As the court prepares to hear its first cases of the 2016-2017 term next week, Senate Republicans’ unprecedented blockade of Chief Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination has resulted in a state of dysfunction at our nation’s highest court.
This upcoming term demonstrates both the incredible importance of the Court and how it has been dangerously hobbled by the lack of a ninth justice.
Democratic senator accused the GOP of “theft” for blocking President Barack Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court so it can be filled by the Drumpf administration.
“We really have to pay attention to the Supreme Court seat.
The seat that is sitting empty is being stolen,” Sen. Jeff Merkley told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Thursday night, January 27.
“It’s being stolen from the Obama administration and the construct of our Constitution. And it’s being delivered to an administration that has no right to fill it.”
President Barack Obama stood in the White House Rose Garden back in March to announce his nominee, Merrick Garland, for the Supreme Court seat emptied by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
But Republicans who control the Senate have refused to grant Garland a hearing, saying it should be up to Obama’s successor to pick a replacement for Scalia, who died in February 2016.
The official term for the red thing on a turkey is a wattle. The wattle changes color as the turkey gets excited or angry.
~Wikipedia~
The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a grouping and classification of vices of Christian origin.
Behaviors or habits are classified under this category if they directly give birth to other immoralities.
According to the standard list, they are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth, which are also contrary to the seven virtues. These sins are often thought to be abuses or excessive versions of one’s natural faculties or passions (for example, gluttony abuses one’s desire to eat).
I must confess that, at minimum, this distressed me. I’d seen the others candidates who were under consideration. Like the election results, I, again, never thought this would be the pick.
The short words, included below, about “The Choice” is the short version.
The mailmanbrings this magazine to my house.
I won’t renew the subscription.
However, I found an article which explains a major meaning behind the details of the picture itself.
These observations helped me breathe better.
It’s not what I thought.
It’s even better.
I know, there’s a lot of reading but, if the choice boggled your mind, it’s worth the read.
I strongly believe that the selected choice has no idea that he could have been played except for Trump being upset Time named him ‘Person of the Year‘ instead of ‘Man of the Year‘.
This is the 90th time we have named the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year.
So which is it this year: Better or worse?
The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees about the answer.
It’s hard to measure the scale of his disruption. This real estate baron and casino owner turned reality-TV star and provocateur – never a day spent in public office, never a debt owed to any interest besides his own – now surveys the smoking ruin of a vast political edifice that once housed parties, pundits, donors, pollsters, all those who did not see him coming or take him seriously.
Out of this reckoning, Trump is poised to preside, for better or worse.
For reminding America that demagoguery feeds on despair and that truth is only as powerful as the trust in those who speak it, for empowering a hidden electorate by mainstreaming its furies and live-streaming its fears, and for framing tomorrow’s political culture by demolishing yesterday’s, Donald Trump is TIME’s 2016 Person of the Year.
The 2016 Person of the Year is Donald Trump, the President-elect of the divided states of America.
Person of the Year is one of the best-known and most-followed franchises in journalism. TIME selects the person who for good or ill has done the most to influence the events of the year.
~Why Time’s Trump Cover Is a Subversive Work of Political Art~
By: Jake Romm
December 8, 2016Time Magazine’s annual “Person of the Year” announcement is, year after year, grossly misunderstood.
Time Magazine is clear on its sole criterion – “the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year” – yet, do a simple search on Twitter and you will find countless people who seem to think that the “Person of the Year” selection is tantamount to an endorsement.
Previous winners have included Joseph Stalin (1939, 1942), Ayatollah Khomeini (1979), Adolf Hitler (1938), and other figures who I think it is safe to assume the Time staff does not endorse.
Photo was shot by Jewish photographer Nadav Kander.
For clues as to how Time feels about that question — is it “for better or worse?” — we can look to the image chosen for the cover of the issue. The decisions that Time made regarding how to photograph Trump reveal a layered, nuanced field of references that place the image among, in this viewer’s opinion, the magazine’s greatest covers.
In order to deconstruct the image, let’s focus on three key elements (leaving aside the placement of the ‘M’ in ‘Time’ that makes it look like Trump has red horns): the color, the pose, and the chair.
~THE COLOR~
Notice how the colors appear slightly washed out, slightly muted, soft. The palette creates what we might call a vintage effect. The image’s sharpness and detail reveal the contemporaneity of the picture, but the color suggests an older type of film, namely, Kodachrome. Kodachrome, the recently discontinued film produced by Kodak, was designed to create accurate color reproduction in the early 1900’s.
This visual-temporal shift in a sense mirrors a lot of the drives that fueled Trump’s rise.
