conditions out of our uncovered premiums? Does the White House staff get coverage for pre-existing conditions? At what point will a genetic predisposition become a pre-existing condition. How do we find any of this out?

Overlooked No More: Bessie Blount, Nurse, Wartime Inventor and Handwriting Expert

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/obituaries/bessie-blount-overlooked.html

Blount invented a feeding device and taught amputee veterans to write with their teeth and their feet. She later became a forensic handwriting analyst.

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Bessie Blount in 1958 helping a disabled war veteran write with his feet. She later invented a feeding device to help veterans become self-sufficient.CreditCreditElmira Star-Gazette/Elmira Advertiser

March 27, 2019

Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

By Amisha Padnani

Bessie Blount was about 7 when a teacher rapped her knuckles during a classroom assignment. The blow stung her, the reason even more so.

“For writing with my left hand!” Blount told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2008, still incredulous more than 85 years later.

So she taught herself to write with her teeth and her toes, figuring, “If it was wrong to write with my left hand, then it was wrong to write with my right hand.”



She never finished her museum. She died the next year, on Dec. 30, 2009. She was 95.

Source: huffpo


Schumer Compares Ilhan Omar To Trump As Top Democrats Echo GOP’s Criticism At AIPAC
At the pro-Israel conference, Democratic leaders are helping the Republicans’ claim that the left has turned against Israel and toward anti-Semitism.


By Akbar Shahid Ahmed



WASHINGTON ― Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) handed Republicans a political gift at this week’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference by equating Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) recent remarks on politicians’ support for Israel with President Donald Trump’s 2017 defense of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“When someone looks at a neo-Nazi rally and sees some ‘very fine people’ among its company, we must call it out. When someone suggests money drives support for Israel, we must call it out,” Schumer said at the AIPAC event Monday evening.

<snip"

She apologized after the first controversy and following the second, elaborated on her views in The Washington Post, explaining that she, as has every U.S. president for decades, believes Israel has a right to exist in areas historically important to Jews but also must end its occupation of internationally recognized Palestinian territories, and she wants to see a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

<snip>

Democrats’ message was clear: We’re not all like Omar, and we’re not planning to abandon a historic U.S. alliance. It’s unclear how it can help. Their response perpetuates a cycle of name-calling and peacocking rather than shifting the conversation to a discussion of facts. There’s simply no evidence for the claim that Democrats have at an institutional level turned on Israel. President Barack Obama crafted the biggest aid package for Israel in U.S. history, members of the party from the leadership level on down frequently visit the country to better understand its concerns and context, and Democrats like Schumer and Deutch are critical to pro-Israel legislation on Capitol Hill.

<snip>


Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/schumer-aipac-ilhan-omar-democrats-israel_n_5c9a66cae4b07c88662c7df0

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Very surprised by this trivializing of Trumps misdeeds.

AOC: Removing ‘Horrific’ Trump Won’t Solve Our ‘Much Deeper Problems’
Freshman congresswoman says the president alone isn’t the problem. It’s the party that embraced him.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-trump-symptom_n_5c98612fe4b057f7330c97e8

By Ed Mazza



“He can stay, he can go. He can be impeached, or voted out in 2020,” she wrote on Twitter, then added:

“But removing Trump will not remove the infrastructure of an entire party that embraced him; the dark money that funded him; the online radicalization that drummed his army; nor the racism he amplified + reanimated.”

Ocasio-Cortez said those deeper problems included income inequality, racism, corruption and a willingness to excuse bigotry. And those, she wrote, can’t be fixed with an election:


It’s not as easy as voting. It means having uncomfortable moments convos w/ loved ones, w/ media, w/ those we disagree, and yes - within our own party, too.

It’s on all of us.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 24, 2019

<snip>


This is an important voice American voice. I am more impressed by her daily.

Devin Nunes Event Axed After Planned ‘Cattle Call’ Protest To Honor Cow Twitter Account

“Cow-ards,” snort Twitter wits after the GOP cancellation announcement.

By Mary Papenfuss

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/devin-nunes-devincow-protest-twitter_n_5c959bcde4b057f7330afb65

<snip>

The protest plot was launched after Nunes sued Twitter and the parody Twitter account @DevinCow for $250 million for online harassment. Nunes’ planned blow against ridicule backfired as the number of “Devin Nunes’ Cow” followers zoomed to 623,000, far surpassing the number of Nunes’ own Twitter followers.

Andy Lassner, the executive producer of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” set off the protest plans Wednesday with a tongue-in-cheek “I’m not saying” that people should show up to the Fresno Lincoln Reagan Dinner — planned for April 11 — to “moo.” Lassner’s followers quickly suggested showing up in cow costumes, with cowbells and mooing noise-makers.

Fresno Republicans said on Twitter that the event was canceled for “security reasons” and declined to elaborate. They hope to reschedule, a representative told the Fresno Bee. Announcement of the event and ticket sales have been removed from the internet.

