https://jezebel.com/unwrapping-the-beef-taylor-swift-fans-are-swiping-at-k-1836582736


California girls: Kamala Harris was joined by pop stars Katy Perry, Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato at an event in Los Angeles on Saturday (above)

After photographs from Scooter Braun’s house surfaced late Saturday night, showing a cadre of celebrities assembled for a fireside chat with Kamala Harris, Taylor Swift fans mobilized on Twitter to wage war in the senator’s mentions. Katy Perry, who unfollowed Braun after “reconciling” with the former snake charmer and “You Need To Calm Down” singer, similarly found herself in hot water with the Swifties. To understand how we got here, let me take you on a thorough tour of three weeks in celebrity swiping.

June 30, 2019:
Taylor Swift unleashes hell with a Tumblr post documenting what she alleges is “years of bullying” by Scooter Braun and his cabal of pop stars. She even claimed that Braun was instrumental in orchestrating the secret Kim Kardashian recording that reignited her feud with Kanye West. That morning, it’d been announced that Braun, the owner of Ithaca Holdings, had acquired Swift’s masters in the sale of Big Machine Records. She claimed she’d “pleaded” for her masters before the sale.

Scott Borchetta, the former owner of the label, countered these claims with emails allegedly sent between Swift and himself. While Taylor Swift’s representatives claim she found out about the news “when she woke up,” Borchetta disputes this. Remember, Swift’s father is a shareholder in Big Machine Records and her lawyers were present when the sale was being finalized. While there is a conceivable reality where her team and family hid this from her, I find it unlikely. Regardless, Justin Bieber immediately joined the fray in defense of Braun, as did Demi Lovato (who Brain recently signed), and his wife Yael. Swift, meanwhile, rallied support from Todrick Hall, Halsey, and Iggy Azalea.

snip


more background

Kamala Harris joins Katy Perry, Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande for fundraiser hosted by Scooter Braun at his $20M LA compound - prompting Taylor Swift fans to attack Democratic hopeful

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7269891/Kamala-Harris-joins-Katy-Perry-Demi-Lovato-Ariana-Grande-event-Scooter-Brauns-compound.html

Democratic congresswomen, planning trip next month, could be routinely denied entry under 2017 boycott law, but Netanyahu can decide to waive the rule

https://www.timesofisrael.com/pm-to-decide-if-bds-supporters-omar-and-tlaib-allowed-to-visit-israel-report/



Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau will decide whether US congresswomen Omar Ilhan and Rashida Tlaib will be allowed to enter Israel and the West Bank next month, Haaretz reported Wednesday. Ilhan told the Jewish Insider on Wednesday that she and Tlaib were planning to visit Israel and the West Bank in “a few weeks,” but the trip could be nixed by Jerusalem over their support for the Palestinian-led anti-Israel boycott movement.

Both Omar, a Somali-born lawmaker from Minnesota, and Tlaib, the first-Palestinian-American woman to be elected to Congress, have been accused of harboring anti-Israel sentiment, in part due to their support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Omar on Tuesday introduced a resolution cosponsored by Tlaib aimed at pushing back against laws seeking to clamp down on boycotts of Israel. The resolution, which does not explicitly mention Israel or the pro-Palestinian BDS movement, affirms the right of Americans to participate in boycotts as an expression of free speech under the First Amendment, citing boycott movements against Nazi Germany, the USSR and apartheid South Africa.

Omar, Tlaib and other BDS supporters say that in urging businesses, artists and universities to sever ties with Israel, they are using nonviolent means to oppose unjust policies toward Palestinians. Israel says the movement masks its motives to delegitimize or destroy the Jewish state.

snip

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/its-biden-v-harris-part-2-at-next-democratic-presidential-debate/2019/07/18/020fe270-a989-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html?utm_term=.ad07135cc626

Former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala D. Harris of California, who clashed at the first Democratic debate, will face off again in the next two-night debate at the end of July, while the ideologically aligned Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren will appear together the other night.