Trump ran a campaign based on regressive policies and attitudes – anti-environmental protection, anti-abortion, pro-coal, etc. This election was not just about regressive policy choices, but also about traditional values (defined primarily by the Christian right), about nostalgia for American greatness and security, about nostalgia for a pre-globalized world.
~THE POSE~
Trump’s pose can be read as a subversive play on a traditional power-portrait pose.
Trump’s turn towards the camera renders the tone conspiratorial rather than judgmental. There are two images at play here – the imagined power-image taken from the front, and the actual image, in which Trump seems to offer the viewer a conniving wink, as if to say, look at how we hoodwinked those suckers in the front (both Trump and the viewer are looking down on those in front).
By subverting the typical power dynamic, Time, in a sense, implicates the viewer in Trump’s election, in his being on the cover in the first place.
By choosing not to shoot Trump head on, the Time cover almost offers us a “behind the scenes” glimpse of the man who has spent so much of his time in front of the camera – heightening the conspiratorial tone and complicity of the viewer. The highly posed and processed nature of the photograph offers yet another level of irony.
Finally, we must note the ominous shadow lurking on the backdrop.
It’s a small, but important and clever detail.
Just as this image provides us with two theoretical points of view, it also provides us with two Trumps – Trump the president-elect, and the specter of Trump the president, haunting in the wings, waiting to take form.
~THE CHAIR~
The masterstroke, the single detail that completes the entire image, is the chair.
Trump is seated in what looks to be a vintage “Louis XV” chair (so named because it was designed in France under the reign of King Louis XV in the mid 18th century).
It’s a gaudy symbol of wealth and status, but if you look at the top right corner, you can see a rip in the upholstery, signifying Trump’s own cracked image. Behind the bluster, behind the glowing displays of wealth, behind the glittering promises, we have the debt, the tastelessness, the demagoguery, the racism, the lack of government experience or knowledge (all of which we unfortunately know too well already).
Once we notice the rip, the splotches on the wood come into focus, the cracks in Trump’s makeup, the thinness of his hair, the stain on the bottom left corner of the seat – the entire illusion of grandeur begins to collapse.
The cover is less an image of a man in power than the freeze frame of a leader, and his country, in a state of decay. The ghostly shadow works overtime here – suggesting a splendor that has already passed, if it ever existed at all.
Taken together, these elements add up to a profound portrayal of anxiety for the coming years. We have the implicit placement of Trump in the mid 1900’s. We have a suggestion of the scheming, sordid underside of power.
We have the crumbling facade of wealth, which, like “The Picture of Dorian Gray” suggests more than just a physical deterioration.
As a photograph, it’s a rare achievement.
As a cover, it’s a statement.
These are only excerpts.
There’s more to it.
Again, I encourage you to read TIME’s complete article.
“I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her,” Trump says. “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them.
It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”
“Whatever you want,” Bush echoes.
A sexual predator has no business running for president
DhakaTribune
Fakhruddin Ahmed
Under intense questioning from CNN’s Anderson Cooper in the second presidential debate on October 9, Donald Trump categorically denied ever sexually assaulting women. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many of his accusers.
Since then, 12 women — all white females — have come forward accusing Trump of forcibly kissing them, fondling their breasts, grabbing their genitals, and forcing himself on them.
The accusations date back from the late 1970’s to 2007.
The accusers include a passenger on a plane, a contestant on The Apprentice, and contestants in the “Miss USA” and “Miss Teen USA” pageant.
Trump’s Rally in Chicago Canceled After Violent Scuffles
With thousands of people already packed into stands and music blaring to warm up the crowd, Donald J. Trump’s campaign abruptly canceled his rally here on Friday night over security concerns as protesters clashed with his supporters inside an arena where he was to speak.
Minutes after Mr. Trump was to have taken to a podium on the campus of a large, diverse public university just west of downtown, an announcer suddenly pronounced the event over before it had begun. Hundreds of protesters, who had promised to be a visible presence here and filled several sections of the arena, let out an elated, unstopping cheer. Mr. Trump’s supporters, many of whom had waited hours to see the Republican front-runner, seemed stunned and slowly filed out in anger.
Around the country, protesters have interrupted virtually every Trump rally, but his planned appearance here — in a city run for decades by Democrats and populated by nearly equal thirds of blacks, Latinos and whites — had drawn some particularly incensed responses since it was announced days ago.
For hours, the Chicago police, along with university officers, the federal authorities and others, were out here in force.
A Chicago police spokesman said that city law enforcement authorities were not consulted and had no role in canceling the event.
The spokesman said there had been five arrests, two by the Chicago police, two by the university’s police and one by the Illinois State Police. The fire department said three people, including a police officer, were injured.
It Is What It Is 