Davis Hammet, once again, gives Kansas and the area, the region, fantastic information on Kansas' state legislation, sure, but also, now, on the Coronavirus, too, and its effects in Kansas.
Kansans--and even Missourians--would do well to follow Mr. Hammet at his organization, shown here below.
January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
February 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
February 25: “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
February 26: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
February 26: “We're going very substantially down, not up.”
February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
February 28: “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
March 2: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”
March 2: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
March 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
March 5: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
March 5: “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
March 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
March 6: “I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.”
March 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
Okay, so we're getting a new airport, a single terminal airport and it's going to cost us all big time and the tear down and new construction is going on now. We all know that.
I have an idea.
A suggestion.
We're the "City of Fountains", right? Sure we are.
Simple, straightforward idea. (You can see where this is going).
On the entrance/exit to this magnificent, unnecessary, expensive, wasteful, fiscally and environmentally irresponsible, again, boondoggle, I'm hoping it's already been brought up and put into the plans to have a huge, beautiful fountain, of course.
It only makes sense.
It would be our way of kind of showing off but also, better yet, putting our local thumbprint on everyone's experiences as they, yes, enter and exit this new structure and our city.
We got everything else wrong about our airport from throwing away the functioning, growing one we had to now buying up this new one.
Let's get this one thing right, anyway.
And not one of those God-awful modern sculptures, drizzling water down like we had at our previous airport.
It should be a large, full-blown, beautiful, spraying fountain not unlike the one across from the entrance to Union Station. But maybe even bigger.
Also maybe not unlike the grand, once more, spraying fountains everyone sees and remembers in Las Vegas. Something like that.
As for the price and cost and paying for it?
How about one--or more--of the area's philanthropic families picking up the tab? They get naming rights and a tax write-off, of course. Maybe the Hallmark Fountain?? Or another Block? Or Kauffman? Or whomever?
So, hattya' say, Kansas City?
Let's do this.
Let's get at least one thing right about our shiny new airport.
It looks for all the world as though Joe Biden will be the Democratic Party candidate for the presidency this Fall.
Sure, Bernie Sanders could still pull yet more delegates in the states that have yet to vote but it does look like, between the money and corporations and organizations that are already behind Mr. Biden and that will be behind him, he will likely gain this political nod and position.
So as the title says, this is how bad politics, presidential, federal government is just now in our nation.
Joe Biden would be a HUGE improvement over Donald, "The John", Trump but he is no way a change agent. Not for the environment, heck, not even for the people.
I've written and posted here, in the last 3 years, some of the worst of the current administration in our White House. God knows this President is ignorant of our government and personally arrogant and misogynist and sexist and racist and homophobic and so much more.
So yes, Joe Biden will be an improvement.
Yahoo.
He can keep us from going over any further national and international brinks, so to speak. He and Congress should be able to, at last, get and keep Russians out of our elections and so much more.
Forget about much significant change in our health care system.
Or change in much of anything else, for that matter.
No, no. Joe Biden is, hmm, at best, a "decent" man. He means well. In his career in Congress, he's been "Go Along Joe." He famously/infamously voted for the Iraq war and on and on.
The wealthy and corporate America no way want a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren in the White House, know that, fellow Americans. They no way want to allow or make possible true, fundamental change, changes back for the people, the middle-, working- or lower-classes.
All that can be said for him, for or about Joe Biden, is that he's no Donald Trump. He's an improvement over that.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how desperately bad our national politics and government are presently.
These are dire times indeed.
We are bought and sold.
God help America.
Link: More of the Democrats and Democratic Party stifling true Progressives--
In a part of town segregated, by law, by laws, decades ago, for minorities, for African-Americans.
Could they be more time deaf or blind?
And I assume this developer wants to put it there because--hello?--land and property and buildings over on that side of town are less expensive??
Because of that same racism and legalized segregation all those years ago?
Could you be more cruel? Or exploitative?
