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4 Film Series to Catch in NYC This Weekend

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Judge Temporarily Stops U.S. From Blocking Undocumented Teenagers’ Abortions

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FOX NEWS: Mormon church's all-male hierarchy is steeped in tradition

Mormon church's all-male hierarchy is steeped in tradition



The Mormon church this weekend is expected to select two new members to a top governing body during a twice-yearly conference that will be the first since new church president Russell M. Nelson in January assumed the highest seat in a well-defined leadership hierarchy.

FOX NEWS: Mormon conference ushers in leaders as church faces scrutiny

Mormon conference ushers in leaders as church faces scrutiny



A Mormon conference this weekend in Utah will usher in a new era of church leadership that comes as the faith grapples with heightened scrutiny about its handling of sexual abuse reports and one-on-one interviews between local lay leaders and youth.

FOX NEWS: Two teens charged in brutal beating death of New Jersey man

Two teens charged in brutal beating death of New Jersey man



Two teens have been arrested and charged in connection with the brutal beating death of a 36-year-old New Jersey man.

FOX NEWS: Trump's talk of a Syria pullout nothing new

Trump's talk of a Syria pullout nothing new



President Donald Trump's unscripted remark this week about pulling out of Syria "very soon," while at odds with his own policy, was not a one-off: For weeks, top advisers have been fretting about an overly hasty withdrawal as the president has increasingly told them privately he wants out, U.S. officials said.

FOX NEWS: Stephon Clark's independent autopsy results reveal he was shot 8 times, official says

Stephon Clark's independent autopsy results reveal he was shot 8 times, official says



The results of an independent autopsy requested by the family of a 22-year-old Sacramento man gunned down last week by police revealed he was shot a total of eight times, including seven times from behind, a pathologist said Friday.

FOX NEWS: In private, Trump has mused about Syria pullout for weeks

In private, Trump has mused about Syria pullout for weeks



President Donald Trump's unscripted remark this week about pulling out of Syria "very soon," while at odds with his own policy, was not a one-off: For weeks, top advisers have been fretting about an overly hasty withdrawal as the president has increasingly told them privately he wants out, U.S. officials said.

FOX NEWS: Mega Millions numbers: 11, 28, 31, 46, 59, Mega Ball 1

Mega Millions numbers: 11, 28, 31, 46, 59, Mega Ball 1



A giant lottery jackpot is awaiting players willing to shrug off miserable odds for a chance at immense wealth.

FOX NEWS: Woman drove drunk after threat to torch neighbor's home, police say

Woman drove drunk after threat to torch neighbor's home, police say



An Ohio woman has drawn attention for making a face in her mug shot after she was arrested for drunken driving -- and accused of threatening to burn down a neighbor's home.

FOX NEWS: Nightclub gunman's widow sobs as jury finds her not guilty

Nightclub gunman's widow sobs as jury finds her not guilty



The widow of the gunman who slaughtered 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was acquitted Friday of helping to plot the attack and lying to the FBI afterward — a rare and stinging defeat for the U.S. government in a terrorism case.

FOX NEWS: Hofstra students want Thomas Jefferson statue removed

Hofstra students want Thomas Jefferson statue removed



Does America run the risk of erasing history by removing monuments? Gianno Caldwell and Geraldo Rivera weigh in on 'The Ingraham Angle.'

Trump Orders State Dept. to Suspend Funds for Syria Recovery

The move came as two members of the United States-led coalition fighting in Syria were killed and five others were wounded by a bomb in a late-night attack.

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The Saturday Profile: Being Dead, He Learned, Is Hard to Overcome

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Anguished Mourners Beg for Answers After Jail Fire in Venezuela

At least 68 people — prisoners and their visitors — died in the fire in Valencia, and many of the victims were buried Friday in hastily organized funerals with no help from officials.

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Can North Korea Handle a K-Pop Invasion?

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A Whistle-Blower’s Canadian Roots: The Canada Letter

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Sacramento, Gaza Strip, Orlando: Your Evening Briefing

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‘Vicious’ Killer of 11 Women Gets Death Penalty in China

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Bar Americans From Man Booker Prize, Fed-Up British Authors Urge

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Russian Accused of Hacking U.S. Technology Firms Is Extradited

Yevgeniy A. Nikulin breached the networks of LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring, and may have compromised the information of more than 100 million people.

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Easter Week Around the World (and Hell, if It Exists)

From Italy to South Africa to India to Israel, the faithful held solemn ceremonies, re-enacted Christ’s suffering and prayed for loved ones before Easter Sunday.

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Trump, Lacking Leverage Over North Korea, Takes Aim at South Instead

By tying a trade deal with South Korea to progress in denuclearizing Pyongyang, President Trump is pressuring an ally hoping it will help him deal with a reclusive foe.

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Vilnius Journal: Where the Genocide Museum Is (Mostly) Mum on the Fate of Jews

The Lithuanian capital is divided on how to face its own messy history, amid accusations of 21st-century Holocaust denial. Was the Soviet occupation really “genocide”?

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Thailand Bus Fire Kills 20 Migrant Workers From Myanmar

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Wooing Saudi Business, Tabloid Mogul Had a Powerful Friend: Trump

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Biggest Threat to Humanity? Climate Change, U.N. Chief Says

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Egypt’s Early Vote Tally: Sisi, 92%, Token Opponent, 3%

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Russia, Venezuela, Malala: Your Thursday Evening Briefing

Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.

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Sarkozy to Face Trial in Influence-Peddling Case in France

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Cricket Hero Breaks Down in Tears on TV Over Cheating

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A Quick Online Divorce for $60? Not So Fast, Denmark Says

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Afghan Hunger Strikers Demand Cease-Fire: ‘Our Blood Is Finished’

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Expelling Diplomats, a Furious Kremlin Escalates a Crisis

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Venezuela, Accustomed to Tragedy, Is Shaken Again by Horrific Jail Fire

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Britain Signals Harder Look at Wealthy Russians and Russian Wealth

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Screams of Anguish at Venezuelan Jail Fire

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No Buicks! Janis Joplin’s message to Donald Trump

Folk-rock singer Janis Joplin performs in Dec. 1969 (Credit: AP)

Janis Joplin, the American rock singer, died at a very young age. Born in 1943, just three years before Donald Trump, she nevertheless has a powerful message to the man who, in 2016, rose to become the 45th President of the United States.

As the world knows, Trump is all about extreme vanity, to put it charitably. In his world, material status symbols are all-decisive — not least to make a powerful impression on the ladies.

In that context, it is instructive to recall the words of one of Janis Joplin’s most famous songs, Mercedes Benz; audio here. Recorded in October 1970, the same month she died, the lyrics are as follows:

Mercedes Benz

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
…
I’m counting on you, Lord, please don’t let me down.
…
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends,
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
That’s it!

Her song certainly isn’t intended as an ode to Germany (although it implies a high quality of German craftsmanship). Nor does it imply any cheating (or “raping”) of America’s material overlords by German car manufacturers.

It is a paean to high-end materialism and a deliberately ironic, but realistic take on the games that the rich and mighty play to underscore their special status on life’s stage.

Note as well that rock stars definitely have one thing in common with real estate honchos — they all love to flaunt the gadgets that display their material status.

Joplin herself actually drove a Porsche. Donald Trump, in his own life, is known to have been enamored with his fair share of foreign-made, high-end luxury vehicles — Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Rolls Royces. For his taste and wallet, it appears as if German car makers are not luxury enough.

