no debates, few candidate forums and hardly any polling.

Cardin has name recognition within the state. He served 20 years in the U.S. House before becoming a senator in 2006. In his last primary, he easily defeated eight challengers.

___

9:15 p.m.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has secured the Republican gubernatorial nomination for a first full term in office, after President Donald Trump publicly embraced him at a rally and followed up with a tweet encouraging voters.

McMaster defeated Greenville businessman John Warren in Tuesday’s primary runoff.

McMaster became governor when Nikki Haley left the office in 2017 to join the Trump administration as U.N. ambassador. As lieutenant governor, McMaster was the first statewide elected official in the country to back Trump’s candidacy.

The runoff pitting McMaster against Warren threatened to embarrass the White House if the governor fell short. Trump has a mixed track record when going all-in for candidates.

McMaster was unsuccessful in his previous bid for the governorship in 2010, losing a four-way GOP primary to Haley.

___

9 p.m.

Polls have now closed in New York and Colorado on a night when seven states are holding primary or runoff elections.

Polls closed in New York and Colorado at 9 p.m. Tuesday. Polls have already closed in South Carolina, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Maryland but remain open in Utah.

New York City’s only Republican congressman will try to hold off a fierce challenge in the state’s primary election from a former congressman trying to make a political comeback after serving prison time for tax fraud. The fight between U.S. Rep. Daniel Donovan and former U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm is the most closely watched race in New York congressional primaries.

In Colorado, the contest to succeed Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper tops the primary. He is prevented by term limit laws from running again.

___

8 p.m.

Polls have closed in Oklahoma, Mississippi and Maryland on a night of primary or runoff elections.

Polls closed in those states at 8 p.m. Tuesday. Polls closed an hour earlier in South Carolina, while polls close later Tuesday in Colorado, New York and Utah.

In Maryland, the outcome of races might be delayed because of an issue with voter registration that election officials said could affect as many as 80,000 voters. Those voters tried to change information through the Motor Vehicle Administration, but the MVA didn’t transmit the information to election officials.

In Mississippi, Democratic voters are picking a nominee to challenge an incumbent Republican senator, and Republicans are choosing a congressional nominee for an open seat.

Oklahoma’s gubernatorial race is at the top of the primary election ballot in that state.

___

7 p.m.

Polls have closed in South Carolina as seven states across the nation hold primary or runoff elections.

Polls closed in South Carolina at 7 p.m. for Tuesday’s runoff. Primary elections are also unfolding in Colorado, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma and Utah, while a runoff was being held in Mississippi.

President Donald Trump has put his name on the line in several races, especially in South Carolina, where he implored voters at a rally Monday to support incumbent Gov. Henry McMaster over newcomer John Warren. The winner faces Democrat James Smith in November.

Voters in one U.S. House District in South Carolina are also set to pick the replacement for U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy. Former state Sen. Lee Bright takes on state Sen. William Timmons for the Republican nomination in Gowdy’s 4th Congressional District.

___

2:15 p.m.

Maryland residents are voting in a primary amid some confusion created by a major voter-registration snafu.

But election officials say they haven’t received any reports of problems thus far in Tuesday’s elections.

A computer error at the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration failed to send changes some voters made in address and party affiliation to the state elections board.

As a result, as many as 80,000 voters could be forced to cast provisional ballots that won’t be counted until next week.

Officials say the problem affects information that was entered either on the administration’s website or at self-serve kiosks.

State elections deputy administrator Nikki Charlson says she hasn’t heard of any problems related to the issue.

___

7 a.m.

Voters in seven states are voting in primary or runoff elections Tuesday. They’re facing decisions on everything from whether to return a convicted felon to Congress to whether marijuana laws should be loosened.

Primary elections are unfolding in Colorado, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma and Utah. South Carolina and Mississippi are holding runoffs.

President Trump has put his name on the line in several races, especially in South Carolina, where he implored voters Monday to support incumbent Gov. Henry McMaster. In New York, Rep. Daniel Donovan hopes to avoid becoming the third House Republican to lose a primary this year. His rival is former Rep. Michael Grimm, who went to federal prison for tax evasion.

And in Utah, Mitt Romney is the favorite to win the GOP nomination for Senate.

By Associated Press

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#Dem gov nom in Maryland #Ex-NAACP president wins #popular Republican incumbent #TodayNews #Washington

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mdye · 7 years

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Trump has repeatedly claimed he's "the least racist person." Here's what his history shows.

