January 1, 2017

Plane Carrying Russian 35 'Diplomats' Expelled by Obama Leaves Airport

Source: LawNewz

by Chris White 10:06 am, January 1st, 2017

A Russian plane landed at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. on Saturday to pick up the 35 Russian diplomats expelled by President Obama in recent days. The Obama administration has alleged the expelled Russians meddled in the United States presidential election last month.

Daily Mail US
?@DailyMail

Russian airlift: Moscow sends plane to ferry its 35 expelled diplomats and families out of U.S. http://dailym.ai/2hx7sPV

According to the Daily Mail, the plane is an Ilyushin Il-96 and that is part of the fleet of aircraft often used by Russian President Vladimir Putin and some of the most senior ministers and politicians in the Russian government.

Read more: http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/plane-carrying-russian-35-diplomats-expelled-by-obama-leave-dulles-international-airport/

January 1, 2017

'Malpractice': Dem rep. smacks down Darrell Issa for trying to replace Obamacare with tort reform

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) asserted on Sunday that part of the solution for replacing President Barack Obama’s health care law is to give patients fewer rights when suing doctors for malpractice.

During a panel discussion on CNN’s State of the Union, Delaware Democratic Representative-elect Lisa Blunt Rochester pointed out that many of her constituents relied on the Affordable Care Act.

“That was a landmark I will always remember,” she said of the health care reform law. “That was sort of like seeing an FDR thing in my own lifetime.”

“I talked to a lot of people in my state,” Blunt Rochester explained. “And everybody agreed that no law is perfect. But to the extent that we’ve touched every single American, everything from dealing with pre-existing conditions to discriminating against women for your coverage to your children who are 26 years or under being able to covered, there are so many good things. And what I would hope is that we would come together and say, ‘Okay, what are things that we can agree on?'”

more
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/malpractice-dem-rep-smacks-down-darrell-issa-for-trying-to-replace-obamacare-with-tort-reform/

January 1, 2017

A-List's Trump Snub Hits Him Where It Hurts - by Joy-Ann Reid

Ultimately, denying Trump and Trumpism the cultural cosign they crave is an important statement.

JOY-ANN REID

01.01.17 12:01 AM ET

Republicans are putting on their “smug faces” and scoffing at the raft of celebrity performers, Rockettes and now even a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, who are refusing to raise their microphones, kick up their bare-legged heels or otherwise perform for Donald Trump at his inaugural.

Bristol Palin, despite her own tenuous grasp on celebrity status, took to her blog to snipe at the refuseniks as ”sissies”.

But make no mistake, this disdain drips with envy (and Bristol would be snapping selfies with those A-listers in a heartbeat if they’d have her.) Republicans and conservatives know full well that denying Trump the celebrity and cultural imprimatur he so desperately craves matters, and not just because of the awkward headlines after each new rejection.

America is, in many ways, as much an idea as it is a country. And Americans have long marketed that idea around the world through our popular culture. From jazz, the blues, country and rock to Hollywood movies, culture has in many ways been our greatest export (or our most obnoxious one, depending on your point of view). In decades past, “The Western” defined the image of a cowboy nation; something both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush revived to their domestic political benefit and to the world’s chagrin. The Hollywood of Frank Capra’s era, when Reagan became a minor star, sold the world an image of American pith and patriotism in many ways as defining as the moon landing or the A-bomb.

Our love of Hollywood-style glamour helped elect two presidents: JFK and Reagan, who fulfilled the prophecy that a country so enamored of actors would eventually make one their president. “All in the Family” chronicled the racial and cultural upheavals of the Nixon era. Bill Clinton captured the zeitgeist of young voters in the early 1990s by playing his saxophone on the “Arsenio Hall” show and survived sexual scandal and impeachment in a country reared on “Dallas” and “Dynasty.” It’s arguable that without the mainstreaming power of entertainment shows like “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and the “Cosby Show” and portrayals of black presidents that became routine in film and on television, it would have been that much harder to get to a real first black president.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/01/a-list-s-trump-snub-hits-him-where-it-hurts.html

January 1, 2017

Why You Need to Stand Up to Hate in 2017

HINDSIGHT. Take It From A German: Americans Are Too Timid In Confronting Hate

In Germany, we were taught over and over again that Hitler came to power because ordinary people were afraid to stand up and speak out. Americans could stand to learn that lesson now.

SABINE HEINLEIN

01.01.17 12:01 AM ET

Late in the evening on Christmas day, Stephanie Pazmino slashed a black, transgender man after he offered her a subway seat. “I don’t want to sit next to black people,” Pazmino told the victim. A couple of weeks ago a man walked into a 7-Eleven in the Bronx. He had no intention to purchase anything but wanted to use the store’s microwave. When the Muslim clerk told him that this was against store policy, the man responded that he could do whatever he wanted. He told the clerk to go back to ‘his country’ and threatened to physically harm him.

At the beginning of December a hijab-wearing city transit worker was assaulted by a passenger who confronted her on the 7 train. “You’re a terrorist and you shouldn’t be working for the city,” said the man, according to reports, as he jabbed a finger at her MTA badge. He followed her off the train at Grand Central Terminus, and then pushed her down stairs at the station. (She was taken to hospital with injuries to her knee and ankle.) The attacker was not apprehended, and there were no reports of anyone trying to intervene.

That same week, a Bay Ridge resident named Christopher Nelson called an off-duty police officer wearing a hijab an “ISIS bitch.” “I will cut your throat!” Mr. Nelson threatened her. “Go back to your country!”

According to the New York Police Department, bias incidents in New York have spiked 400 percent in the two weeks that followed the election of Donald J. Trump, compared to the same period last year. The Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy organization that tracks hate incidents and provides tolerance training in schools, has released a report that stated that bias incidents have surpassed the 1,000 mark since the election. The vast majority of these incidents were directed towards immigrant women.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/01/take-it-from-a-german-americans-are-too-timid-in-confronting-hate.html

January 1, 2017

Chris Christie's Book of Hubris - by the NYT Editorial Board

After a disastrous showing in the Republican presidential primaries and getting booted from the Trump transition team, Gov. Chris Christie returned home last month to the comfort of his power base in Trenton, only to find old statehouse allies brandishing pitchforks and torches, not the legislative favors he had hoped for.

On Dec. 20, lawmakers rejected a measure that would have relaxed state ethics law so that Mr. Christie, who has served for seven years, could profit from a book deal during his last year in office. They also denied salary increases for Mr. Christie’s cabinet members and other officials that would have cost about $10 million a year. And they rejected Mr. Christie’s “revenge bill,” which would have ended the government’s obligation to place paid legal notices in local newspapers, including those that had bedeviled the governor during the Bridgegate scandal.

The defeat certainly provides fresh material for an honest memoir, but Mr. Christie, suffering the lowest popularity ratings of his career, is not likely to tell all. Too bad, because it’s a spellbinding tale of political hubris — Mr. Christie cynically shifting roles from tough-talking rival of Donald Trump to fawning acolyte after Mr. Christie’s own candidacy failed. The governor soon was described in news accounts as Mr. Trump’s traveling “manservant,” and was caught in TV moments with a facial expression somewhere between ennui and adoration as he stood silently awaiting his future at Mr. Trump’s side.

A gripping chapter would be Mr. Christie’s account of how he suddenly fell from grace as chief of Mr. Trump’s transition, a post with enormous patronage power that evaporated without even a tweet from Mr. Trump about his being just another loser. (Allies of Mr. Christie say he holds out hope that Mr. Trump will turn back to him with a job when the governance gets tough.)

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/chris-christies-book-of-hubris.html?emc=edit_th_20170101&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284&_r=0