Notice one thing? Very few Buicks on that list!

When Trump now suggests to the Europeans that they are cheating because they are not buying more Buicks, there is doubly bad news. It is very unlikely that, even at a zero tariff, Europeans would fall in love with Buicks.

Plus, even the people that make up Trump’s own industry, real estate, would usually not be caught dead in such an — American — car. It conveys no status. It’s for granddads.

Proof positive of the truthfulness of Janis Joplin’s message to Donald Trump is that the U.S. sales of Daimler Benz, BMW and Porsche are traditionally very aligned to boom times in the real estate and investment banking sectors.

Real estate boom, sales are up (because everybody wants a bimmer), real estate bust and sales are down.

from Salon: in-depth news, politics, business, technology & culture Salon https://ift.tt/2J6xrwB

The lesson for progressives from Daniel Biss’ Illinois governor race loss: Don’t alienate labor

Daniel Biss (Credit: AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The dust has settled in Illinois’ gubernatorial primaries, and the two candidates left standing are those with the biggest bank accounts.

Billionaire Democrat J.B. Pritzker fended off rivals Chris Kennedy, a millionaire businessman, and Daniel Biss, a state senator and former math professor who ran on the most progressive platform in the race. On the Republican side, investment banker and incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner won out in a much-closer-than-expected contest against conservative state Rep. Jeanne Ives.

On the face of it, the failure of Biss to beat Pritzker is dispiriting. A number of high-profile progressive groups aligned with Bernie Sanders, such as Our Revolution, National Nurses United and MoveOn.org, threw their weight behind Biss, hoping that his left-leaning platform could overcome Pritzker’s big spending.

Yet Biss also came with baggage. A close look at the race offers instructive lessons for progressive challengers nationwide — perhaps most importantly, that union support remains indispensable and candidates must have an unblemished track record on workers’ rights.

Rauner is widely seen as the most vulnerable incumbent GOP governor up for reelection in 2018. Pritzker appeared to be the Democratic establishment’s anointed candidate, with backing from the Cook County Democratic Party, powerful labor groups such as the Illinois AFL-CIO and building trades unions, as well as Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth. The institutional powers within the party apparently made a calculation that the only way to defeat Rauner, a near-billionaire Republican incumbent who had bought his way into the governor’s mansion, was with an even richer candidate of their own.

But the specter of two ultra-wealthy businessmen battling it out for governor by tapping their personal coffers did not exactly inspire enthusiasm among progressives. Of the field of six Democratic challengers, Biss appeared to offer the best alternative: a candidate of modest income running on an explicitly progressive platform that included providing single-payer healthcare and tuition-free college, establishing a $15 minimum wage, overturning the statewide ban on rent control, putting in place a financial transaction tax, legalizing marijuana, ending monetary bail and commuting drug convictions.

Money was undoubtedly part of the reason that Biss was never able to galvanize enough momentum to overtake Pritzker. The billionaire pumped nearly $70 million of his own money into his campaign, blanketing the state in ads and pushing forward the narrative that he was the only candidate with the abilities, record and resources to take on both Rauner and Donald Trump. Biss’ campaign, meanwhile, spent just $2 million, and his commercials in the state ran a full ten times less than those funded by the Pritzker campaign.

But it wasn’t just the sheer number of ads that aided the Pritzker campaign; it was also their content. As Biss’ support began to climb in February and he overtook Kennedy for second place, the Pritzker campaign’s mailers and TV ads began focusing squarely on Biss and his record of writing and championing legislation that would have slashed the pensions of state workers.

The attacks could easily be seen as cynical, since, in 2011, Pritzker himself donated $20,000 to a PAC that supported candidates willing to cut pensions and attack unions. Yet the attacks did focus on a legitimate flaw in Biss’ record, which appeared to undercut his progressive bona fides. In 2013, Biss was the co-author of S.B. 35, a bill that would have cut pension benefits for 467,000 Illinois workers, including retirees. The bill passed the legislature and was only prevented from going into effect because the Illinois Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for the state to take away money promised to workers. At the time, the bill was referred to by its opponents in the labor movement as “pension theft.”

In response to Biss’ role in advocating the bill, in 2013 unionized retirees protestedoutside of his office, demanding that he change his position. Biss responded by defending the legislation as “benefit reform” and saying that “all sides . . . should be asked to give something.”

Biss’ record on pensions may have been part of the reason the Illinois AFL-CIO and building trades were comfortable coming out early for Pritzker, and why many other unions dragged their feet on endorsements. And it allowed Pritzker to attack Biss from his left on the issue of workers’ rights.

Throughout the campaign, Biss fought to distance himself from the pension bill, claiming that he made a mistake in writing and supporting the legislation and that his role in the fiasco was a “learning experience.” Biss’ platform laid out a labor-friendly agenda of fully funding state pensions, defending workers’ rights, raising the minimum wage and protecting collective bargaining. His mea culpas were enough for many progressives in the state to forgive and move on, but not to win him the support of public-sector unions.

The Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT), for example, backed Pritzker in December 2017. Other unions, such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) remained neutral, denying Biss the endorsement of powerful forces in the Illinois labor movement.

In Illinois, labor endorsements and support are invaluable to candidates hoping to win the backing of rank-and-file union members. Union membership in the state sits at 15 percent, compared to just 10.7 percent nationally, and 827,000 Illinois workers are represented by unions. A disproportionate percentage of these workers are African American, a demographic where Biss’ support lagged throughout the primary. When leadership makes endorsements, especially early on in races, it can sway membership to throw their support behind a candidate. After the Illinois AFL-CIO endorsed Pritzker in June 2017, the Chicago Tribune reported that the move cemented his status as the early front-runner in the race. Biss’ fraught record on pensions may have closed the door to potential endorsements from unions in the state from the start.

More broadly, in the United States, the labor movement remains the most powerful vehicle for the working class to advance their interests. Biss’ history of antagonizing that movement muddied the waters for him as he attempted to claim the mantle of being the progressive champion in the race.

It’s unclear whether unions such as SEIU and AFSCME would have thrown their support behind Biss had his record been more in step with labor’s priorities, or whether their backing would have tipped the race his way. Ultimately, many unions were likely swayed by Pritzker’s ability to self-fund his campaign, allowing them to hold on to their resources.

Winning a Democratic primary against as wealthy and formidable an opponent as Pritzker, though, would always be a herculean task without support from major unions. And by writing and cheerleading legislation these same unions considered “pension theft,” Biss may have alienated them before the race even began.

The campaign saw another misstep in September 2017 when Biss dropped popular Chicago Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa as his running mate, less than a week after tapping him for the ticket. Biss had faced pressure from Congressman Brad Schneider, a campaign supporter, to abandon Ramirez-Rosa over his refusal to disavow the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, which was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which Ramirez-Rosa is a member. (Full disclosure: The author has volunteered on campaigns run out of Ramirez-Rosa’s ward office.)

Since taking office in 2015, Ramirez-Rosa has been a staunch ally of unions in Illinois, including the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and SEIU, and the decision to boot him was seen by some in the labor movement as a slight against a strong defender of workers’ rights. Along with SEIU and CTU, other organizations aligned with Ramirez-Rosa similarly held out their support for Biss, including DSA and United Working Families, the Illinois partner of the Working Families Party.

