#healthy debate on citizenship bill

[snarkesthour]

Happy St George's Day!

· In the midst of a pandemic when schools are all closed, the government votes to not allow free school meals to schoolchildren during school holidays, despite this being the only meal many of them have each day

· Marcus Rashford, a footballer, led the drive to feed the nation’s children, 49% of which live in poverty, and forced the government to provide food for them during the school holidays

· Instead of previous years when vouchers were given to parents that can only be spent on nutritious food, members of government give contracts to friends to provide a week’s work of food costing £5 to schoolchildren for a price of £30. Food is unhealthy and would not last a week

· Parcels also expect parents to cook two tablespoons of rice at a time in the oven and bake their own bread every day, ignoring poverty-stricken families possible lack of access to such equipment

· Wife of conservative MP attacks poor families for eating unhealthy food when healthy food is cheaper, ignoring the fact that not all families have access to equipment needed to store and cook it

· Nigel Farage, head of the Brexit party came out strongly against the government for their stance on starving schoolchildren. Not a good look.

· Another MP came out and said that poor families should not receive government assistance because the money would be going direct to brothels and crackhouses and the parents would spend it on drink and drugs instead of feeding their kids, a dangerous and persistent stereotype of working class people

· For the first time in its history, UNICEF is feeding kids in the UK – the 5th richest country in the world – and the head of the House of Commons accused them of “playing politics” and said they should “be ashamed of themselves”

· J.K. Rowling came out hard as a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), writing a book about a serial killer that dresses up as a Muslim woman, which isn’t subtle when you look at her history of transphobia and other “-isms”

She also publicly supported an author who wrote a book about the destruction of Europe by waves of Muslim immigration

· Speaking of J.K. Rowling, the government’s response to the Gender Recognition Act.

· It is now impossible for under 16s to receive reversible puberty blockers

· Wait times at NHS Gender Clinics, of which there are only 7 in the country, have doubled, with wait times now up to 60+ months (5+ years)

· Keir Starmer, head of the Labour (left wing) party says he doesn’t want to get involved in trans issues

· With the loss of Labour, no major party supports trans rights

· Self ID is no longer allowed, meaning every step of transition is medicalised and involves the trans person having to prove that they are “trans enough” at every stage to panels of cis people

· Government wants to invalidate non-enrolled deed polls, essentially making available a public list of every trans person in the UK

· Hate crimes have quadrupled

· Anti-trans campaigners are now setting their sights on trans adults’ access to hormones

· A petition was formed to counter this and was reviewed by the government, who determined that nothing was wrong with the GRA except that it might have been a bit lax.

· The Guardian newspaper ran child labour and child starvation supporting stories

· Internal border now along the border of Kent and lorry drivers must produce travel papers (Brexit Passport) to cross it, placing the county of Kent in a state of “no man’s land”

· Government fails to lockdown on time, every time

· Government refuses to ban conversion therapy in the UK

· Scotland adopts Human Rights of Children, which requires the government to better support children and families, especially those who are poor, disabled, minorities or young carers. England does not

· The government declared that sleeping rough is now grounds for deportation

· Schools reopened several times despite being warned not safe to do so

· The government banned NHS workers from speaking out about COVID

· Do Not Resuscitate orders proposed for those in care homes, with learning disabilities and who are autistic

· The government cut pensions as the COVID death toll rose

· The government learnt about new South-East COVID strain in September and didn’t come forwards until December

· New COVID strain targets kids, teens, and young adults, and yet none of those groups are allowed vaccination unless a serious pre-existing condition is had, even if they are key workers

· Downing Street says UK should be model of racial equality because government report says no institutional racism in the UK

· Report also says young people are young and foolish for thinking it exists and that minorities are superstitious and irrational and are sabotaging themselves out of success

· It came out that the government was given the independent report and rewrote it to the version that was released to the public – the version that says racism doesn’t exist in the UK

· The rewritten report also refers to the slave trade as the “Caribbean experience”, like those enslaved were on holiday

· Woman in London abducted, murdered and dismembered by off-duty cop and when socially distanced vigil goes ahead, police wait until dark before trapping women, arresting them, using excessive force on them, and also destroying memorial

· Bill passed in government that allows undercover officers to commit serious crimes such as murder, torture and rape

· Plainclothes police to now patrol nightclubs and bars due to aforementioned murder by police officer

· Bill passed that bans any protest at all, no matter how quiet, unobstructive or small it is, including single-person protests. Bill also includes a 10 year sentence for damaging a statue, which is a longer sentence than for rape

· TV programmes critical of the government have been cancelled

· Universities have been told what to platform and schools have been told what to teach, including banning material speaking about BLM and calling for “overthrow” of capitalism

· Voting has been supressed, mainly those who are working class or POC

· During protests in Bristol, press was assaulted and pepper sprayed by police and two legal observers were arrested

· Being Roma/Traveller and living the traditional Roma/Traveller lifestyle is now illegal under that same bill that bans protests. They also have to register as such and receive a licence or risk losing their vehicles

· Hours before Eid, lockdown across the UK with no warning whatsoever, meaning people woke up the next morning after visiting relatives to find themselves “criminals”. The country was opened up specifically for Christmas though

· Conservative (right wing) party blamed BAME (Black And Minority Ethnic) communities for dying of COVID more than white people

· Landlords have been protected extensively and renters blamed for living in close quarters or having to take public transport to work

· Conservatives have launched investigation into possible corruption in Liverpool Council. Liverpool is a Labour stronghold and if corruption is found then the Conservatives can seize control of the council. No evidence of corruption is present as of yet

· Military threatened to stage a coup if Corbyn (then head of the labour party) became Prime Minister

· Government orders all government buildings in England, Wales and Scotland to fly the Union Flag every day to boost patriotism

· MPs call for the curriculum to require teaching the history of the Union Flag rather than Britain’s many atrocities

· The first fortnight of April saw a mini heatwave with temperatures up to 20°C immediately followed by snow, and this is ignored in favour of debating “vaccine passports” in order to visit the pub

· UK allows for international summer holidays despite being warned it will cause a third wave, such as the situation in Germany

· Government placed asylum seekers arriving in the UK in army barracks where they were to sleep 24 to a room with no open windows or air circulation, and when COVID inevitably ran rampant, the Home Secretary accused the asylum seekers of not following COVID protocol, such as social distancing

· Several accounts of self-harm and suicide attempts were reported from the asylum barracks and were dismissed

· UK to deport unaccompanied minor asylum seekers

· UK refuses entry into the UK for radicalised teen failed by system who joined ISIS. Case is difficult and controversial because teen wishes to return to the UK temporarily to fight for her citizenship after the UK broke international law by stripping it from her, despite her not having dual citizenship. Argument given was that her parents were from Bangladesh and so she could apply for citizenship there. Bangladesh refused. Teen is now stateless and living in a refugee camp after losing several children, unable to fight for her citizenship to be reinstated.

