The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    In the News

    St. Paul elects its first African American mayor

    By Brandon Carter @ TheHill.com, Nov. 8, 12:40 am

    The city of St. Paul, Minn., has elected its first African American mayor in Melvin Carter.

    Carter, a former St. Paul city council member, won the mayor’s race after receiving 50.89 percent of the vote, according to WCCO. He will take over for current Mayor Chris Coleman, both of whom are members of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party in Minnesota.

    Carter carried several prominent endorsements into the election, including Coleman and Democratic National Committee vice chair Keith Ellison (Minn.) [....]

    artappraiser 7 years 2 months ago

    Charlotte, N.C., elects its first female African American mayor

    By Brandon Carter @ TheHill.com, Nov. 7, 11:46 pm

    Charlotte, N.C., has elected its first female African American mayor in Democrat Vi Lyles, according to the Charlotte Observer.

    Lyles won 58 percent of the votes over the Republican challenger, Kenny Smith [....]

    artappraiser 7 years 2 months ago

    DEM NORTHAM WINS VIRG GOV

    It looks like the Dem won the gubernatorial  race in Virginia.

    The link does not tell....as it were.

    I am watching MSNBC RIGHT now 

    MSNBC calls it for the Dem!

    http://www.msnbc.com/search/NORTHAM%20WINS

    This is looking goooooooooood.

    Gillespie sucks

    hahhahaahah

    Richard Day 7 years 2 months ago

    ObamaCare signups surge in early days to set new record

    By Peter Sullivan @ TheHill.com, Nov. 6

    A record number of people signed up for ObamaCare in the first few days of open enrollment this year compared to the same period in previous years, several sources close to the process told The Hill.

    The surge in sign-ups, which was confirmed by an administration official, comes despite fears from Democrats that enrollment would fall off due to the Trump administration's cutbacks in outreach and advertising [.....]

    artappraiser 7 years 2 months ago

    Syria to ratify the Paris agreement, leaving the US alone

    By Sara Stefanini @ Politico.com, Nov. 7

    BONN, Germany — Syria announced today it will join the Paris climate agreement, leaving the U.S. as the only country outside the international accord.

    The Syrian delegation announced it would ratify the 197-party agreement during a plenary meeting on the second day of the U.N.’s two-week COP23 climate summit, hosted by Fiji in Germany [....]

    artappraiser 7 years 2 months ago

    House members join bipartisan fight for criminal justice reform

    By Stef W. Kight @ Axios.com, Nov. 7

    House members Jason Lewis (R-MN) and Bobby Scott (D-VA) announced a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill this morning with the goal to decrease "the size and associated costs" of the federal justice system. The bill will: focus on violent and repeat-offenders; decrease the three-strike penalty to 25 years instead of life for drug trafficking offenses; and make it easier for drug offenders to qualify for less than the mandatory minimum [....]

    artappraiser 7 years 2 months ago

    Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why.

    As the world’s moneyed princes, dictators and oligarchs look for more places to park their billions, mountains of money may be coming to Silicon Valley.

    By Farhad Manjoo @ NYTimes.com, Nov. 6

    We need to talk about the tsunami of questionable money crashing into the tech industry.

    We should talk about it because that money is suddenly in the news, inconveniently out in the open in an industry that has preferred to keep its connection to petromonarchs and other strongmen on the down low.

    The news started surfacing over the weekend, when Saudi Arabia arrested a passel of princes [....]

    Then there’s Russia [....]

    artappraiser 7 years 2 months ago

    Democrats in this state are doing something unusual: Winning their elections

    By Robert Samuels @ WashingtonPost.com, Nov. 6

    NORMAN, Okla. — The newest state legislator in Oklahoma leaned over his bathroom sink, teasing his tousled hair to get that John F. Kennedy bouffant. The blue suit came from J.C. Penney and fit snugly [....] Jacob Rosecrants, a 39-year-old single father [.....]