Despite these slips, Biss’ sophisticated campaign and dedicated volunteers helped him outperform what many political observers had expected from a state senator who early on had little name recognition or personal funds to draw from. And by consistently touting progressive solutions to the state’s problems, such as a financial transactions tax and a Medicare-for-all healthcare system, Biss and his team, along with activists across the state, were able to help push the debate within the primary decidedly to the left.

The effect was evident in Pritzker’s victory speech, in which he touted such policy planks as passing a progressive income tax and a $15 minimum wage, instituting universal healthcare and paid family leave, legalizing marijuana and defending labor unions.

The Biss campaign helped lay the groundwork for future left challengers to run in Illinois. And it offers a cautionary lesson that labor credibility is crucial to a successful progressive campaign. We’ll never know whether a candidate less vulnerable to criticism could have beaten Pritzker. But future challengers can learn from both the successes and pitfalls of Biss’ run.

With the 2018 elections just months away, a Chicago mayoral race coming in 2019 and more contests ahead in 2020 and 2022, there will be ample opportunities for candidates to heed this lesson as they seek to wrest the reins from the political establishment and win electoral power.

from Salon: in-depth news, politics, business, technology & culture Salon https://ift.tt/2GKReUd

Kelly Jones: Alex Jones brainwashed my son

Rex Jones on "Infowars" (Credit: YouTube/The Alex Jones Channel)

In a desperate attempt to thwart the rising political power of the Parkland teens spearheading the March For Our Lives movement, Infowars’ Alex Jones tapped his own 15-year-old son to do his dirty work for him. Indeed, Alex’s son Rex Jones, via a video on Infowars.com, has challenged student journalist and activist David Hogg — who survived the massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School — to a debate after equating Hogg with Nazis.

“Hogg, you claim that the establishment is shaking in its boots in fear of you,” Rex Jones said in the video. “No, they love you. They love gun control. They’ve wanted this for years.”

“Hitler, Stalin, Mao, North Korea – do you think those corrupt leaders allowed their citizens to have guns?” he continued.

“Do you think that the Jews were able to protect themselves when Hitler put them in concentration camps? No, they were disarmed. And that’s why they were enslaved,” Rex said to Hogg in the video. “You are submitting to tyranny. You are begging to have the rights that our forefathers fought for stripped away.”

“Name a time, name the place, name the venue. I will do it,” Rex Jones concluded, challenging Hogg to a debate.

The video echoed similar sentiments from a separate video which featured his father earlier this week, one in which Alex Jones interposed video clips of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and shooting survivors that also equated them with Nazis.

“We are up against an exact formula, an exact program of control,” Alex claimed on his Tuesday broadcast on his show Infowars. “And they’re not just going after the Second [Amendment], they’re trying to ban everybody that’s defending the Second [Amendment] on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook.”

Within all of this political drama and mud-slinging sits Rex’s distressed mother, Kelly Jones. Kelly, who lost a convoluted custody battle with her allegedly abusive ex-husband, says that Alex is exploiting Rex — and that her son isn’t deserving of the mean comments he’s receiving in response to his video.

“I’m horrified by what Alex has done,” Kelly Jones told Salon. “What he’s done is horrifically endangering and exploitive of our son by placing him in the middle of the most charged topic of our of country.”

Kelly continued to say Rex has been “brainwashed “ and is being used as a “weapon” by Alex.

Kelly said she’s asked YouTube to take the video down, but hasn’t received an answer yet. On Twitter, she’s been repeatedly contacting them as well.

I am horrified & incredibly concerned for my vulnerable minor son who has been endangered and exploited fo ratings by my ex-husband, Alex Jones.

I implore @YouTube to immediately remove these endangering videos.

I am speaking to counsel and will issue a video statement today.

— Kelly Jones (@AlexJones_Ex) March 30, 2018

There is something particularly shocking in seeing a father exploiting a fifteen-year-old son in a ploy to stir up drama and views. Moreover, using a teenager as a political weapon only furthers the tendency for rhetorical attacks and cyberbullying of both the Parkland kids and Jones’ child. It’s not just a few sick internet commentators: Alex Jones and other right-wing personalities like Laura Ingraham have been openly smearing the Parkland teenagers. Beyond seeming desperate, Alex Jones’ bringing his child into this is downright unsettling.

from Salon: in-depth news, politics, business, technology & culture Salon https://ift.tt/2Gpj5Wu

Being a predator isn’t part of your hero’s journey

"The Ren & Stimpy Show" (Credit: Nickelodeon Animation Studio)

Hey, all you quote-unquote geniuses and innovators out there — the price of your success will no longer be anyone else’s childhood. Your garbage has gone collectively unexcused for far too long.

The latest grotesque example in the parade of men who who’ve leveraged their reputations to gain proximity to youth emerged Thursday, when Buzzfeed revealed what happened when two teenage girls reached out to “Ren & Stimpy” creator John Kricfalusi during the peak of his fame.

Robyn Byrd claims that in 1994, when she was 13, she reached out to Kricfalusi as a fan and budding animator. But what began as seemingly an encouraging mentorship evolved over time. By the time she was 16, she had begun living with him as his “girlfriend.” Their relationship was common knowledge. He was in his early forties. He also reportedly took, and shared, explicit photos of her without her knowledge or consent. In a chaste photograph of them together in 1996, she looks unmistakably like a child. 

Another woman, artist Katie Rice, says that during the same period, “he began hitting on her when she was a minor… behavior that ranged from writing her flirty letters to masturbating while she was on the phone.” She says that from the time she began working for him at the age of 18, he “persistently” sexually harassed her. Here’s a doozy of a takeaway line: “Through an attorney, Kricfalusi denied exposing himself to Rice, and said that [a comment he made about rape] was just a joke.” Rice also claims that she found child pornography on his computer. Another woman, not identified by name in the story, says that she saw “naked images of prepubescent girls who appeared to be between 12 and 14″ on his computer as well.

Through his attorney, the now 62-year-old Kricfalusi denies ever possessing child pornography. As for the rest, the attorney says, “The 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi, especially after losing ‘Ren and Stimpy,’ his most prized creation. For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend. Over the years John struggled with what were eventually diagnosed mental illnesses in 2008. To that point, for nearly three decades he had relied primarily on alcohol to self-medicate. Since that time he has worked feverishly on his mental health issues, and has been successful in stabilizing his life over the last decade. This achievement has allowed John the opportunity to grow and mature in ways he’d never had a chance at before.”

Hi, I have to go vomit forever now.

First of all, yes, there is a broad spectrum of relationships, and of age and power dynamics. We definitely can, however, get over the notion that a man in his forties, who has known a girl who idolized him since she was in the eighth grade, ever has a 16-year-old “girlfriend.” That’s done. But before we burn this BS to the ground, let’s take a very brief trip through some fairly recent history.

Woody Allen claims his affair with his now wife Soon Yi Previn began when she was in college. She was approximately 10 years old — as an abused orphan, her exact birthdate is uncertain — when he began dating her mother. 

Aaliyah was 15 when she illegally wed R. Kelly, a man whose history involving underage girls spans more than two decades and multiple accounts. They met when she was 12.

Shoshana Lowenstein was a 17-year-old high schooler the first time then 39-year-old Jerry Seinfeld spotted her in Central Park and introduced himself. “I didn’t realize she was so young,” he later claimed, regarding a girl who may well have been wearing her Nightingale-Bamford School uniform at the time.

Anthony Rapp was 14 when he says that a 26-year-old Kevin Spacey made a sexual advance toward him. Spacey responded last fall by saying, “I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago. But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.” He then went on to take the opportunity to come out as gay, as if being accused of being a sexual predator is a great time to make an announcement about your orientation. (It is not.)

