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
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
dlwickham
dlwickham's Journal
dlwickham's Journal
December 29, 2017
Looking back, things did seem a bit out of balance with successful marijuana entrepreneur Bethany Sherman.
She shared an open contempt for Eugene and its renowned left-wing politics. She gloated about the election of Donald Trump. She made sure to note that she’d given her baby a German name.
But few who knew Sherman expected to read an antifascist expose´ accusing her of neo-Nazi sympathies. They were even less prepared for Sherman’s immediate and enthusiastic declaration of white pride, though she disavowed any connection to neo-Nazis.
Within a day of the allegations, Sherman found her carefully cultivated image as a well-connected and savvy businesswoman in tatters. She closed the marijuana testing lab that she had worked for years to establish. The industry condemned her and customers left in droves.
Emboldened white nationalists? Look no further than this liberal Oregon college town
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2017/12/post_292.htmlLooking back, things did seem a bit out of balance with successful marijuana entrepreneur Bethany Sherman.
She shared an open contempt for Eugene and its renowned left-wing politics. She gloated about the election of Donald Trump. She made sure to note that she’d given her baby a German name.
But few who knew Sherman expected to read an antifascist expose´ accusing her of neo-Nazi sympathies. They were even less prepared for Sherman’s immediate and enthusiastic declaration of white pride, though she disavowed any connection to neo-Nazis.
Within a day of the allegations, Sherman found her carefully cultivated image as a well-connected and savvy businesswoman in tatters. She closed the marijuana testing lab that she had worked for years to establish. The industry condemned her and customers left in droves.
December 29, 2017
I have found myself not caring what garbage Trump tweets
I expect him to say something controversial or just plain stupid to piss off the left and have his supporters come back and start a twitter war
I know that this could be dangerous, but I'm in favor of just ignoring him. He's like the senile old grandparent who sits in the room and you just nod and smile at anything they say.
December 28, 2017
The first man to publicly come out as gay in Chechnya has revealed he was publicly shamed and forced to take back his comments.
Mover Eskarkhanov received death threats and was forced to apologise on national television after he told Time magazine that he was gay.
Chechnya was condemned by world leaders and LGBT activists after the news of “gay concentration camps” in the republic reached the international press in April 2017.
Chechnyas first openly gay man forced to apologise on national TV
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/12/28/chechnyas-first-openly-gay-man-forced-to-apologise-on-national-tv/1/?utm_source=ET&utm_medium=ETFB&utm_campaign=portal&utm_content=inf_17_60_2&tse_id=INF_b78537d0ec1c11e79160a780a1ef54dfThe first man to publicly come out as gay in Chechnya has revealed he was publicly shamed and forced to take back his comments.
Mover Eskarkhanov received death threats and was forced to apologise on national television after he told Time magazine that he was gay.
Chechnya was condemned by world leaders and LGBT activists after the news of “gay concentration camps” in the republic reached the international press in April 2017.
December 26, 2017
WELCH — Sadeq Hauter looks out the window of his family’s convenience store at the steep hillsides and hollows of Appalachia and is reminded of his hometown in Yemen. The difference is that, here, he can see a future for himself and his wife and children.
He relocated them in 2015 to escape from Yemen’s escalating civil war. The family opened Eller’s Quick Stop on a flat stretch of U.S. 52 in Northfork, a town of 372 in McDowell County. Their arrival presents both a stir of hope and a challenge to a community that — like so many rural places in America — is trying to eradicate generational poverty while simultaneously adjusting to the huge economic shifts roiling the nation.
The Hauter children are the only English-as-a-second-language students enrolled in McDowell County public schools, which are on the front lines of the economic effort being led by Reconnecting McDowell, an ambitious public-private initiative. Yet the school district has been averaging triple-digit enrollment losses the past few years, according to education officials, prompting a paradoxical question: Are efforts to better prepare the county’s students simply quickening their exodus and hastening the demise of the county and its way of life? Or might the arrival of a family of newcomers hint at a new chapter for this corner of Appalachia?
A Yemeni family flees a war-torn nation and bets on a future in rural Appalachia
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/a-yemeni-family-flees-a-war-torn-nation-and-bets/article_7a985774-1e87-561f-bbc1-818907bd0de2.htmlWELCH — Sadeq Hauter looks out the window of his family’s convenience store at the steep hillsides and hollows of Appalachia and is reminded of his hometown in Yemen. The difference is that, here, he can see a future for himself and his wife and children.
