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Zorro

Zorro's Journal
Zorro's Journal
September 4, 2016

Back us so we can block Clinton agenda, say some Republicans

It's just a trickle now, but some Republicans are urging people to back GOP congressional candidates because they'd constrain Hillary Clinton's agenda should she be elected president this November.

Republicans don't want to be blamed for prematurely giving up on Donald Trump, the party's presidential nominee, for fear of alienating his supporters. But with Trump lagging in most polls and Election Day two months off, many in the GOP view the strategy as low-risk because of the deep antipathy many Republicans hold toward Clinton.

"Trump supporters are so die-hard that it's highly unlikely they're going to vote for Democratic candidates," said GOP strategist Ron Bonjean. "They may be unhappy with Republican members saying those things, but it's unlikely they're going to walk away from them."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., facing a competitive re-election fight, unveiled a video this week promising to "act as a check, not a rubber stamp," if Clinton wins the White House. In fundraising emails in recent weeks, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., GOP operative Karl Rove and a Colorado lawmaker battling for his seat made similar appeals.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/back-us-block-clinton-agenda-republicans-071729952--election.html

John McCain needs to lose this election. He is well past his expiration date.

September 4, 2016

Framed. She was the PTA mom everyone knew. Who would want to harm her?

The cop wanted her car keys. Kelli Peters handed them over. She told herself she had nothing to fear, that all he’d find inside her PT Cruiser was beach sand, dog hair, maybe one of her daughter’s toys.

They were outside Plaza Vista School in Irvine, where she had watched her daughter go from kindergarten to fifth grade, where any minute now the girl would be getting out of class to look for her. Parents had entrusted their own kids to Peters for years; she was the school’s PTA president and the heart of its after-school program.

Now she watched as her ruin seemed to unfold before her. Watched as the cop emerged from her car holding a Ziploc bag of marijuana, 17 grams worth, plus a ceramic pot pipe, plus two smaller EZY Dose Pill Pouch baggies, one with 11 Percocet pills, another with 29 Vicodin. It was enough to send her to jail, and more than enough to destroy her name.

Her legs buckled and she was on her knees, shaking violently and sobbing and insisting the drugs were not hers.

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-framed/

A long but very interesting read about how petty vindictiveness by an attorney couple against a school volunteer backfired with serious life consequences.

September 4, 2016

Tensions Deepen Between Donald Trump and R.N.C.

The Republican National Committee had high hopes that Donald J. Trump would deliver a compassionate and measured speech about immigration on Wednesday, and prepared to lavish praise on the candidate on the party’s Twitter account.

So when Mr. Trump instead offered a fiery denunciation of migrant criminals and suggested deporting Hillary Clinton, Reince Priebus, the party chairman, signaled that aides should scrap the plan, and the committee made no statement at all.

The evening tore a painful new wound in Mr. Trump’s relationship with the Republican National Committee, imperiling his most important remaining political alliance.

Mr. Priebus and his organization have been steadfastly supportive of Mr. Trump, defending him in public and spending millions of dollars to aid him. But the collaboration between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Mr. Priebus’s committee has grown strained over the last month, according to six senior Republicans with detailed knowledge of both groups, some of whom asked to speak anonymously for fear of exacerbating tensions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/us/politics/donald-trump-rnc-reince-priebus.html

September 4, 2016

Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun

Huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through.

Five hundred miles down the Atlantic Coast, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., is disappearing beneath the sea several times a year, cutting the town off from the mainland.

And another 500 miles on, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., increased tidal flooding is forcing the city to spend millions fixing battered roads and drains — and, at times, to send out giant vacuum trucks to suck saltwater off the streets.

For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/science/flooding-of-coast-caused-by-global-warming-has-already-begun.html

September 4, 2016

One of California's best-known Republicans is backing Democrat Loretta Sanchez for Senate.Here's why

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is supporting his colleague Rep. Loretta Sanchez in this fall’s Senate race, a contest that pits two Democrats against each other and gives GOP voters no obvious choice.

The two appeared together in Issa’s congressional district this week, giving Sanchez an opportunity to publicize her expertise on national defense in a part of the state where she needs to do well with Democrats, Republicans and independents alike if she hopes to overtake her rival, Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris.

