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demmiblue

demmiblue's Journal
demmiblue's Journal
November 17, 2017

Burton's U.S. Winter Olympic uniforms are very old-school NASA

Source: Mashable



If you love snowboarding and you're a space nerd the 2018 Winter Olympics are for you.

Burton Snowboards released the official U.S. snowboard team uniforms for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and guess what: They're astronaut themed.

The uniforms were inspired by NASA's history according to a press release, and even give a nod to the space administration's old-school logo.

The uniforms and their aluminum-coated silver fabric definitely give off a futuristic vibe, but upon further inspection there are some clear references to 1960s and 1970s NASA uniforms.

Patches on the competition jackets, hats, shirts, and gloves show the American flag along with "USA" written in the familiar NASA font. On several items of clothing, Burton is written into NASA's iconic logo, and the white jacket and one-piece straight-up look like space suits.


More: http://mashable.com/2017/11/16/burton-winter-olympic-snowboard-uniforms-nasa/?utm_cid=hp-h-4#9w9d2QMN2Oq1
November 16, 2017

Martin O'Malley's new PAC aims to help down-ballot Democrats

Source: Politico

Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor and 2016 presidential candidate, is launching a new political organization Thursday to help Democratic candidates across the country, in a move that may represent another step toward a 2020 presidential run.

O’Malley has been more active than nearly any other party member in campaigning for local candidates around the country in 2017, visiting 21 states for fellow Democrats since last year’s election. His new Win Back Your State PAC will allow him to chip in for more hopefuls.

The kickoff comes as influential figures in the party put a premium on rebuilding the political infrastructure from the ground up after eight years of down-ballot devastation.

“This is not a time for anybody to sit on the sidelines or to try to read tea leaves for 2020,” he said in an interview ahead of the group’s launch. “My wife said to me, ‘Why do you keep going out there?’ And I said, ‘Because I feel like I’m doing something good for my country. You want me to sit at home and throw stuff at the television?’ Life is all about how we transform our grief. There are a lot of Democrats who, for the last year, have been wallowing in grief. I, instead, decided to get out on the road and help really decent people who are running."

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/16/martin-omalley-democrats-244945

November 16, 2017

Dem senator jokes: 'Moment of weakness' led me to share photo comparing Trump, Obama

Source: The Hill

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) joked that he had a “moment of weakness” on Twitter Wednesday night after he shared an image comparing photos of President Trump and former President Obama.

“I KNOW I shouldn't have retweeted this. A moment of weakness…” Leahy tweeted alongside the comparison.

The tweet Leahy shared compared a photo of Obama to Trump with the caption “ObamaCare vs. TrumpCare…you decide.”

I KNOW I shouldn't have retweeted this. A moment of weakness... https://t.co/xjRpsc3V93
— Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) November 15, 2017

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/360620-dem-senator-jokes-moment-of-weakness-led-me-to-share-photo-comparing-trump



https://twitter.com/SenatorLeahy/status/930944981682081792
https://twitter.com/TomthunkitsMind/status/930941614402473984
November 15, 2017

Washingtons huge new Bible museum says it wants to stay out of politics. But its opening gala is at

Source: The Washington Post

Washington’s huge new Bible museum says it wants to stay out of politics. But its opening gala is at the Trump hotel.

The leadership of the Museum of the Bible has been working hard in the run-up to this weekend’s opening to emphasize the inclusive, academic, apolitical nature of the museum, which organizers say will be the world’s largest dedicated to the Bible and sits just off the Mall.

And so its opening black-tie gala Thursday night is presenting a challenge: The $50,000-a-table fundraising event is at the Trump hotel.

Officials at the nonprofit museum say the decision was for pragmatic, scheduling reasons but some museum employees and academic consultants refused to enter the hotel affiliated with the controversial president.

Museum officials said by the time they started looking for space, about a year ago, the Trump hotel was the only ballroom available in Washington that could accommodate such a big group. The Thursday dinner gala will have about 750 people in attendance.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/11/15/washingtons-huge-new-bible-museum-says-it-wants-to-stay-out-of-politics-but-its-opening-gala-is-at-the-trump-hotel/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.de938c86ed24

November 15, 2017

Jared Kushner Doesn't Read And Gets Tired Of Talking About The Middle East, Joe Scarborough Says

Source: Newsweek

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, a conservative who once enjoyed a friendship with President Donald Trump and the first family, railed on Jared Kushner as an unthinking, uninterested simpleton on his Wednesday MSNBC broadcast.

Scarborough described moments from along the 2016 presidential campaign trail in which he said he observed the president's son-in-law and senior adviser displaying a lack of regard for international policy matters, despite his role as the president's Middle East peace envoy.

