August 6, 2019

Trump's lies are peppered w/ unnamed validators - "tough guys" who break down crying in his presence

Trump made 56 false claims last week

That was down from 78 false claims the week prior and 61 false claims the week before that.

Where he made the biggest numbers: Trump made 26 false claims at his campaign rally in Cincinnati, 13 more in various exchanges with the media, seven on Twitter, five in an interview with C-SPAN.

Top categories: Eighteen false claims were about the economy or trade; 10 were about Trump's popularity, his crowds or others' crowds; 10 were about immigration; eight were about former President Barack Obama's record.

The most egregious false claim: Support from African Americans

Trump's stories are peppered with unnamed validators -- "many people" who say he's right about something, "tough guys" backstage who break down crying in his presence, a "friend" who just called him to say something dramatic.

Last week, as he faced accusations of racism for his attack on Baltimore as "disgusting, rat and rodent infested" and unfit for human habitation, he turned the black community into a validator.

"What I've done for African Americans, no president, I would say, has done," he told reporters, citing his criminal justice legislation, the low black unemployment rate and the criticism of Baltimore itself. "Now, I'll say this: They are so happy, because I get the calls."

Though Trump does have African American supporters, all the available evidence suggests African American voters are overwhelmingly unhappy with him. In one poll the week before last, he had a 6% approval rating with black voters; 80% of them said he is racist.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/06/politics/weekly-fact-check-trump-early-august/index.html

August 6, 2019

Olympian Carl Lewis backs equal pay for women, calls President Donald Trump a 'racist & misogynist'

Carl Lewis backs equal pay for women, calls President Donald Trump a 'racist'

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis said Monday that female athletes deserve fair and equal pay and criticized President Donald Trump as a “racist and misogynist.”

Lewis spoke in the Peruvian capital of Lima, where he will present the 100-meter and long jump medals at the Pan American Games. He also said that he became an athlete thanks to his mother, who competed in the first Pan Am Games in Buenos Aires in 1951.

“If I didn’t have a strong woman in my life, I wouldn’t be sitting here today,” he said at a press conference with Leroy Burrell, a former world record-holder in the 100 meters. “My mother was a pioneer.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2019/08/05/carl-lewis-president-donald-trump-racist-and-misogynist/1929736001/


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August 6, 2019

Montana man slams 13 year old boy to the ground, fracturing his skull, for disrespecting the flag

Taylor Hennick, a witness cited by the paper, said the national anthem had begun at the fairgrounds when she saw a boy, “lying on the ground.”

“He was bleeding out of his ears, seizing on the ground, just not coherent,” Hennick said.

Other witnesses told Missoula’s KPAX-TV they saw Brockway slam the boy to the ground. Brockway allegedly told encroaching bystanders the assault was justified because the boy had been “disrespecting the national anthem,” Hennick said.

The boy, whom authorities identified only as 13-year-old, was flown to Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital in Spokane, Wash., with temporal skull fractures, KPAX-TV reported. His parents told the station he was bleeding from his ears for nearly six hours after the alleged assault. He has since been released from the hospital and returned home for recovery.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/montana-man-allegedly-assaulted-boy-13-for-not-removing-his-hat-during-national-anthem-reports


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August 6, 2019

" their President has stood with them and done what no other president would do"

Phrase in Trump Tweet this morning. He is just grotesque. speaking of himself in third person, calling himself the best ever of this and that.

August 6, 2019

Man smashes window to rescue dog from hot car

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2019/08/06/new-mexico-man-saves-dog-hot-car-newsource-orig.cnn

August 6, 2019

puppy found after 2 months

https://twitter.com/InactionNever/status/1158599096606908417

August 6, 2019

He's Getting Worse

He’s Getting Worse
Trump is turning the American presidency into a platform for the wholesale demonization of minorities.

The current, and (to date) most debased, phase of the Trump presidency—the phase that includes the unceasing demonization of minority legislators and the endorsement of North Korean communism—began, in retrospect, on May 8, in the Florida Panhandle, at a rally in Panama City. It was there that Donald Trump gave tacit approval to the use of violence against immigrants.

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But in this latest phase, his rhetoric has become particularly sweeping. Brown people in general have become his targets. And there is no reason to hope that he will reform. His followers reward his radicalism, and his handlers are among the most cynical figures in American political history. His aide Kellyanne Conway tweeted on Sunday, “Working as one to understand depraved evil & to eradicate hate is everyone’s duty. Unity. Let’s do this.” And his daughter Ivanka wrote, in a way that hints at a permanent separation from reality, “White supremacy, like all other forms of terrorism, is an evil that must be destroyed.” And, of course, there is no one of any influence in his party who is willing to confront him.

I watched the video recording of the rally in Panama City shortly after reading the El Paso killer’s so-called manifesto. It is a document littered with phrases and rhetorical devices injected into mainstream discourse by the president and his supporters—talk of a “Hispanic invasion,” accusations that Democrats support “open borders,” and the like. As Trump faces the possibility that he will lose the presidency next year, he may become more enraged, and more willing to deploy the rhetoric of violence as a way to keep his followers properly motivated. The Panama City speech was an important moment in Trump’s ongoing effort to make the American presidency a vehicle in the cause of marginalizing and frightening racial minorities; the killings are a possible (and predictable) consequence of such rhetoric.