· Rioting in Northern Ireland, which included the first use of water cannons in 6 years, a bus being hijacked and burnt, a press photographer attacked, and people throwing bricks, fireworks and petrol bombs at police, not to mention some of the clashes happening over a peace wall in west Belfast, completely ignored in British media and then later drowned out by non-stop news of Prince Phillip’s death, obscuring any important news from being heard. Riots were over Northern Ireland’s being a part of the UK

· MPs take vote on whether China’s treatment of Uighurs constitutes genocide. They decide it does, but that it isn’t their job to do anything further

· Home Office released their spending for the 2020 fiscal year. It’s a mess, including over £77,000 at an eyebrow salon in March alone, and £6,000+ in Pollyanna Restaurant which doesn't appear to exist.

· When people started questioning the spending, the Home Office sent a tweet fact checking themselves

· Country reopened over the summer for Eat Out To Help Out, a scheme to boost the economy. COVID cases rose sharply and the government then blamed people, but mostly working class people, for not following restrictions such as only leaving the house when absolutely necessary, after telling them it was safe

· Foreign NHS workers denied COVID vaccinations

· GCSEs and A-Levels were cancelled due to COVID-19 and expected exam grades were to be used instead. Private school students received grades much higher than they were expecting, and state school students received grades much lower, some grades falling as far as an A to an E. This was because the government couldn’t imagine state school students being smart enough to receive the high grades they were predicted to get; after much uproar the grades were scrapped, and a new method was introduced

· BBC offered staff grief counselling following Prince Philip’s death, but not after having to report on the ever-rising COVID death toll

· The COVID-19 Infection Survey closed in mourning for Prince Philip, with workers to contact participants to reschedule visits for “as soon as possible” when they return to work

· Census workers told to pack up and go home and were placed on immediate unpaid leave due to the death of Prince Philip, but told they must make up the hours later

· Conservative MPs lobbied for a new royal yacht after voting to keep schoolchildren hungry (see first points)

· The BBC’s complaint page crashed over the amount of complaints they got of their coverage of Prince Philip’s death. It was covered non-stop for over 24 hours and the page came in at over 100,000 complaints before going down

· BBC also fast becoming politically biased despite their requirement to be apolitical, after cutting out the audience laughing at Boris Johnson on Question Time, displaying Corbyn as a communist figure in front of a prominent piece of Russian architecture, and providing a platform for a Conservative MP to tell a stage 4 bowl cancer patient that her life wasn’t valuable on live television

· On the COVID-19 pandemic, the BMJ, (British Medical Journal) said about the government that “science was being suppressed for political and financial gain” by “some of history’s worst autocrats and dictators”

· Not only did Boris Johnson launch Eat Out To Help Out when he was warned it was dangerous, lifted lockdowns too early when he was warned it was too dangerous, reopened schools when he was warned it was too dangerous, but when scientists said the second COVID jab should be delivered within 3 weeks he decided that was too tall an order and it should be within 12 weeks – after a period of radio silence, suddenly the science fit his plan. No scientists came forwards to defend it

· The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, blamed protestors for protests that became violent from police attacking protestors, bullied staff members under her, bought members of staff in her department, said it was “disgraceful” to topple the statue of Edward Colson, a slave trader, in Brighton because it undermined anti-racism protests, held treasonous meetings with Israel with the plan to divert aid money, and threatened to starve Ireland in order to get them to agree to Brexit

· She also wants to set up Australian-style asylum processing centres on British islands, but the islands she wants are in the Atlantic ocean and over 4000 miles away from the UK. This is because she wants to help asylum seekers enter the UK legally, completed ignoring or oblivious to all the reasons that asylum seekers might not be able to do that, and for the fact that to seek asylum you must essentially walk up the border and ask for it

· The bungling of the Track and Trace system – the government spent £10bn on a system to track and trace the spread of COVID-19. All data was stored on an Excel spreadsheet which developed a technical glitch and many results were lost before the system was scrapped

· As Autism Acceptance month began, the BBC ran a story saying the autism causes fascism, and that an autistic person who had chosen to embrace the ideology was incapable of seeing that a neo-Nazi group he joined was morally bad because he was autistic

#st george's day #uk politics

[if-only-angels-could-prevail]

“American Things” by Tony Kushner

Summer is the season for celebrating freedom, summer is the time when we can almost believe it is possible to be free. American education conditions us for this expectation; school's out! The climate shift seductively whispers emancipation. Warmth opens up the body and envelops it. The body in summer is most easily at home in the world. This is true even when the summer is torrid. I have lived half my life in Louisiana and half in New York City. I know from torrid summers.

On my seventh birthday, midsummer 1968, my mother decorated my cake with sparklers she'd saved from the Fourth of July. This, I thought, was extraordinary, fantastic, sparklers spitting and smoking, dangerous and beautiful atop my birthday cake. In one indelible, ecstatic instant my mother completed a circuit of identification for me, melding two iconographies, of self and of liberty: of birthday cake, delicious confectionery emblem of maternal enthusiasm about my existence, which enthusiasm I shared; and of the nighttime fireworks of pyro-romantic Americana, fireworks-liberty-light which slashed across the evening sky, light which thrilled the heart, light which exclaimed loudly in the thick summer air, light which occasionally tore off fingers and burned houses, the fiery fierce explosive risky light of Independence, of Freedom.

Stonewall, the festival day of lesbian and gay liberation, is followed closely by the Fourth of July; they are exactly one summer week apart. The contiguity of these two festivals of freedom is important, at least to me. Each adds piquancy and meaning to the other. In the years following my 7th birthday I had lost some of my enthusiasm for my own existence, as most queer kids growing up in a hostile world will do. I'd certainly begun to realize how unenthusiastic others, even my parents, would be if they knew I was gay. Such joy in being alive as I can now lay claim to has been returned to me largely because of the successes of the political movement which began, more or less officially, 25 years ago on that June night in the Village. I've learned how absolutely essential to life freedom is.