    A month before, he was a middle school geography teacher driving a Chrysler PT Cruiser with no air conditioning, knocking on doors at the end of a hot Oklahoma summer. Now, he is the poster boy for a national party desperate to rebuild its bench.

    Rosecrants is a Democrat who won in a district that is 60 percent Republican. He is one of three Democrats who have won GOP legislative districts in Oklahoma special elections in the months since President Trump won 65 percent of the vote in one of the country’s most conservative states [....]

    artappraiser 7 years 2 months ago

    The Swedish ambassador’s search for answers in Trump country

    By Greg Jaffe @ WashingtonPost.com, Nov. 5

    PETERS TOWNSHIP, Pa. — The new Swedish ambassador to the United States was wedged into the back seat of a Honda Civic headed south out of Pittsburgh in search of some true-believing, climate-change-denying, anti-free-trade, “America first” Trump voters.

    On one side of Ambassador Karin Olofsdotter sat a former German defense minister and on the other a Washington think-tanker, a former Obama White House official who had organized the Trump country excursion.

    Olofsdotter was only a couple of months into her stint as Sweden’s ambassador and still struggling to make sense of a country that seemed as though it had been flipped upside down politically since her last U.S. tour six years ago, when she was the embassy’s second-in-command [....]

    artappraiser 7 years 2 months ago

    On the Texas Church Shooting Perp's Anger Problem

    Excerpt from 26 dead in Texas church shooting, with children among the victims

    By Matt Pearce & John Savage @ from Sutherland Springs, TX for LATimes.com, Nov. 5

    [....] Kelley was in the U.S. Air Force from 2010 to 2014 but left with a “bad conduct” discharge and was sentenced to 12 months’ confinement after he was convicted of assaulting his wife and their child, according to an Air Force representative.

    A Facebook profile under the gunman's name featured a photo of an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. In recent months, Kelley was adding strangers as friends on Facebook from "within 20 minutes" of the Sutherland Springs area and starting Facebook fights with them, according to area resident Johnathan Castillo.

    Castillo accepted Kelley's friend request a couple of months ago, thinking that maybe he or his friends had met Kelley but hadn't remembered him. But Kelley soon proved to be troublesome. "A lot of people were deleting him" for "starting drama" on Facebook, including sending insulting Facebook messages, Castillo said. “It’s like he went looking for it, you know what I mean?" Castillo said. "You can tell people who are defending their opinions versus someone who’s looking to start something."nCastillo said he was angry with the gunman, noting the picture of the rifle on Kelley's Facebook page, "making the rest of us who actually hunt look bad."

    A typo-riddled LinkedIn profile under Kelley's name featured Kelley in a photo with a baby and said that he was a "management consulting professional" from the San Antonio area who was in the Air Force. "I am a hard working dedicated person," the profile said. "I live by the core values on which the Air Force go by."

    The profile said Kelley taught "children ages 4-6 at vocational [vacation] bible schools helping their minds grow and prosper" at the Kingsville First Baptist Church .

    His interests on LinkedIn included "Animal Welfare," "Children," "Civil Rights and Social Action" and "Human Rights." [....]

    artappraiser 7 years 2 months ago

    The Paradise Papers: Millions of Leaked Files Shine Light on Where the Elite Hide Their Money

    By Michael Forsythe @ NYTimes.com, Nov. 5

    It’s called the Paradise Papers: the latest in a series of leaks made public by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists shedding light on the trillions of dollars that move through offshore tax havens.

    The core of the leak, totaling more than 13.4 million documents, focuses on the Bermudan law firm Appleby, a 119-year old company that caters to blue chip corporations and very wealthy people. Appleby helps clients reduce their tax burden; obscure their ownership of assets like companies, private aircraft, real estate and yachts; and set up huge offshore trusts that in some cases hold billions of dollars.

    The New York Times is part of the group of more than 380 journalists from over 90 media organizations in 67 countries that have spent months examining the latest set of documents.

