For fellow Canadians, globally curious onlookers, brick and mortar Americans – ponder impeachment for dummies. A no nonsense impeachment flowchart courtesy Buzzfeed.
Image credits: Melina Mara / the Washington Post via Getty Images (Pelosi); Drew Angerer / Getty Images (Trump); Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images (McConnell); Stephanie Keith / Getty Images (Trump); Caroline Brehman / CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images (Pence)
I have been profoundly saddened by the decision to sign death warrrants for the Kurds and Kurdish fighters who have been our allies. This despicable act of self-serving cowardice brings to mind the words of other freedom fighters in our own country not all that many years ago.
In honour of the full Hunter’s Moon this weekend – timelapse from Adrien Mauduit at Night Lights Films – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC0CLzCpM6nuLSAi1JNBjkA
Hunter’s is an autumn moon, the first full moon of fall following the Harvest (full moon closest to the fall equinox) moon. https://earthsky.org/tonight/full-hunters-moon-from-dusk-till-dawn?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=45a5e032e7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_02_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-45a5e032e7-393970565
Ponder origin of all named moons at the link below –
https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/moon/full-moon-names.html
If there is a single chilling lesson to learn from the Trump presidency it’s that U.S. race relations have not progressed as far as people think. D Trump has dozens of times in rallies and from the rostrum spoken demeaningly of multiples races and backgrounds. His manipulative words have been received eagerly by certain segments of his audience — publicly. With no fear of reprisal, or sanction. His hate-mongering has gone largely unanswered by other Republicans — giving him freedom to continue his spread of racist hate.
In 1908 the Postmaster General of the United States banned the mailing of lynching postcards like the one below.
In this day and age we might think that an overreaction to an isolated instance, but the truth of the matter is that from the 1870’s on there it had become a popular thing to produce postcards as warnings, and as evidence of one’s…
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Allow me to introduce War Donkey – first place this Canadian goes for perspective on American politics. Copied below, a impeachment update posted tonight by War Donkey founder Dave Consiglio. “Impeachment Updates” reads like a comedy sketch, so warped it couldn’t possibly document reality. Time to stop laughing, clucking and wringing hands. Wake up America! This is real.
https://www.quora.com/q/war-donkey
I haven’t posted in two days…and so of course about eighty things have happened…
Resignations
Acting DHS secretary Kevin McAleenan has resigned. He wasn’t even confirmed yet. He’s had the job since April, when Kirstjen Nielsen resigned.
Shepard Smith has resigned from Fox News. Apparently strain between the news and opinion sides of the network played a part.
Michael McKinley, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s chief of staff, has resigned.
John Huvane, CEO of Giuliani (yes that Giuliani) Safety and Security, has resigned.
Kurt Volker, US Envoy to Ukraine, has resigned.
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry is expected to announce his resignation. He apparently participated in the president’s dealings in Ukraine.
Court Rulings
Trump lost an appeal to keep his tax returns secret from a House subpoena.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas found President Trump’s proclamation declaring a national emergency at the southern border to be unlawful, ruling that the use of funds for this project violates the Consolidated Appropriations Act.
Judges in three states ruled against a Trump policy that would withhold green cards to immigrants who receive public assistance such as Medicaid.
A court decision affirmed the Department of Energy’s obligation to publish its finalized energy efficiency standards.
Polling
Similar results have been obtained from other polls. At least a plurality, if not an outright majority of Americans, including increasing numbers of Republicans, agree that the president should be removed from office.
Arrests
The first arrests of Donald Trump’s impeachment crisis
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, associates of Rudy Giuliani, allegedly funneled significant amounts of foreign money to President Trump and other Republicans and helped set up meetings in Ukraine regarding the Bidens.
Other news
Trey Gowdy, former Congressman, is joining Trump’s legal team. There are stories circulating that Trump may be parting ways with Giuliani.
Trump Leaned on State Dept. to Release Jailed Giuliani Client
Gordon Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union, and Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine, agreed to comply with a House subpoena and testify, defying a State Department order not to appear.