Lesbian and gay freedom is the same freedom celebrated annually on the Fourth of July. Of this I have no doubt; my mother told me so, back in 1963, by putting sparklers on that cake. She couldn't have made her point more powerfully if she'd planted them on my head. Hers was a gesture we both understood, though at the time neither could have articulated it; "This fantastic fire is yours." Mothers and fathers should do that for their kids: give them fire, and link them proudly and durably to the world in which they live.

One of the paths down which my political instruction came was our family seder. Passover, too, is a celebration of Freedom in sultry, intoxicating heat (Passover actually comes in the spring but in Louisiana the distinction between spring and summer was never clear). Our family read from Haggadahs written by a New Deal Reform rabbinate which was unafraid to draw connections between Pharaonic and modern capitalist exploitations; between the exodus of Jews from Goshen and the journey toward civil rights for African-Americans; unafraid to make the yearning which Jews have repeated for thousands of years a democratic dream of freedom for all peoples. It was impressed upon us, as we sang "America the Beautiful" at the seder's conclusion, that the dream of millennia was due to find its ultimate realization not in Jerusalem but in this country.

The American political tradition to which my parents made me an heir is mostly an immigrant appropriation of certain features and promises of our Constitution, and of the idea of democracy and federalism. This appropriation marries morally and ideologically indeterminate freedom to the more strenuous specific mandates of justice. It is the aggressive, unapologetic, progressive liberalism of the 30s and 40s, a liberalism strongly spiced with socialism, trade unionism and the ethos of internationalism and solidarity.

This liberalism at its best held that citizenship was bestowable on everyone, and sooner or later it would be bestowed. Based first and foremost on reason, and then secondarily on protecting certain articles of faith such as the Bill of Rights, democratic process would eventually shift power from the mighty to the many, in whose hands, democratically and morally speaking, it belongs. Over the course of 200 years, brave, visionary activists and ordinary, moral people had carved out a space, a large sheltering room from which many were now excluded, but which was clearly intended to be capable of multitudes. Within the space of American Freedom there was room for any possibility. American Freedom would become the birthplace of social and economic Justice.

Jews who came to America had gained entrance into this grand salon, as had other immigrant groups: Italians, Irish. Black people, Chicanos and Latinos, Asian-Americans would soon make their own ways, I was told, as would women, as would the working class and the poor -- it could only be a matter of time and struggle.

People who desired sex with people of their own gender, trans-gender people, drag kings and drag queens, deviants from heterosexual normality were not discussed. There was identity, and then there was illness.

I am nearly 38, and anyone who's lived 38 years should have made generational improvements on the politics of his or her parents. For any gay man or lesbian since Stonewall, the politics of homosexual enfranchisement is part of what is to be added to the fund of human experience and understanding that we pass on to the next generation-upon which we hope improvements will be made.

The true motion of freedom is to expand outward. To say that lesbian and gay freedom is the same freedom celebrated annually on the Fourth of July is simply to say that queer and other American freedoms have changed historically, generally in a healthy direction (with allowances for some costly periods of faltering, including recently), and must continue to change if they are to remain meaningful. No freedom that fails to grow will last.

Lesbians and gay men of this generation have added homophobia to the consensus list of social evils: poverty, racism, sexism, exploitation, the ravaging of the environment, censorship, imperialism, war. To be a progressive person is to believe that there are ways to actively intervene against these evils. To be a progressive person is to resist Balkanization, tribalism, separatism; to be progressive is to seek out connection. I am homosexual, and this ought to make me consider how my experience of the world, as someone who is not always welcome, resembles that of others, however unlike me, who have had similar experiences. I demand to be accorded my rights by others; and so I must be prepared to accord to others their rights. The truest characteristic of freedom is generosity, the basic gesture of freedom is to include, not to exclude.

That there would be a reasonably successful movement for lesbian and gay civil rights was scarcely conceivable a generation ago. In spite of these gains, much of the social progress which to my parents seemed a foregone conclusion has not yet been made, and much ground has been lost. Will racism prove to be more intractable, finally, than homophobia? Will the hatred of women, gay and straight, continue to find new and more violent forms of expression, and will gay men and women of color remain doubly, or triply oppressed, while white gay men find greater measures of acceptance, simply because they are white men?

The tensions which have defined American history and American political consciousness have most often been those existing between the margin and the center, the many and the few, the individual and society, the dispossessed and the possessors. It is a peculiar feature of our political life that some of these tensions are frequently discussed and easily grasped, such as those existing between the states and the federal government, or between the rights of individuals and society's claims upon them; while others' tensions, especially those which are occasioned by the claims of marginalized peoples, are regarded with suspicion and fear. Listing the full catalog of these claims is sure to raise howls decrying "political correctness" from those who need desperately to believe that democracy is a simple thing.

Democracy isn't simple and it doesn't mean that majorities tyrannize minorities. We learned this a long time ago, from, among others, the Moses of that Jewish American Book of Exodus, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, or, in more recent times, from Thurgood Marshall. In these days of demographic shifts, when majorities are disappearing, this knowledge is particularly useful, and it needs to be expanded. There are in this country political traditions congenial to the idea that democracy is multicolored and multicultural and also multigendered, that democracy is about returning to individuals the fullest range of their freedoms, but also about the sharing of power, about the rediscovery of collective responsibility. There are in this country political traditions, from organized labor, from the civil-rights and black-power movements, from feminist and homosexual liberation movements, from movements for economic reform, which postulate democracy as a dynamic process. These traditions exist in opposition to those which make fixed fetishes of democracy and freedom, talismans for reaction.

These traditions, which constitute the history of progressive and radical America, have been shunted to the side in an attempt at revisionism that began during the McCarthy era. Over the course of American history since World War II, the terms of the national debate have subtly, insidiously shifted. What used to be called liberal is now called radical, what used to be called radical is now called insane. What used to be called reactionary is now called moderate, and what used to be called insane is now called solid conservative thinking.