This very much reminds me of the prisons that were opened and created in the Southern United States that were put on former plantations. Own them first the, when you don't own them any more, trump up charges and throw them in jails and prisons.
And then, if you read the article, which I personally highly recommend, for what it's worth, you'll see how the company that runs these ICE shelters for the government, has been abusive and racist, to say the least and repeatedly, over time.
Kansas City has some incredible history and in lots of ways. Today's date points out one more.
The nation's first African-American Congressman, Senator was from--you guessed it--right here in the Kansas City area.
Hiram Rhoades Revels was destined for greatness. Born in the 1820s (historical accounts vary on the exact year) he fought at the Battle of Vicksburg and served as a chaplain for the Union Army. And, reportedly at the request of Fredrick Douglas, helped recruit and organize black soldiers during the Civil War. In Missouri, and two other states, Revels was an educator, and in 1865, founded and led St. Paul A.M.E. Church in nearby Independence, MO. Years later, he also became the first African American U.S. Senator in Mississippi, filling the seat vacated by Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.
So the first African-American member of Congress, Senator, was from right here in our own area.
What do you call a news program in a major city of America that only has white people on it, discussing what are supposed to be local issues?
Not one African-American. Not one Hispanic or Latina/Latino. Nothing.
Only white people.
What is that but racist?
On both programs' panels, not one "person of color." "Ruckus" did, this week, have the head of our local Jazz Museum, Rashida Phillips on at the beginning of the program but no minority, save a woman, on the panel.
Only white people can give answers to what our problems are and what the solutions might be?
And how, exactly, can people like Dave Helling and Steve Kraske and Mike Mahoney support and continue to support this and these programs?
Why does the local Hispanic media like Dos Mundos support this group?
Yessiree. Here we go again. One more week of KCPT and Mike Shanin saving the city, saving us all with four lily, bleached-white Caucasians on the panel of the weekly "news" program "Ruckus."
Not one African-American.
Not one HIspanic or Latino/Latina.
Nada.
Zip.
They show African-Americans and Hispanics in their promotional commercials and requests for funding and get this, they advertise that they're supported by the Hispanic community's Dos Mundos newspaper but actually have a minority person from the area on the program??
FUGGEDABOUDIT.
They did have 2 whole wimmin on the program so at least it wasn't completely all white males. There was at least ONE minority. I guess we have to be thankful for that.
Given that it's PBS and a publicly-funded program, you wouldn't think this would even be an issue. It is really stunning. Not only is it this way but it's been this way since KCPT began.
You'd think this was 1920's or 1940's or even 1960's America.
But it surely isn't.
In Mr. Shanin's and his program's defense, I will say that they TALKED about inviting a black female singer to be on the program. In the future.
Not done there, our PBS station KCPT also ran FOUR VERY WHITE PEOPLE, again, on "Week in Review."
Not one "person of color."
Honestly. It's stunning.
What chutzpah. What an insult.
It insults our intelligence as well as the audience, the entire city.
Democratic Party Senator Brian Schatz, of Hawai'i, seemed to say it right and best Monday, I thought, about this President and his impeachment in the Senate.
“There are millions of Americans that have formed a basic expectation about how a trial is to function, based on hundreds of years of law and based on their common sense. Make no mistake: what the senate did was an affront to the basic idea of a trial. And for all the crocodile tears of my colleagues, all the fake outrage at the accusation, we must call this what it was. It’s a cover-up.
I don’t know what Mulvaney or Bolton or Pompeo would say, I don’t know what the documents will illuminate, and I believe it is normally very dangerous to ascribe motives to fellow senators when criticizing their vote, but it is impossible for me to escape the conclusion that they don’t want to know, that they wanted to get this over with before the Superbowl, of all things. They are afraid of this house of cards falling all the way down.
As I look at the republican side of the chamber, I know this moment in history has made their particular jobs extraordinarily difficult, requiring uncommon courage. They have to risk the scorn of their voters, their social circle, their colleagues, and their president in order to do the right thing. On one level I knew the likely outcome, but the bitter taste of injustice lingers in my mouth.