For Issa, the bipartisan event may help soften his image as congressional Republican leadership’s attack dog on the Obama administration.

He said that despite their differences on most issues facing the nation, he respects Sanchez’s knowledge of military and world affairs and they both support efforts to keep the country safe.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-darrell-issa-loretta-sanchez-20160903-snap-story.html

September 3, 2016

Venezuela's Maduro jeered, dozens detained: activists

Source: Reuters

Venezuelan authorities have arrested more than 30 people on Margarita island for heckling President Nicolas Maduro, activists said on Saturday, in what appeared to be a rare public confrontation with the unpopular leader.

Videos published by activists, purportedly from the Margarita locality of Villa Rosa on Friday night, show scores of people banging pots and pans and jeering the socialist president during a visit to inspect state housing projects.

The display of anger followed a vast march in Caracas on Thursday that opposition leaders say has emboldened Maduro's foes after 17 years of socialist rule in the OPEC nation of 30 million people.

After Maduro left Villa Rosa, a rundown area known in the past as a pro-government stronghold, intelligence agents moved in, opposition and rights campaigners said.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/venezuelas-maduro-jeered-dozens-detained-activists-174038323.html

September 3, 2016

The hunt for Planet Nine reveals some strange, far-out objects

Astronomers hunting for Planet Nine have found some 50 new objects lying beyond the orbit of Neptune – including a few that may help them track down this elusive, distant world.

The new discoveries, described in a paper accepted to the Astronomical Journal, mark another step toward finding this mysterious giant planet, which could help rewrite our understanding of our own solar system.

In 2014, astronomers Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and Chadwick Trujillo of Northern Arizona University announced that they’d found an object with the most distant orbit ever observed in the solar system – a possible dwarf planet called 2012 VP113 that lay far beyond Pluto.

2012 VP113 (nicknamed “Biden”) was a baffling object, because its orbit placed it in what was thought to be a no man’s land between the Kuiper belt (the icy ring of distant debris whose largest member is Pluto) and the Oort cloud, a far-out, spherical shell of debris that scientists think surrounds the solar system.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-planet-nine-objects-snap-story.html

September 3, 2016

Juno reveals that Jupiter's north pole is 'like nothing we have seen or imagined'

Source: LA Times

Seen from a different angle, Jupiter looks like a whole new world.

After flying within about 2,500 miles of the gas giant’s cloud tops on Aug. 27, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has sent home unprecedented images of the planet’s north pole, revealing a stormy fluid-scape that looks as if it could be from a totally different planet.

Last week’s flyby was the spacecraft’s first such pass with all its science instruments turned on, as well as the closest of the 36 orbital flybys that the spacecraft is set to make during its mission. While Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system by far, there’s surprisingly little known about its polar regions — and so Juno’s close-up camera work was bound to deliver a few surprises.

As the JunoCam imager revealed, Jupiter’s north pole is bluer than better-known areas of the planet, which are often dominated by red-brown hues. Gone are those iconic bands of light and dark; in their place, a whole lot of storms.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-jupiter-north-pole-20160902-snap-story.html

September 2, 2016

MEXICAN PRESIDENT SAYS HE MADE TRUMP PAY FOR LUNCH

MEXICO CITY (The Borowitz Report)—The war of words between Donald J. Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto continued on Thursday as Peña Nieto vehemently asserted that he made the Republican Presidential nominee pay for lunch during his visit to Mexico City.

“As soon as we sat down to order, I made it very clear that I had no intention of paying for lunch,” Peña Nieto said. “And when the check arrived, I made absolutely no move to pick it up.”

To support his claim, Peña Nieto tweeted out a photo of himself seated at a table with an aggrieved-looking Trump, who appears to be placing an American Express card on top of a restaurant check.

Responding to the Mexican President’s claim, the Trump campaign issued a statement of its own. “As anyone who has read ‘The Art of the Deal’ knows, Donald J. Trump is a master negotiator,” the statement began. “While he did pay for Peña Nieto’s lunch, he extracted a commitment from the Mexican President to pick up the check the next time they go to dinner. It’s a well-established fact that dinner is far, far more expensive than lunch. Yet again, Donald Trump entered into a negotiation and won big.”

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/mexican-president-says-he-made-trump-pay-for-lunch

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