Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News Editorials & Other Articles General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

demmiblue

demmiblue's Journal
demmiblue's Journal
October 31, 2017

Betsy DeVos dressed as Ms. Frizzle for Halloween and everyone's thrilled! No just kidding...

Source: Mashable

Amidst the indictments of former top Trump campaign officials through Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the president and the first lady hosted the traditional White House Halloween party on Monday evening.

While many members of the Trump administration opted not to wear costumes, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos attended the party as Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus. Interesting!

Ms. Frizzle, of course, was a school teacher/scientist with a permit to drive a school bus and also a witch or a magician or something. Betsy DeVos is a billionaire without an education degree and zero experience working in a school environment who recently repealed 72 documents outlining the rights of students with disabilities in schools.

Anyway, here she is:





http://mashable.com/2017/10/31/devos-ms-frizzle-halloween/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link#YQW69LCmaVq8


A thousand NOPES... this is sacrilege.
October 31, 2017

Climate-denying nominee for top USDA science post gets caught in Russia controversy

Source: Think Progress

Sam Clovis, one of the Trump administration’s more controversial nominees for a political appointment, was already raising eyebrows ahead of his November 9 confirmation hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee. To start, Clovis — who has been nominated to the position of undersecretary of research, education, and economics at the United States Department of Agriculture, the agency’s top science position — has no background in the the hard sciences, nor any experience with agricultural or nutritional science. Clovis is also a staunch climate science denier who accused President Barack Obama of “race baiting” and has called progressives “the real racists.”

But on Monday, Clovis’ nomination took on new meaning when it was revealed that, while working as national co-chairman of the Trump campaign, he had encouraged George Papadopoulos, a campaign foreign policy adviser, to meet with Russian nationals in a potential effort to bolster the campaign. On Monday, unsealed court documents revealed that Papadopoulos had plead guilty to lying to federal agents about his communication with Russia.

“I would encourage you” to “make the trip, if it is feasible,” Clovis wrote in an August email to Papadopoulos, in response to plans suggested by Papadopoulos to go to Russia and meet with Russian officials off the record. Clovis also praised Papadopoulos’ outreach efforts, telling him “great work” in regards to a March 2016 meeting during which Papadopoulos and a London professor, as well as a Russian woman incorrectly described as “Putin’s niece,” discussed plans for a potential meeting between the campaign and “Russian leadership.”

Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/clovis-usda-russia-connection-3e9bd33bacfd/

October 31, 2017

Fox to Offer Twenty-Four-Hour Coverage of Bill Clintons Impeachment

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Calling it a story “too hot for the other cable-news networks to handle,” Fox News Channel announced on Tuesday that it would begin airing twenty-four-hour coverage of Bill Clinton’s 1998–99 impeachment.

Fox anchor Sean Hannity announced the programming change, telling viewers that Fox would devote all its resources to reporting the Clinton impeachment to the exclusion of all other news stories.

“This story has everything: sex, lies, and misdeeds at the highest levels of our government,” Hannity said. “We are planning to flood the zone to bring it to you.”

Calling it “the story Bill and Hillary Clinton don’t want you to hear,” Hannity said Fox would be unstinting in its effort to get to the bottom of the impeachment.


https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/fox-to-offer-twenty-four-hour-coverage-of-bill-clintons-impeachment?mbid=social_twitter
October 31, 2017

Congratulations to Katy Tur and Tony Dokoupil! ♥

Katy Tur eloping with fiancé Tony Dokoupil this weekend

NBC News’ Katy Tur is eloping with CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil this weekend.

We hear the couple — who met in the makeup room at MSNBC when Dokoupil worked at the network — planned to wed on Friday at dusk in a “nondenominational ceremony in the middle of the desert in Utah,” a source said.

“They deliberately picked a place where there will be no cell service and no one around them talking about politics,” says the friend of the couple. “No setup, no altar, just in front of rocks.

Katy said it would be ‘just us and the earth.’?”

https://pagesix.com/2017/10/28/katy-tur-and-tony-dokoupil-are-getting-married-this-weekend/




https://twitter.com/KatyTurNBC/status/925138839445708800
October 30, 2017

ABA deems another Trump judicial nominee not qualified

Source: Politico

Another one of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees — this time, to the powerful appellate courts — has been deemed "not qualified" by the American Bar Association.

Leonard Steven Grasz was nominated in August to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and has his confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. But in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee obtained by POLITICO, the American Bar Association says members of its standing committee unanimously concluded, with one person abstaining, that he was not qualified to serve as a federal judge.

The letter did not elaborate on why.

Grasz is currently a lawyer in Omaha and served for more than 11 years as Nebraska’s chief deputy attorney general. His home-state senators — Nebraska Republicans Deb Fischer and Ben Sasse — effusively praised him when Grasz was nominated, with Fischer promoting his “sterling credentials and impressive experience” and Sasse deeming him a “by-the-book kind of guy.”

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/30/aba-trump-judicial-nominee-not-qualified-244327

October 30, 2017

Godless - Official Trailer [HD] - Netflix



Coming Nov. 22nd.
October 30, 2017

Trump to lunch with Sessions amid Manafort charges

Source: The Hill

President Trump on Monday is scheduled to have lunch with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, just hours after Trump's former campaign chairman was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Sessions was invited to join Trump's weekly lunch with Vice President Pence, which is closed to press coverage.

It's likely Trump will raise the indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, which represents a significant escalation of the special counsel probe that has loomed over his presidency for months.

The president in the past has criticized Sessions for his handling of the Russia investigation, blaming his decision to recuse himself for Mueller's appointment.

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/357783-trump-to-lunch-with-sessions-amid-manafort-charges



Hmmm?!
October 30, 2017

The Jared bubble

What my 18 months as Jared Kushner’s first editor taught me about the Trump family and the press

Source: Columbia Journalism Review



“You can’t say ‘hit job’ in here.”

I was six months into my tenure as the editor of the New York Observer, and I was schooling my publisher, Jared Kushner, on why ordering up a slam of someone who had crossed his family in business didn’t pass the journalistic smell test.

Kushner, in an earlier meeting, had asked for a hit piece on an official at Bank of America, and was now in my office to check on how the story was coming together. I had spent the previous weeks trying to avoid the subject with him, knowing full well that the Observer was never going to pursue a story about an anonymous banker whose only sin was running afoul of the Kushner family.

But he was pressing the issue. Finally, in that office meeting in the spring of 2010, I told him the piece was not going to happen, that talk of a “hit job” was a textbook definition of malice, and that I considered the issue closed.

Kushner, then a 28-year-old journalism novice who had so far been deferential to my news judgment, pursed his lips, paused a beat, and ended the conversation.


Read more: https://www.cjr.org/special_report/cjr-kyle-pope-jared-kushner-observer.php

Profile Information

Member since: Thu Feb 14, 2008, 10:58 AM
Number of posts: 37,866
Latest Discussions»demmiblue's Journal