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03/22/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Trump is Sending Congress to Space

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed legislation Tuesday adding human exploration of Mars to NASA’s mission. Could sending Congress into space be next?

Flanked at an Oval Office bill-signing ceremony by astronauts and lawmakers, Trump observed that being an astronaut is a “pretty tough job.” He said he wasn’t sure he’d want it and, among lawmakers he put the question to, Sen. Ted Cruz said he wouldn’t want to be a space traveler, either.

But Cruz, R-Texas, offered up a tantalizing suggestion. “You could send Congress to space,” he said to laughter, including from the president.

Trump, who faces a crucial House vote later this week on legislation long promised by Republicans to overhaul the Obama-era Affordable Care Act health law, readily agreed. The health care bill is facing resistance from some conservative members of the party.

“What a great idea that could be,” Trump said, before turning back to the space exploration measure sponsored by Cruz and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

The new law authorizes $19.5 billion in spending for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for the budget year that began Oct. 1. Cruz said the authorization bill is the first for the space agency in seven years, and he called it a “terrific” achievement.

Trump last week sent Congress a budget proposal that seeks $19.1 billion in spending authorization for the agency next year.

“For almost six decades, NASA’s work has inspired millions and millions of Americans to imagine distant worlds and a better future right here on earth,” Trump said. “I’m delighted to sign this bill. It’s been a long time since a bill like this has been signed, reaffirming our commitment to the core mission of NASA: human space exploration, space science and technology.”

The measure amends current law to add human exploration of the red planet as a goal for the agency. It supports use of the International Space Station through at least 2024, along with private sector companies partnering with NASA to deliver cargo and experiments, among other steps.

After signing the bill, Trump invited several lawmakers to comment, starting with Cruz. When Trump invited Vice President Mike Pence to speak, he suggested that Nelson be allowed to say a few words. Nelson traveled into space when he was in the House.

“He’s a Democrat. I wasn’t going to let him speak,” Trump quipped, to laughter. Nelson ultimately got a chance to briefly praise his bill.

Pence also announced that Trump plans to re-launch the National Space Council, with Pence as chairman, to coordinate U.S. space policy. The council was authorized by law in 1988, near the end of the Reagan administration, but ceased to operate soon after Bill Clinton took office in January 1993.

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Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

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This story has been corrected to show that authorization is for the 2017 budget year, instead of 2018.

03/22/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Idiots Gang Rape a 15 year-old on Facebook Live!

CHICAGO (AP) — The mother of a 15-year-old girl who authorities say was sexually assaulted in an attack streamed live on Facebook said Wednesday that her daughter has received online threats since it happened and that neighborhood kids have been joking about it and harassing her family.

The woman was reunited with her daughter on Tuesday, two days after the girl went missing and a day after police learned of the attack. She said her daughter is staying with a relative and is scared to come home, and that she shares that fear.

“This is just disturbing and to think the kids think it is funny,” the mother, 32, told The Associated Press. The AP isn’t naming her to protect the identity of her daughter.

She said that since the attack, people have threatened on Facebook that “they are going to get her” daughter and that neighborhood children have been laughing about the incident and ringing the family’s doorbell looking for the girl. She said she’s shocked by the callousness people have shown since the attack, which was viewed live by about 40 people on Facebook Live – none of whom reported it to the police.

“I can’t stay here,” she said of Lawndale, the West Side neighborhood where her family lives. “I have other kids, too. I let them walk to school and now I have to take them.”

Police said Wednesday that they hadn’t arrested anyone in the attack, which involved five or six men or boys. A police spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, said the girl knows at least one of her attackers and that investigators are making good progress identifying those involved.

Police only learned of the attack on Monday afternoon, the day after the girl went missing. Her mother went to a Lawndale police station and filled out a missing person report, then spotted the head of the city’s police department, Superintendent Eddie Johnson, outside the station and approached him. She told him her daughter had been missing since Sunday and showed him screen grab photos of the assault that friends of her daughter had sent her.

Guglielmi said Johnson immediately ordered detectives to investigate and the department asked Facebook to take down the video, which it did.

Andrew Holmes, a local activist, said a friend of the girl’s mother called him Monday asking if he could help find the video online and get it to the police, which he did. He said to him, the video showed that the girl was frightened and trying to get away.

“You could see where she was fearful. … You could see the look of fear and where she is resisting, pushing back,” he told the AP. “It looked like … she was in total shock.”

Holmes said the video shows someone pulling the girl to a bed as she struggled to get away. He said he was struck by the indifference of the others who were there.

“Other individuals were there standing around and talking and someone says, ‘Cut the lights off,'” he said, adding that the lights kept going on and off during the video, which was several minutes long.

The mother said her daughter was still terrified after police found her.

“She went to the hospital, but she was so scared she didn’t want anybody to touch her,” the mother said. She said her daughter had bruising on her neck but she was told of no other significant bruises or cuts by the doctors.