He relocated them in 2015 to escape from Yemen’s escalating civil war. The family opened Eller’s Quick Stop on a flat stretch of U.S. 52 in Northfork, a town of 372 in McDowell County. Their arrival presents both a stir of hope and a challenge to a community that — like so many rural places in America — is trying to eradicate generational poverty while simultaneously adjusting to the huge economic shifts roiling the nation.
The Hauter children are the only English-as-a-second-language students enrolled in McDowell County public schools, which are on the front lines of the economic effort being led by Reconnecting McDowell, an ambitious public-private initiative. Yet the school district has been averaging triple-digit enrollment losses the past few years, according to education officials, prompting a paradoxical question: Are efforts to better prepare the county’s students simply quickening their exodus and hastening the demise of the county and its way of life? Or might the arrival of a family of newcomers hint at a new chapter for this corner of Appalachia?
December 26, 2017
Mary Horomanski went online earlier this month to check her electric bill.
The Erie woman was stunned to see that she owed Penelec, her electricity provider, more than $284 billion — an amount greater than the national debts of Hungary and South Africa combined.
“My eyes just about popped out of my head,” said Horomanski, 58. “We had put up Christmas lights and I wondered if we had put them up wrong.”
The good news, if you can call it that, was that Horomanski didn’t have to pay the entire $284,460,000,000 until November 2018. Her minimum payment for December was a relatively paltry $28,156.
Erie woman receives $284 billion electric bill
http://www.goerie.com/news/20171225/erie-woman-receives-284-billion-electric-billMary Horomanski went online earlier this month to check her electric bill.
The Erie woman was stunned to see that she owed Penelec, her electricity provider, more than $284 billion — an amount greater than the national debts of Hungary and South Africa combined.
“My eyes just about popped out of my head,” said Horomanski, 58. “We had put up Christmas lights and I wondered if we had put them up wrong.”
The good news, if you can call it that, was that Horomanski didn’t have to pay the entire $284,460,000,000 until November 2018. Her minimum payment for December was a relatively paltry $28,156.
December 23, 2017
Michael Yamashita has purchased the Bay Area Reporter making him the first gay Asian-American publisher and owner of an LGBT newspaper. The decision was announced on Monday.
Yamashita has served as the newspaper’s publisher since 2013 and was also its former general manager. After receiving two shares from former investors, he was able to purchase the LGBT weekly newspaper.
He will also take over BAR Media Inc., which was founded four years ago. Todd Vogt and Patrick Brown have stepped down from the board but Yamashita plans to nominate replacements in the near future.
The Bob Ross Foundation now has 20 percent stake in the company with Yamashita taking over the other 80 percent in the company.
Gay publisher Michael Yamashita purchases Bay Area Reporter
http://www.washingtonblade.com/2017/12/21/gay-publisher-purchases-bay-area-reporter/Michael Yamashita has purchased the Bay Area Reporter making him the first gay Asian-American publisher and owner of an LGBT newspaper. The decision was announced on Monday.
Yamashita has served as the newspaper’s publisher since 2013 and was also its former general manager. After receiving two shares from former investors, he was able to purchase the LGBT weekly newspaper.
He will also take over BAR Media Inc., which was founded four years ago. Todd Vogt and Patrick Brown have stepped down from the board but Yamashita plans to nominate replacements in the near future.
The Bob Ross Foundation now has 20 percent stake in the company with Yamashita taking over the other 80 percent in the company.
December 22, 2017
About 100 of President Donald Trump’s nominees have been kicked back to the White House, prolonging an unusually high number of vacancies across his administration and escalating the Senate’s long-running nomination wars.
While the Senate agreed to keep roughly 150 of Trump’s picks for consideration next year, it refused to do so on roughly 100 others, according to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office. That means the White House will have to renominate them if Trump wants them installed.
Among the high-profile picks tossed back to the White House: Alex Azar, chosen as the new head of the Department of Health and Human Services; Thomas Farr, a district court nominee whose record on voting rights has infuriated Democrats; and K.T. McFarland, the former deputy national security adviser chosen as U.S. ambassador to Singapore who is now facing questions about her communications with ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn.
That will trigger a requirement that nominees’ paperwork be up to date — a gargantuan task for some nominees who've been languishing in the Senate for months, especially if their net worth changed dramatically because of the surging stock market.
