February 26, 2016

Friday Bernie Group Toon Roundup

February 25, 2016

Marijuana legalization advances through the Vt Senate

MONTPELIER - After an afternoon of debate, the Senate voted 16-13 to advance the marijuana legalization bill on Wednesday. The Senate will vote again on Thursday before sending the bill to the House. Usually, the third reading is a perfunctory vote, but the marijuana bill will face additional floor amendments.

The bill would allow adults 21 or older to possess up to an ounce of marijuana, and create licenses for retailers and growers.

Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, said he was "relieved" to get 16 votes. The bill faced opposition from senators on both sides of the issue, with some saying the bill went too far and would negatively impact Vermonters, and others saying the bill failed to go far enough.


more
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/politics/2016/02/24/marijuana-legalization-advances-through-vt-senate/80869210/

February 25, 2016

How the water crisis in Flint returned to the spotlight

BY TERRELL J. STARR
2 hours ago
Danielle Green has spent her life in an uphill fight to help her town of Flint, Mich. overcome poverty. The water crisis that has thrown Flint into the national spotlight has set back those efforts — and hit even closer to home, as her own mother has tested positive for lead poisoning.

She wasn’t sure who she was going to vote for before sitting down with Bernie Sanders on Feb. 15 — but after seeing his "compassion and sincerity" up close she was won over.

"I just like what he stands for, equality. And he has compassion," Green, whose mother tested positive for lead poisoning, told me. "When we went in to speak with him. It was he and his wife. They were both extremely concerned and sympathetic about our situation."

SEE ALSO: The poisoning of Flint, Michigan

Green said she showed Sanders and his wife, Jane, a photo of urine-colored water inside of her mother’s washing machine. Their faces wrinkled in disgust, she remembered.

"There is a compassion and sincerity about him wanting to get something done and that’s close to my heart,” Green said. "I’m a Bernie Sanders fan all of the way. He definitely has my vote because I can see the sincerity in him and in his wife. And that’s what we need: someone who is sincere."



more

http://mashable.com/2016/02/25/bernie-sanders-hug-flint-michigan/#tVJvGcEzfEqm

February 25, 2016

Trump's campaign screws up spelling and name for Oklahoma rally

Donald Trump's campaign has updated a Facebook cover photo that misspelled Oklahoma City and "Oaklahoma City," but the cover photo is still not quite correct.

As of noon Thursday, an updated picture reads that the Republican frontrunner is coming to "Oklahoma, OK."

Trump will be in Oklahoma City on Friday for a rally at 6 p.m. at Cox Convention Center.



http://www.koco.com/news/trump-campaign-spells-oklahoma-wrong-on-event-page-for-fridays-speech/38186142?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=FBPAGE&utm_campaign=KOCO+5+News

The stupid, it burns...

February 25, 2016

Peru has copper. China wants it. And now Beto Chahuayllo is dead.

When the Chinese took over the Las Bambas copper mine here in the Andes Mountains in 2014, Beto Chahuayllo at first barely noticed the change.

He kept on painting buildings at the mine, a job he’d been doing for four years in hopes of saving enough to leave his village and his dirt-floor hut and move his family to nearby Cuzco, where the houses have electricity and his children could attend a better school.

The new owners, a conglomerate of Chinese state-owned companies, bought the mine while it was still under construction, paying $5.85 billion to the Swiss firm that had started developing it.

The Peruvian government welcomed the new investors, predicting that Las Bambas — a gray gash across the mountains set to be second biggest copper mining operation in the world — would boost Peru’s gross domestic product by 1.4% once production began.

The deal was part of China’s dramatic expansion into Latin America over the last decade, a relationship that has brought enormous benefits to both sides. But China’s investments in the region have increasingly met resistance from the people whose voices register least in the global economy.

more
http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-peru-china-mining-20160224-story.html

February 25, 2016

Hillary Clinton's Betrayal of the American Left

By Walker Bragman

It has long been said by disenchanted left-wing people that America has no left wing party—just a right wing and a moderate right wing party. This has been the case for years until recently with the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. One would think liberals would be ecstatic. While many are, once again, the left is cannibalizing itself in the face of opportunity.

I’m just going to say this: Hillary supporters are pessimistic and politically blind. There’s no other way of putting it. They are mostly Baby Boomers, many of whom base their votes on an assumption of Republican narrative dominance that has been for years since the realignment of the south, but no longer exists. For the sake of electability they are afraid of embracing ideas they think are “too radical” even though they may agree with them.

But here are five charts from the nonpartisan PoliticalCompass.org which places candidates on a political spectrum based rough estimations of their ideology. Each one should serve as a wake up call about what is actually “too radical.” The X-axis is the economic scale, and the Y-axis is the social scale:


This graph shows where Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders fall on a political spectrum in comparison to the GOP. We’ll keep referencing this as we go on, but for now, something very interesting should stand out: Bernie Sanders is closer to the middle—the objective political center—than any other candidate running.

much more

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/02/hillary-clintons-betrayal-of-the-american-left.html

February 25, 2016

Thursday TOON Roundup 3- The Rest

Gitmo




Rights



Hollywood


Apple






Fbook



Climate


Media

February 25, 2016

Thursday TOON Roundup 2 -The world's Greatest Deliberative Body!

February 25, 2016

Thursday Toon Roundup 1- Trumpocracy

February 24, 2016

Abortion Clinics Are Closing at a Record Pace

Abortion access in the U.S. has been vanishing at the fastest annual pace on record, propelled by Republican state lawmakers’ push to legislate the industry out of existence. Since 2011, at least 162 abortion providers have shut or stopped offering the procedure, while just 21 opened.

At no time since before 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, has a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy been more dependent on her zip code or financial resources to travel. The drop-off in providers—more than one every two weeks—occurred in 35 states, in both small towns and big cities that are home to more than 30 million women of reproductive age.


No region was exempt, though some states lost more than others. Texas, which in 2013 passed sweeping clinic regulations that are under scrutiny by the Supreme Court, saw the most: at least 30. It was followed by Iowa, with 14, and Michigan, with 13. California’s loss of a dozen providers shows how availability declined, even in states led by Democrats, who tend to be friendly to abortion rights.

Stand-alone clinics, not doctors’ offices or hospitals, perform the vast majority of pregnancy terminations. They account for the vast majority of the tally, which was compiled by Bloomberg News over the past three months and builds on a similar undertaking from 2013.

more

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-24/abortion-clinics-are-closing-at-a-record-pace