President Donald Trump has a standard response for questions about whether he’s racist: He’ll tell you that no, in fact, he’s "the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered."

But Trump’s record tells a very different story.

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly made explicitly racist and otherwise bigoted remarks — from calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists to proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the US to suggesting that a judge should recuse himself from a case solely because of the judge’s Mexican heritage.

The trend has continued into his presidency. From stereotyping a black reporter to pandering to white supremacists after they held a violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump hasn’t stopped with the racist acts even after his election.

In fact, the very first time Trump appeared in the pages of the New York Times, back in the 1970s, was when the US Department of Justice sued him for racial discrimination. Since then, he has repeatedly appeared in newspaper pages across the world as he inspired more similar controversies.

This long history is important. It would be one thing if Trump simply misspoke one or two times. But when you take all of Trump’s actions and comments together, a clear pattern emerges — one that suggests that bigotry is not just political opportunism on Trump’s part but a real element of Trump’s personality, character, and career.

Trump has a long history of racist controversies

Here’s a breakdown of Trump’s history, taken largely from Dara Lind’s list for Vox and an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times:

1973: The US Department of Justice — under the Nixon administration, out of all administrations — sued the Trump Management Corporation for violating the Fair Housing Act. Federal officials found evidence that Trump had refused to rent to black tenants and lied to black applicants about whether apartments were available, among other accusations. Trump said the federal government was trying to get him to rent to welfare recipients. In the aftermath, he signed an agreement in 1975 agreeing not to discriminate to renters of color without admitting to discriminating before.

1980s: Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump's Castle, accused another of Trump's businesses of discrimination. "When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor," Brown said. "It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back."

1988: In a commencement speech at Lehigh University, Trump spent much of his speech accusing countries like Japan of "stripping the United States of economic dignity." This matches much of his current rhetoric on China.

1989: In a controversial case that’s been characterized as a modern-day lynching, four black teenagers and one Latino teenager — the "Central Park Five" — were accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York City. Trump immediately took charge in the case, running an ad in local papers demanding, "BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!" The teens’ convictions were later vacated after they spent seven to 13 years in prison, and the city paid $41 million in a settlement to the teens. But Trump in October said he still believes they’re guilty, despite the DNA evidence to the contrary.

1991: A book by John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, quoted Trump’s criticism of a black accountant: "Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control." Trump at first denied the remarks, but later said in a 1997 Playboy interview that "the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true."

1992: The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because it transferred black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s prejudices.

2000: In opposition to a casino proposed by the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, which he saw as a financial threat to his casinos in Atlantic City, Trump secretly ran a series of ads suggesting the tribe had a "record of criminal activity [that] is well documented."

2004: In season two of The Apprentice, Trump fired Kevin Allen, a black contestant, for being overeducated. "You're an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything," Trump said on the show. "At some point you have to say, ‘That’s enough.’"

2005: Trump publicly pitched what was essentially The Apprentice: White People vs. Black People. He said he "wasn't particularly happy" with the most recent season of his show, so he was considering "an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world."

2010: Just a few years ago, there was a huge national controversy over the "Ground Zero Mosque" — a proposal to build a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Trump opposed the project, calling it "insensitive," and offered to buy out one of the investors in the project. On The Late Show With David Letterman, Trump argued, referring to Muslims, "Well, somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff."

2011: Trump played a big role in pushing false rumors that Obama — the country’s first black president — was not born in the US. He even sent investigators to Hawaii to look into Obama's birth certificate. Obama later released his birth certificate, calling Trump a "carnival barker."

2011: While Trump suggested that Obama wasn’t born in the US, he also argued that maybe Obama wasn’t a good enough student to have gotten into Columbia or Harvard Law School, and demanded Obama release his university transcripts. Trump claimed, "I heard he was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?"

For many people, none of these incidents, individually, would be totally damning: One of these alone might suggest that Trump is simply a bad speaker and perhaps racially insensitive (not "politically correct," as he would put it), but not overtly racist.

But when you put all these events together, a clear pattern emerges. At the very least, Trump has a history of playing into people’s racism to bolster himself — and that likely says something about him too.

And of course, there’s everything that’s happened through and since his presidential campaign.

As a candidate and president, Trump has made many more racist comments

On top of all that history, Trump has repeatedly made racist — often explicitly so — remarks on the campaign trail and as president:

Trump launched his campaign calling Mexican immigrants "rapists" who are "bringing crime" and "bringing drugs" to the US. His campaign is largely built on building a wall to keep these immigrants out of the US.

