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Looks like the balance of power is speaking .........
Think about that for a second & next time you dump a "bottled water" in Blizzard's dog dish & because our local water well tables are questionable.
GOP figures call on Moore to leave Alabama race after allegations of sexual misconduct
Liz Goodwin, Senior National Affairs Reporter
Yahoo News
November 9, 2017
GOP figures call on Moore to leave Alabama race after allegations of sexual misconduct
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a slew of other Republicans called on Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama to “step aside” if new allegations that he had sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl — in 1979, when he was 32 — are true.
Less than an hour after the Washington Post’s bombshell report, Republicans were disavowing Moore, who ran as an outsider and defeated the more establishment Sen. Luther Strange, R-Ala., in a recent primary. The special election to fill the seat, previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is scheduled for Dec. 12.
“If these allegations are true, Roy Moore should step aside for all the obvious reasons — very disturbing allegations,” McConnell told reporters.
The Post story is based on an account by a woman named Leigh Corfman, now 53. According to the story, she supports Republicans and voted for Donald Trump last year.
McConnell and other Republicans did not specify what would convince them that the allegations are true.
Three other women accused Moore of pursuing them, according to the Post. All four were quoted under their full names by the newspaper, and other witnesses confirmed they shared their stories with them at the time.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican who recently endorsed Moore, said the conduct described in the story was “deeply disturbing and troubling.” He said the “next steps” for the race are up to the governor of Alabama and its people.
Asked whether Moore should represent his state, Alabama’s senior senator, Richard Shelby, replied: “I supported Senator Strange — you all know that.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, called the report “horrifying.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., released a statement calling upon Moore to step down immediately.
“The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying,” McCain said. “He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of.”
Moore denies allegations that he had sexual contact with the 14-year-old and that he pursued relationships with other teenage girls while he was in his 30s. “This garbage is the very definition of fake news and intentional defamation,” his campaign said in a statement.
Republican senators have been slow to endorse Moore, with just five — including Cornyn — backing him so far. Moore espouses more extreme views than most U.S. senators, arguing that consensual sex between adults of the same gender should be outlawed and suggesting that the 9/11 attacks could have been punishment for the country distancing itself from God.
The judge made a trip to Washington at the end of last month to court senators, telling reporters in brief remarks that they weren’t telling the truth about him in their newspapers. “I don’t hate people,” he said.
It’s unclear what will happen to Moore’s candidacy if he seeks to pull out before the special election against Democrat Doug Jones. Alabama law appears to say that it is too late to replace his name on the ballot even if he files a notice of withdrawal. The state GOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“At this point ballots have already been printed and absentee voting has begun in our 67 counties,” said Brent Beal, the deputy attorney general in Alabama’s secretary of state office. “Because of this, no change to the ballot can be made for the Dec. 12 election.”
—Gabby Kaufman contributed to this report.
Uhm, I hate to be pedantic here, but doesn't at least one of the two parties have to be married in order for it to be adultery?Hey, Roy. Do you remember those tablets that you had installed in the Alabama Supreme Court building that got you tossed from office several years ago? Every read them...particularly the part about adultery?????
Authorities in California ask church to stop feeding the homeless
CBS NEWS
November 9, 2017, 4:52 PM
MALIBU, Calif. -- A Malibu church that has helped the homeless for years has been asked to stop feeding people who are down on their luck.
CBS Los Angeles spoke to the people at the United Methodist Church about the request.
Workers at the church say they are able to serve as many as 100 people. They've been serving meals on Wednesdays since 2014.
But now, the food service will come to an end after Thanksgiving at the city's request.
"It's a safe place," said Michah Johnson, who is homeless. "And everyone is welcome. And the food is really good. It's home-cooked. And there's TLC involved."
"The church is very helpful," he added. "They keep my spirits up. They keep me accountable. When you're homeless, it's very easy to slip off and become jaded."
The church says the city sent an email asking members to attend a meeting on Monday, where they were asked to stop feeding the homeless.
"Very succinctly," said Dawn Randall, who works with the United Methodist Church. "They claimed we are increasing homelessness."
"I think many of them eat out of dumpsters and trash cans when they aren't eating with us," said Kay Gabbard, who also works with the United Methodist Church. "We can't pretend like (homelessness) doesn't exist in our backyard. We can't pretend that it only exists outside Malibu."
CBS Los Angeles reached out to Malibu's mayor for a comment. They have yet to hear back.
