LA Pride March Opens with Solidarity and Sorrow After Man Apprehended with Explosives

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/los-angeles-lgbt-community-marches-solidarity-orlando



The annual LA PRIDE parade kicked off on Sunday as scheduled, featuring colorful displays of solidarity—and sorrow—after the deadliest mass shooting in US history targeted a gay club in Orlando overnight, killing 50.

"All of our hearts today are with Orlando. We are Pulse, we are Orlando, we are Americans, we are all LGBTQ community members today," said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. "We are all part of a country that will not be beaten down. We will not go away, and today we are proud of who are."

But suspicious activities closer to home also threatened to overshadow the event: Santa Monica authorities discovered a car full of possible explosives, assault rifles and ammunition. The owner was a man who told police he was in town for the pride festivities in West Hollywood.

Among the weapons in the car was tannerite, an ingredient that can be used to create a pipe bomb, according to a law enforcement source quoted by the Los Angeles Times. The Times also reported that there was no known connection between the shooting in Orlando and the car, which had Indiana plates. The FBI has taken over the investigation.

What Should Bernie Sanders Do Next?
Four leaders from top progressive groups discuss how Sanders could turn a phenomenal campaign into a lasting legacy.

Josh HarkinsonJun. 11, 2016 6:00 AM



http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/what-should-bernie-sanders-do-next

On the eve of the presidential primary in Washington, DC—the final vote of the campaign—Bernie Sanders stood before a massive crowd of placard-waving supporters and reflected on a run that defied all expectations. "What the punditry thought was that this campaign would not go very far," he said. "Well, here we are in mid-June and we are still standing."

Sanders has pledged to take his nomination fight all the way to the floor of the Democratic National Convention, pushing platform and rules changes that would empower progressives. But if he wants to create a lasting legacy in the months and years to come, he must figure out how to parlay the momentum of his campaign into an enduring progressive movement.

Others have tried this before. After winning 11 states in the 1988 Democratic presidential primary, Jesse Jackson channeled his campaign's progressive energy into the Rainbow Push Coalition, an activist group dedicated to racial justice. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean lost an insurgent presidential bid in 2004 but used his formidable email list to create Democracy for America, a group dedicated to electing progressives. But such efforts have fallen far short of political revolution.

So what should Sanders do next? Mother Jones asked four leaders from the country's top progressive political groups: Neil Sroka of Democracy for America, Ben Wikler of MoveOn.org, Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and Dan Cantor of the Working Families Party. Here's how they mapped the road ahead for Sanders:

Neil Young Onstage: 'F--ck You, Donald Trump'

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-onstage-f--ck-you-donald-trump-20160611



In a lengthy Facebook post, Neil Young cleared the air about how he feels about Donald Trump using his songs: "YOUNG CONTINUES TO DENY TRUMP PERMISSION TO USE HIS MUSIC," the rocker wrote, attaching a short clip of him yelling "Fuck you, Donald Trump" onstage.

The discrepancy began with an interview with Reuters, in which Young stated that Trump's campaign bought the license to use his song "Rockin' in The Free World." "Once the music goes out, anyone can use it for anything," Young said in the interview.

In this new statement, Young points out that there is a legal difference between obtaining music rights for commercial use and obtaining a license agreement for public venues. The former requires the consent of the artist. "When I discovered that [Trump] first used my song at his campaign launch, my management called his office and immediately requested he stop," Young wrote. "We thought he had. But now, unfortunately, I understand he is still using it."

Young alleges that when management approached Trump, the GOP frontrunner began "hurling insults" and released a photo that was taken out of context, Young said. The picture in question was taken months prior to Trump's decision to run in the presidential election during an investors meeting for Young's music company Pono.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/espn-rachel-nichols-shuts-down-brian-windhorst-after-sexist-on-air-comment_us_575b1828e4b00f97fba851e2?ir=Canada§ion=ca_canada&utm_hp_ref=canada

It started when Windhorst was asked whether he was “hurt” that LeBron James currently follows Nichols and not him on Twitter.

“I don’t care,” Windhorst responded. “He’s sliding into Rachel’s DMs.”

Nichols immediately reacted to the words, shaking her head and, at one point, turning to the camera and lifting her hands into the air — as if to say, is he kidding me?