In 2014, James Franco made light of asking a girl,  “You’re single? What’s the hotel? Should I rent a room?” after she’d directly identified herself as 17, jesting on Twitter that “I HOPE PARENTS KEEP THEIR TEENS AWAY FROM ME!” Way ahead of you there, pal.

I’d also like to give a special honorable mention award to Quentin Tarantino, for his 2003 claim about Roman Polanski’s 13-year-year old sexual assault victim, that “I don’t believe it’s rape, not at 13, not for these 13-year-old party girls…. Look, she was down with this.” In February, he apologized to the woman, generously adding that “I incorrectly played devil’s advocate in the debate for the sake of being provocative.” Oh look, I’m not done throwing up.

The fetishization of youth as creative muses for allegedly brilliant adult men is a time-worn trope. Where would pop music be without skin-crawling odes to deflowering teenagers? Where would cinema be without Oscar-nominated films like “Manhattan”? I don’t know but let’s find out!

Nearly as despicable as gross, entitled men grooming, preying upon, abusing and/or harassing vulnerable individuals is the determined insistence these SOBs so often have on giving themselves a hero’s journey. That particular shady nonsense is not just limited to men who like youngsters, either.

When Matt Lauer’s creepiness came to light last fall, he issued an apology with the promise that “Repairing the damage will take a lot of time and soul searching and I’m committed to beginning that effort.” When Morgan Spurlock issued a rambling confession of his own misdeeds, he made sure to note, “I hope to empower the change within myself. We should all find the courage to admit we’re at fault.” And Louis CK punctuated his statement about allegations about him by noting, three goddamn times, how “admired” he was by the women he was supposed to be apologizing to.  Jesus Christ, you guys.

How selfish, how devoid of empathy does a person have to be to see behavior that hurts other people — especially behavior that hurts very young people — as an element in his own path toward self-actualization? Because I promise, you can say you’re sorry without throwing in the world’s least appropriate humblebrag. I have a very limited amount of interest in how any of these clowns have learned and evolved. I definitely don’t want to hear about their “achievement” now that they’ve supposedly “grown and matured.”

I have instead expansive concern for every single person whose trust was exploited by some overcompensated hack who thought the needs of his penis were more important than the agency of a human being, especially one still in the process of growing up. I have bottomless rage for the droves of abettors who stood silently around these insects, sharing the wealth of their successes, smirking at their seeming conquests. I want to punch a wall every time some smug has-been like Terry Gilliam says he’s worried about “mob rule,” or Sean Penn ponders whether “it really is in our interest to trample Charlie Rose?” when they don’t seem to have given a moment’s thought to all the careers derailed, the potential unfulfilled, the monumental loss of talent, at the expense of mediocre men’s egos. And I am done allowing myself a “problematic” enjoyment of works created by people who disgust me. As Katie Rice told Buzzfeed, “I know a lot of people struggle with the ‘art vs. artist’ thing, and I get it . . . . There’s nice people you can hire. There’s nice people who can make things, there’s nice people who make cartoons . . . . They’re just as f**king good.”

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Sharon Stone on physical comedy and her rusted moral compass

Sharon Stone as Senna in "All I Wish" (Credit: ETA Films)

In the lively romantic comedy “All I Wish,” Sharon Stone plays Senna, a vivacious 46-year-old woman whose life unfolds one birthday at a time over a succession of years. Dreaming of being a fashion designer, Senna works as a buyer for a boutique. The day she loses her job is also the night she meets Adam (Tony Goldwyn), a lawyer who insults her before realizing they were being set up on a date.

As the years pass, Senna and Adam connect romantically, but she is against marriage, and he can’t quite figure out what Senna wants from all of the mixed signals she sends.

“All I Wish” shows how Senna grapples with her feelings about work and relationships, as well as her mother’s (Ellen Burstyn) desire for Senna to get her life together and get married — in any order. Senna only figures out who she is when the people she loves aren’t around.

The film is a showcase for Stone’s comedic skills, allowing her to pratfall while drunk, roll her eyes (at a bad date) and behave mischievously, as when she publicly embarrasses Adam in a bar while he’s wearing the bottom half of her bikini (long story).

The actress chatted with Salon about birthdays, marriage, and how she got into her bikini, as well as “All I Wish.”

The film is set on Senna’s consecutive birthdays — some good, some bad. Can you tell me a particularly good or bad birthday you had?

I think a good birthday is this year, where all my friends and family flew in and we had parties, dinner and lunches. People were lying around all over my house hanging out together, laughing. A bad birthday was the year my family forgot. I was 10.

What about a good/bad birthday gift?

This is going to sound incredibly stupid, but a friend got me socks. I’ve been wanting black socks for women and she found the most wonderful black socks. I love them. I got fancy presents, but these socks she gave me is a gift I love so much. It touched me that she looked everywhere to find these socks.

Senna claims not to believe in marriage. What are your thoughts about marriage and relationships?

For a long, long time I did not believe in marriage because I met so many people who said they did but didn’t. I think a lot of people believe in arrangements but not relationships. If I met anyone present in a relationship I’d believe in it. It takes sincerity and trust and intention and those [qualities] are just not laying around.

Senna is a fashionista. I still admire the fact that you once wore a Gap T-shirt to the Oscars. You get to share a tight bikini with Tony Goldwyn in this film. Can you talk about that?

I can say I used the Suzanne Somers Thighmaster for a couple of months. I bought it off TV and used it while watching TV as I thought of how I would put on a bathing suit. My son and his 17- year-old friends came over and did the Thighmaster too, with their arms and knees. I bought every late-night workout toy. I balanced on that piece of plastic that’s a curve . . .  

Senna is a bit mercurial. She admits to being a little melodramatic. Some folks might call her a diva. How do you feel about that label?

I think that when you’re a woman and you’re successful, people do that. They don’t call men those names. When you are on the phone and ask for a cup of tea, that’s not being a diva. If you need your lunch brought in or you need to get a mani/pedi while working, that’s being multi-functional. You don’t have time to do things separately. You have to reconsider women and the way you talk about us, treat us, and consider us as business people. We are expected to present in a certain way while we are doing all this other stuff. It takes a village.  

Senna talks about feeling everything is screwed up but she is waiting for a moment when she gets her act together. She only really figures out who she is when the people she loves (mom, Adam) aren’t around. When did you know who you were?

My sister says my moral compass was always on north. Sometimes I think it’s rusted on north! I think I can get a little stuck, and playing characters, like Senna, who are wild, is good for me. I can get stuck in my own conservatism or routine. I come from [Meadville], very blue-collar Pennsylvania, so it’s good for me to play characters that are free and kooky.

Speaking of free and kooky, you get to play comedy and do some pratfalls in “All I Wish.” Did you do your own stunts?

As much as I can. I was given a stuntwoman’s jacket and made an honorary member for all the stunts I’ve done over the years. I’m athletic. I like to do sports, work out and run around. That’s a big part of my personality. Steven Soderbergh says I’m a physical actress. That makes his job easier. I get on the floor. I’m a mover. It’s a big part of my expression.

Before this, I didn’t have many opportunities to do comedy. I worked with Albert Brooks. I wanted to go for it. Sandra Bullock is the Lucille Ball of our day. Nobody does pratfalls like her. Her work is inspiring to me. I watched her. If you’re going to fall, you have to drop. I watched Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon. I looked at these women who are just so amazing and physical. You have to be prepared and ready to do that work. I want to do more of this work.