He called for a ban on all Muslims coming into the US. He later expanded this ban to include anyone from specific countries, including possibly France and Germany. Once he took office, his "Muslim ban" took the form of an executive order in which he banned anyone from seven Muslim-majority countries from coming into the US for 90 days and banned nearly all refugees for 120 days.

When asked at a Republican debate whether all 1.6 billion Muslims hate the US, Trump said, "I mean a lot of them. I mean a lot of them."

He argued that Judge Gonzalo Curiel — who was overseeing the Trump University lawsuit — should recuse himself from the case because of his Mexican heritage and membership in a Latino lawyers association. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who endorsed Trump, later called such comments "the textbook definition of a racist comment."

Trump was repeatedly slow to condemn white supremacists who endorsed him, and he regularly retweeted messages from white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

He tweeted and later deleted an image that showed Hillary Clinton in front of a pile of money and by a Jewish Star of David that said, "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!" The tweet had some very obvious anti-Semitic imagery, but Trump insisted that the star was a sheriff’s badge, and said his campaign shouldn’t have deleted it.

Trump has repeatedly referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has said she has Cherokee ancestors, as "Pocahontas."

At the Republican convention, he officially seized the mantle of the "law and order" candidate — an obvious dog whistle playing to white fears of black crime, even though crime in the US is historically low. His speeches, comments, and executive actions after he took office have continued this line of messaging.

In a pitch to black voters, Trump said, "You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?"

Trump stereotyped a black reporter at a press conference in February. When April Ryan asked him if he plans to meet and work with the Congressional Black Caucus, he repeatedly asked her to set up the meeting — even as she insisted that she’s "just a reporter."

In the week after white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump repeatedly suggested that "many sides" and "both sides" were to blame for the violence and chaos that ensued. In short, Trump painted the white supremacists as morally equivalent to counterprotesters that stood against them. This seemed like a dog whistle to white supremacists — and many of them took it as one, with white nationalist Richard Spencer praising Trump for "defending the truth."

This list is not comprehensive, instead relying on some of the major examples since Trump announced his candidacy. But once again, there’s a pattern of racism and bigotry here that suggests Trump isn’t just misspeaking; it is who he is.

Are Trump’s actions and comments "racist"? Or are they "bigoted"?

One of the common defenses for Trump is that he’s not necessarily racist, because Muslim and Mexican people don’t actually comprise a race.

Journalist Mark Halperin, for example, said as much when Trump argued Judge Curiel should recuse himself from the Trump University case because of his Mexican heritage, making the astute observation that "Mexico isn’t a race."

Kristof made a similar point in the New York Times: "My view is that ‘racist’ can be a loaded word, a conversation stopper more than a clarifier, and that we should be careful not to use it simply as an epithet. Moreover, Muslims and Latinos can be of any race, so some of those statements technically reflect not so much racism as bigotry. It’s also true that with any single statement, it is possible that Trump misspoke or was misconstrued."

This critique misses the point on two levels.

For one, the argument is tremendously semantic. It’s essentially probing the question: Is Trump racist or is he bigoted? But who cares? Neither is a trait that anyone should want in a president — and either label essentially communicates the same criticism.

Another issue is that race is socially malleable. Over the years, Americans considered Germans, Greeks, Irish, Italians, and Spaniards as nonwhite people of different races. That’s changed. Similarly, some Americans today consider Latinos and, to a lesser degree, some people with Muslim and Jewish backgrounds as part of a nonwhite race too. (As a Latino man, I certainly consider myself to be of a different race, and the treatment I’ve received in the course of my life appears to validate that.) So under current definitions, comments against these groups are, indeed, racist.

This is all possible because, as Jenée Desmond-Harris explained for Vox, race is entirely a social construct with no biological basis. This doesn’t mean race and people’s views of race don’t have real effects on many people — of course they do — but it means that people’s definitions of race can change over time.

But really, whatever you want to call it, Trump has made racist and bigoted comments in the past. That much should be clear in the long lists above.

Trump’s bigotry was a key part of his campaign

Regardless of how one labels it, Trump’s racism or bigotry was a big part of his campaign — by giving a candidate to the surprisingly many white Americans with huge levels of racial resentment.

One paper, published in January by political scientists Brian Schaffner, Matthew MacWilliams, and Tatishe Nteta, found that voters’ measures of sexism and racism correlated much more closely with support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction after controlling for factors like partisanship and political ideology.

