tenderfoot

tenderfoot's Journal

November 14, 2019

Italian council is flooded immediately after rejecting measures on climate change

Veneto regional council, which is located on Venice's Grand Canal, was flooded for the first time in its history on Tuesday night -- just after it rejected measures to combat climate change.

The historic Italian city has been brought to its knees this week by the worst flooding there in more than 50 years.
And the council chamber in Ferro Fini Palace started to take in water around 10 p.m. local time, as councilors were debating the 2020 regional budget, Democratic Party councilor Andrea Zanoni said in a long Facebook post.

https://www.facebook.com/andreazanonix/posts/10159116946155299

more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/14/europe/veneto-council-climate-change-floods-trnd-intl-scli/index.html

https://twitter.com/brianschatz/status/1195041124404146177

November 14, 2019

NBC News thinks the hearing "lacked the pizzazz necessary to capture public attention."

Because life is a reality television show... and Trumpism is normal...

They're getting ratioed hard...

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1194830580896145408

November 13, 2019

Chuck Woolery: Supporting Trump 'pretty much destroyed my career'

Outside of hosting a gameshow, I was unaware that he had a career.

Supporting President Trump and taking a conservative stance in public ruined Chuck Woolery's career and got him shadow-banned from Twitter, said the former game show host on "Fox & Friends" Wednesday.

Woolery tweeted about his personal political beliefs last week and claimed he paid a heavy professional price for simply expressing how he felt.

"To answer your question. Yes, I have pretty much destroyed my career by openly supporting Trump and letting all know, I am a conservative. Painful at times, but true. After all is said and done. It was my choice and I can live with it. I would do it all again," he tweeted.

"It was kind of a self-deprecating tweet I sent out because I know I'm shadow-banned. I've got about 650 or 700,000 followers," he told "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade.

<snip>

Political discourse in America has gotten so out of control that it's emboldened people to ruin the lives of those they disagree with, Woolery added.

"What you have wrong is... the companies who you represent are just inundated with all of this negative [stuff]. It's not true," he said. "They just make this stuff up and throw it out [there] because they want to destroy your life. They don't just want to disagree with you. They are so vehement and so virulent. They just want to destroy you and that's their purpose."

more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebrity/chuck-woolery-supporting-trump-pretty-much-destroyed-my-career/ar-BBWHEWz?ocid=ob-fb-enus-280

November 12, 2019

Senior Trump official embellished resume, had face on fake Time cover

WASHINGTON — A senior Trump administration official has embellished her résumé with misleading claims about her professional background — even creating a fake Time magazine cover with her face on it — raising questions about her qualifications to hold a top position at the State Department.

An NBC News investigation found that Mina Chang, the deputy assistant secretary in the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations, has inflated her educational achievements — like claiming, falsely, to be a Harvard grad — and exaggerated the scope of her nonprofit's work.

Whatever her qualifications, Chang had a key connection in the Trump administration. Brian Bulatao, a top figure in the State Department and longtime friend of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, attended a fundraiser for her nonprofit in Dallas and once donated $5,500 to her charity, according to a former colleague of Chang's.

Chang, who assumed her post in April, also invented a role on a U.N. panel, claimed she had addressed both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and implied she had testified before Congress.

<snip>

"Here you are on Time magazine, congratulations! Tell me about this cover and how it came to be?" asks the interviewer, who hosts a YouTube show.

"Well, we started using drone technology in disaster response and so that was when the whole talk of how is technology being used to save lives in disaster response scenarios, I suppose I brought some attention to that," Chang said.

The interviewer says Chang brought the Time cover to the interview as an example of her work.

Time magazine spokesperson Kristin Matzen said the cover is "not authentic."

<snip>

hang says in her official biography that she is as an "alumna" of Harvard Business School. But according to the university, Chang attended a seven-week course in 2016, and does not hold a degree from the institution.

Her biography on the State Department website says she is a "graduate" of a program at the Army War College. But the program she attended was a four-day seminar on national security, according to the college.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/senior-trump-official-embellished-resume-had-face-fake-time-cover-n1080356

November 12, 2019

Trump adviser Stephen Miller injected white nationalist agenda into Breitbart, investigation reveals

Emails to former Breitbart writer show Miller focused on inserting white nationalist talking points to shape 2016 election coverage

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller shaped the 2016 election coverage of the hard right-wing website Breitbart with material drawn from prominent white nationalists, Islamophobes, and far-right websites, according to a new investigative report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Miller also railed against those wishing to remove Confederate monuments and flags from public display in the wake of Dylann Roof’s murderous 2015 attack on a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and praised America’s early 20th-century race-based, restrictionist immigration policies.

Emails from Miller to a former Breitbart writer, sent before and after he joined the Trump campaign, show Miller obsessively focused on injecting white nationalist-style talking points on race and crime, Confederate monuments, and Islam into the far-right website’s campaign coverage, the SPLC report says.

<snip>

The SPLC story is based largely on emails provided by a former Breitbart writer, Katie McHugh. McHugh was fired by Breitbart over a series of anti-Muslim tweets and has since renounced the far right, telling the SPLC that the movement is “evil”.

However, throughout 2015 and 2016, as the Trump campaign progressed and she became an increasingly influential voice at Breitbart, McHugh told the SPLC that Miller urged her in a steady drumbeat of emails and phone calls to promote arguments from sources popular with far-right and white nationalist movements.

<snip>

Miller used a US government email address during the early part of the correspondence, when he was an aide to senator Jeff Sessions, and then announced his new job on the Trump campaign, and a new email address, to recipients including McHugh.

more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/nov/12/trump-adviser-stephen-miller-white-nationalist-agenda-breitbart

November 11, 2019