On behalf of everyone who couldn’t get away with an unpaid traffic fine, is in jail for stealing groceries so that they could eat that night, who can’t get a job because of medical debt, I say shame on anyone who places this president or any president above the law. The president is not above the law. No one is above the law. The president is guilty on both counts.”
DO THE RIGHT THING! Cancel the CHIEF'S Victory Parade on Wednesday! Move it to Saturday! We are on a Collision Course with a Major Ice and Snow Winter Storm on February 5, 2020! We waited 50 Years, why can't we Wait 3 More Days for the Safety of the Team and the Public? As a Photographer, we will have much better Photographs for the History of Kansas City Archives on a Non Snow and Ice Day! Plus that weather can be Deadly! It Ain't Worth Doing It! Don't Blow this One Day! There are NO DO-OVERS!
It makes sense. On Saturday, there isn't a forecast of snow, it's supposed to be warmer and far more could attend, all 3. Someone out there said the NFL requires any celebration like this is required to take place within 3 days of the win. That seems bizarre but I don't know if it's true. I can't imagine why they'd care, have this rule or why it effects them. I would also think they'd make exceptions for weather, as in this case, or other situations.
I don't think it will happen but it's a good thought. The current forecast does, yes, call for snow, but the expectations of total snow inches is about one inch.
This idea has come up in a few places. That is, what if Barack Obama said or did even SOME of the things this orange Republican Party Trump has said or done. Bill Maher brougt it up first.
Can you imagine?
Republicans and Right Wingers would be FLIPPING OUT.
And then now? With this impeachment? Are you kidding?
If then President Barack Obama asked the head of another foreign nation---say, oh, the head of the Ukraine---for a "favor", to investigate the son or daughter of his foremost political rival in a current campaign for an election for his very job?
Can you even imagine the uproar from the Republicans?
FUGGEDABOUDIT.
They'd freaking explode.
They'd have him in impeachment status 20 minutes after the phone call ended. They'd flip.
Nicholas Kristof very fairly and appropriately proposes this very same question today, again, in Sunday's New York Times.
Consider Trump’s impeachment from some other angles.
Just a bit of the article:
What if it were Obama who had been caught in this Ukraine scandal?
My guess is that if it were Obama, Republicans would be demanding witnesses (as they did in the 1999 trial of Bill Clinton). Given how aggressively Republican members of Congress pursued the Benghazi events — multiple investigations, eventually finding no evidence of wrongdoing by either Obama or then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — I’m confident that the G.O.P. would be insisting that Obama be removed, with frequent chants of “lock him up.”
...“Imagine if our president had leveraged his role as commander in chief to convince a foreign power to open an investigation into his political opponent. Imagine if the president’s rival lost the primary because news broke that he was under investigation. Imagine if that meant the president faced a weaker candidate in November 2020 — and won re-election as a result.”
The foreign country could then blackmail our president by threatening to expose the corruption, gaining leverage over our foreign policy. Meanwhile, the president might abuse presidential power in other ways in the belief that impunity was complete. If all this eventually became public, and truth does have a way of trickling out, this would have devastating consequences for the legitimacy of American elections.
This thought experiment perhaps isn’t so far-fetched. We know now that Trump’s pressure on Ukraine caused alarm in the White House and the intelligence community, with National Security Adviser John Bolton likening it to a “drug deal.” Yet for all that uproar, it almost didn’t become public. It was only because of a whistle-blower that the information began to emerge, and the military aid to Ukraine was released only after the White House became aware of the whistle-blower and was being pressured by Congress.
In short, Trump’s plan almost succeeded — and in any case, he will get away with it in the sense that he is sure to be acquitted by the Senate. When Republicans suggest that Trump did nothing wrong, what message does that impunity send to Trump and to future presidents?