And one telling study, conducted by researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Stanford shortly before the election, found that if people who strongly identified as white were told that nonwhite groups will outnumber white people in 2042, they became more likely to support Trump. That suggested that there’s a big racial element to support for Trump. (Much more on these kinds of polls in my explainer.)

Trump has also earned the support of vocal white supremacists and nationalists, including former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.

Why do so many Ku Klux Klan members support Trump? "A lot of what he believes, we believe in." https://t.co/AqB3DLKL9f

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 25, 2016

As Sarah Posner and David Neiwert reported at Mother Jones, what the media largely treated as gaffes — Trump retweeting white nationalists, Trump describing Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and criminals — were to white supremacists real signals approving of their racist causes. One white supremacist wrote, "Our Glorious Leader and ULTIMATE SAVIOR has gone full-wink-wink-wink to his most aggressive supporters."

Some of them even argued that Trump has softened the greater public to their racist messaging. "The success of the Trump campaign just proves that our views resonate with millions," said Rachel Pendergraft, a national organizer for the Knights Party, which succeeded David Duke’s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. "They may not be ready for the Ku Klux Klan yet, but as anti-white hatred escalates, they will."

All of this goes against the big goal of the Republicans’ 2013 "autopsy" report, which was supposed to offer a guide after the party’s big electoral loss in 2012. It suggested some of the ways the party could increase support among minority voters — including improved lines of communication. Instead, Republicans got Trump. And yet Trump won, landing huge victories in rural white America.

So Trump can deny his racism or bigotry all he wants. But even his supporters get it. As much as his history of racism may show that he’s racist, perhaps who supported him and why is just as revealing — and it doesn’t paint a favorable picture for Trump.

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riverdamien · 7 years

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In the Thin Places

In the Thin Places Is the Eucharist John 16:12-15 Last week I celebrated the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Healing with an old friend who is severely ill; several days ago as I was leaving a restaurant an older homeless man approached me for food, and so I took him back to the restaurant and sat with him as he ate, and in those moments of fellowship the Eucharist was celebrated; last night I gave two guys socks and the Eucharist was celebrated. In all of these instances I am reminded of the thin places in our lives because they make the experience of God's desire for each one of us, and our desire for God more possible, by capturing our attention and pulling us out of our ordinary routines and concerns. In these moments I am reminded that ultimately all we have is God, and nothing else matters. Last Friday night I received my Doctor of Ministry Degree from Knox Theological Seminary, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida--one of the top Evangelical seminaries in the country. One of its top benefactors was Dr. James Kennedy. When I was a young whore on the streets of Los Angles, kicked out of my denomination, shunned by my old friends for being queer, I read one of his books, wrote him a letter--he responded with so much love, and compassion, and continued to respond through the years from my being on the streets as a whore and than back to the streets as a priest. In the thin places he showed me love and grace. In the thin places we celebrated the Eucharist together, for he broke bread with me in my pain. In these two years at Knox in the thin places I have celebrated the Eucharist. I have broken bread in fellowship and God has come near. Knox Theological Seminary has met me in the thin places. Today in Texas Juan Castillo and in Alabama Thomas Arthur are scheduled to be executed. Let us pray for them and break bread with them in our prayers, let us break bread with their victims, and walk in the thin places of forgiveness and mercy. One of my professors, Dr. Jonothan Linebaugh, tells us that through justification by faith we come to God as forgiven sinners. We are on the road to salvation, and that when we come to the final judgment our Great Therapist will gather us together and hash out everything and bring us into fellowship with the One God. As Clement of Alexander tells us "There is one River, but many streams," in in that one River we will meet. I have come home in these years, and have found my ministry renewed. Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God! --------------------------------------------- Friday, 12 Noon: Vigil Against Death Penalty--Earl Warren Office Building, 350 McAllister Street. -------------------------------------------- Fr. C. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min. P.O. Box 642656 San Francisco, CA 94164 www.temenos.org 415-305-2124

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repwinpril9y0a1 · 7 years

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She's The Best Answer To Donald Trump You Never Heard Of

Heather Booth doesn’t look like a revolutionary. She sits demurely on a sofa, dressed simply in black, fingering a silver necklace. She speaks softly, selecting her words with care and enunciating cleanly. Dignity. Respect. Community.

But something comes over her when she begins to talk about helping people organize to make their world better. The sweet smile fades. She sits up straighter. Her voice tightens, the words come faster. Power. Together. Act. She strikes a gently curled fist into an open palm. IM-pact.