Three years ago, The Atlantic, in its endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president (an editorial motivated not by love for Clinton but by fear of Trump), stated, “In one of the more sordid episodes in modern American politics, Trump made himself the face of the so-called birther movement, which had as its immediate goal the demonization of the country’s first African American president. Trump’s larger goal, it seemed, was to stoke fear among white Americans of dark-skinned foreigners.”

It is depressing to realize that we were correct (though, if anything, understated in our analysis), and it is depressing to think that there is no immediate way out of this crisis.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/trump-getting-worse/595453/

August 5, 2019

German Shepherd is left a 'nervous wreck' after being dumped at an animal shelter

Rocco the German Shepherd is left a 'nervous wreck' after being dumped at an animal shelter because his owners were expecting a new baby
Rocco was abandoned at the Dallas Animal Services and Adoption Center
The three-year-old dog was filmed cowering inside his kennel by a visitor
Preethi Pillaipakkam, who rescues and fosters German Shepherds saw the video and said was shocked the family had given him up because of a new baby
She said: 'But once I saw how underfed he was, it did not surprise me. It is probably a combination of change in family situation, plus not [being] the best owners in the first place.'
Since the video went viral, dozens of adoption applications have been submitted



Preethi Pillaipakkam (pictured) rescued "Rocco" from the Dallas Animal Services and Adoption Center after a video of Rocco went viral




After a few days of lightly treading his new environment, Rocco began to slowly open up and became his former self




https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7323591/Dog-nervous-wreck-ABANDONED-animal-shelter-family-new-baby.html

August 5, 2019

Trump tweets, stays out of sight for hours after shootings

https://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/After-pair-of-mass-shootings-Trump-remains-out-14279451.php

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) — As the nation reeled from two mass shootings in less than a day, President Donald Trump spent the first hours after the tragedies out of sight at his New Jersey golf course, sending out tweets of support awkwardly mixed in with those promoting a celebrity fight and attacking his political foes.

Americans did not glimpse the president in the immediate aftermath of a shooting in El Paso, Texas, that killed at least 20 people and, hours later, one in Dayton, Ohio, that claimed at least nine lives. Not until Trump and the first lady prepared to fly back to Washington in the late afternoon Sunday did he appear before cameras.


"Hate has no place in our country, and we're going to take care of it," Trump declared before boarding Air Force One.


While connecting "hate" and mental illness to the shootings, Trump made no direct mention of gun laws, a factor brought up by Democratic officials and those seeking their party's nomination to challenge Trump's reelection next year. He also ignored questions about the anti-immigration language in a manifesto written by the El Paso shooter that mirrors some of his own.

August 4, 2019

WHAT BULLETS DO TO BODIES

The gun debate would change in an instant if Americans witnessed the horrors that trauma surgeons confront every day.

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/gun-violence/

She is the chair of Temple’s Department of Surgery, one of only 16 women in America to hold that position at a hospital. In my initial conversation with her, which took place shortly after the mass shooting in Orlando, where 49 people were killed and 53 injured by a man who walked into a gay nightclub with a semi-automatic rifle and a Glock handgun, she was joined by Scott Charles, the hospital’s trauma outreach coordinator and Goldberg’s longtime friend. Goldberg has a southeastern Pennsylvania accent that at low volume makes her sound like a sweet South Philly grandmother and at higher volume becomes a razor. I asked her what changes in gun violence she had seen in her 30 years. She said not many. When she first arrived at Temple in 1987 to start her residency, “It was so obvious to me then that there was something so wrong.” Since then, the types of firearms have evolved. The surgeons used to see .22-caliber bullets from little handguns, Saturday night specials, whereas now they see .40-caliber and 9 mm bullets. Charles said they get the occasional victim of a long gun, such as an AR-15 or an AK-47, “but what’s remarkable is how common handguns are.”

Goldberg jumped in. “As a country,” Goldberg said, “we lost our teachable moment.” She started talking about the 2012 murder of 20 schoolchildren and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Goldberg said that if people had been shown the autopsy photos of the kids, the gun debate would have been transformed. “The fact that not a single one of those kids was able to be transported to a hospital, tells me that they were not just dead, but really really really really dead. Ten-year-old kids, riddled with bullets, dead as doornails.” Her voice rose. She said people have to confront the physical reality of gun violence without the polite filters. “The country won’t be ready for it, but that’s what needs to happen. That’s the only chance at all for this to ever be reversed.”

She dropped back into a softer register. “Nobody gives two shits about the black people in North Philadelphia if nobody gives two craps about the white kids in Sandy Hook. … I thought white little kids getting shot would make people care. Nope. They didn’t care. Anderson Cooper was up there. They set up shop. And then the public outrage fades.”

Goldberg apologized and said she wasn’t trying to stop me from writing a story. She just didn’t expect it to change anything.