The recovery of antecedents is immensely important work. Historians are reconstructing the lost history of homosexual America, along with all the other lost histories. Freedom, I think, is finally being at home in the world, it is a returning -- to the best particulars of the home you came from, or the arrival, after a lengthy and arduous journey, at the home you never had, which your dreams and desires have described for you.

I have a guilty confession to make. When I am depressed, when nerve or inspiration or energy flag, I put on Dvorak's Ninth Symphony, "From the New World"; I get teary listening to the Largo. It's become one of the alltime most shopworn musical cliches, which is regrettable. My father, who is a symphony conductor, told me that Dvorak wrote it in America and then contributed all the money from the New World Symphony's premiere to a school that accepted former slaves. But as the story goes, his daughter fell in love with a Native American and Dvorak took the whole family back to Bohemia.

Like many Americans I'm looking for home. Home is an absence, it is a loss that impels us. I want this home to be like the Largo from the New World Symphony. But life most frequently resembles something by Schoenberg, the last quartet, the one he wrote after his first heart attack. Life these days is played out to the tune of that soundtrack. Or something atonal, anyway, something derivative of Schoenberg, some piece written by one of his less talented pupils.

The only politics that can survive an encounter with this world, and still speak convincingly of freedom and justice and democracy, is a politics that can encompass both the harmonics and the dissonance. The frazzle, the rubbed-raw, the unresolved, the fragile and the fiery and the dangerous: these are American things. This jangle is our movement forward, if we are to move forward; it is our survival, if we are to survive.

#thrilled that I found the entire text of my favorite essay online

[newshourbd]

PPFA calls for healthy debate on citizenship bill in Assam

#PPFA calls for #healthydebate on #citizenshipbill in Assam

The forum of patriotic people in a statement pointed out that those motivated elements had been claiming, as if, the concerned bill is Assam centric and once it turns into a law, millions of Bengali Hindu people from Bangladesh would be dumped in the State and even the practice will continue for decades.

Expressing absolute annoyance over a section of Assamese intellectuals and civil society…

View On WordPress

#Assam #healthy debate on citizenship bill #healthy debate on citizenship bill i #Migration #News #Patriotic People’s Front Assam #PPFA

[tomshufflepuff]

you literally said that someone calling someone else conservative is an insult. and you get so riled up when I call your beliefs a mental problem. most liberals tend to be hypocritical snowflakes. Trump has done more in his short time as president than Obama did in his 2 terms.

okay and? Lmao I didn’t say it was a mental disorder. It can be an insult in my opinion if it’s by match the actual 100% conservative that don’t believe in equal rights for everyone (don’t fight me on this lmao most conservatives don’t like the LGBTQ community and are very traditional and don’t support women’s rights). I got all “riled” up because what you said is bullshit and disgusting. And nah you’re not right about Trump doing more. If you mean saying more offensive things then yes you are correct. Sorry I don’t know how you can support someone who calls Africa a “shithole country” and insults the CONTINENT’s people, but welcomed white immigrants from Norway? (His wife is an immigrant and doesn’t have US citizenship just an fyi) and someone who categorizes Mexicans as rapists and blaming them for the drug and job problems in this country.Let’s look at what good things Obama did:1) He rescued the country from the Great Recession, cutting the unemployment rate from 10% to 4.7% in 6 years2) He signed the Affordable Care Act which provides health insurance to over 20 million uninsured Americans3) Ordered for the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden4) Passed the $787 billion America Recovery and Reinvestment Act to spur economic growth during the Great Recession5) Supported the LGBT community’s fight for marriage equality7) Commuted the sentences of nearly 1200 drug offenders to reverse “unjust and outdated prison sentences”8) Saved the U.S. auto industry9) Helped put the U.S. ontrack for energy independence by 202010) Began the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan 11) Signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals allowing as many as 5 million people living in the U.S. illegally to avoid deportation and receive work permits12) Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to re-regulate the financial sector13) Dropped the veteran homeless rate by 50 percent14) Reversed Bush-era torture policies15) Began the process of normalizing relations with Cuba16) Increased Department of Veteran Affairs funding17) Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act18) Boosted fuel efficiency standards for cars19) Improved school nutrition with the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act20) Repealed the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy (which is honestly one of my favorite things he’s done)21) Signed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, making it a federal crime to assault anyone based on sexual or gender identification (something our country desperately needed)22) Helped negotiate the landmark Iran Nuclear Deal23) He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to combat pay discrimination against women (he a feminist lmao don’t fight me. Another thing he did that’s one of my favorites)24) Nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, making her the first Hispanic ever to serve as a justice25) Supported veterans through a $78 billion tuition assistance GI bill26) Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”27) Launched My Brother’s Keeper, a White House initiative designed to help young minorities achieve their full potential (again, he believes in equality FOR ALL)28) Expanded embryonic stem cell research leading to groundbreaking work in areas including spinal injury treatment and cancersooooo should I go on orrrrr 🤷‍♀️🤔And the things Trump has done for this country can be debated on if it’s actually good.He wants to be allies with Russian and North Korea. North Korea has gone back on MANY promises in the past to not attack using military weapons. Russia, well Putin was a spy and now he’s president and he’s involved with multiple dangerous people.He pulled out on the Paris Climate convention which says the US will not be participating with other major countries in trying to stop global warming. Oh and he said global warming isn’t real.He said his inauguration crowd was larger than Obama’s (lmao it wasn’t.)He accused Obama of wiretapping him, which Obama never did.He kinda confessed on Twitter that that Trump tower meeting with DJ jr. was to get “dirt” on Hilary. Keep in mind that he lied about it many times. He supports Roseanne Barr who is a known anti Jewish and a racist.He called Mexicans, “rapists” and said they were bringing drugs and crime into this country. Not knowing that there’s more white American citizens who have been prosecuted for rape. He blames immigrants on everything, including “stealing jobs”. No okay lmao first of all, no one is “stealing” any jobs. The employer is often going to hire the employee who is a better worker. So stop complaining like a little bitch saying a Mexican stoke your job and start working on becoming a harder and better worker. Plus another reason why more immigrants are being hired is because a lot of them don’t have much money after coming here from Mexico. And they are willing to work for anything to be able to have enough money to provide for their families. The American employer sees that and doesn’t give them a fare pay because they know the immigrant will work for anything. So they take advantage and lower the pay for that employee so they can keep the money for themselves.He also body shames women and treats them as if they were objects. He hates NATO because okay lesson time, NATO was put together because of the Soviet Union’s (Russia) rose to power during the Cold War and were taking over many nearby cities and torturing people. So some countries in Europe and and the Americas established NATO as an alliance to fight against the Soviet if they ever rise to power like that again. And you know why Trump pulled out of it? Because he’s friends with Putin and doesn’t want to be in an alliance against him.He also wants DACA gone because it protects immigrants. Not knowing that you can’t get a DACA if you have a criminal record of any kind.Says he loves all of the dreamers yet he’s very racist and unfair to the majority of the dreamers in this country (Latinos and Latinas).Promotes a “Space Force” lmao what even is that the next Star Wars movie.He wants abortion and birth control gone and his excuses is because of his religion (along with Mike Pence) and they wanna get rid of Planned Parenthood just because they give abortions. Planned Parenthood does get government funding, but that funding does not go to abortions, just basic medical help to new moms. My mom went to planned parenthood, she obviously didn’t get an abortion 😂And recently, Trump locks children in actual cages in support of Jeff Session’s “no tolerance policy” saying that if you come into this country illegally, they’re gonna rip your children away from you. Not only that, but they didn’t even bother to keep track of children in any way and many children are still separated from their parents. And Sessions quotes a bible verse while speaking about the policy. Yet Trump supporters who call themselves Christians ignore this one bible verse, “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself for you were foreigners in Egypt. For I am the LORD your GOD.” Hmmmm 🤔Also, there’s this thing called Separation of Church and State that was mentioned by one of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, going into detail about the First Amendment in the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise of the First Amendment. So he really shouldn’t use a bible verse to back up his shit. Along with Pence and Trump using their religious beliefs to cancel abortions.