Senna says she doesn’t wish for money, men, or bringing people back from the dead. What is something you wish for?

I wish for my children to be happy and well.

Are you happy and well?

Yeah!

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Should Adam Sandler record a Passover song? A debate

Adam Sandler (Credit: AP/Matt Sayles)

The Jewish holiday of Passover is here. And with the holiday upon us — the remembrance of the chosen people’s flight from slavery in Egypt — let us consider the question nobody is asking: Where is the Adam Sandler song?

Sandler — who has brought us four songs merely listing people who are Jewish, and one feature film about Hanukkah — has been silent on other Jewish holidays, like the one that requires Jews to abstain from eating bread products for eight nights. But Manischewitz, known to Jewish people for amazingly sweet wine and matzo, among other things, wants to change that. Here’s their pitch to Sandler, which they shared with us:

Dear Adam,

Shalom, and Chag Sameach!

The Manischewitz Company, the largest marketer of Kosher Foods in North America, thinks that the world needs a Passover song, and who better to write and sing it than YOU?!

To get your creative juices flowing, we are offering you a fun Passover challenge and the ‘suite’-est deal around – a fully stocked, state-of-the-art hotel suite equipped with all the Manischewitz products you grew up loving. It is our hope that you would do one thing for us: once again “put on your yarmulke” and compose a follow-up to your smash hit The Hanukkah Song for the families of the world celebrating the Passover season to enjoy!

Passover begins on March 30, and we here at Manischewitz are very busy stocking store shelves across America with our matzo, gefilte fish, soups and more so that Jewish families across the world can enjoy their Passover Seders. But, Manischewitz feels like something is missing as we plan for the holiday – kids need a fun and engaging song and story to bring the holiday to life!

As part of our offer, your spacious, comfortable hotel suite will be fully equipped with musical equipment and packed with delicious Manischewitz products including our famous Matzo Ball soup, all the gefilte fish you can eat and plenty of matzo. Take a look at the attached photos – “not too shabby,” right?

Additionally, we will provide you with free Manischewitz Products for life, as a thank-you for penning the new Passover anthem.

Come on Adam, take our challenge – we know it will be “so much funukah!”

Granted, the Manischewitz people are leaning really hard on the Hanukkah song, but it’s worth debating. Salon’s Jeremy Binckes and Erin Keane are here to weigh in on the merits of having Adam Sandler compose a special ditty for the big holiday.

Jeremy: There was a time that Adam Sandler was a veritable American darling. It’s hard to believe that he performed the first Chanukah Song on national television more than 23 years ago. If the goal of the Hanukkah song was to launch Sandler onto the national spotlight, one could say that he succeeded. The funny song was Sandler at his best. It was innocent, it was funny, it was cute and it wasn’t in your face. Let’s be honest, the Hanukkah song was fantastic, especially how it lives on recordings – the shy Sandler trying to get through a list of Jewish people in Hollywood — ya know, people fellow Jews could look up to.

But eventually, cute Sandler turned into rocker Sandler. And the song turned into a rock spectacle:

What’s happened in the years since then? Well, Sandler went on to hit peak Sandler — the obnoxious, in-your-face character in “Billy Madison” and “Happy Gilmore.” And yes, he did have some good roles — I mean, he had good reviews for “The Wedding Singer,” and I personally liked “Punch Drunk Love” — but Sandler may have hit a wall when 2000 rolled around. That’s when he started racking up nominations for the “Golden Raspberry” award for the worst performance in a leading role.

He’s been nominated for a worst award 11 times and has won it three times. It’s safe to say that he’s in need of a career resuscitation. And Passover may be the perfect time to start.

At its heart, Passover is the story of liberation. And it’s the story of finding freedom. It recalls a time when Jews were slaves in Egypt. And Moses — a Jew — became the defender of the Jewish people when he challenged the Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” What followed were plagues that punished the Egyptian people: The waters turned to blood; plagues of frogs and lice occurred; pests killed the animals; boils emerged on the people; fire and ice rained down from the sky; locusts ate everything; a darkness fell upon the land; and finally, the first-born males in Egypt were killed when God passed over the houses of Egyptians.

But, to Jewish scholars, Passover is a metaphysical thing, too. It’s about understanding what the true meaning of freedom is, by giving up bread for eight days and nights. Directly, it’s a response to the hasty exodus from Egypt, which forced the Jews to run so fast that they took unleavened bread with them. As Chabad.org notes:

Freedom is commonly perceived as the removal of all external constraints on a person’s development and self-expression. Freedom is the natural state of man, this line of reasoning implies; free him of all outside forces that limit and inhibit him, and you have a free human being.

Passover embodies a far more ambitious freedom. The exodus from Egypt, which marked the end of Israel’s subjugation to their Egyptian enslavers . . . We then proceeded to also free ourselves of the alien influences that constrained us from within the pagan habits and mind-set that centuries of subjection to the depraved culture of Egypt had imposed on us, and our own inborn negative inclinations.

All of this is to say that Passover represents the perfect time for the rebirth of Adam Sandler. He can free himself from the Sandler that has become, well, detested in some circles, and ignored in others. He can re-connect with his roots. It may not be another list of Jewish people, but it could be a way for him to find the spark again. Maybe this time it’s through his desire to eat bread?

Erin: I’m confused about your metaphor, Jeremy. Is Adam Sandler’s career a plague to endure or a tyranny to escape? (The answer is “yes.”) Remember that removing “all external constraints on . . . [his] self-expression” got us Adam Sandler riding an ostrich in “Blended.” I realize I’m the gentile in this debate, so it’s not really up to me, but can’t we let Passover keep its dignity? Be careful what you wish for here. Do you really want to be singing “Book a cruise to St. Kitts and Nevis / After we drink all the Manischewitz” once a year for the rest of your life?

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How smartphones are heating up the planet

(Credit: Shutterstock)

When we think about climate change, the main sources of carbon emissions that come to mind for most of us are heavy industries like petroleum, mining and transportation.

Rarely do we point the finger at computer technologies.

In fact, many experts view the cyber-world of information and computer technologies (ICT) as our potential saviour, replacing many of our physical activities with a lower-carbon virtual alternative.

That is not what our study, recently published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, suggests.

Having conducted a meticulous and fairly exhaustive inventory of the contribution of ICT — including devices like PCs, laptops, monitors, smartphones and tablets — and infrastructure like data centres and communication networks, we found that the relative contribution of ICT to the total global footprint is expected to grow from about one per cent in 2007 to 3.5 per cent by 2020 and reaching 14 per cent by 2040.

That’s more than half the relative contribution of the entire transportation sector worldwide.

Another disconcerting finding is that all this extraordinary growth is mostly incremental, essentially shattering the hope that ICT will help reduce the global carbon footprint by substituting physical activities with their virtual counterparts.

The impact of smartphones

Perhaps the most surprising result of our study was the disproportionate contribution of smartphones relative to the overall ICT footprint.

We found that the relative emissions share of smartphones is expected to grow from four per cent in 2010 to 11 per cent by 2020, dwarfing the individual contributions of PCs, laptops and computer displays.

In absolute values, emissions caused by smartphones will jump from 17 to 125 megatons of CO2 equivalent per year (Mt-CO2e/yr) in that time span, or a 730 per cent growth.

