October 27, 2018

Obama at Detroit rally: "Out of this political darkness, I see a great awakening"

(Detroit Free Press) Standing before a crowd of several thousand people in Detroit Friday night, former President Barack Obama said the biggest threat to the nation’s democracy is indifference.

But a vote on Nov. 6 can neutralize that threat, he told a crowd jammed into the gymnasium at Cass Technical High School.

“I’m hopeful that despite all the noise, all the lies, we’re going to remember who we are, who we’re called to be. Out of this political darkness, I see a great awakening,” he said. “If you vote, things will get better, it will be a start.”

With 10 days left before the Nov. 6 election, the rally was designed to get Democrats fired up and ready to work to both help candidates up and down the ticket as well as get to the polls to cast their ballots. ............(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/10/26/barack-obama-cass-tech-detroit/1774600002/

October 27, 2018

Donald Trump Has 'Stoked A Cold Civil War,' Former McCain Adviser Says

(Newsweek) In the wake of explosive devices being sent to prominent Democratic politicians, a former adviser to Arizona Senator John McCain said President Donald Trump has “stoked a cold civil war” in the United States. Steve Schmidt took to Twitter on Wednesday to rail against Trump and his rhetoric, calling him “the greatest demagogue in American history.”

“Trump has stoked a cold civil war in this Country,” Schmidt wrote. “His rallies brim with menace and he has labeled journalists as enemies of the people. That someone would seek to kill their political enemies is not aberrational but rather inevitable consequence of Trump’s incitement.”

Schmidt’s tweets were an apparent response to the multiple explosive devices sent to prominent Democratic politicians and others on Wednesday. Former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and others were targeted.

“The targets are political not coincidental,” he continued. “Trump, the greatest demagogue in American history has celebrated violence over and over again. It looks like someone finally took Trump both literally and seriously. The WH will feign outrage when this obvious point is made.” .............(more)

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-has-stoked-cold-civil-war-former-mccain-adviser-says-1188393

October 25, 2018

The Health Department's Christian Crusade

From Rolling Stone:


The Health Department’s Christian Crusade
The religious right has infiltrated the office of Health and Human Services, and reproductive rights are the first target

By TESSA STUART


....(snip)....

Conventional wisdom — at least since 2016, when candidate Donald Trump bluntly declared his intention to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade — has held that the gravest threat to reproductive freedom in the United States would come, eventually, from the Supreme Court. But while the focus has been on the judicial branch, officials in the executive have been quietly writing the constitutionally protected right to an abortion out of federal rules and grant guidelines. Today, the ability of low-income women to secure an abortion is poised to disappear even before the next challenge to Roe lands before the court — and for immigrant girls in ORR custody whether it still exists at all is a matter of some debate.


The Department of Health and Human Services is a sprawling agency with a trillion-dollar budget and nearly a dozen operating divisions, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the government-run health programs Medicare and Medicaid. It has a hand in everything from funding preschool programs and regulating vitamins to identifying Superfund sites and monitoring Ebola outbreaks.

During the Obama administration, no area of the federal government was more reviled by the religious right than HHS. Viewed by religious Republicans as the primary staging ground for the administration’s assaults on “faith” and “freedom,” HHS was assailed for implementing rules that expanded hospital visitation rights to same-sex couples, protected transgender patients from discrimination and required employers to offer birth-control coverage.

It was a coup, then, when Trump installed pious orthopedic surgeon Tom Price as secretary, who, with the help of the office of Vice President Mike Pence, began stocking the department with an army of culture-war veterans plucked from the country’s most radical religious organizations — the archconservative Family Research Council, the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, Americans United for Life, and the National Abstinence Education Association among them. By the time Price was forced to step down over a spending scandal last September, HHS had already been transformed into what the Family Research Council called “a virtual promise-keeping factory” for Christian conservatives. .....(more)

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/health-and-human-services-abortion-policies-738904/

October 24, 2018

Truth.....

"As long as there are crazed or crafty leaders to play on old fears, a mob will turn cruel."

-- Leigh Brackett

October 24, 2018

Hello DU !!!

It's been a long time. Just dropping in to say "Hi!"