<snip>

The @DevinCow parody account was apparently inspired by the Nunes family dairy, which has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm subsidies from the federal government. Earlier this month, Nunes complained about “socialism” after a California waitress asked him in a restaurant if he wanted a straw. The state has passed a law to combat plastic waste by limiting plastic straws only to customers who request them.

Roger Stone invokes Fifth Amendment in House Judiciary document request

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/435123-roger-stone-declines-to-hand-over-documents-in-house-judiciary-probe-invoking?gdpr_consent=&gdpr=false

By Jacqueline Thomsen - 03/21/19 12:48 PM EDT
995


Roger Stone is declining to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee’s request for documents in its investigation into President Trump's administration, business and campaign, citing his Fifth Amendment rights.

<snip>

“As a current criminal defendant, with the presumption of innocence guaranteed to him, it is not in Mr. Stone’s best interest to participate in any additional proceedings, outside those in federal court, until the charges are resolved,” Smith wrote. “Neither will Mr. Stone confirm for your Committee the existence of, or produce any documents requested, for the purpose of being used against him in anyway or to further the political agenda of people who want nothing more than to avenge the loss of their chosen candidate for president in 2016 by deposing the legally elected office holder."

Smith also characterized the committee’s request for documents as a “fishing expedition.”

“I hardly need to say that the gossip and innuendo which surrounds Mr. Stone in the press and in the Congress, and the pending criminal matter, provides him with a reasonable basis to protect himself from the ‘ambiguous circumstances’ which some have embraced,” the letter states.

<snip>

https://dreamer9177.com/2019/03/21/article-sponsor-of-the-discouraging-frivolous-lawsuits-act-sues-twitter-cow-account-for-250-million/

Sponsor of the “Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act” sues Twitter cow-account for $250 million

http://flip.it/9KSrWg

Or have I jumped the gun?

Old Rape Kits Finally Got Tested. 64 Attackers Were Convicted.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., committed $38 million in forfeiture money in 2015 to help other jurisdictions test thousands of backlogged rape kits.CreditJeenah Moon/Reuters

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/nyregion/rape-kit-tests.html

By Ali Watkins

March 12, 2019


By February 2017, Maisha Sudbeck had made peace with the idea she would never get justice. It had been five years since she was raped in Tucson by a man she had met online. The police had brushed the case off as a he-said-she-said standoff. For years, her rape evidence kit had sat untested. With two children and a new marriage, she had moved on with her life.



The detective said a grant from the Manhattan district attorney’s office had helped the Tucson authorities clear a backlog of untested rape kits, which preserve the DNA evidence left by an attacker. After five years, Ms. Sudbeck’s kit had finally been tested, the detective said. And the police had found a match in a database of people with criminal records: a man named Nathan Loebe.

“My chapter was reopened,” Ms. Sudbeck said. “Having my kit finally tested was a catalyst for hope.”

In February, Mr. Loebe was convicted of sexually assaulting Ms. Sudbeck and six other women. Ms. Sudbeck testified against him at trial.



Follow Ali Watkins on Twitter: @AliWatkins

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Is This the Greatest Photo in Jazz History?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/nyregion/thelonius-monk-charlier-parker.html?fallback=0&recId=1IJEmQHWYmLt782CGytbBFmAgn7&locked=0&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=TX&recAlloc=top_conversion&geoCountry=US&blockId=most-popular&imp_id=326733285



Mr. Parent, a photographer with a knack for showing up at the right time and place, didn’t need much encouragement. He arrived at the jazz club early in the evening of Sept. 13, 1953. It was unseasonably cool for late summer. The New York Times front page detailed the marriage of Senator John F. Kennedy and the glamorous Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, R.I. The Brooklyn Dodgers had just clinched the pennant in Milwaukee.

The show that night was billed as the Thelonious Monk Trio. Monk, 35, was already a prolific composer and piano innovator, yet it would take a decade for his brilliance to be fully appreciated by mainstream America. The trio was rounded out by Charles Mingus, 31, on standup bass and the youngster Roy Haynes, a 28-year-old hotshot drummer everyone called “Snap Crackle.”

The Open Door was a dark little joint that Mr. Haynes would later characterize as “a dump.” The jazz historian Dan Morgenstern was slightly more generous in his description: “It was a strange place but had great music.” There was an out-of-tune piano in the front room that was presided over on most nights by a woman known as Broadway Rose. She sang popular songs of the day.

<snip>

With Monk, Mingus and Haynes, he had certainly booked a top-shelf trio, reason enough to make the trip downtown. The word on the street that afternoon — and what a savvy Bob Parent already knew — was that there was a good chance Charlie Parker would sit in with the trio.



A version of this article appears in print on March 9, 2019, on Page MB5 of the New York edition with the headline: Four Titans of Bebop, and ‘the Greatest Photo in Jazz’.