The lion’s share of this footprint (85 to 95 per cent) will be caused not by the use of the device, but rather by its production. That includes, in addition to the manufacturing energy, the energy for material mining for gold and the so-called rare-earth elements like yttrium, lanthanium and several others that today are almost exclusively available only from China.

Another guilty participant in this excessive carbon footprint are the phone plans that encourage users to get a new smartphone every two years. That accelerates the rate at which older models become obsolete and leads to an extraordinary and unnecessary amount of waste.

These findings pertain to the device side.

Every text, download, email uses server energy

On the infrastructure side, we predict the combined footprint of data centres and communications networks will grow from 215 megatons of C02 equivalent a year (Mt-CO2e/yr) in 2007 to 764 MtCO2-e/yr by 2020, with data centres accounting for about two thirds of the total contribution.

For comparison purposes, the entire carbon footprint of Canada was about 730 MtCO2-e in 2016 and is expected to decrease by 2020.

The growth in smartphones and data centres aren’t unrelated.

Indeed, it’s the dizzying growth in mobile communications that’s largely driving the pace for data centres. For every text message, video download, photo exchange, email or chat, there’s a 24/7 power-hungry server in some data centre that’s making it happen.

It’s the energy consumption that we don’t see.

Software companies spur growth

Finally, and perhaps the most ironic aspect of all this, is that it’s software that is driving the overall growth in ICT as a whole, devices and infrastructure included.

Software companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo boast some of the largest data centres in the world. The rise in dominance of the mobile operating systems, namely Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, along with the millions of mobile applications that are built on top of those platforms, has spawned the mobile communication age.

The incredible — as well as unsustainable — growth in the emission footprint of all this hardware is there for only one purpose: To support and serve the software universe.

In other words, while it’s the hardware that does all the dirty work, it’s the software that’s calling all the shots.

The way out?

At the societal level, we must demand that all data centres run exclusively on renewable energy.

At the individual level: Hold on to your smartphone for as long as you can, and when you do upgrade, make sure you recycle your old one. Sadly, only one per cent of smartphones are being recycled today.

Lotfi Belkhir, Associate Professor & Chair of Eco-Entrepreneurship, McMaster University

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The White House personnel office is basically a frat house

President Donald Trump pauses during a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, March 20, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/ (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

Remember Taylor Weyeneth? He was a 24-year-old on the rise, the deputy chief of staff at the White House drug policy office who had a glittering resume that made it seem only fair for him to land such a cushy gig.

Except, as it turned out, Weyeneth had lied about a number of details on his resume: Whether he has completed his Masters coursework at Fordham University, the length of time he had spent as a legal assistant at the law firm O’Dwyer & Bernstein, the duration of his tenure as vice president of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, whether he had ever volunteered at a Queens monastery.

In January Weyeneth was let go, according to The Washington Post, but there were still questions about how someone as unqualified and demonstrably dishonest as him was able to get hired in the first place. Was it a fluke occasion in which someone dropped the ball?

A piece of that puzzle may have fallen into place on Friday, when The Washington Post reported that the Presidential Personnel Office — which is responsible for finding and vetting thousands of political appointees — is understaffed and run by young people who treat the office like their own personal frat house.

These anecdotes from the Post’s story speaks volumes:

Even as the demands to fill government mounted, the PPO offices on the first floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building became something of a social hub, where young staffers from throughout the administration stopped by to hang out on couches and smoke electronic cigarettes, known as vaping, current and former White House officials said.

PPO leaders hosted happy hours last year in their offices that included beer, wine and snacks for dozens of PPO employees and White House liaisons who work in federal agencies, White House officials confirmed. In January, they played a drinking game in the office called “Icing” to celebrate the deputy director’s 30th birthday. Icing involves hiding a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, a flavored malt liquor, and demanding that the person who discovers it, in this case the deputy director, guzzle it.

It should hardly come as a surprise that two of the office leaders have less than stellar backgrounds of their own. One dropped out of college and has arrests for drunk driving and writing bad checks, while the other managed to get arrested for assault, disorderly conduct, fleeing an officer and underage drinking as a Marine Corps reservist. Another senior staffer managed to get jobs for four of his relatives due to his position at the PPO — a feat that probably wasn’t too difficult considering that many jobs have remained unfilled due to the office being understaffed. With only 30 current employees, the PPO under Trump has less than a third of the staff that existed in previous administrations.

Bear in mind: This is an office responsible for filling more than 4,000 government positions, with more than 1,200 of those requiring approval from the Senate.

As Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, told the Post, “No administration has done it as poorly as the current one.”

The White House denied this and blamed Democrats for obstruction, of course, but the numbers simply don’t bear out that story. At this point in their presidencies, George H. W. Bush had 481 confirmed appointments, Bill Clinton had 619 confirmed appointments, George W. Bush had 615 confirmed appointments and Barack Obama had 548 confirmed appointments. Trump, by contrast, has only had 387 confirmed appointments, and they have taken an average of 84 days for each one (the range for the previous four presidents was 43 to 65 days).

Just as troubling as the low quantity of appointments, though, is the fact that so many have been low quality. Someone like Weyeneth pales in comparison to Carl Higbie, a former Navy SEAL who Trump appointed as the Chief of External Affairs for the Corporation for National and Community Service. It later turned out that Higbie had a long history of making misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic and racist comments, which ultimately led to his resignation.

Of course, the worst appointment of all may be a candidate with no governmental experience whatsoever, a long history of alleged sexual misconduct, a business track record that has led to thousands of lawsuits, more racist and sexist comments than are easy to record and a resume that had as its most recent highlights a stint as a reality TV star.

Good thing that person doesn’t have too much power, right?

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An Italian experiment is tantalizingly close to detecting dark matter

Sensors on the Large Underground Xenon dark matter detector can register the emission of just a single photon from a dark matter interaction within the detector's giant xenon tank. So far, however, no signs of dark matter have been seen. (Credit: Matt Kapust, Sanford Underground Research Facility)

In the history of physics, there are occasional metaphorical shouts from the void that are observed once and never again. The Wow! signal, one of the best candidates for a radio communique from an alien civilization, was detected just once in 1977; repeated attempts to listen in the region in which it originated were fruitless. While it has long been theorized that magnets with a single pole may be physically possible, the experimental detection of what was thought to be a magnetic monopole occurred on Valentine’s Day in 1982, though it, too, was never seen again.

Now, an experiment underway in Italy to detect dark matter particles, the gravitationally attractive substance that makes up much of the universe, continues to produce tantalizing and positive results. The caveat? Other dark matter detectors around the world aren’t seeing the same thing.

For 20 years, the DAMA/LIBRA project (short for “DArk MAtter / Large sodium Iodide Bulk for RAre processes”) has been attempting to observe dark matter directly. Indirect detection is easy; indeed, merely by observing the orbital pattern of stars in our galaxy, one can see that they are guided by an unseen gravitational hand that occupies far more mass than is apparent. Most dark matter detectors, including DAMA, operate on the principle that dark matter is likely a weakly interacting particle, meaning that while its gravitational pull is observable on a massive (galaxy-wide) scale, it rarely interacts with “normal” matter in any other way. Hence, why we call it “dark”: it may bounce off itself and have its own pressure, but it flows right through and between us unnoticed, like tears in rain.