Democrats block dozens of Trump nominees
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/22/trump-nominees-democrats-block-314775?lo=ap_c2About 100 of President Donald Trump’s nominees have been kicked back to the White House, prolonging an unusually high number of vacancies across his administration and escalating the Senate’s long-running nomination wars.
While the Senate agreed to keep roughly 150 of Trump’s picks for consideration next year, it refused to do so on roughly 100 others, according to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office. That means the White House will have to renominate them if Trump wants them installed.
Among the high-profile picks tossed back to the White House: Alex Azar, chosen as the new head of the Department of Health and Human Services; Thomas Farr, a district court nominee whose record on voting rights has infuriated Democrats; and K.T. McFarland, the former deputy national security adviser chosen as U.S. ambassador to Singapore who is now facing questions about her communications with ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn.
That will trigger a requirement that nominees’ paperwork be up to date — a gargantuan task for some nominees who've been languishing in the Senate for months, especially if their net worth changed dramatically because of the surging stock market.
December 22, 2017
Stunned and shocked would be an understatement if we wanted to describe how quite a few seasoned counter-intelligence officers at Hungary’s Constitutional Protection Office (AH) could have felt in April 2014. Going against their professional convictions, AH terminated an ongoing investigation and subsequently initiated a criminal case against a lesser-known far-right politician. The accusation was severe: spying against institutions of the European Union on behalf of a third country. Security officers of AH were embarrassed, not because they weren’t fully convinced that Béla Kovács, a notoriously russophile Hungarian member of the European Parliament – dubbed as KGBéla even by his own far-right comrades – broke the law and made illegal contacts with Russian intelligence officers, but because they wanted to make sure he could not escape justice and his web of contacts would be fully discovered.
As politics interfered with the investigation, the security officers of AH knew their work was still incomplete.
The story of Béla Kovács is the most accurate depiction of the complicated nature of Russian influence in Hungary. In order to understand what happened to him, and why, we need to take a brief look at today’s political landscape of Hungary first.
HUNGARIAN MEP ACCUSED OF SPYING FOR RUSSIA
https://vsquare.org/the-great-escape-of-kgb/Stunned and shocked would be an understatement if we wanted to describe how quite a few seasoned counter-intelligence officers at Hungary’s Constitutional Protection Office (AH) could have felt in April 2014. Going against their professional convictions, AH terminated an ongoing investigation and subsequently initiated a criminal case against a lesser-known far-right politician. The accusation was severe: spying against institutions of the European Union on behalf of a third country. Security officers of AH were embarrassed, not because they weren’t fully convinced that Béla Kovács, a notoriously russophile Hungarian member of the European Parliament – dubbed as KGBéla even by his own far-right comrades – broke the law and made illegal contacts with Russian intelligence officers, but because they wanted to make sure he could not escape justice and his web of contacts would be fully discovered.
As politics interfered with the investigation, the security officers of AH knew their work was still incomplete.
The story of Béla Kovács is the most accurate depiction of the complicated nature of Russian influence in Hungary. In order to understand what happened to him, and why, we need to take a brief look at today’s political landscape of Hungary first.
December 22, 2017
Hall of Fame broadcaster Dick Enberg dies at age 82
Source: ESPN
Dick Enberg, the Hall of Fame broadcaster whose "Oh my!" calls rang familiar with so many sports fans, has died, his wife and daughter confirmed Thursday night.
He was 82.
Enberg's daughter, Nicole, said the family became concerned when he didn't arrive on his flight to Boston on Thursday, and that he was found dead at his home in La Jolla, a San Diego neighborhood, with his bags packed. The family said it was awaiting official word on the cause of death but believed he had a heart attack.
Enberg was one of America's most beloved sports broadcasters, with his versatile voice spanning the world on networks such as NBC, CBS and ESPN. In all, he covered 28 Wimbledons, 10 Super Bowls and eight NCAA men's basketball title games, including the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird showdown in 1979.
Read more: http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/21842570/dick-enberg-beloved-broadcaster-dies-age-82
December 13, 2017
Schumer calls cops after forged sex scandal charge
Source: Axios
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he was the victim of a fake news hit on Tuesday, and has turned over to Capitol Police a document that purports to detail lurid sexual harassment accusations by a former staffer.
Read more: https://www.axios.com/schumer-calls-cops-after-forged-sex-scandal-charge-2517019807.html
Profile Information
Member since: Fri Nov 9, 2012, 02:24 AMNumber of posts: 3,316