(Sliding into DMs, an explainer: When someone, typically a man, privately and suggestively messages someone else, typically a woman, whom they’re interested in.)

http://www.wcnc.com/news/politics/trump-uses-obama-08-ad-to-attack-clinton/239758608

Eliza Collins, USA TODAY , WCNC 11:24 AM. EST June 11, 2016

Just a day after President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump used an old ad from their primary fight in 2008 to hit Clinton.



The ad starts out by saying Clinton “will say anything to get elected” and she was part of the problem with politics.

“Hillary Clinton, she’ll say anything and change nothing,” the final screen reads.

Later Friday Trump tweeted a #FlashbackFriday of Obama attacking Clinton over her comments about the second amendment.

How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions

By RUSS BUETTNER and CHARLES V. BAGLIJUNE 11, 2016



Less than two weeks before the casino opened, Marvin B. Roffman, a casino analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, an investment firm based in Philadelphia, told The Wall Street Journal that the Taj would need to reap $1.3 million a day just to make its interest payments, a sum no casino had ever achieved.

***

By December 1990, when Mr. Trump needed to make an $18.4 million interest payment, his father, Fred C. Trump, sent a lawyer to the Castle to buy $3.3 million in chips, to provide him with an infusion of cash. The younger Mr. Trump made the payment, but the Casino Control Commission fined the Castle $65,000 for what had amounted to an illegal loan.

***

Just over a year after it opened, the Taj Mahal was in bankruptcy court, followed in 1992 by both the Plaza and the Castle. In the plan that was worked out, Mr. Trump ceded to the lenders a 50 percent stake in the businesses in return for lower interest rates. The lenders agreed to defer certain principal and interest payments and hold off on personal claims against Mr. Trump for five years. But there was little or no reduction in the enormous debts that would plague his gambling empire far into the future.

***

Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Mr. Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on the casino, she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.

After Bernie, Does the Left Need a Rethink?

What to make of the fact that Sanders ran the campaign progressives have been dreaming of for years, and lost
By Joshua Holland June 10, 2016

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/after-bernie-does-the-left-need-a-rethink-20160610

For as long as I can remember, there's been a deeply held belief on the American left that if a Democrat would only stop pandering to the mushy middle and run an unapologetically liberal, unabashedly populist campaign, he or she would win in a laugher. For too long, the Dems have offered nothing more than Republican-lite candidates, according to this view — and why vote for the "lite" version when you can have the real thing?

Call it the "What's the matter with Kansas?" theory of politics. In his 2004 bestseller of that name, liberal writer and political analyst Thomas Frank argued Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism and disastrous trade deals and their coziness with Wall Street left a huge opening for the right. Conservatives had swooped in with a bait-and-switch: They promised to clean up our "depraved" culture and lead the fight on social issues like abortion and gay marriage, but as soon as they were in office, they turned around and gave those Americans cheap public services and a bunch of tax cuts they were too poor to use.

The answer seemed simple: Give low- and middle-income folks — i.e., the majority of the country — an opportunity to vote in a way that would better serve their economic interests. This would bring "Reagan Democrats" and socially conservative blue-collar types back into the fold, giving them reason to stop bitterly clinging to their God and their guns.

This was also seen as an answer to the midterm drop-off effect — the tendency of key Democratic constituencies to only vote in presidential years — that's long bedeviled the party and, in recent years, delivered unified Republican control of 30 statehouses and both chambers of Congress. After the 2014 midterms that Barack Obama called a "shellacking" for the left, Frank told Salon we were seeing Democrats demonstrate "a logic that's very familiar here in Washington, D.C. You move to the center, you always move to the center. But it's a logic that's just going to lead to more and more disasters down the road." He warned that "if they do enough of this triangulation, they'll become a party that has become so similar to Republicans, then why bother with them?"

https://www.facebook.com/topic/Reince-Priebus/182644085103312

Reince Priebus: Republican National Committee Chair Responds to Hillary Clinton’s Tweet to Donald Trump

“If anyone knows how to use a delete key, it's you,” Priebus said in a tweet to Clinton, referencing her email controversy as secretary of state. "Delete your account," she tweeted Trump on Thursday.