There are many dark matter experiments in the world, and most of them operate on a similar principle: if dark matter is indeed a particle, it should very, very, very, very, very occasionally bump into “normal” matter, which would create a very faint spark of light or a jiggle of an atom that we could detect. This is in essence the mechanism by which humans detected neutrinos, another slippery particle: by putting photomultiplier tubes in a field of dark, still water (or water ice), the tubes detect the occasional ricochet of a neutrino on an atom of normal matter.

Dark matter detection is similar, although the threshold at which dark particles may occasionally nudge baryonic (normal) matter is far lower. If neutrinos are like a soft tap on one’s shoulder, dark matter is more like a dust mote – barely noticeable at all. The experiments to detect dark matter use different materials but similar principles: create a very still environment and then listen for the particle’s footsteps.

Many of these dark matter detection experiments are underground, where there is less background noise, and are science-fictional in their grandeur: XENON1T, another Italian experiment, is situated deep in a mountain and uses liquid xenon (an inert noble gas) housed in huge water tanks. 8,000 feet underground in an abandoned South Dakota mine, the LUX experiment also uses xenon to listen for dark matter’s faint beck. DAMA/LIBRA, beneath the Gran Sasso mountain in L’Aquila, uses crystals made of sodium iodide and thallium; the crystal lattice should, ideally, vibrate throughout if it is touched by a dark matter particle.

And DAMA/LIBRA, and its precursor, DAMA/NaI (NaI meaning “Sodium Iodide,” chemically), had some scintillating (pun intended) results: just as expected, there were more detections during the half of the year that the Earth was moving against the tide of dark matter relative to the galaxy, and fewer in the time that it was moving with the tide. As with any experiment, there were small margins of error, but the results were promising. “During seven independent experiments of one year each one, [DAMA/NaI] has pointed out the presence of a modulation satisfying the many peculiarities of a [weakly interacting massive particle] induced effect, reaching a significant evidence,” the scientists wrote in a 2003 paper.

Some caveats here, of course: no other experiments for dark matter detection were able to reproduce DAMA/LIBRA or DAMA/NaI’s results — yet. But notably, no one was able to prove that DAMA/Libra did anything in error that could have skewed their results. “The mystery [r]emains of why their result is incompatible with just about every other finding in this field,” Juan Collar, a University of Chicago physicist, told Nature.

Now, after upgrading the DAMA/Libra experiment in 2010, the scientists involved are about to publish their new results.  You can preview them by thumbing through this abstruse Powerpoint (inexplicably penned in Comic Sans) from earlier this week; but basically, the so-called modulation – the pattern of rising and falling signals that may be dark matter particles striking the detectors — persists.

 

 

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Middle America’s teachers strike back: After West Virginia, educators speak out

Teachers hold signs at a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Feb. 26, 2018. (Credit: AP/John Raby)

Teacher protests are sweeping the country as America’s educators fight back against political systems that saddle them with inadequate pay.

A teacher strike in Oklahoma looks like it could still happen, after their union rejected a recent pay raise as an inadequate concession. The concession itself was a $6,100 pay raise for Oklahoma teachers, approved by the state legislature and supported by Gov. Mary Fallin, who described it as a “historic moment,” according to CNN. She also noted that it was “not easy” getting the measure, House Bill 1010XX, to be accepted by enough legislators to become policy. It pays for teacher pay by raising taxes on fuel, cigarettes and lodging, according to Time.

Fallin’s proposal offered far less than the teachers were demanding. The Oklahoma Education Association had called for a $10,000 pay raise for its teachers over the next three years and a $5,000 pay raise for full-time support professionals, including bus drivers, food service workers and custodians. Even with the $10,000 pay increase, Oklahoma teachers would still be paid less than the national average (they rank 49th in the country on a list that includes the District of Columbia): The average Oklahoma teacher is paid between $41,150 and $42,460 each year, well below the national average of $59,020 to $61,420.

“While this is major progress, this investment alone will not undo a decade of neglect. There is still work to do to get this legislature to invest more in our classrooms and that work will continue Monday when educators descend on the capitol,” Alicia Priest, the OEA president, explained in a Facebook video.

She added, “Educators across Oklahoma have said, ‘Enough!’ Their frustration is justified, but that frustration — because of years of broken promises — turned into courage, and that courage turned into energy, and that energy into momentum, and that momentum created this moment that forced that legislature to act.”

That momentum did not begin in Oklahoma and does not seem likely to end there.

The trendsetters were teachers in West Virginia, whose longstanding strike eventually led to a 5 percent pay raise. In Arizona, teachers are threatening to strike unless they receive a 20 percent pay raise, an increase in school funding to the levels they’d been at before the Great Recession (in 2008) and a pledge to stop cutting taxes until Arizona has the same amount of per-student spending as the national average, according to The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, at least eight school districts were forced to close in Kentucky as a result of teachers’ dissatisfaction with a new pension plan, according to CBS News. According to the plan passed by the state legislature (in a process that critics decry as having been rushed and snuck into an unrelated sewage services bill), newly hired teachers would see their pension benefits change from an “inviolable contract” to one that could be changed by the state government. There are also complaints that the bill will not implement the annual cost of living adjustment and will limit the number of sick days that teachers can put toward their retirement plans, according to CNN.

One state senator, Republican Damon Thayer, tried to defend the bill by arguing that it “is good news for teachers, current, retired and future, because it puts Kentucky’s pension systems on a path to sustainability.”

Many teachers do not see things that way, as Jefferson County’s Hallie Jones learned when she established a Facebook group “Sickout!” expressing her disgust with how Kentucky’s teachers are being treated.

“I set up the Facebook group around 9:30 and then I was looking at it and I was really confused because it had only been 20 minutes and there were 300 or 400 members,” Jones told Salon. “And then it jumped up to 700. And I thought, ‘Oh, there’s another group!’ And maybe I just clicked the wrong one. But now I’m in this bigger group. But then I realized the group that I had started went viral. So I was a little freaked out and things just happened. Now I woke up this morning and there were 7,200 people in the group.”

That number kept rising through Friday.

“The teachers do have some legitimate complaints about the pension bill and a lot of that stems from teaching as a calling,” one assistant principal, who asked to remain anonymous, told Salon. “The teachers really go into education in order to make a difference in children’s lives, and some of the complaints that educators have with this is they know this is not what is best for kids.”

They added, “For myself, as an administrator, the main issue with this is, the educators that come into the pension system in the future are going to be put into a different pension system than the one we are currently in. This degrades our current pension system and leaves it less stable. It also is not as good of a system for the people who are coming into it in the future. We already are having difficulties finding teachers — there is a teacher shortage currently — and what I can say is, all of our kids in Jefferson County deserve the best teachers.”

Lauren Dowell, a teacher in Jefferson County, reinforced this notion with her personal story.

“I have a daughter. She is currently teaching English overseas in South Korea. She has found her calling, I think,” Dowell told Salon. “She loves the kids, she loves the profession, she loves everything about it. I cannot encourage my child to go into teaching here because I don’t think she has a secure future as I was promised when I started.”

What started out as a movement in West Virginia seems to have evolved into something more. On one level, it is a movement that could transform how education is carried out in this country; teachers are making it clear that, while they didn’t enter this profession to make money, they refuse to allow that fact to be used as justification for economically exploiting them. In a deeper sense, however, this story is that of how a once-moribund institution — the American labor union — has suddenly and unexpectedly re-emerged as a potent force in America’s ongoing political and cultural narrative.

It remains to be seen whether the teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona and Kentucky will get what they want from their state governments, but it’s unlikely that this particular genie will ever be put back in its bottle. Teachers are educated people by their very nature, and they’re too smart — and, it seems, too organized — to take being underpaid lying down anymore.