"I have spoken with him a lot, I like Jared, but any time he tried to explain the history of the Middle East, he didn’t want to, he didn’t want to hear it," Scarborough said Wednesday. "He said, ‘I’m tired of the talking. We don’t need to read history books.’ Here is a guy — how old is he, 34, 35? — I’m sure he’s great in real estate and everything else, but the point is that this entire administration has shunned experts."

The segment on Kushner and First Daughter Ivanka Trump began at the 21:00 minute mark, when Scarborough described the president’s campaign last year as a "clown show" comprised of a staff "that worked in real estate or the fashion industry."


Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-does-not-read-middle-east-morning-joe-scarborough-712011?utm_campaign=NewsweekTwitter&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social
November 13, 2017

Locals Were Troubled by Roy Moore's Interactions with Teen Girls at the Gadsden Mall

Source: The New Yorker

...

He meant back to the early eighties, when Roy Moore was, many people say, a regular visitor to the mall. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that, when Moore was a thirty-two-year-old assistant district attorney in Etowah County, he brought Leigh Corfman, who was fourteen years old at the time, to his home and sexually molested her. Three additional women told the Post that Moore had pursued them when they were in their teens and he was in his early thirties. (On Monday, another woman, Beverly Young Nelson, said that Moore assaulted her when she was sixteen years old. At a press conference, she held up a high-school yearbook that she said Moore signed before the alleged assault.) Two of the women say that they first met Moore at the Gadsden Mall, and the Post reports that several other women who used to work there remembered Moore’s frequent presence—“usually alone” and “well-dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt.”

This past weekend, I spoke or messaged with more than a dozen people—including a major political figure in the state—who told me that they had heard, over the years, that Moore had been banned from the mall because he repeatedly badgered teen-age girls. Some say that they heard this at the time, others in the years since. These people include five members of the local legal community, two cops who worked in the town, several people who hung out at the mall in the early eighties, and a number of former mall employees. (A request for comment from the Moore campaign was not answered.) Several of them asked that I leave their names out of this piece. The stories that they say they’ve heard for years have been swirling online in the days since the Post published its report. “Sources tell me Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall and the YMCA for his inappropriate behavior of soliciting sex from young girls,” the independent Alabama journalist Glynn Wilson wrote on his Web site on Sunday. (Wilson declined to divulge his sources.) Teresa Jones, a deputy district attorney for Etowah County in the early eighties, told CNN last week that “it was common knowledge that Roy dated high-school girls.” Jones told me that she couldn’t confirm the alleged mall banning, but said, “It’s a rumor I’ve heard for years.”

...

Jason Nelms, an I.T. worker who grew up in nearby Southside and now lives in Tennessee, regularly visited the Gadsden Mall as a teen-ager, in the early eighties. “It was a joke from one of the managers/assistant managers that they couldn’t keep an eye on their theater and an eye on the kids outside,” he explained to me via Facebook Messenger. “Us kids would congregate outside on the sidewalk near the theater after the mall closed on Friday and Saturday nights. Anyway, when asked why they had to keep an eye outside, they said that some older guy had been trying to pick up younger girls. They didn’t go beyond that but one of the concession workers whispered to us later that it was Roy Moore he was talking about.”

Gadsden’s current law-enforcement community could not confirm the existence of a mall ban on Moore. But two officers I spoke to this weekend, both of whom asked to remain unnamed, told me that they have long heard stories about Moore and the mall. “The general knowledge at the time when I moved here was that this guy is a lawyer cruising the mall for high-school dates,” one of the officers said. The legal age of consent in Alabama is sixteen, so it would not be illegal there for a man in his early thirties to date a girl who was, say, a senior in high school. But these officers, along with the other people I spoke to, said that Moore’s presence at the mall was regarded as a problem. “I was told by a girl who worked at the mall that he’d been run off from there, from a number of stores. Maybe not legally banned, but run off,” one officer told me. He also said, “I heard from one girl who had to tell the manager of a store at the mall to get Moore to leave her alone.”


Read more: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/locals-were-troubled-by-roy-moores-interactions-with-teen-girls-at-the-gadsden-mall?mbid=social_twitter
November 13, 2017

Keurig CEO Not Happy With Tweet About Company Pulling Ads From Hannity

Source: TPM

Keurig made headlines this weekend when the coffeemaker company revealed on Twitter that it had pulled ads from Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, prompting angry Hannity fans to destroy their Keurigs on camera.

However, it appears that the company’s CEO is not too happy with the publicity.

In a letter to staff obtained by the Washington Post, Keurig CEO Bob Gamgort wrote that the social media team should not have broadcast the company’s decision to temporarily yank advertising from Hannity’s show. A spokesperson for Keurig told TPM that the company was not releasing the letter but confirmed that a note was sent to employees Monday morning.

Gamgort argued that it was “unacceptable” for the social media team to broadcast the company’s decision on advertising strategy.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/keurig-ceo-hannity-ads?utm_content=bufferd3e63&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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