Thursday, October 25th, 2018
MATTHEW CHAPMAN, - Salon/Alternet
Stephan: Wilbur Ross is a stereotype of the Trumpian professional. He looks responsible, he speaks in a measured way, he is an insider who clawed his way up in the world of greed where many Trumpians live but is, in fact, a professional liar and grifter. But that's not why I am running this report. I chose it because it is a first example of why the Republicans were so committed to getting Brett Kavanaugh confirmed on the Supreme Court, and the trend they have been trying to establish for the last several decades.
If you control the Presidency and the Congress you can make the laws in such a way that you never break the law and, if there is any question, you have the court to interpret the laws in your favor. Our democracy is evaporating in front of our eyes, and forty some percent of us think that's fine.
Wilbur Ross
Credit: AP/Andrew Hamik
On Monday, the Supreme Court issued an emergency stay blocking the deposition of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in the ongoing dispute over the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.
The order, a victory for the Trump administration, puts any attempt to question Ross about his role in the inclusion of the question on hold, at least until the Court can hear the issue more fully. The Court’s decision overrules, for the time being, the order of U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman, who instructed Ross to submit to questioning from lawyers in the ongoing litigation of the Census.
While Ross is now unlikely to testify in the upcoming trial, which is scheduled for November 5, other depositions, including of Justice Department official John Gore, can proceed as planned. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, the far-right flank of the court, partially dissented on the grounds that if Ross’ deposition should be stayed, the entire process should be stayed as well.
The decision to […]
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Thursday, October 25th, 2018
Walter Einenkel, Staff Writer - Daily Kos
Stephan: I'll be very clear. Clarence Thomas should never have been confirmed as an Associate Justice. And his wife's behavior, I think, should cause him to be impeached. I don't like to use Daily Kos, because I don't like the language in which most of its stories are written, way too polemic for SR, but Daily Kos is one of the few publications that pays attention to this trend. How can a court possibly have even the illusion of a neutral judge, when his wife is an activist at the far end of the alt-right, who sends out a six-year-old photograph of a bleeding policeman and palms it off as something to do with the immigrant caravan, as if it were a current event?
And while I am at it. George Soros is a man to be admired. When the Soviet Union came apart there were very few major American business figures who recognized the opportunity to end the Cold War and have Russia become a democratic country. I was a partner in the 104th joint venture between Russia and the United States, Sovaminco, to do just that on albeit a smaller scale. I saw this close up. History will judge the failure of the U.S. to help Russia become a democratic country, as one of the world's great geopolitical mistakes. In the glasnost and perestroika era two men stood out for me. George Soros, and Don Kendall of Pepsico. But especially Soros. He did everything he could and poured tens of millions of his own dollars into the effort to help Russia morph into that kind of country. I will always admire and respect him. Subsequently, I learned about other projects he pursued, They all have one thing in common, they are designed to foster wellbeing.
The big boogie man for right-wing groups right now is the “George Soros-funded” immigrant caravan that is bringing thousands of criminals into our country, where they will steal your teenage daughters … and your jobs! Virginia Thomas, wife of and apologist for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, likes to mix it up from her position on high. From her (now) protected Twitter account, she passed along this frightening image of a bloody Mexican law enforcement officer.
That’s some pretty damning stuff. I wonder why the media won’t share that image? Oh, right, because they already did share that image when it was taken, back in 2012!
Snopes was able to quickly break down where this and other images came from, and it turns out it had nothing to do with the immigrants working their way up into the United States. That image came from clashes between students and police during protests over school curriculum in Michoacan.
This […]
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Thursday, October 25th, 2018
Ana Sandoiu , - Medical News Today
Stephan: Pancreatic cancer has a very high mortality. I personally have lost three friends to this disease. So I think this is potentially very good news, and I await replications.
A new study, published in the Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research, finds that a synthetic analog of a compound found in a rare Chinese tree can be used to tackle treatment-resistant pancreatic cancer.
The American Cancer Society (ACS) report that around 55,440 people will develop pancreatic cancer in 2018 and around 44,330 people will die as a result.
This cancer is particularly difficult to both treat and diagnose.
A lack of specific and accessible screening methods means that specialists often find the disease in its later stages, which can impact the patients’ outlook.
The ACS estimate that 12–14 percent of people with early-stage pancreatic cancer go on to survive for 5 years.
New research offers much-needed hope; scientists have found that a derivative of camptothecin — which is a Chinese tree bark compound whose anticancer properties were discovered over half a century ago — can effectively kill pancreatic cancer tumors.
Fengzhi Li, Ph.D., who […]
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Wednesday, October 24th, 2018
Stephan: Through much of the 1970s I was the special assistant to the chief of naval operations, and my job was largely about helping design, and explain to the world how the elitist conscription military of the Viet Nam era was being transformed into an all-volunteer meritocracy where merit, not race, religion, gender, or wealth would determine promotion through the ranks. Colin Powell was one example of those new policies and the promotion of Lt. General Laura Richardson is another. This is good news.
For the first time in US Army Forces Command, or FORSCOM, history, a woman will be leading the largest command in the Army, representing 776,000 soldiers and 96,000 civilians.
This may be a first for the Army, but Richardson has had other firsts.
She has been with the US Army since 1986, and in 2012 she became the
first female deputy commanding general for the 1st Cavalry Division, known as
“America’s First Team.”
In 2017, she became second in command to Gen. Robert B. Abrams, when she was named the first female deputy commanding general of FORSCOM in Fort Bragg, North Carolina,
the US Army reported.
Now, Richardson will become […]
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Wednesday, October 24th, 2018
Stephan: In most developed nations the society, the culture, recognizes that an educated populace is in the best interest of the nation. That's why increasingly you see in countries in Europe and Asia that various arrangements are made to see that as many people as possible get educated and that it is in the national interest for young men and women to go to college either at no cost or with fees they can easily afford.
This is not true in the United States where, like everything else, the only consideration is profit. As a result at the elementary and secondary school level American children now aren't even in the top 25 nations in terms of math, native language, and historical skills, and people graduating from college do so with crippling debt they may carry for decades.
Higher education is supposed to be the great equalizer, the one-way ticket to the security and prosperity of the middle class. But with 44 million Americans struggling with more than $1.4 trillion of student debt, the very thing that’s supposed to level out the playing field, in fact, makes disparities a lot worse.
A new interactive map released today by Generation Progress, the youth-engagement arm of the Center for American Progress, breaks down average student debt burden—the percent of income spent on student loan payments—for each zip code across the nation. As the third installation of the Mapping Student Debt project, the map aims to highlight exactly which neighborhoods feels the most debt pressure in their everyday spending.
Americans pay an average of 6 percent of each paycheck toward student loans, but in large cities that tend to have more young and low-income borrowers, like New York City or Washington, D.C., debt burden can surpass 10 percent. That’s way more than the 5.5 percent of a paycheck that Americans typically spend on groceries, according to the Department of Agriculture.
Researchers found […]
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