Who is matched with whom can shift the trajectory of the race, as Harris showed in the first debate when she went after Biden on the issue of busing and race. It created a Harris vs. Biden narrative and helped catapult Harris toward the top of the national polls. The aftershocks of that moment were felt for days later, culminating in Biden giving a major speech defending his civil rights record. A rematch gives Harris another shot to handicap Biden, while Biden gets an opportunity for a do-over after his fumbling performance against Harris last time.

For socialist democrat Sanders and capitalist Warren, who are vying for many of the same far-left voters, their matchup allows them the chance to differentiate. It also denies Sanders a chance to go after Biden, whom he competes with for the populist and working-class vote. In the past week, Sanders has targeted Biden for not embracing Medicare-for-all, providing a preview of how hard he planned to go after Biden if given the opportunity.

Debate host CNN held a live drawing on Thursday night to determine the lineups. The Democrats wanted to avoid having separate first-tier and second-tier debates like Republicans did in 2016, so instead chose to randomly divide the whole field over two nights. It happened anyway in the first debate in June when all the top-polling candidates except for Warren were drawn for the same night.

snip

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-supporters-newest-rallying-cry--send-her-back-reverberates-across-a-nation-fraught-with-racial-tension/2019/07/18/6ee96ede-a99d-11e9-9214-246e594de5d5_story.html?utm_term=.6dfdd6479125

After days of inflaming the nation’s racial tensions, President Trump stood before a mostly white crowd of supporters Wednesday and observed what he had wrought. “Send her back! Send her back!” the crowd chanted as Trump looked on silently for 13 seconds, basking in the response to his attacks on a Somali-born Muslim congresswoman whom he had accused of supporting terrorists and hating America. The new rallying cry of Trump’s supporters unleashed emotional responses from people across the country, with some outraged by and others supportive of the president’s latest polarizing act.

“I think he’s tearing the world apart with what he says and how he says it,” Lu Norman, 88, said while visiting the library in the rural west Texas town of Stanton. “I don’t think he’s presidential.” Also at the library Wednesday, Lori Valles said the president was being “petty” and turning “people against each other.” Trump “needs to be impeached,” the 42-year-old certified nurse’s aide said.

Dan Wendel, a Boston contractor, had a different view about Trump’s attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and three other congresswomen. “You really want to know? I love it!” he said Wednesday outside a building he was working on in Southie, a gentrifying working-class neighborhood of Boston. Wendel said Trump was right to call out Democratic lawmakers for “bad-mouthing America.”

During his rally in Greenville, N.C., on Wednesday, Trump accused Omar and Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) of being unpatriotic. Following up on his tweets Sunday — in which he urged the four minority lawmakers to “go back” to their countries of origin — Trump told the crowd that the four women ought to leave the United States.

snip

Shadow cabinet ministers “understand in their heart of hearts that the Corbyn project is hollow and moribund", says MP at bombshell meeting.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyn-labour-party-general-election_uk_5d2e3594e4b0a873f6431034

Deep divisions tearing at the Labour Party mean it is destined for general election disaster, MPs and activists revealed at an explosive meeting. Wes Streeting, MP for Ilford North, warned “self-inflicted wounds” over Brexit and “hollow” leadership on anti-Semitism will hand victory to the Conservatives in any snap poll. Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow ministers know “in their heart of hearts” the party faces electoral oblivion, Streeting added, amid reports that Boris Johnson is plotting a snap general election should he be crowned prime minister next week.

The Times reported on Tuesday night that Johnson wanted to fight an election “while Jeremy Corbyn is still around” because Labour was in no fit state to win. Streeting told the meeting of MPs and activists from the centre-left group Labour First, held in Westminster, that Corbyn had been “a primary driver” of the party’s “anti-Semitism problem”, adding: “Although I am an eternal optimist, I do not believe that JC is capable, morally or intellectually, of addressing this problem.” He later added shadow cabinet ministers “understand in their heart of hearts that the Corbyn project is hollow and moribund and is damaging our party”.