If you haven’t already, or even if you have, please call (don’t email) your Representative and your Senators, be they Democrats or Republicans, and tell them you support impeachment. The numbers drive the decisions of your reps, and the more calls they receive from their constituents that support impeachment, the more they will realize their political futures hang in the balance.
Bray loudly, Donkeys. Let them hear your voices.
I’m not sure we give ourselves enough credit when credit is due. It’s easy to think that we are just a single person, that our voice doesn’t matter, that no one hears when we speak. But we, each one of us, are complex creatures who exert our influence in many different ways.
Each of these individual modes teach us more about life and love and each of these better enable us to have an impact in the world around us, in the people we love, in the things we care about.
I suppose one should have included “I fail” in that list somewhere because that is certainly part of the human experience. Failure, however, isn’t the only experience and considering that too many of us are probably more likely to focus on our failures than on our successes I think it’s a good thing to leave that off the list…
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The Senate Intelligence Committee today released volume two of its Russia investigation, which concludes that Russians sought “to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin.” Keep in mind that the Senate Intelligence Committee is run by, wait for it, the Republicans.
Now, Trump, his talking heads and his base will continue to say “so what?” This doesn’t prove that Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russians. It doesn’t even, in their tiny brains, justify the two and a half year “Witch Hunt”. But it does kill one of Trump’s many, many, many, fairy-tales that the Russians didn’t want him to win because he is so TOUGH on them, a fairy tale he disproves without any help from anyone every single day.
Look, the vast majority of intelligent, stable, sober, non-delusional Americans know that…
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You cannot have revolution nor even begin to affect our current climate catastrophe without collective action.
Photo by Markus Spiske
And therein lies the problem, because we here in the U.S. don’t even know what collective action looks like any more. There was a time when we mobilized workers and they took literal action in order to effect changes in the work place. But today, in the 2010’s the closest we get are social media calls for lots of individual actions: boycotts, calls to show up to protests, or other personal acts. But we seem incapable of organizing a sustained action and that may just be the death of us. Literally, or figuratively.
Photo by Startup Stock Photos
These mass media “actions” aren’t collective actions, they’re merely “simultaneous” and “distributive” actions, urged not by leaders or organizers but by armchair social media propagandists. Individuals have no relationship with the initiators…
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Today, Scott Sheppard of Carnegie Institution for Science launched a contest to name 20 newly discovered moons of Saturn. For those keeping score, Saturn (now with 82 moons) leapfrogged past Jupiter (79 moons) to claim satellite supremacy.
Illustration is courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Saturn image is courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute. Starry background courtesy of Paolo Sartorio/Shutterstock.
Dust off history books, brush up on Norse, Gallic and Inuit mythology – between now and December 6, 2019 the contest is open to anyone who follows IAU rules. Follow link below to enter contest.
From Wikipedia –
In 1847 the seven then known moons of Saturn were named by John Herschel. Herschel named Saturn’s two innermost moons (Mimas and Enceladus) after the mythological Greek Giants, and the outer five after the Titans (Titan, Iapetus) and Titanesses (Tethys, Dione, Rhea) of the same mythology. Until then, Titan was known as the “Huygenian (or Huyghenian) satellite of Saturn” and the other moons had Roman numeral designations in order of their distance from Saturn. Subsequent discoverers of Saturnian moons followed Herschel’s scheme: Hyperion was discovered soon after in 1848, and the ninth moon, Phoebe, was named by its discoverer in 1899 soon after its discovery; they were named for a Titan and a Titaness respectively. The name of Janus was suggested by its discoverer, Audouin Dollfus.
Current IAU practice for newly discovered inner moons is to continue with Herschel’s system, naming them after Titans or their descendants. However, the increasing number of moons that were being discovered in the 21st century caused the IAU to draw up a new scheme for the outer moons. At the IAU General Assembly in July 2004, the WGPSN allowed satellites of Saturn to have names of giants and monsters in mythologies other than the Greco-Roman. Since the outer moons fall naturally into three groups, one group is named after Norse giants, one after Gallic giants, and one after Inuit giants. The only moon that fails to fit this scheme is the Greek-named Phoebe, which is in the Norse group.
notestoponder 