    As with the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers leak came through a duo of reporters at the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and was then shared with I.C.I.J., a Washington-based group that won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the millions of records of a Panamanian law firm [....]

    artappraiser 7 years 2 months ago

    Deep Dive: hacking Clinton & the Democrats
    PeraclesPlease 7 years 3 months ago

    Fetus College Savings Plan in GOP Money Grab

    ...The provision explicitly allows expectant parents to designate a “child in utero” as a beneficiary of a 529 plan.

    Parents have long been able to set up 529 accounts for an unborn child, but the provision accomplishes what anti-abortion activists have long sought: It enshrines into federal law the recognition of the unborn.

    NCD 7 years 3 months ago

    Trump’s approval rating is far lower than any president in 7 decades of polling

    By Dan Balz & Scott Clement @ WashingtonPost.com, 29 minutes ago

    Home page headline as above with this lede: A majority of Americans say President Trump has not accomplished much during his first nine months in office, and they have delivered a report card that is far harsher even than the tepid expectations they set for his tenure when he was sworn into office, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News survey. Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans — 37 percent — say they approve of the way Trump is handling his job. His disapproval rating has reached 59 percent, with 50 percent saying they strongly disapprove of the job he is doing. Although the ratings have changed little in the past four months, both represent the worst marks of his presidency.

    Second headline on page: Poll: Trump’s performance lags behind even tepid public expectations

    artappraiser 7 years 3 months ago

    How civil rights activists harnessed the power of Amazon when America needed it most

    By Nicole Gallucci @ Mashable.com, Nov. 4

    When a group of civil rights activists saw the mounting need in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico following devastating hurricanes, they had an epiphany: It's on us. Unsatisfied with the speed in which disaster relief flowed into ravaged areas, they made a choice. They weren't going to wait for the government or established nonprofits to respond. They would do it themselves. But how?

    They turned to Amazon Wish Lists and harnessed the power of social media [....]

    With a name that references the black market, "American Black Cross" incorporates the group's get-it-done attitude. "It's about being able to cut out the middleman to go directly to service people in the communities that are in need," ABC co-founder John H. Dixon III, said [....]

    artappraiser 7 years 3 months ago

    Salman Run: Saudi Shuffle as Trump Tweets Trip

    Arrests come days after women allowed in spirts events first time.

    Chief Saudi investor prince seems to spurn Jared, US stock exchange - is this result, or is Salman setting country on better path, rooting out crooked deals? Or more complicated?

    While Saudis & Russians extend oil bromance, MoscoMoscow Times notes new partnership with Iran too

    https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/iran-russia-display-strategic-unity-...

     

    PeraclesPlease 7 years 3 months ago

    Industrial robots weave a metal bridge as they move in mid-air

    VIDEO posted by Nikolay Nikolov @ Mashable.com, 5 days ago

    A startup in the Netherlands is using industrial robots to print the largest steel bridge in the world. 

    A third of the structure is already built in-house, using robots that mount directly on the bridge as they deposit tiny layers of steel. It's expected to be complete and installed by late 2018.

    artappraiser 7 years 3 months ago

    Men harassed, instant action taken. Women...?
    PeraclesPlease 7 years 3 months ago

    Hitler on the Hudson: "they would all go Nazi"
    PeraclesPlease 7 years 3 months ago

    How the Democrats Are Failing the Resistance

    By Andrew Sullivan @ NYmag.com, Nov. 3

    Mostly analyzing what the activities in the VA governor's race mean for the bigger picture and concluding

    [....] They have learned nothing from 2016. Their intelligentsia seems determined to ensure that no midwestern whites ever vote for the party again. Their public faces are still Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi. They still believe that something other than electoral politics — the courts, the press, the special counsel — will propel them back to power. They can’t seem to grasp the nettle of left-populism. And they remain obsessed with a Russia scandal that most swing voters don’t give a damn about.