But I do not agree with everything Obama did. He did do some, well not so good, well bad things too. So I do acknowledge that Obama isn’t all perfect. And I’m pointing out a lot of bad things Trump has done because those are the major key points. He hasn’t really done anything good for this country, or our allies. And he’s not a good leader by being racist and sexist.

#Obama is pretty cool #tom holland is not a conservative #tom holland supports the LGBTQ community #tom holland is a feminist #reminder he’s friends with laura and zendaya #aka two of the biggest lgbtq supporters and feminists #zendaya #laura harrier #tom holland #peter parker #tom holland likes Obama

[socialjusticeartshare]

Biden will pledge to tackle immigration overhaul in address to Congress, while signaling openness to more targeted deal

President Biden will recommit himself to overhauling the immigration system Wednesday during his first address to Congress, while signaling openness to Congress passing smaller parts of his agenda that have bipartisan support, including guaranteeing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

Biden will call on Congress to pass his immigration proposal, which includes a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants and funding for security upgrades at the border and ports of entry, according to an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the address ahead of its public release. The move marks an attempt by Biden to show his seriousness on immigration policy at a time when he is under attack from Republicans over the migrant surge at the border and from Democrats over his handling of how many refugees should be allowed into the country.

Biden fulfilled his campaign promise to send an immigration bill to Congress on the first day of his administration, but the legislation has taken a back seat to more pressing issues for the White House, such as the recently enacted coronavirus relief bill and his infrastructure proposal.

At the border, a widely predicted crisis that caught Biden off guard

Even without the political fallout from the administration’s handling of a surge of Central American migrants at the border, a comprehensive immigration bill would be difficult to get through Congress given the need to secure at least 10 Senate Republican votes for its passage.

Given this political reality, according to the official, Biden will also use his address to a joint session of Congress to push for more targeted legislation that would guarantee a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, known as “dreamers,” allow farmworkers already in the country to earn legal status and ease restrictions on visas for seasonal agricultural workers. Both bills passed the House with bipartisan support: The dreamers bill passed with nine Republican votes, while the farmworkers legislation had the support of 30 Republicans.

To make his sell, especially to skeptical Republicans, Biden will outline how immigrants play a crucial role in maintaining a healthy and competitive economy, the official said.

Former president Donald Trump made restricting immigration a signature issue during his time in office and often used harsh rhetoric, which was at times called racist, to describe foreigners seeking to come to the United States. Many Republicans rallied behind this agenda, including Trump’s campaign to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, making any bipartisan deals a nonstarter.

But with Trump out of office, there have been some signs that there could be agreement between the parties on some immigration issues.

A bipartisan group of 14 senators — five Republicans and nine Democrats — are meeting in hopes of striking a deal on a narrower immigration compromise that would marry border security priorities important to Republicans with a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers and dreamers. Senators are discussing all bills that have been introduced, including a bipartisan measure recently proposed by Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) on border security. These talks, however, are not very far along and a deal would be difficult to strike.

To lead ICE, Biden picks Texas sheriff who criticized Trump’s immigration policies

Biden is also expected to applaud Vice President Harris for her work on engaging with El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — the Northern Triangle countries many migrants are leaving to escape violence and poverty. Republicans have criticized Harris for not traveling to the southern U.S. border to assess the situation there, but the White House has dismissed these attacks, noting that her assignment is to deal with the cause of the migration as other administration officials focus on problems at the border.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are continuing to push Biden to include parts of proposed immigration legislation into the second plank of his infrastructure package, the “American Families Plan,” which he plans to announce on Wednesday. Although it is not expected to be included, caucus members may be pleased with the president’s attention to immigration during his first speech before Congress.

The handful of caucus members who met with Biden last week urged him to mention his support of the bills already proposed in Congress.

In June 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that allowed dreamers to stay in the country and work without the threat of being deported. Democrats have been seeking to codify that program ever since, particularly after it survived Trump’s attempt to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the policy’s official name.

Many Republicans have expressed support for permanently addressing the fate of dreamers, and it remains at the center of any potential immigration deal.

“I have always said that I’m open to finding — it doesn’t necessarily have to be the U.S. Citizenship Act, but it has to be more robust than dreamers,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “If dreamers is all that happens, the community won’t be happy and I won’t be.”

As for Republicans, several strategists responsible for political messaging said that striking a deal on immigration may dampen efforts to pressure Biden on the migrant surge at the border, which Republicans have grabbed onto as a political issue.

