RandySF
RandySF's JournalDemocrats make a play to turn Arizona blue
PHOENIX — It has been two decades since Arizona’s red-state status was in doubt in a presidential election. But that was before Donald Trump and his build-a-border-wall platform won the GOP primary and inflamed anti-Republican sentiment among Latino voters.
Trump’s campaign is dispatching vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence to the state for two public events, a tangible sign of Republicans’ concern that Arizona could be competitive this year — while local Democrats, thinking along the same lines, are intensely lobbying Hillary Clinton’s campaign and national Democratic groups for the resources to help make it happen.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/arizona-clinton-trump-blue-226536#ixzz4GBpQwzEW
White Nationalist Trump Supporters: God Says Women Shouldn't be President
On white nationalist radio show “The Political Cesspool” on Saturday, host James Edwards questioned if women should be allowed to vote and suggested that as a woman, Hillary Clinton should not be president because women can’t even be “the ruler of the house under God’s law.”
Edwards, who has credited Donald Trump with empowering the “pro-white” movement, broadcasted last month from the Republican National Convention, where he interviewed four members of Congress and a Trump campaign surrogate.
Discussing Chelsea Clinton’s Democratic National Convention speech, Edwards said, “You cannot be a very radical, and I mean extremist radical, feminist and at once be the kind of mother that God intended for a woman to be. So I’m sure that there is love between Hillary Clinton and her daughter, but I did not see the family and familial bonds out of the Clinton family that I saw from the Trump family. Does anyone really believe that Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton sleep in the same room? Does anyone really believe that Hillary Clinton even sleeps with men?”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/white-nationalist-trump-supporters-god-says-women-shouldn-t-be-president
Looks like Suicide Squad is a hit, based on Twitter reviews of early screenings
Can't wait to see it Friday.
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=%23SuicideSquad%20screening&src=tyah&lang=en
Swanky San Francisco high-rise sinking, tilting
A newly built high-rise residential tower in San Francisco that's home to famed 49ers' quarterback Joe Montana and Giants' outfielder Hunter Pence is slowly sinking and shifting, and may ignite a court battle between residents and the city.
The 58-story Millennium Tower, located at 301 Mission Street just south of the city's financial district, was completed in 2008 and has sunk 16 inches and shifted 2 inches to the northwest since opening, according to a report issued by an independent consultant obtained by KTVU-TV.
The owners of the $350 million building told KTVU the construction next door of the Transbay Transit Center, a $4.5 billion project to serve as a hub of mass transit, has caused the ground movements.
P.J. Johnston, spokesman for Millennium Partners, which built the tower, told KTVU in a written statement that the transit center has been a negative impact on the luxury high-rise.
"All buildings settle over time," the statement said. "However, 301 Mission exists in a location where major underground construction work was subsequently performed by others, who were obligated to monitor and protect existing structures, and to mitigate any impacts of their work. 301 Mission has settled more than originally anticipated because it was affected by such subsequent construction by others."
The Millennium Tower Association, the building's home owners association, told the television station it has hired its own group of consultants to try and figure out what's going on.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/08/01/swanky-san-francisco-high-rise-sinking-tilting.html
Military Mom Booed at Pence Rally for Asking About Trump's Remarks on Capt. Khan
Mike Pence just can't escape the controversy surrounding Donald Trump's critical remarks about the parents of fallen soldier Capt. Humayun Khan.
Taking questions from the audience at a rally in Carson City, Nev., the Indiana governor was asked how he could "tolerate" Trump disrespecting military families.
"Time and time again Trump has disrespected our nation’s armed forces and veterans and has disrespect for Mr. Khan and his family is just an example of that,” Catherine Byrne asked, as the crowd started loudly booing. “Will there ever be a point in time when you’re able to look Trump in the eye and tell him enough is enough? You have a son in the military. How do you tolerate his disrespect?”
Pence, whose father was a combat veteran, thanked Byrne for the question and tried to quiet the room. “Folks -- that’s what freedom looks like and that’s what freedom sounds like, okay? It is,” he said.
Pence went on to thank Byrne for her son’s service, then essentially reiterated the statement he issued yesterday.
“As I said last night, as Donald Trump said Saturday night, Captain Khan is an American hero and we honor him and honor his family as we do all Gold Star families in this country. We truly do. The story of captain Khan is an incredibly empowering story,” he said, before recounting Khan’s story.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/military-mom-booed-pence-rally-capt-khan/story?id=41057043
Jill Stein says it’s dangerous to expose kids to wifi signals
At a meeting in March, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein told the assembled crowd that wireless Internet technology is dangerous for developing children.
In the video, posted Monday by Patheos blogger Michael Stone, a woman in the audience said that she is a kindergarten teacher who is concerned about children being given devices with screens to learn from at a young age.
