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demmiblue

demmiblue's Journal
demmiblue's Journal
May 30, 2017

A women's movement grows in 'the most Trumpian place in America'

“At first we all felt like we were little creatures crawling out from under rocks, just reaching out to each other,” said Hollen. “Then we found a few, and a few more.”

Source: PBS

The women gathered hesitantly in front of the county courthouse, many of them holding signs. At first there were a few, then a few more, and then more than 70. It was early February, and they had come to protest President Donald Trump’s travel ban. At first, as they marched down Main Street, they got thumbs up and honks of support. But it wasn’t long before the counter-protesters arrived, men holding signs that said “Make America Great Again,” “Trump” and “These People are Stupid!”

Soon, a parade of pickup trucks followed, led by a truck full of fraternity brothers from the nearby college in Buckhannon, a small town in north central West Virginia. As men whooped and hollered, and did a “burn out” -- spinning their wheels while stationary, until their treads burned and smoked on the asphalt -- the women were doused in a giant cloud of black smoke. Some were hit with pebbles and debris. When another truck dropped firecrackers, the women, some with children, tried not to run or scream.

Among them was Lisa Hollen, a soft-spoken speech pathologist, who had changed jobs after the 2016 election because of how pro-Trump the school she worked at had become. To her, Trump had always been a wealthy, “larger-than-life loser,” a man who made womanizing comments on the Howard Stern Show and acted like a bully on reality TV, even long before he was a political candidate. After he was elected, the principal at Hollen’s school told the teachers not to talk about Trump’s victory, which Hollen thought was not very good advice. Not after the scene at Buckhannon-Upshur Middle School on the day after the election, when kids in the hallways chanted “Build a wall!” And not after one of her seventh grade students said that “people who voted for Hillary Clinton should be taken out in the yard and shot.”

To Hollen, addressing Trump’s win was not about being a “cry-baby liberal.” But she knew most of Buckhannon saw it differently.

...

An older woman speaks up next, her voice trembling a little. “I was sitting here earlier thinking, I never really had a voice before.” She begins to cry, and another woman comes over and takes her hand. “I was raised to be seen and not heard. Then I got married right out of high school and it was the same thing. And I was abused for 14 years. (You all) gave me a voice again.” The woman touches her chest. She is still crying. “So sorry.”









Read more: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/features/trump-west-virginia/

Well worth the read... these women are inspiring!
May 29, 2017

Hannity repeatedly pushed stories after Fox backed away from or retracted them

Source: Media Matters

Volatile Fox News anchor and right-wing conspiracy theorist Sean Hannity has repeatedly pushed stories even after his network retracted or backed away from them and has on multiple occasions broken ethical and employment guidelines. Hannity has pushed polls that the network had previously said “do not meet our editorial standards,” hyped debunked Muslim “no-go zones” in France after the network had to apologize for reporting about them, engaged in political activity without Fox’s knowledge or approval, and has used his Fox platform to benefit a sponsor of his radio show.

Hannity pushed online polls supporting Trump days after Fox memo said they “do not meet our editorial standards”

Leaked Fox memo said 2016 online election polls "do not meet our editorial standards." Business Insider reported that the Fox News vice president for public opinion research sent a September 27 internal memo “reminding television producers and the politics team that unscientific online polls ‘do not meet our editorial standards.’” (Business Insider, 9/28/16)

Hannity hyped online polls just two days after internal memo circulated saying they don’t meet Fox standards. On September 29, Sean Hannity cited post-debate online polls to show that people "vote so overwhelmingly for [Donald] Trump," just two days after a Fox News internal memo said they "do not meet our editorial standards.” Scientific polls showed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly won the debate, with an NBC/SurveyMonkey poll showing that then-candidate Donald Trump came in third place in the two-person debate, finishing both behind Clinton and "neither." (Media Matters, 9/26/16)

Read more: https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/05/28/hannity-repeatedly-pushed-stories-after-fox-backed-away-or-retracted-them/216686

May 29, 2017

Portland Stabbing: Donald Trump Finally Responds Amid Public Outcry

Source: Newsweek

President Donald Trump acknowledged the deadly stabbing in Portland on Monday after journalists and the American public urged him to speak out about the incident.

“The violent attacks in Portland on Friday are unacceptable. The victims were standing up to hate and intolerance. Our prayers are w/them,” Trump tweeted. However, he sent the message from the official presidential Twitter account, @POTUS, which has 18 million followers, rather than his personal Twitter account, @RealDonaldTrump, which has nearly 40 million followers.


http://www.newsweek.com/portland-stabbing-trump-responds-public-outcry-617076

May 28, 2017

Trump's latest tweet: British Prime Minister May was very angry...

that the info the U.K. gave to U.S. about Manchester was leaked. Gave me full details!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/868840252227674113

What is the crackpot trying to insinuate now?

May 26, 2017

Meet the Real Jared Kushner

"He’s a lot tougher than he looks."

Source: Politico



He was supposed to be the calm one, cool and unflappable under his Ray-Bans and beltless blue bespoke suits. If Steve Bannon was the Rumpelstiltskin of the administration, donning multiple half-tucked dress shirts at a time and always carrying a clutch of briefing papers and barreling through the administrative state, Jared Kushner, through pedigree and temperament, could reach out one of his long, elegant fingers and tap everyone in the West Wing on the shoulder and urge them to just cool out a bit. In a White House sullied by ties to Russia and all sorts of unsavory characters from the fringe, Kushner was set to float above, surrounding himself with fellow figures from the elite worlds of Manhattan finance and real estate and deep-sixing the harder-edged ideas of the White House’s “nationalist” wing.

Except that this isn’t quite how it has gone in the White House over the last several months. It was Kushner who reportedly pushed for the firing of FBI Director James Comey over the objections of Bannon. And it was Kushner who was the lone voice urging for a counterattack after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the appointment of a special prosecutor, according to the New York Times. And it is now Kushner whose family’s business activities leave him open to the same level of charges of conflict of interest that have dogged his wife and father-in-law, and Kushner who appears to be as closely tied to the Russian government as anyone serving in the White House: NBC News and the Washington Post reported Thursday that the FBI is taking a close look at his contacts with the Russians.

What happened to America’s princeling? Is he hearing footsteps from Bannon and the other anti-globalists in the White House’s great and daily game of dominance? Is he trying to play to the instincts of his audience of one, President Donald Trump? The widespread assumption liberals make about Kushner seems to be this: Because he is soft-spoken, slim and handsome, with degrees from Harvard and NYU and a family that donates to Democrats, he couldn’t possibly be the same guy knifing his West Wing rivals and urging the president to go to war with the Justice Department and the FBI.

But that assumption is wrong. Kushner and his representatives did not respond to requests for comment about this story. But those who know him from his days as a young New York real estate magnate and newspaper publisher say that America is just getting to know the Jared Kushner they have always known, that beneath the unflappable golden exterior is someone unafraid to bungee jump or to counter-punch when he feels slighted.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/25/jared-kushner-russia-fbi-donald-trump-215191

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