    They think they are “woke.” They are, in fact, in a political coma. 

    artappraiser 7 years 3 months ago

    Talking Mideast Peace and Christianity, Egypt's Sissi Makes Unprecedented Overture to U.S. Evangelicals

    By Amir Tibon in Washington D.C. for Haaretz.com, Nov. 2

    The three-hour meeting - where they discussed Middle East peace, ISIS, and Christians in the region - signals Sissi's interest in forging a close relationship with one of the most influential religious denominations in the U.S.

    artappraiser 7 years 3 months ago

    "Putin’s Reality TV Opposition"

    By Oleg Kashin, Guest op-ed @ NYTimes.com, Nov. 2

    Oleg Kashin is the author of “Fardwor, Russia! A Fantastical Tale of Life Under Putin.” This essay was translated by Carol Apollonio from the Russian.

    Count me impressed, this guy has learned the how of culture change...nix the passionate hyberpole and purity police, go for the human interest, break the kayfabe...

    artappraiser 7 years 3 months ago

    In Atlanta, a Thorny Question: Should the Next Mayor Be Black?

    Voters in the “Black Mecca” are asking themselves how important it is to maintain a streak of black mayors dating to 1974.

    By Richard Faucet from Atlanta for NYTimes.com, Nov. 3

    [....] Mr. Reed, who is barred by term limits from seeking a third four-year term, has overseen a period of urban renaissance that has also seen Atlanta become wealthier and whiter. Since 2010, the percentage of blacks has diminished from 54 percent of the city population to about 51 percent.

    This year, polls show the front-runner to be a white woman, Mary Norwood, an indefatigable former Junior League vice president from the tony neighborhood of Buckhead. Central to Ms. Norwood’s appeal is her promise to fight for all neighborhoods, a message that nearly earned her the mayoralty in 2009, when she lost to Mr. Reed in a runoff by about 700 votes.

    Ms. Norwood, an at-large councilwoman, is convinced that black voters will see beyond race. “We have been so forward thinking, so progressive and so inclusive, and that’s the way our people work in this town,” she said. “I have wonderful support all across the city.” [....]

    The idea that a victorious white candidate would break a streak of African-Americans dating to 1974 does not sit well with everyone [....]

    artappraiser 7 years 3 months ago

    White House Backs Report at Odds With Its Climate Stance

    Second headline: U.S. Report Says Humans Cause Climate Change, Contradicting Top Trump Officials

    By Lisa Friedman & Glenn Thrush @ NYTimes.com, Nov. 3, 7:58 pm

    • The White House approved a report from 13 federal agencies saying that humans are the main cause of global warming.
    • The report directly contradicts much of the Trump administration’s position.

     

    Related piece: What the Report Says About Global Warming’s Impact published 5:23 pm

    artappraiser 7 years 3 months ago

    Who among the politically powerful and major media fell for Russian trolls' tweets?

    Russian Troll Tweets Duped Global Media Thousands of Times

    By Ben Popkin @ NBCNews.com, Nov. 3

    [....] On Wednesday, the House Intelligence Committee publicly released for the first time the list of over 2,700 handles provided by Twitter that the social media platform linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian intelligence agency-linked firm based in St. Petersburg, Russia.

    Exclusive to NBC News, the list of known IRA-linked handles published by the committee was cross-referenced against an archive of tweets by 855 politicians and public figures tracked by PolitiTweet, an online tool published by PolitiWatch, a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology and public accountability organization.

    And reporters and editors for over 20,000 global news outlets embedded the Russian propaganda tweets from Jan. 1, 2016, to Sept. 30, 2017, according to social media analysis by Meltwater, a San Francisco-based media intelligence company, which shared its findings with NBC News.

    The result was a list of high-influence individuals and accounts that inadvertently promoted Russian state-sponsored propaganda, previously unreported in its entirety. The handles flagged in the database, along with less than half-a-dozen from previous reports, include [....]

     

    artappraiser 7 years 3 months ago

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