The mother said she thinks the attack happened Sunday night, and that she learned of it from friends of her daughter who saw the video, recognized her daughter, a high school freshman, as a basketball player they know, and called her, the mom.

“They couldn’t send me the video so they sent screen shots,” she said.

A spokeswoman for Facebook, Andrea Saul, declined to comment on the girl’s case, specifically, but she said the company takes its “responsibility to keep people safe on Facebook very seriously.”

“Crimes like this are hideous and we do not allow that kind of content on Facebook,” she said.

The video marks at least the second time in recent months that the Chicago Police Department has investigated an apparent attack that was streamed live on Facebook. In January, four people were arrested after a cellphone footage showed them allegedly taunting and beating a mentally disabled man.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SEXUAL_ASSAULT_FACEBOOK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-03-21-10-16-59

03/22/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

There is no Leadership for Democrats

The Democratic Party has a leadership vacuum at the top, with many registered voters eager to see someone who is not currently on the scene become the party’s standard-bearer in 2020, according to a new Harvard-Harris Poll survey provided exclusively to The Hill.

When registered voters were asked whom they view as the leader of the Democratic Party, 40 percent said it has no leader.

Fifteen percent named former President Obama as the party’s leader. Twelve percent said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has gone out of his way not to join the Democratic Party despite running for the its presidential nomination last year.

Eleven percent view Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as the party’s leader, and 10 percent answered with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.

On the question of who should be a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, Sanders led the field, at 14 percent, followed by former first lady Michelle Obama at 11 percent, Warren at 9 percent, Clinton at 8 percent, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo each at 4 percent, and television personality Oprah Winfrey and Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) each at 3 percent.

Forty-five percent said they want to see someone not on the list of possible candidates in the survey.

“There is a vacuum now in the Democratic Party in terms of leadership and a 2020 candidate, so it’s the Democrats who might have a raft of candidates next time, especially if the voters are searching for someone new,” said Harvard-Harris co-director Mark Penn.

When Clinton was taken out of the list of potential 2020 candidates, Sanders’s support went up to 18 percent, followed by Michelle Obama at 14 percent and Warren at 10 percent. No other candidate received more than 4 percent support, and 44 percent of respondents said they want someone not on the list.

“Michelle Obama has some potential as a future candidate if she was interested in politics,” Penn said.

Barack Obama has said his wife “will never run for office,” though she remains hugely popular among Democrats.

The party is in the midst of a full-scale rebuilding project after the 2016 elections, in which it lost control of the White House and failed to win majorities in either the House or Senate.

Democratic ranks have also faced serious defeats at the state level, where the party has lost about 1,000 legislative seats since Obama took office. Republicans control 69 of 99 legislative chambers across the country and 33 of 50 governor mansions.

Democrats took the first step in setting a new path forward last month when former Obama administration Labor Secretary Tom Perez defeated Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Sanders acolyte, to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Still, the party lacks a consensus leader at a time when there are deep and lingering divisions between grassroots liberals and mainstream establishment Democrats.

The partisan breakdown of the Harvard-Harris survey is 37 percent Democratic, 30 percent Republican, 28 percent independent and 5 percent other.

When only Democrats are taken into account, the figures shift slightly.

Thirty-five percent of Democrats said their party has no leader. Sixteen percent picked Barack Obama or Warren as the leader, followed by Sanders at 14 percent and Clinton at 8 percent.

Twenty-five percent of Democrats said they want someone not on the poll’s list of possibilities to be their presidential candidate in 2020. Twenty percent said Sanders should be the nominee, followed by Michelle Obama at 17 percent, Warren at 15 percent, Clinton at 10 percent, Cuomo and Booker each at 4 percent, Winfrey at 3 percent and Cuban at 2 percent.

Overall, 40 percent of respondents had a favorable view of the Democratic Party, compared with 60 percent who viewed it negatively. Republicans were seen similarly, 41 percent favorable to 59 percent unfavorable.

But Republicans had a far more positive view of their own party, with 79 percent saying they had a favorable view of the GOP. Only 65 percent of Democrats had a favorable view of their own party.

Among all the registered voters surveyed, 46 percent said the Democratic Party is becoming more liberal, 43 percent said it is staying the same, and 11 percent said it is moving to the right. A majority of Democrats, 56 percent, said the party is staying the same, while 30 percent said it is becoming more liberal and 14 said it is becoming more conservative.

Forty-nine percent of all those surveyed said the GOP is becoming more conservative, while 36 percent said it is staying the same and 16 percent said it is becoming more liberal. Among just Republicans, 43 percent said their party is staying the same, 39 percent said it is becoming more conservative, and 19 said it is becoming more liberal.

The Harvard-Harris survey of 2,092 registered voters was conducted online between March 14 and 16.

The Hill will be working with Harvard-Harris throughout 2017. Full poll results will be posted online later this week.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/324903-for-democrats-no-clear-leader

03/22/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Confirmed: Trump transition members were under surveillance during Obama administration

Hell Yes This Piece Of Shit Wiretapped Trump Tower

Members of the Donald Trump transition team, possibly including Trump himself, were under U.S. government surveillance following November’s presidential election, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told reporters Wednesday.