Booth, 71, is one of the nation’s most influential organizers for progressive causes. Inside almost every liberal drive over the past five decades ― for fair pay, equal justice, abortion rights, workers’ rights, voter rights, civil rights, immigration rights, child care ― you will find Booth. But you may have to look hard.

Because she’s not always at the head of the protest march. More often, she’s at a let’s-get-organized meeting in a suburban church basement or a late-night strategy session in a crumbling neighborhood’s community center. She’s helping people already roused to action figure out practical ways to move their cause forward. And always she’s advancing the credo she learned as a child: that you must not only treat people with dignity and respect, but you must shoulder your own responsibility to help build a society that reflects those values.

Heather is one of the people who makes this all work. Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Booth is the founder and president of the Midwest Academy, which for over four decades has trained grassroots activists to advance progressive causes across the country. The academy’s goal, according to its website, is both aspirational ― to “give people a sense of their own power to improve society” ― and enormously practical ― to teach a “strategic, rigorous, results-oriented approach to social action.”

To that end, Booth has worked with a range of liberal groups, from USAction, MoveOn, People’s Action, NAACP National Voter Fund, Alliance for Citizenship and the Voter Participation Center, to the National Organization for Women, the National Council of La Raza, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the Center for Community Change. (She’s also blogged for HuffPost.)

“Heather is one of the people who makes this all work,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), indicating a sweep of progressive issues ― including the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Warren, then a Harvard law professor, had a vision of that federal consumer agency in 2007. But she confessed to a colleague that she had no idea how to make it happen, how to harness the political energy needed to push it past the opposition of powerful corporate financial interests.

Her colleague said simply, “Call Heather.”

So it was that, deep in the financial crisis of 2008, with Wall Street giants collapsing, mortgaged homes going under water and banks facing insolvency, throngs of activists appeared to demand real financial reform. They were drawn from labor unions, civil rights organizations, consumer and citizen action groups, and unaffiliated individuals who had never before been politically active but who were furious at the abuse of ordinary Americans.

Booth’s work wasn’t simply a matter of gathering people for protest marches, although those were important. She helped activists devise the tactics to pressure specific legislators. Together they faced off against the monied interests of big business and the political bosses.

And they succeeded. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into law. Politicians and other notable figures gathered on stage for a gala signing ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building. Booth was in the back of the auditorium.

But she felt vindicated. In the fight against Goliath, Booth later told Bill Moyers with a disarming smile, “Sometimes David wins.”

Warren said, “I’m in awe.’’

Today, opposition to the actions and conduct of President Donald Trump keeps rolling out in the street and on social media. The ugly firing of FBI Director James Comey has ignited new outrage. But the question is whether all that energy can be harnessed for action beyond protest marches ― or if it will dissipate like the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement.

That’s where Booth comes in.

The Trump era “is a perilous and inspiring time ― both are true,” she told HuffPost. “The peril can’t be overstated. I do think families will be ripped apart, people will unjustly be imprisoned, jobs will be destroyed. I think lives may be destroyed,” she said. “I fear for unjustified wars. I think the structure of democracy itself will be threatened, from simple protections of people’s health and safety to the ability to live a decent life. So ... a time of great peril.”

“But ...” She allowed herself a broad smile, offering a glimpse of the spirit that has powered uphill battles all these years. “I am incredibly heartened by the outpouring of people standing up to say, ‘You’re not going to do this. We are going to defend our lives, our families. Our democracy! And we are going to defend each other.’”

“If you stand together and organize,” Booth said, “you can change the world.”

youtube

This conviction goes way back. In the early 1950s, the sole African-American child in her first-grade class in Brooklyn, New York ― a boy named Benjamin ― was accused by a white student of having stolen her lunch money. The accuser and her friends crowded around Benjamin, pointing and taunting. Booth pushed her way into the circle, put her arm around Benjamin and just stood with him. (And, of course, the accuser then found her lunch money in her shoe.)

As an adolescent, Booth felt she didn’t fit in. She tried out for the cheerleading squad, but quit when she found out that more talented black girls had been turned away. She volunteered for the school chorus, but apparently had no aptitude for singing. At the Christmas pageant, she was asked to just silently mouth the words.

“I was insecure most of my life,” she said, “and in almost all situations felt I was not good enough, didn’t know enough.”