Uhm, I hate to be pedantic here, but doesn't at least one of the two parties have to be married in order for it to be adultery?
Trump judge nominee, 36, who has never tried a case, wins approval of Senate panel
By DAVID G. SAVAGE
NOV 10, 2017 | 9:50 AM
Brett J. Talley, President Trump’s nominee to be a federal judge in Alabama, has never tried a case, was unanimously rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Assn.’s judicial rating committee, has practiced law for only three years and, as a blogger last year, displayed a degree of partisanship unusual for a judicial nominee, denouncing “Hillary Rotten Clinton” and pledging support for the National Rifle Assn.
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee, on a party-line vote, approved him for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.
Talley, 36, is part of what Trump has called the "untold story" of his success in filling the courts with young conservatives.
“The judge story is an untold story. Nobody wants to talk about it,” Trump said last month, standing alongside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in the White House Rose Garden. “But when you think of it, Mitch and I were saying, that has consequences 40 years out, depending on the age of the judge — but 40 years out.”
Civil rights groups and liberal advocates see the matter differently. They denounced Thursday’s vote, calling it “laughable” that none of the committee Republicans objected to confirming a lawyer with as little experience as Talley to preside over federal trials.
"He's practiced law for less than three years and never argued a motion, let alone brought a case. This is the least amount of experience I've seen in a judicial nominee," said Kristine Lucius, executive vice president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
The group was one of several on the left that urged the Judiciary Committee to reject Talley because of his lack of qualifications and because of doubts over whether he had the "temperament and ability to approach cases with the fairness and open-mindedness necessary to serve as a federal judge."
Some conservatives discount the ABA's rating. "The ABA is a liberal interest group. They have a long history of giving lower ratings to Republican nominees," said Carrie Severino, counsel for the Judicial Crisis Network, which supports Trump's nominees. She said past liberal nominees have been rated as qualified even if they had little or no courtroom experience.
Talley does have some other qualifications, some traditional, others less so. He grew up in Alabama and earned degrees from the University of Alabama and Harvard Law School. He clerked for two federal judges and worked as a speech writer on the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney. And, like many people who eventually became federal judges, he became the protege of someone who became a senator.
In Talley’s case, the mentor was Republican Sen. Luther Strange, the former Alabama state attorney general who was appointed to the Senate in January to replace Jeff Sessions, who left the Senate to become U.S. attorney general. Talley worked for Strange as a deputy.
Typically, senators play the lead role in recommending nominees for the federal district judgeships in their state. Talley also had something of an inside track. This year, when Sessions moved to the attorney general's post, Talley took a job in the Justice Department's office that selects judicial nominees.
Trump and McConnell have succeeded in pushing judicial nominees through the Senate because the Republicans have voted in lockstep since taking control of the chamber in 2014.
When Trump took office in January, there were more than 100 vacant seats on the federal courts, thanks to an unprecedented slowdown engineered by McConnell during the final two years of President Obama’s term. The Senate under GOP control approved only 22 judges in that two-year period, the lowest total since 1951-52 in the last year of President Truman’s term. By contrast, the Senate under Democratic control approved 68 judges in the last two years of George W. Bush’s presidency.
The best known vacancy was on the Supreme Court. After Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, McConnell refused to permit a hearing for Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee. Trump filled the seat earlier this year with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.
The Alliance for Justice, which tracks judicial nominees, said Trump’s team is off to a fast start, particularly when compared with Obama’s first year. By November 2009, Obama had made 27 judicial nominations, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Trump has nominated 59 people to the federal courts, including Justice Gorsuch. That’s also a contrast with Trump’s pace in filling executive branch jobs, where he has lagged far behind the pace of previous administrations.
Liberal advocates are dismayed that Republicans have voted in unison on Trump's judges.
"So far, no one from his party has been willing to stand up against him on the agenda of packing the courts," said Marge Baker, vice president of People for the American Way.
Last month, when the Judiciary Committee held a hearing on several other nominations, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked Talley about his fervent advocacy of gun rights. In a blog post titled a "Call to Arms," he wrote that "the President and his democratic allies in Congress are about to launch the greatest attack on our constitutional freedoms in our lifetime," referring to Obama's proposal for background checks and limits on rapid-fire weapons following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
"The object of that war is to make guns illegal, in all forms," Talley wrote. The NRA "stands for all of us now, and I pray that in the coming battle for our rights, they will be victorious," he added.