Nunes said the surveillance appeared to be legal but that he was concerned because it was not related to the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election and was widely disseminated across the intelligence community.

“I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show that the president-elect and his team were, I guess, at least monitored,” Nunes told reporters. “It looks to me like it was all legally collected, but it was essentially a lot of information on the president-elect and his transition team and what they were doing.”

Nunes said he is heading to the White House later Wednesday to brief Trump on what he has learned, which he said came from “sources who thought that we should know it.” He said he was trying to get more information by Friday from the FBI, CIA and NSA.

Nunes described the surveillance as most likely being “incidental collection.” This can occur when a person inside the United States communicates with a foreign target of U.S. surveillance. In such cases, the identities of U.S. citizens are supposed to be kept secret — but can be “unmasked” by intelligence officials under certain circumstances.

Nunes said his new information appears to show that additional members of the Trump transition team — beyond former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — were unmasked. This means they were identified in U.S. intelligence reports.

He said the information that he had seen and was disseminated across the intelligence community appeared to him to have “little or no apparent intelligence value.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/devin-nunes-donald-trump-surveillance-obama-236366

03/21/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Mock Slave Auction Outrages Parents!

MAPLEWOOD, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — When it comes time for fifth graders to learn about the history of colonization and slavery, it’s always a sensitive subject.

As CBS2’s Jessica Layton reported, parents like Tracey Jarmon-Woods said it became even more painful after what took place in a 5th grade classroom at her son’s school in Maplewood.

“There was a sale of a black child by white children in the classroom,” Tracey Jarmon-Woods said, “If you’re demoralized — sold on a block in 2017 — it may affect you the rest of your life.”

A mock slave auction earlier in the month was hotly discussed during after school pickup outside Jefferson Elementary School, and later at a board of education meeting.

“I’m disgusted, really disgusted a child was bought. That doesn’t make any sense,” one parent said.

“We’re always in damage control, and it’s getting absurd honestly,” student BOE member Filip Saulean said.

In a letter sent to parents, the principal said the impromptu reenactment of a slave auction by students was done while the teacher was out for a medical procedure and a substitute was in charge of the class.

“The activity was not part of the curriculum, not part of the teacher’s assignment, not condoned by the classroom teacher, and not authorized by the district,” the statement said.

It’s not the first time the district has come under fire for its curriculum on colonization. Around the same time as the mock slave sale, controversial posters at another district school — South Mountain Elementary — offended several parents.

“We have to do better for our children,” Elissa Malespina said.

On Monday night, Superintendent Dr. John Ramos addressed the incidents.

“There was no intent to be provocative or demeaning,” he said, “The context is important to know.”

A school social worker will speak with 5th graders at Jefferson Elementary on Tuesday.

The district said it is planning a town hall event with parents and their kids on the topic as well.

Mock Slave Auction Stokes Tempers At Maplewood Elementary School

03/21/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Pope Claims Social Media is a Major Distraction

Vatican City (AFP) – Pope Francis on Tuesday warned young people to resist the lure of “false” versions of life presented on social media or reality TV shows.

Instead, the Internet generation needs to write their own histories, become masters of their destiny and establish real connections with their past, the 80-year-old pontiff says in a video message for World Youth Day, on April 9.

“Many people say that young people are distracted and superficial. They are wrong!” Francis says.

“Still, we should acknowledge our need to reflect on our lives and direct them towards the future.

“In the social media, we see faces of young people appearing in any number of pictures recounting more or less real events, but we don’t know how much of all this is really ‘history’, an experience that can be communicated and endowed with purpose and meaning,” he said.

“Television is full of ‘reality shows’ which are not real stories, but only moments passed before a television camera by characters living from day to day, without a greater plan.

“Don’t let yourselves be led astray by this false image of reality! Be the protagonists of your history; decide your own future.”

The tone of Francis’s comments partly reiterated a speech at last year’s World Youth Day in which he told teens not to let themselves become “couch potatoes”.

But this time he implicitly addressed many aspects of social media culture that have caused concern to psychologists, from the photo-shopping of images to selective editing of events recorded online to project images of happiness and success that may not correspond to reality.

“To have a past is not the same as to have a history,” Francis said. “In our life we can have plenty of memories, but how many of them are really a part of our memory?

“How many are significant for our hearts and help to give meaning to our lives?”

In practical terms, Francis said young people could help to make more sense of their lives and their own past through time spent with grandparents, by keeping a daily journal and by spending a few minutes each evening contemplating the day’s events.

In this, he suggested, they should draw inspiration from the example of Mary, mother of Jesus.

“The young mother of Jesus knew the prayers of her people by heart. Surely her parents and her grandparents had taught them to her. How important it is for the faith to be passed down from one generation to another.”

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/pope-tells-young-resist-false-reality-social-media-165048243.html

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