Stein said that, yes, it’s bad for growing kids to spend too much time glued to screens on TVs or computers. Too much non-human interaction has been shown to negatively affect children’s cognition and their ability to socialize and communicate with others.
“And what about the wireless?” the teacher asked.
“We should not be exposing, especially, kids’ brains to that,” Stein said. “You know, we don’t follow that issue in this country, but in Europe where they do, they have good precautions around wireless. Maybe not good enough, because it’s very hard to study this stuff. We make guinea pigs out of whole populations and then we discover how many die.”
https://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/jill-stein-says-its-dangerous-to-expose-kids-to-wifi-signals/
Democrats widen Nevada registration advantage to 72,000
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada's Democratic voter base grew faster than the Republican voter base in July.
The Nevada Secretary of State's Office reported Monday that Republicans added more than 5,900 new voters to their ranks last month, while Democrats added nearly 8,600.
Democrats now have a 72,000-voter advantage over Republicans among the more than 1.3 million active registered voters in Nevada.
The number of voters in the state grew almost 2 percent last month.
Nevada is considered a battleground state in the presidential election because both parties are relatively close in registration.
http://www.ktnv.com/news/national/democracy-2016/democrats-widen-nevada-registration-advantage-to-72000_72576104
The swiftboating of Lt. Col. Khan is underway
mid Donald Trump's ongoing attacks on the family of U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American solider who was killed fighting in Iraq, a number of his supporters latched onto a conspiracy theory that Khan's father is a "Muslim Brotherhood agent" and his son was on an "Islamist mission."
The theory seemed to originate with the fringe right-wing site Shoebat.com, which is run by Walid Shoebat, a Palestinian-American who has claimed to be a former terrorist and "radicalized Muslim" before his conversion to Christianity.
In a lengthy post published Sunday, Shoebat and his son Theodore argue that Khizr Khan, who made an emotional appeal Thursday at the Democratic National Convention to vote for Hillary Clinton to honor his son, "wants to advance Sharia Law and bring Muslims into the United States."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/roger-stone-khizr-khan-muslim-brotherhood-conspiracy
Donald Trump’s Draft Deferments: Four for College, One for Bad Feet
Back in 1968, at the age of 22, Donald J. Trump seemed the picture of health.
He stood 6 feet 2 inches with an athletic build; had played football, tennis and squash; and was taking up golf. His medical history was unblemished, aside from a routine appendectomy when he was 10.
But after he graduated from college in the spring of 1968, making him eligible to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, he received a diagnosis that would change his path: bone spurs in his heels.
The diagnosis resulted in a coveted 1-Y medical deferment that fall, exempting him from military service as the United States was undertaking huge troop deployments to Southeast Asia, inducting about 300,000 men into the military that year.
The deferment was one of five Mr. Trump received during Vietnam. The others were for education.
His experience during the era is drawing new scrutiny after the Muslim American parents of a soldier who was killed in Iraq publicly questioned whether Mr. Trump had ever sacrificed for his country. In an emotional speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, the soldier’s father, Khizr Khan, directly addressed Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, saying, “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/us/politics/donald-trump-draft-record.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=1
GOP civil war comes to Kansas
DODGE CITY, Kansas — It was a scene out of 1950s Americana: Tim Huelskamp waved to constituents at a parade in this old cowboy town, smiling as his sons handed out bubble gum and campaign fliers urging a vote on Tuesday for the Republican congressman — a “Proven Principled Conservative.”
But the niceties on display last weekend belied a ferocious intra-Republican feud unfolding here in Kansas’ sprawling 1st Congressional District. Residents of the onetime stomping grounds of Wyatt Earp have been bombarded with competing TV ads and mailers, blasting Huelskamp as an ineffective troublemaker who’s lost his sway on critical agricultural issues. They’re urging voters to replace the Freedom Caucus member with Roger Marshall, an obstetrician running for office for the first time.
What’s resulted in “the Big First,” as locals in the rural 63-county district call it, is an unlikely, multimillion dollar proxy fight this summer between some of the most powerful interests in the Republican Party. Outside conservative groups, including the Club for Growth and Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity, have swooped in to try and save Huelskamp in Tuesday’s primary, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Ricketts family’s “Ending Spending” group are spending big to send the three-term congressman back to Kansas.
The showdown has flipped the script on GOP warring in recent election cycles. Often it’s been an establishment-friendly incumbent scrambling to fend off a primary election challenger from the right. This time, it’s one of the most uncompromising conservatives in the House — a man who instigated John Boehner’s ouster as speaker and has bucked GOP leaders time and again on major votes — ironically being attacked as a D.C. insider and fighting for his political life.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/tim-huelskamp-kansas-primary-226486
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