The third thought experiment is simple: What if Trump weren’t president, but was like almost any other person in America?
What if he were a high school vice principal who ensured that a police detective’s son would be accepted in advanced placement classes — and then added, “I’d like you to do us a favor, though.” The favor would be an investigation of the vice principal’s ex-wife before their upcoming child custody hearing, in hopes of tilting the outcome in his favor.
In that situation, the vice principal would be fired. We all recognize that no school official or other person in a government bureaucracy should use public power for private benefit.
So a last query: Shouldn’t we have as high a standard for the president of the United States as for a school vice principal?
How any President could ask the head of another, foreign nation to investigate the son of his foremost political rival during a current, ongoing campaign for election to his very office and that somehow be okay is beyond, way beyond me. That alone is enough. But then to withhold nearly 400 million dollars in aid Congress had approved and appropriated to help that nation against our own very public, national enemy in their time of need until he got such investigation?
Again, fuggedaboudit.
How anyone could say or think that what this Orange One has done is not impeachable is just incomprehensible.
When a Brooklyn politician tells transplants to “go back to Ohio,” what exactly does that mean?
It's an article about a public figure who lamented the gentrification of the Big Apple and all the people from "flyover country" intruding and inhabiting the city, thus driving up prices and sucking the personality of the city, out of it. How it ends:
Five years ago a school district near Kansas City, Mo., gained wide attention when a transgender student was crowned homecoming queen. Three years after that, two elementary schools in the district installed gender-neutral bathrooms.
If you are welcome where you are, maybe you don’t have to leave
So kudos to you, Kansas City. Kudos to us. We're opening our minds out there.
The President of the United States asked the head of a foreign nation to investigate his foremost rival in the current campaign for election for his very job.
How is that, alone, not impeachable?
Then, on top of that, PEOPLE IN HIS OWN ADMINISTRATION thought, said and testified that this same President was WITHHOLDING NEARLY 400 MILLION DOLLARS IN AID that Congress authorized to help an ally, the Ukraine, against our known, sworn enemy.
Again, if this isn't, if these aren't impeachable, what is?
Oh, heck yes.
It wasn't so much a quid pro quo as it was extortion.
Mike Shanin, his weekly news program "Ruckus" and our PBS station KCPT all did it again.
On this evening's weekly program, on tonight's panel, they had 2 white men, a very white--even blonde haired--woman and one black man.
One person "of color."
And even the woman was clearly a Right Winger, very likely Republican since she called out for Mike Pompeo, praising him and saying he should run for President in the future.
Again, I say and ask again, how incredible would it be if KCPT and Mike Shanin and this show--and "Week in Review" for that matter, their other weekly news program--consistently, reliably, week after week, would have, at worst, one white man, one white woman, an African-American of any sex and a Hispanic or Latina, again, of either sex?
How great would that be?
And it wouldn't be difficult, either.
They would finally, at long last, reliably and dependably have a far better cross section of everyone in the metropolitan area instead of so thoroughly covering white people and their viewpoints and issues.
We can dream.
Can't we?
Until they do, isn't this just media approved racism? And segregation?
For now, they cover, again, the white viewpoint solidly and dependably.
I never thought we'd be or do worse than Richard Nixon. I never thought we'd be or do worse than Ronald Reagan. I never thought we'd be or do worse than George W Bush.
I was wrong. I was very wrong.
While now we need to defeat this Donald Trump come November, I wonder to the point of fear our ability to put this all behind us, all of Mr. Trump's words and actions and emotions, and to heal and become one nation again.
He’s maybe the most dangerous politician of my lifetime. He’s helped transform the Republican Party into a cult, worshiping at the altar of authoritarianism. He’s damaged our country in ways that may take a generation to undo. The politician I’m talking about, of course, is Mitch McConnell.
Two goals for November 3, 2020: The first and most obvious is to get the worst president in history out of the White House. That’s necessary but not sufficient. We also have to flip the Senate and remove the worst Senate Majority Leader in history.