He picked out shadow Treasury minister Clive Lewis, who had recently criticised the “conspiratorial nature of the politics of anti-Semitism on the left”. Streeting said Labour’s left-wing MPs should be challenged more, adding: ″I genuinely think that there are lots of MPs who sit at the shadow cabinet table or who stand up at the despatch box as shadow minister who know in their heart of hearts that we are being led by a hollow prospect that is destined to lose a general election.”

Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge, meanwhile, accused Corbyn allies of “weaponising” Labour general secretary Jennie Formby’s cancer diagnosis to block criticism over the anti-Semitism crisis as she took aim at senior aides. “Jeremy Corbyn has been for me the worst and the weakest leader of the Labour Party in all our 118 years,” she said. “Every day that Seumas Milne is devising our strategy, every day that [Unite boss] Len McCluskey is dictating our politics, every day that they are all refusing to stand up against anti-Semitism, Boris Johnson will sleep soundly in Number 10.”

snip

census, and the court so ordered. There’s no going back. It’s over.

https://twitter.com/dale_e_ho/status/1151240317250822146


https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6200561-July-16-2019-Order-by-U-S-District-Judge-Jesse.html

Steve Bullock: People are hungry for government that can work

https://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/steve-bullock-people-are-hungry-that-government-can-work-63976517904

Blame Thomas Jefferson.

https://www.vox.com/2019/7/16/20696932/nancy-pelosi-trump-tweet-racist-chaos

The House of Representatives devolved into chaos Tuesday over whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had the right to call President Donald Trump’s tweets attacking four progressive lawmakers of color “racist,” as a matter of official record. The controversy started during a debate over a House resolution condemning Trump’s tweets telling the four lawmakers to leave the country and “go back” to “the crime infested places from which they came.” (The resolution ultimately passed on a vote of 240-187, with four Republican lawmakers voting in favor.) Pelosi called his remarks racist during a speech on the House floor.

“Every single member of this institution should join us in condemning the president’s racist tweets,” Pelosi said. “To do anything less would be a shocking rejection of our values and a shameful abdication of our oath of office to protect the American people.” Republicans called for Pelosi’s words to be removed from the official record, arguing the speaker broke a House parliamentary rule that states lawmakers cannot malign the character of the president.

What ensued was hours of tumult on the House floor that pushed Democrats and Republicans into their respective corners, caused the former president of the Congressional Black Caucus to “abandon” his duties presiding over the House floor, and that left Pelosi — the House speaker — temporarily banned from speaking on the House floor for the rest of the day. (We’ll explain all of this).

The mayhem comes down to House Republicans’ refusal to censure Trump, no matter the extremity of his rhetoric. Since his weekend tweets, Trump has not backed down on his comments about Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, three of whom were born in the US. He thinks they “hate” the United States, and Republicans have been steadfast in defending him.''

snip

indication of things to come

As someone who lost a loved one to depression, the idea of strong-arming sufferers back to their desks rather than to therapy is offensive

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/boris-johnsons-idea-hard-work-cures-mental-illness-total-madness-telegraph-column/

Boris Johnson’s latest column for The Telegraph puts forward the idea that the UK can “improve mental health, save money and boost the economy all in one go”. In it, he suggests that what helped Winston Churchill cope with his depression wasn’t his alleged dependence on alcohol, but the fact that he worked hard.

“It was with work that he pitchforked off his depression; and what was true for Churchill is basically true for all of us: that to a very large extent we derive our self-esteem from what we do,” he writes. “It is often from our jobs – from being engrossed in our daily tasks – that we get that all-important sense of satisfaction.” Using a genial tone, Johnson goes on to acknowledge that work may be the thing that “stresses us out” but says it can also be the cure. He even refers to it as “therapy”.

‘Irresponsible and distasteful’

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it shares traits with a speech made by Harry Potter’s Dolores Umbridge – the Ministry of Magic bureaucrat. When she first arrives at Hogwarts, she performs a long address about the role the ministry will play which everyone writes off as harmless waffle. But hidden between the lines lies her true intention – that the ministry will become more controlling to everyone’s detriment.

As the frontrunner for Prime Minister, Johnson’s column is similarly sinister, and a worrying precursor for the future of mental health in this nation, should he – and it looks very likely he will – come to power.

snip