“What we really need is for [Biden] to admit that his policies and rhetoric caused the crisis. The results of this crisis are as predictable as they are disastrous — for both migrants and American citizens,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on the House floor last week while the chamber debated legislation that would bar future presidents from implementing countrywide travel bans — a bill introduced in response to Trump’s attempt early in his administration to ban travelers from several majority-Muslim countries.

Biden rescinded Trump’s travel ban on Muslim countries during his first day as president, completing a campaign promise.

Republicans blame Biden policies — such as his decision to halt the construction of Trump’s border wall and an order clarifying that only undocumented immigrants who pose a national, border or public security risk should be deported — as reasons there are currently problems dealing with the number of migrants at the border.

“These priorities are almost a parody of left-wing governance,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last week. “Not securing the border. Not a better plan for these children. Just ‘woke’ proofreading. This is not going to get the job done.”

Biden has defended his approach, saying many of Trump’s policies were inhumane and that the flow of migrants at the border is, in part, seasonal.

The president has faced the fiercest backlash from his party for breaking his promise to raise the cap on the number of refugees that can be admitted to the United States each year. The White House quickly reversed course and said it will have a new proposal out soon.

Refugee cap Biden administration touted — then ditched — is back on table

Biden faced sharp criticism from activists early on in his campaign for not paying enough attention to the Hispanic community, a mistake he tried to reverse by pledging to send Congress an immigration bill on his first day as president.

Since taking office, Biden has taken several actions on immigration to fulfill promises he made on the campaign trail, such as signing an executive order that created a task force to unite 600 children separated from their parents during the Trump administration. He has partially completed some promises, like preventing undocumented military veterans from deportation and streamlining the naturalization process. He also attempted to pause deportations for his first 100 days, a move that was blocked by a judge in Texas.

Article Source

#Biden #immigration #overhaul #congress

[lupine-publishers-rrhoaj]

Lupine Publishers | Aging, Healthy Families and Narrative Approaches

  Lupine Publishers | Journal of Health Research and Reviews

Abstract

Due to the mounting importance of recent research in the areas of healthy families and aging, the paper assesses the particular relationship between old age, health and family life by means of studying the role of grand-parenting and the way it is perceived by older people, the family, and the society at large. The study applies a narrative approach; hence, telling the meaning of the family and grand parenting through personal stories and public discourse, based on the theory of Michel Foucault. The findings put forth suggest that identities of health and family and grand-parenting are built on multiple grounds, and that therefore theory should be sensitized accordingly, as identities are managed at different levels, for different audiences and at different levels of awareness.

Introduction

There has been an interest in aging and family, within sociological developments relating to aging and health policy since the late 1990s (Minkler, 1998). This is a trend that has cut across Canadian, American and European research Cloke et al, 2006; Walker and Naegele [1]; Minkler, 1998; Bengtson et al. [2]; Biggs and Powell [3]; Carmel et al. [4]. The reasons for such expansion are as much economic and political as they are academic. US and European governments recognize that the “family” is important for health and economic needs and this should be reflected in our understanding of aging, family processes and in health policy Beck [5]. “Narrativity” has become established in the health sciences, both as a method of undertaking and interpreting research cf Kenyon et al., 1999; Holstein and Gubrium [6]; Biggs et al. [7] and as a technique for modifying the self McAdams [8]; Mcleod [9]. Both Gubrium [10] and Katz [11] suggest that older people construct their own analytical models of personal identity based on lived experience and on narratives already existing in their everyday environments. By using a narrative approach, the meaning of health and family can be told through stories about the self as well as ones “at large” in public discourse.

Self-storying, draws attention to the ways in which family identities are both more open to negotiation and are more likely to be “taken in” in the sense of being owned and worked on by individuals themselves. Families, of course, are made up of interpersonal relationships within and between generations that are subject to both the formal rhetoric of public discourse, and the self-stories that bind them together in everyday life. The notion of family is, then, an amalgam of policy discourse and everyday negotiation and as such alerts us to the wider health implications of those relationships (cf Powell, 2005). The rhetoric of health policy and the formal representations of adult aging and family life that one finds there, provide a source of raw material for the construction of identity and a series of spaces in which such identities can be legitimately performed. It is perhaps not overstating the case to say that the “success” of a family policy can be judged from the degree to which people live within the stories or narratives of family created by it. In fact, the relationship between healthy families and older people has been consecutively re-written in the health policy literature. Each time a different story has been told and different aspects of the relationship have been thrown into high relief. It might even be argued that the family has become a key site upon which expected norms of intergenerational relations and late-life citizenship are being built. This paper explores the significance of such narratives, using developments in the UK as a case example that may also shed light on wider contemporary issues associated with old age. The structure of the paper is in four constituents. Firstly, we start by mapping out the emergence and consolidation of neoliberal family policy and its relationship to emphasis on family obligation, state surveillance and active citizenship. Secondly, we highlight both the ideological continuities and discontinuities of the subsequent health democratic turn and their effects on older people and the family. Thirdly, research studies are drawn on to highlight how “grand-parenting” has been recognized by governments in recent years, as a particular way of “storying” the relationship between old age and family life. Finally, we explore ramifications for researching family policy and old age by pointing out that narratives of inclusion and exclusion often co-exist. It is suggested that in future, aging and family life will include the need to negotiate multiple policy narratives. At an interpersonal level, sophisticated narrative strategies would be required if a sense of familial continuity and solidarity is to be maintained.

Neoliberalism, Aging, and Healthy Families

Political and health debate since the Reagan/Thatcher years, has been dominated by neoliberalism, which postulates the existence of autonomous, assertive, rational individuals who must be protected and liberated from “big government” and state interference Gray [12]. Indeed, Walker and Naegele [1] claim a startling continuity across Europe is the way “the family” has been positioned by governments as these ideas have spread beyond their original “English speaking” base. Neoliberal policies on health and family, has almost always started from a position of laissez-faire, excepting when extreme behavior threatens its members or wider health relations Beck [5]. Using the UK as a case example, it can be seen that that neoliberal policy came to focus on two main issues. And, whilst both only represent the point at which a minimalist approach from the state touches family life, they come to mark the dominant narrative through which aging and family are made visible in the public domain (Cloke et al. 2006). On the one hand, increasing attention was paid to the role families took in the care of older people who were either mentally or physically infirm. A series of policy initiatives UKG [13-15] recognized that families were a principal source of care and support. “Informal” family care became a key building block of policy toward an aging population. It both increased the salience of traditional family values, independence from government and enabled a reduction in direct support form the state. On the other hand, helping professionals, following US experience Pillemer and Wolf [16], became increasingly aware of the abuse that older people might suffer and the need to protect vulnerable adults from a variety of forms of abuse and neglect Biggs et al. [17]. Policy guidance, “No Longer Afraid: the safe-guard of older people in domestic settings,” was issued in 1993, shortly after the move to seeing informal care as the mainstay of the welfare of older people. As the title suggests, this was also directed primarily at the family.