Like Trump, Mitch McConnell is no garden-variety bad public official. McConnell puts party above America, and Trump above party. Even if Trump is gone, if the Senate remains in Republican hands and McConnell is reelected, America loses because McConnell will still have a chokehold on our democracy.
This is the man who refused for almost a year to allow the Senate to consider President Obama’s moderate Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland.
And then, when Trump became president, this is the man who got rid of the age-old Senate rule requiring 60 Senators to agree on a Supreme Court nomination so he could ram through not one but two Supreme Court justices, including one with a likely history of sexual assault.
This is the man who rushed through the Senate, without a single hearing, a $2 trillion tax cut for big corporations and wealthy Americans – a tax cut that raised the government debt by almost the same amount, generated no new investment, failed to raise wages, but gave the stock market a temporary sugar high because most corporations used the tax savings to buy back their own shares of stock.
McConnell refuses to support what’s needed for comprehensive election security – although both the U.S. intelligence community and Special Prosecutor Mueller say Moscow is continuing to hack into our voting machines and to weaponize disinformation through social media.
McConnell has earned the nickname “Moscow Mitch” because he’s doing exactly what Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump want him to do – leave America vulnerable to another Putin-supported victory for Trump.
McConnell is also blocking bipartisan background-check legislation for gun sales, even after the mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, El Paso and Odessa, Texas.
So even if Trump is out of the White House, if McConnell remains Senate Majority Leader he will not allow a Democratic president to govern.
He won’t allow debate or votes on Medicare for All, universal pre-K, a wealth tax, student loan forgiveness, or the Green New Deal. He won’t allow confirmation votes on judges nominated by a Democratic president.
The good news is McConnell is the least popular senator in the country with his own constituents. He’s repeatedly sacrificed Kentucky to Trump’s agenda – for example, agreeing to Trump’s so-called emergency funding for a border wall, which would take $63 million away from projects like a new middle school on the border between Kentucky and Tennessee.
McConnell is even cut funding for black lung disease suffered by Kentucky coal miners. I know from my years as labor secretary that coal mining is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and the number of cases of incurable black lung disease has been on the rise. But when a group of miners took a 10-hour bus ride to Washington this past summer to ask McConnell to restore the funding, McConnell met with them for one minute and then refused to help them. No wonder Democrats are lining up in Kentucky to run against Moscow Mitch in 2020.
The not-so-good news is that McConnell is up for re-election the same day as Donald Trump, and Trump did well in Kentucky in 2016. Which means we have to help organize Kentucky, just as we have to organize other states that may not be swing states in the presidential election but could take back the Senate.
Consider Georgia: Republican Senator Johnny Isakson is retiring, meaning both of Georgia’s Senate seats are now up for grabs. And this one extra seat—in a state that is trending blue—could be the tipping point that allows Democrats to win enough seats to end GOP control of the Senate.
Trump has to go, but so does McConnell.
Here’s what you can do: Wherever you are in the country, you can donate to McConnell’s challengers. If you live in or near Kentucky, you can get out and knock doors or make calls. Or if you have friends or family in the state, encourage them to get involved.
As to the question of who is worse, Trump or McConnell — the answer is that it’s too close to call. The two of them have degraded and corrupted American democracy. We need them both out.
Here’s what you can do: Wherever you are in the country, you can donate to McConnell’s challengers. If you live in or near Kentucky, you can get out and knock doors or make calls. Or if you have friends or family in the state, encourage them to get involved.
As to the question of who is worse, Trump or McConnell — the answer is that it’s too close to call. The two of them have degraded and corrupted American democracy. We need them both out.
From none other than that champion of the "little guy", Professor Robert Reich.
5 Ways to Stop Corporations From Ruining the Future of Work
Artificial intelligence, robots, and other advanced technologies are already transforming the world of work – and their impact is just beginning. They’ll grow the economy and make it more efficient. But unless American workers are involved, that growth and technological change will benefit only those at the top.