A month later, he reprinted a "thoughtful response" from a reader who wrote: "We will have to resort to arms when our other rights — of speech, press, assembly, representative government — fail to yield the desired results." To that, he wrote: "I agree completely with this."
When pressed, he told the senators he was "trying to generate discussion. I wanted people to be able to use my blog to discuss issues, to come together and find common ground."
In a follow-up written question, Feinstein asked him how many times he had appeared in a federal district court.
"To my recollection, during my time as Alabama's deputy solicitor general, I participated as part of the legal team in one hearing in federal district court in the Middle District of Alabama," he replied.
On Thursday, the Judiciary Committee approved White House lawyer Greg Katsas on a 11-9 vote to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and then approved Talley on another 11-9 vote. The nominations now move to the Senate floor, where a similar party-line result is expected.
Major questions before the Supreme Court this fall »
david.savage@latimes.com
Twitter: DavidGSavage
UPDATES:
9:50 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from the Judicial Crisis Network.
This article was originally published at 8:10 a.m.
HERE'S SCIENTIFIC PROOF THAT TRUMP'S HANDS ARE TOO SMALL TO HOLD A WATER BOTTLE LIKE A NORMAL ADULT
BY KASTALIA MEDRANO
11/15/17 AT 6:56 PM
On Wednesday, November 15, 2017, President Donald Trump was giving a televised speech at the White House to recap his recent Asia tour. At approximately 3:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, he began to wheeze and looked around for water, announcing that he didn’t have any. Multiple journalists pointed out a Fiji water bottle to his right. Trump then picked the bottle up and, using both hands, drank from it.
Let us begin.
The bottle Trump was provided was a plastic FIJI Water-brand bottle. According to FIJI Water’s official website, FIJI Water water bottles are available in four sizes:
330 mL: Our smallest bottle size, the FIJI Water 330 mL ships in a 36-count case. The Lil’ FIJI is a perfect size for kids, it also fits easily in a purse or a car cup holder for on-the-go use. A great size for entertaining and events, it can also be a thoughtful treat for business clients and customers.
500 mL: Our most popular bottle size, the FIJI Water 500 mL ships in a 24-count case. Large enough to quench your thirst, yet completely portable, the 500 mL is the perfect serving size for adults. The FIJI Water 500 mL is also the ideal bottled water size to stock the office and conference rooms.
1 Liter: The FIJI Water 1 Liter bottle ships in a 12-count case. The 1 Liter is a reliable thirst-quencher that is well-suited for active lifestyles and greater hydration needs. Also a must-have item for the well-stocked family refrigerator.
1.5 Liter: Our largest-size and best value, the FIJI Water 1.5 Liter ships in a 12-count case. For those serious about hydration the 1.5 Liter is just the right size. This large size is also great for meals and group gatherings.
The bottle Trump used appeared to be the 500 mL. As of press time, FIJI Water had not responded to a request for comment as to whether the 500 mL FIJI Water bottle was designed to be grasped with one normal-sized adult hand or two. However, we can reasonably infer from the phrases “completely portable” and “the perfect serving size for adults” that this bottle was intended to fit comfortably in a single, normal-sized hand of an adult with normal-sized hands.
The 500 mL bottle.
AMAZON
The average male hand measures 7.4 inches from wrist to fingertip, and 3.30 inches across the palm. If Trump's hands are not sufficiently sized for him to instinctively grasp the 500 mL bottle with just one of them, then the logical fit would be the next size down: the Lil' FIJI.
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the average child’s middle finger is about 2.83 inches long, which would make the hand length roughly 5.66 inches. FIJI Water®was not wrong to describe this option as a "great size for entertaining and events, [and] a thoughtful treat for business clients and customers."
Trump has notably mocked Florida Senator Marco Rubio for drinking water during a televised speech (Rubio has already responded to today's incident), and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for appearing to lack "stamina." Trump himself is known for gripping a lot of things unnecessarily, like stair railings, but Google ‘Trump drinking water two hands video’ and you can see that this is definitely a thing.
This election was lost four and six years ago, not this year. They [Republicans] didn’t start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickles down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellows hands. They saved the big banks, but the little ones went up the flue.
Right, and I don't think any either of the current bills do that.Another thing that he pointed out was that lowering the corporate tax rate to 20% while leaving the non-incorporated business and personal tax rate at 39% was not a good idea.