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Kids diagnosed with autism are less likely to have had all necessary vaccinations

(Credit: Brian A Jackson via Shutterstock)

Children who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder are less likely to have received all recommended vaccinations than kids in the general population, according to a new study. That also applies to the younger siblings of kids with autism. The reason, perhaps unsurprisingly, turns out to be yet more evidence of fallout from the highly misguided anti-vaccination movement.

After their children are diagnosed with autism, a problematic percentage of parents halt the immunization process, foregoing necessarily followup shots, most likely because they erroneously link the diagnosis with the disorder. Many of those parents also choose not to have their younger children vaccinated, as a result of the same fears. As a result, study authors note, “children with autism spectrum disorder and their younger siblings are at increased risk of vaccine-preventable diseases.”

Researchers from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research examined childhood immunization records from sites offering CDC-recommended childhood immunizations in California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. The analysis compared the records of 3,729 children with autism against those of 592,907 children not diagnosed with the disease, all of whom were born between 1995 and 2010. Researchers found that among kids diagnosed with autism disorder who were aged 7 and up, 82 percent were fully up to date on their vaccinations. That’s 12 percent lower than kids in the general population. They also noted that “for the measles, mumps, rubella (or MMR) vaccine, 96 percent of those without [autism] were vaccinated, compared with 84 percent of those with” the disease.

Relatedly, just 73 percent of the younger siblings of children with autism had been properly vaccinated by their first birthday. That number shot up to 85 percent among younger siblings of kids without the disorder. The difference between the two groups narrowed significantly as they became tweens, possibly indicating that once parents were confident their kids were beyond the age of a likely autism diagnosis, they opted to get them vaccinated.

While scientists have repeatedly shown that vaccines don’t cause autism, the anti-vaxxer campaign continues to push the idea that childhood immunizations are potentially dangerous to children. As a result, in recent years, rates of vaccination have been on a slow decline both in Europe and the U.S., with a correlating increase in the frequency of diseases that immunizations have helped nearly eradicate. Last year, anti-vaccination misinformation helped lead to a measles outbreak in Minnesota and a 20-year high in the number of mumps cases in Texas. Europe experienced a four-fold increase in measles diagnosesbetween 2016-2017. (Some anti-vaxxers have reportedly even stopped getting their dogs immunized, according to anecdotal reports from veterinarians.)

“We need to better understand how to improve vaccination levels in children with autism spectrum disorder and their siblings, so they can be fully protected against vaccine-preventable diseases,” study co-author and CDC scientist Frank DeStefano said in a statement.

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Noor Salman, widow of Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, acquitted of all charges

Artwork and signatures cover a fence around the Pulse nightclub (Credit: AP/John Raoux)

Noor Salman, the wife of Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, was fully acquitted in her alleged role in the deadly 2016 shooting that rocked Orlando.

Salman was accused of aiding and abetting her husband and of obstructing justice by lying to investigators. A guilty verdict would have lead to life in prison.

“The family is elated,” said Susan Clary, a family spokesperson, outside of the court after the verdict. “Noor can go home now to her son . . . resume her life and try to pick up the pieces from two years in jail.”

Prosecutors and defense attorneys painted radically contrasting pictures of Salman throughout the course of the trial: as a woman who helped her husband prepare for the attack, and conversely, as an abused woman who married the devil.

“The family always thought that Noor was the victim of Omar Mateen,” Clary said Friday.

Al Salman, Noor’s uncle, whom Clary said has acted as her father figure, was elated at the news, according to ABC News. He said today was, “Good Friday for everybody. It’s Holy Friday for Muslims and Good Friday for Christians.”

“We [are] looking forward to taking my niece and hire a therapist for her,” he added. “I don’t know how she’s going to make up for the last two years.”

The trial started two weeks ago in the U.S. District Court in Orlando, Florida, and the jury deliberated for a little more than 12 hours before reaching their decision Friday morning, a rare setback for federal prosecutors.

The court is roughly two miles away from the site of the Pulse nightclub where Mateen killed 49 people and injured 58 others in the June 12, 2016 attack. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. It’s since been eclipsed by the shooting at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017.

One of Noor Salman’s attorneys, Fritz Scheller, said that immediately after the verdict was read, “she was overwhelmed, we were all overwhelmed,” ABC News reported.

“There’s rejoicing but there’s sorrow because she’s been in prison for over a year, separated from her son,” Schellar said.

John Mina, the chief of the Orlando Police Department, released a statement after the verdict had been released, saying he believes in the criminal justice system and appreciates the hard work of the jurors, attorneys and the FBI involved in the case.

“Nothing can erase the pain we all feel about the senseless and brutal murders of 49 neighbors, friends, family members and loved ones,” Mina said.

“Our community is strong, and the men and women of the Orlando Police Department stand ready to put themselves in harm’s way to protect our residents and visitors,” he said.

On the other hand, Orange County Sheriff Jerry L. Demings said he was “disappointed” in the court’s decision.

“I am disappointed in the outcome of the trial and know that the victims and/or their families are more disappointed,” Demings said in a statement.

“This has been an emotional event for our community and many may feel that justice has not prevailed,” he said. “However, the system of justice has spoken and we should look to the continued healing for the families and our entire community so that this event will not define us.”

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Fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe raises $400,000 for legal bills

Andrew McCabe (Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe launched an online fundraiser to help cover the legal costs that might come as he responds to investigations, congressional inquiries and considers suing over his abrupt termination — and people are quite responsive.

McCabe’s team unveiled the legal defense fund through GoFundMe at about 2 p.m. on Thursday, with a $150,000 goal. By 7 p.m., it had raised more than $200,000, prompting organizers to increase the goal of the campaign to $250,000.

As of Friday morning, the fund had raised more than $400,000.

“The support of Mr. McCabe has been overwhelming, humbling, and deeply appreciated,” the GoFundMe page said. “He and his family continue to deal with the very public and extended humiliation that the administration, and the president personally, have inflicted on them over the past year. Unfortunately, the need for a legal defense fund is a growing reality. Media reports indicate that at a minimum, there are a number of congressional inquiries that he will be required to respond to, as well as the broader Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigation that is ongoing, and any potential lawsuits he might consider.”

McCabe was fired from the FBI by Attorney General Jeff Sessions two days before his retirement, at the recommendation of Justice Department officials.

President Trump has long criticized McCabe publicly, largely for his wife Jill’s acceptance of campaign donations from a Hillary Clinton ally when she ran for state office in Virginia. Shortly before McCabe’s firing, Trump mocked the possibility that McCabe might retire with full benefits. “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!” the president tweeted.

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017

After McCabe was fired, several fake GoFundMe pages were created on his behalf, and a McCabe representative had to flag that they weren’t official accounts.

McCabe, who called his firing a part of President Trump’s “war” on the FBI in a statement, authored an op-ed in The Washington Post last week, detailing his departure. He said he found out he was fired when a friend called and told him the news.

“So, after two decades of public service, I found out that I had been fired in the most disembodied, impersonal way — third-hand, based on a news account,” McCabe wrote. “Shortly after getting word, I noticed an email from a Justice Department official in my work account, telling me that I had been ‘removed from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the civil service.'”

McCabe said that he woke up to a tweet from President Trump praising his firing.

Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2018

“Not in my worst nightmares did I ever dream my FBI career would end this way,” McCabe wrote.

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