The challenge of making economic growth and technological change benefit all working people and not just those at the top is the same challenge I’ve written about and talked a lot about over the years. It’s the challenge of reversing widening inequalities of income, wealth, and political power. A big part of the solution is making sure workers have a voice and a union. That way they have more bargaining leverage to get a piece of the pie that in recent years has been going almost entirely to the top.
We shouldn’t think of emerging technologies as things we have no control over – as if they just happen automatically, inevitably. We have the power to shape technological progress. We need to assert our roles as workers and members of a democratic society to ensure that new technologies benefit all of us.
Here are five ways to do so:
First, workers need a stronger voice, from the boardroom to the shop floor. Workers at all levels should participate in the design, development, and deployment of technology in the workplace – as they do in Germany.
This is not only good for workers. It’s also good for companies that otherwise waste countless dollars trying to figure out how best to use new technologies without consulting frontline workers who are closest to processes and products, and know how to get maximum use out of new technologies.
In the early 2000s, Home Depot spent over $1 billion in automation but reduced investment in their workforce. In the end, because workers were left out of the process, many of these automated systems failed and had to be scaled back.
Second, if we want corporations to invest in innovation and their workers we need to reform Wall Street. So instead of buying back their own shares of stock to manipulate stock prices and laying off employees to boost short-term profits, corporations can make the long-term investments that are necessary for their competitiveness and for the competitiveness of their workers.
Every corporation can get access to the same gadgets. What makes a corporation uniquely competitive is its people – how its workers utilize the new technologies.
Third, we need to rebuild strong collaboration between government and business in researching and developing new technologies, so they work for the benefit of all. That’s what we did in the three decades after World War II, when the Defense Department worked with the private sector to develop the Internet, telecommunications, and aerospace; when the National Institutes of Health did basic research for pharmaceuticals and medical breakthroughs; and our national laboratories pioneered research on biofuel, nuclear, wind and solar energy.
Conservatives often object that it’s not the role of government to steer technological development. Yet most of the cutting-edge technology that’s the crowning achievement of the United States’ private sector was in fact developed as a result of public innovation and public funding.
Our government is still steering technological development. The difference now is we have the capacity to steer that development in a way that generates broad-based prosperity, not just jaw-dropping incomes for a few innovators and investors.
Fourth, a more open and forward-looking industrial policy can help steer the nation’s economic growth toward combating our central challenges – climate change, poverty, our crumbling infrastructure, costly and inaccessible health care, lack of quality education.
Tackling big ambitious goals like transitioning to clean energy can encourage collaboration between different sectors of the economy. Backed by the right technologies, they can also be sources of the good jobs of the future.
Conservatives claim the government shouldn’t pick winners and losers. But that’s what we’ve done for years. We already have an industrial policy when the government bails out Wall Street banks, gives special tax breaks to oil, and hands out subsidies to Big Agriculture. But it’s a backwards industrial policy, led by powerful industry lobbyists. We need a forward-looking industrial policy that develops the industries and jobs of the future, and does so openly, in ways that benefit working people and society.
Finally, we need to assure that our workers are protected from the downsides: That new information technologies along with their increasing potential for monitoring and surveilling workers don’t undermine worker autonomy, dignity, and privacy. That the use of algorithms to manage workers doesn’t give top management unwarranted power in the workplace. And that workplace technologies don’t make work more unpredictable for millions of workers.
Workers need some control over how these technologies and the data they produce are used. And for this they need strong unions.
New technologies advancing toward our workplace shouldn’t reduce the standard of living of Americans. They should raise our standard of living. But that won’t happen automatically.
Workers need a voice. Government needs a responsible role. We deserve a forward-looking and open industrial policy. And the rules of the game need to be fair. We should all be able to steer the direction of technological change and influence how new technologies affect our lives.
I found the following post today on Facebook on the page of author, reporter and former correspondent for NPR until 2014.