It is perhaps a paradox that a policy based ostensibly on the premises of leaving-be, combines two narrative streams that result in increased surveillance of the family. This paradox is based largely on these points being the only ones where policy “saw” aging in families, rather than ignoring it. This is not to say that real issues of abuse and neglect fail to exist, even though UK politicians have often responded to them as if they were some form of natural disaster unrelated to the wider policy environment. To understand the linking of these narratives, it is important to examine trends tacit in the debate on family and aging, but central to wider health policy. Wider economic priorities, to “roll back the state” and thereby release re-sources for individualism and free enterprise, had become translated into a family discourse about caring obligations for ill relatives and the need to enforce them. If families ceased to care, then the state would have to pick up the bill. Families, rather than being seen as “havens against a harsh world,” were now easily perceived as potential sites of mistreatment, and the previously idealized role of the unpaid carer became that of a potential recalcitrant, attempting to avoid their family obligations. An attempt to protect a minority of abused elders thus took the shape of a tacit threat, hanging above the head of every aging family Biggs and Powell [18]. It is worth note that these policy developments took little account of research evidence indicating that family solidarity and a willingness to care had decreased in neither the UK Wenger, 1994; Phillipson [19] nor the US Bengtson and Achenbaum [20]. Further, it appeared that familial caring was actually moving away from relationships based on obligation and toward ones based on negotiation Finch and Mason [21]. Family commitment has, for example, to vary depending upon the characteristic care-giving patterns within particular families. Individualistic families provided less instrumental help and made use of welfare services, whereas a second, collectivist pattern offered greater personal support. Whilst this study focused primarily on upward generational support, Silverstein and Bengtson [22] observed that “tight-knit” and “detached” family styles were often common across generations. Unfortunately, policy developments have rarely taken differences in care-giving styles into account, preferring a general narrative of often idealized role relation-ships. It is not unfair to say that during the neoliberal period, the dominant narrative of family became that of a site of care going wrong.

Health Democracy, Aging, and the Family

Health democratic policies toward the family arose from the premise that by the early 1990s, the free-market policies of the Thatcher/Reagan years had seriously damaged the health fabric of the nation state and that its citizens needed to be encouraged to identify again with the national project. A turn to an alternative, sometimes called “the third way,” emerging under Clinton, Blair and Schroeder administrations in the US and parts of Europe, attempted to find means of mending that health fabric, and as part of it, relations between older people and their families Beck [5]. The direction that the new policy narrative took is summarized in UK Prime Minister Blair’s [23] statement that “the most meaningful stake anyone can have in society is the ability to earn a living and support a family.” Work, or failing that, work-like activities, plus an active contribution to family life began slowly to emerge, delineating new narratives within which to grow old Hardill et al. [24]. Giddens [25] in the UK and Beck [26] in Germany, both proponents of health democratic politics, have claimed that citizens are faced with the task of piloting themselves and their families through a changing world in which globalization has transformed our relations with each other, now based on avoiding risk. According to Giddens [25], a new partnership is needed between government and civil society. Government support to the renewal of community through local initiative, would gives an increasing role to “voluntary” organizations, encourages health entrepreneurship and significantly, supports the “democratic” family characterized by “equality, mutual respect, autonomy, decision-making through communication and freedom of violence.” It is argued that health policy should be less concerned with “equality” and more with “inclusion,” with community participation reducing the moral and financial hazard of dependence cf Walker, 2002; Biggs et al. [7]; Powell and Owen [27]; Walker and Aspalter [28].

Through an increased awareness of the notion of ageism, the influence of European ideas about health inclusion and North American health communitarianism, families and older people found themselves transformed into active citizens who should be encouraged to participate in society, rather than be seen as a potential burden upon it Biggs [29]. A contemporary UK policy document, entitled “Building a Better Britain for Older People” DSS [30] is typical of a new genre of western policy, re-storying the role of older adults: “The contribution of older people is vital, both to families, and to voluntary organisations and charities. We believe their roles as mentors-providing ongoing support and advice to families, young people and other older people-should be recognised. Older people already show a considerable commitment to volunteering. The Government is working with voluntary groups and those representing older people to see how we can increase the quality and quantity of opportunities for older people who want to volunteer.” What is perhaps striking about this piece is that it is one of the few places where families are mentioned in an overview on older people, with the exception of a single mention of carers, many of whom, it is pointed out, “are pensioners themselves.” In both cases the identified role for older people constitutes a reversal of the narrative offered in preceding policy initiatives. The older person like other members of family structure is portrayed as an active member of the health milieu, offering care and support to others Hardill et al. [24].

The dominant preoccupation of this policy initiative, is not however, concerned with families. Rather, there is a change of emphasis toward the notion of aging as an issue of lifestyle, and as such draws on contemporary gerontological observations of the “blurring” of age-based identities (Featherstone and Hepworth, 1995) and the growth of the grey consumer Katz [11]. Whilst such a narrative is attractive to pressure groups, voluntary agencies and, indeed, health gerontologists; there is, just as with the policies of the neoliberals, an underlying economic motive which may or may not be to the long term advantage to older people and their families. Again, as policies develop, the force driving the story of elders as active citizens was to be found in policies of a fiscal nature. The most likely place to discover how the new story of aging, fits the bigger picture is in government-wide policy. In this case the document has been entitled “Winning the Generation Game” UKG [31]. This begins well with “One of the most important tasks for twentyfirst century Britain is to unlock the talents and potential of all its citizens. Everyone has a valuable contribution to make, throughout their lives.” However, the reasoning behind this statement becomes clearer when policy is explained in terms of a changing demographic profile: “With present employment rates” it is argued, “one million more over-50s would not be working by 2020 because of growth in the older population. There will be 2 million fewer working-age people under 50 and 2 million more over 50: a shift equivalent to nearly 10 percent of the total working population.”