Even so, one day in her early teens, the would-be activist stood by herself in New York City’s Times Square handing out leaflets urging an end to the death penalty. It wasn’t pleasant. In the late 1950s, Times Square was a vile pit of hucksters, porn shops and addicts. One guy spit on her. Flustered, she kept dropping her leaflets. “I was really frightened,” she said.

The lesson she took from that experience, however, wasn’t that you had to stop protesting, but that you had to stop doing it alone. You had to draw others into the action. Get organized. Together you could achieve results even if you were scared and insecure.

Booth felt that power a few years later in Mississippi, where as a University of Chicago student, she spent the Freedom Summer of 1964 organizing for voter rights. That, too, was frightening and inspiring. “We were standing for something that mattered, that was bigger than ourselves, and if as an individual I didn’t know what I was doing, as a group we did know what we were doing,” she said. “And over time I could see that because of this, we were ending segregation.”

Some years later, as a young mother of toddlers on Chicago’s South Side, Booth gathered a group of working moms to form a neighborhood day care cooperative ― and found the idea blocked by the city’s byzantine licensing codes. So they began organizing other parents across the city, at church and synagogue meetings and other community forums.

“People flocked to us,” Booth recalled in a recent TEDx talk. “People gained confidence, found their voice, spoke about their love for their kids, the child care they needed, their vision for the future.”

They framed the conflict as loving mothers versus uncaring bureaucrats. The press noticed. Then Chicago’s politicians noticed. Within six months, she said the city had agreed to one-stop licensing, a licensing review board of parents and child care providers, and $1 million for new child care centers.

It starts where there is an injustice in the world. ... And people say, ‘We need to do something about that. Let’s take some action.’ Heather Booth

The potency of targeted, strategic organizing is a key idea taught at the Midwest Academy, which Booth started in 1973. She chose the name not for the academy’s location, Chicago, but because it sounded wholesome, a clean break from the strident rhetoric of the student left. “We didn’t want to be mean,” she explained.

Three core ideas guide the 25,000 activists who have trained at the academy: The goal of organizing must be concrete improvement in people’s lives. The organizing must help ordinary people develop their own sense of power. And activists should seek change that is systemic ― not just fixing the water supply in Flint, but giving people in Flint some oversight of the water system.

Among the academy’s teaching materials is a strategic planning chart to help organizers link a specific and achievable goal with available resources (money, allies, media contacts), the names of decision-makers whose support or acquiescence is needed, the tactics required to win over opponents, and the messaging to mobilize others to join in.

“Rather than saying, ‘Oh, this is awful, they’re giving money to the wealthiest and taking away our fundamental services, so let’s do a hands-around-the-Capitol’ ― well, that may be a good thing to do,” Booth said. “But can we do it in a way that builds our organization’s resources, brings in more people, maybe raises funds? And afterwards, let’s look at what worked and what didn’t work. What do we do next?”

As valuable as organizing is, Booth understands that it’s a tool for social progress, not the driving force behind it.

“It doesn’t start with training, although the training helps people be more effective,” she said. “It starts where there is an injustice in the world ― people living in fear that some family member will be deported who’s been here 20 years. And people say, ‘We need to do something about that. Let’s take some action.’”

After a police officer killed black teen Michael Brown, for instance, “there was an outpouring across the country. No one had to be told, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ Not just ‘I can’t,’ but ‘we can’t.’ So it starts with people’s anger, love, fear, hate, concern and standing up to say, ‘It can’t continue like this.’”

Today, at a time when many feel powerless and despairing, Booth draws inspiration and energy from the protests that have been erupting since Trump’s inauguration. “We are gaining strength,” she observed.

“The size, the numbers, the beauty of the effort, how representative it is of America ― all of America ― the number of places it’s happening. And how beautifully nonviolent, peaceful and intense they are simultaneously.”

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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pat78701 · 7 years

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She's The Best Answer To Donald Trump You Never Heard Of

Heather is one of the people who makes this all work. Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Her colleague said simply, “Call Heather.”

But she felt vindicated. In the fight against Goliath, Booth later told Bill Moyers with a disarming smile, “Sometimes David wins.”

Warren said, “I’m in awe.’’

That’s where Booth comes in.

“If you stand together and organize,” Booth said, “you can change the world.”

youtube

“I was insecure most of my life,” she said, “and in almost all situations felt I was not good enough, didn’t know enough.”

It starts where there is an injustice in the world. ... And people say, ‘We need to do something about that. Let’s take some action.’ Heather Booth

As valuable as organizing is, Booth understands that it’s a tool for social progress, not the driving force behind it.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rcnSmM

#DIYS

0 notes