As I said, so many things too many of us Americans don't know in our world. I thought this enlightening, if not even important.
Last night, for a few girlfriends, I made baba ghanoush for the first time in a long time. Blistering the eggplants’ skins to black, hulling out the pomegranate seeds, I thought of the first time I was served it -- in a beautiful salon, the snow falling outside, the carpets unfurled and the talk, mesmerizing. I was in North Tehran, at the home of two scholars, Goli and Karim Imami. It was 1995, 16 years after the Iranian revolution, and NPR hadn’t had anyone in the country in years. In the short two weeks I’d have there, I met scores of people -- and even, fell in love with an amazing man over tea and jasmine and jazz.
I would make several more trips to Iran in the 90’s and 2000, one of which, for the Washington Post magazine, would even lead to meeting my husband a few years later. Iran is a spectacularly beautiful country -- you can ski right outside Tehran, or visit the Caspian Sea.
Once, doing a story for Vanity Fair, I got stuck overnight on a train with Faezeh Rafsanjani, the daughter of President Rafsanjani, who was the country’s leader then. We went skiing, too. I made many, many friends -- and my Iranian boyfriend, Ramin, moved with me for a year to Canada, where he became a citizen, (his brothers were already there) before he returned to Tehran and his business. He was a brilliant physicist and poet.
We’ve lost touch, but so many other friends remain -- Mamak, the art collector, scholar and curator, Houman, the graphic artist who had his own marketing and design firm (he’d spend eight years in America before returning to aging parents), Azar Nafisi, the author who emigrated and wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran and I remember, too, all the women who were pushing for change. Maziar Bahari, the documentary filmmaker who was imprisoned in 2009 and lives in London today.
Iran has had internal struggles since the dawn of 20th century, sometimes erecting democratic measures, as in its 1906 constitution (demolished in 1979), and other times, more often, seen those instincts suppressed by monarchies or theocracies -- but it is the Americans overthrew its democratically-elected prime minister Mosaddegh in 1953, in favor of the US-dependent Shah and his brutally repressive regime. The 1979 revolution was wildly popular before it was essentially hijacked by its theocracy, which has enacted its own brutality on the Iranian people, murdering thousands of people. And one way or another, they have held onto power ever since, despite mass demonstrations and international pressure.
But at least Iran, in 2015, under the nuclear agreement JCPOA, signaled it would give diplomacy a try, and abide by the international nuclear agreement that Donald Trump couldn’t wait to tear up, a racist’s rebuke to an African-American president, whose hated legacy he’d do anything to destroy. Now, the forces of progressivism have been dealt a tremendous blow in the killing of Soleimani.
Even Iranians who would have hated his malicious lethality believe in Iran’s sovereignty-- and there is plenty of hatred within Iran for its own leadership. There were huge demonstrations last fall.
Listening to my former colleague Mary Louise Kelley conduct her excellent interview with Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, I thought back to a time when I’d interviewed him in New York, and how bitter and angry he sounded last night.
As why should he not?
Skills of diplomacy have failed-- and this president has hollowed out intelligence in all the various military sectors, left nearly a score of top defense and intelligence positions vacant, all so that he can act arbitrarily and conduct his whims by tweet.2020 dawns with fear -- the fires in Australia, the gaslighting from the White House and its enablers like Pompeo, the missile strikes raining down in an Iraq caught helplessly in between the US and Iran, and the Iranian people insulted and enraged.
We talked so much, when I was in Iran 20 years ago, about "goftegu," dialogue - could there be a dialogue between Iran and democracies. Two men had founded a magazine by that name. And even though at least them would have to flee, (as did many others; Iran is a bad actor to its own people as well) at least, while Barack Obama was president, we had some dialogue. We had diplomacy. Iranians had sympathy for Americans after 2001.
If there is any sympathy there today, I can imagine, it is among the kinds of educated people who’ve struggled under this regime, who know too well what it is like to have a malignant actor with autocratic instincts at the helm. We have a man who would destroy culture, something he does not understand, and who celebrates war crimes.
I just hope we can survive long enough to get rid of him.
Until he is gone, the world is so much less safe.
My baba ghanoush was well-received. Restraint, restraint, restraint.
"If a defense wants to prove their client is innocent, and there is abundant evidence this is so - which demonstrates that the prosecution was reckless and unwarranted - doesn't an innocent man demand..the evidence be presented and all the witnesses who can vindicate him come forward to lay it to rest once and for all?
Wouldn't an innocent man who knows the evidence proves it want that evidence be shown to the world - and left there forevermore as proof of this conspiracy - the conspiracy that has no basis?"
Trump lies like most people breathe, and today was no exception. His speech this morning addressing Iran’s missile attacks on two American army bases in Iraq was riddled with misleading statements, inflammatory rhetoric, and outright lies. Among the most outrageous of Trump’s tall tales:
He claimed the Iranian people chanted “Death to America” on the day the nuclear deal was signed.
In reality, thousands of Iranians took to the streets to celebrate the signing of the nuclear deal, elated that a diplomatic channel between Iran and the United States had finally been opened after years of tensions. Public dancing, while normally banned, was even permitted as Iran’s citizens banded together in a rare display of national unity. He repeated a wild claim that the U.S. gave Iran "$150 billion, not to mention $1.8 billion in cash" after signing the deal.
This is patently untrue.
After the deal was signed, Iran regained access to $150 billion of its own assets, which had been frozen abroad. The $1.8 billion in cash was from a 1970s-era deal in which Iran paid the U.S. $400 million for military equipment that never ended up getting delivered due to the revolution, which disintegrated diplomatic relations. After the deal was signed in 2015, the U.S. agreed to pay Iran the original $400 million in addition to $1.3 billion in interest.
He again claimed that he had destroyed "100 percent of ISIS and its territorial caliphate". While its territorial caliphate is no longer, ISIS is very much alive and well.
In fact, ISIS is poised on the edge of resurgence thanks to Trump’s brash foreign policy decisions, including his abandonment of our Kurdish allies in Syria last October and last week’s strike against General Soleimani.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the lies Trump spouted this morning. At a time when world peace hangs precipitously in the balance, it is unconscionable that the American people cannot rely on the president to tell us the basic truth.
Homicides fell below 500 last year in Chicago for the first since 2015, marking the third consecutive year of double-digit decreases, official Police Department statistics show.
Anyone can and no doubt will say what they will about the Windy City but if it, the city and the police, are getting good results, this kind of results, cutting homicides and shootings, with their population and size, it seems we here in Kansas City could likely learn things from them. Someone--the police chief, our new Mayor, someone, ought to maybe get up there, ask some questions and see what they're doing to get good results.
It's one thing for President Trump to have supporters, sure, and a lot of us don't understand even that but there are those who take this even further. In fact, they take it much, much further.
Donald J Trump. A "man of God". Or worse, a God himself.
Right.
To clear this up, let's make a list, even just a short list of hings we know about Donald J Trump:
He was given 493 million dollars from his father, upon his father's death
He declared bankruptcy at least 6 times, in his business dealings
He was found guilty of fraud through his Trump University and had to repay 25 million dollars
He was found guilty by a judge, in a court of law, for stealing 2 million dollars from a charity. And it was a charity for American Veterans from which he stole this money
He was married and cheated on this first wife
He ended up divorcing his first wife and marrying the woman with whom he cheated on this first wife
He cheated on his second wife
He ended up divorcing his second wife and marrying the woman with whom he cheated on that second wife
He cheated on his third wife
He paid $130,000 to the woman with whom he cheated on his third wife in order to buy her silence because, after all, he was in the middle of campaigning for election to the Presidency, the highest office in the nation
And that's all just for starters. There's a lot more, certainly, but I think the above all make my point.
If that's a God, that is one warped, even sick God, if not also universe.
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