The solution, then, is to engage older people not only part of family life but also in work, volunteering or mentoring. Older workers become a reserve labor pool, filling the spaces left by falling numbers of younger workers. They thus contribute to the economy as producers as well as consumers and make fewer demands on pensions and other forms of support. Those older people who are not thereby healthly included, can engage in the work-like activity of volunteering. Most of these policy narratives only indirectly affect the aging family. Families only have a peripheral part to play in the story, and do not appear to be central to the lives of older people. However, it is possible to detect the same logic at work when attention shifts from the public to the private sphere. Here the narrative stream develops the notion of “grand-parenting” as a means of health inclusion. This trend can be found in the UK, in France Girard and Ogg [32], Germany Scharf and Wenger [33], as well as in the USA Minkler [34]. In the UK context the most detailed reference to grand-parenting can be found in an otherwise rather peculiar place-namely from the Home Offic-an arm of British Government primarily concerned with law and order. In a document entitled “Supporting Families” (2000b), “family life” we are told, “is the foundation on which our communities, our society and our country are built.” “Business people, people from the community, students and grandparents” are encouraged to join a schools mentoring network. Further, “the interests of grandparents, and the contribution they make, can be marginalized by service providers who, quite naturally, concentrate on dealing with parents. We want to change all this and encourage grandparents-and other relativesto play a positive role in their families.” By which it is meant: “home, school links or as a source of health and cultural history” and support when “nuclear families are under stress.” Even older people who are not themselves grandparents can join projects “in which volunteers act as “grandparents” to contribute their experience to a local family.” In the narratives of health democracy, the aging family is seen as a reservoir of potential health inclusion. Older people are portrayed as holding a key role in the stability of both the public sphere, through work and volunteering, and in the private sphere, primarily through grandparental support and advice (Cloke et al. 2006). Grandparents, in particular, are storied as mentors and counselors across the public and private spheres. Whilst the grandparental title has been used as a catch-all within the dominant policy narrative; bringing with it associations of security, stability and an in many ways an easier form of relationship than direct parenting; it exists as much in public as in private space. It is impossible to interpret this construction of grandparenthood without placing it in the broader project of health inclusion, itself a response to increased health fragmentation and economic competition. Indeed it may not be an exaggeration to refer this construal of grand-parenting as neofamilial. In other words, the grandparent has out-grown the family as part of a policy search to include older adults in wider society. The grandparent becomes a mentor to both parental and grandparental generations as advice is not restricted to schools and support in times of stress, but also through participation in the planning of amenities and public services BGOP [35]. This is a very different narrative of older people and their relationship to families, from that of the dependent and burdensome elder. In the land of policy conjuring, previously conceived problems of growing economic expense and health uselessness have been miraculously reversed. Older people are now positioned as the solution to problems of demographic change, rather than their cause. They are a source of guidance to ailing families, rather than their victims. Both narratives increase the health inclusion of a potentially marginal health group: formerly known as the elderly.

“Grand-Parenting” Policy

There is much to be welcomed in this story of the active citizen elder. Especially so if policy-inspired discourse and lived self-narratives are taken to be one and the same. There are also certain problems, however, if the two are unzipped, particularly when the former is viewed through the lens of what we know about families from other sources. First, each of the roles identified in the policy domain, volunteering, mentor-ship and grand-parenting, have a rather second–hand quality. By this is meant that each is supportive to another player who is central to the task at hand. Rather like within Erikson’s psycho-health model of the lifecycle, the role allocated to older people approximates grand-generativity and thereby contingent upon the earlier, but core life task of generativity itself Kivnick [36]. In other words it is contingent upon an earlier part of life and the narratives woven around it, and fails to distinguish an authentic element of the experience of aging. When the roles are examined in this light, a tacit secondary status begins to emerge. Volunteering becomes unpaid work; mentoring, support to helping professionals in their eroded pastoral capacities; and grand-parenting, in its familial guise, a sort of peripheral parent without the hassle. This peripherality may be in many ways desirable, so long as there is an alternative pole of authentic attraction that ties the older adult into the health milieux. Either that or the narrative should allow space for legitimized withdrawal from healthy inclusive activities. Unfortunately, the dominant policy narrative has little to say on either count. Second, there is a shift of attention away from the most frail and oldest old, to a third age of active or positive aging, which, incidentally, may or may not take place in families. It is striking that a majority of policy documents of what might be called the “new aging,” start counting from age 50, an observation that is true for formal government rhetoric and pressure from agencies and initiatives lead by elders Biggs [37]. This interpretation of the life-course has been justified in terms of its potential for forming intergenerational alliances BGOP [35] and fits well with the economic priority of drawing on older people as a reserve labor force UKG [38].

Third, there is a striking absence of analysis of family relations at that age. Possibilities of intergenerational conflict as described in other literature De Beauvoir [39], not least in research into threegeneration family therapy Hargrave and Anderson [40]; Qualls [41] plus the everyday need for tact in negotiating childcare roles Bornat et al. [42]; Waldrop et al. [43], appear not to have been taken into account. This period in the aging life-course is often marked by midlife tension and multi-generational transitions, such as those experienced by late adolescent children and by an increasingly frail top generation Ryff and Seltzer [44]. Research has indicated that solidarity between family generations is not uniform and will involve a variety of types and degrees of intimacy and reciprocity Silverstein and Bengtson [22]. Finally, little consideration has been given to the potential conflict between the tacit hedonism of aging lifestyles based on consumption and those more healthly inclusive roles of productive contribution, of which the “new grandparenting” has become an important part. Whilst there are few figures on grandparental activity it does, for example, appear that community volunteering amongst older people is embraced with much less enthusiasm than policy-makers would wish Boaz et al. [45]. Chambre [46] claims volunteering in the US diminishes in old age. Her findings indicate the highest rates of volunteering occur in mid-life, where nearly two thirds volunteer. This rate declines to 47 percent for persons aged between 65 and 74 and to 32 percent among persons 75 and over. A UK Guardian-ICM (2000) poll of older adults indicated that, amongst grandfathers, but not grandmothers, there was a degree of suspicion of child-care to support their own children’s family arrangements. More than a quarter of men expressed this concern, compared with only 19 percent of women interviewed. The UK charity, Age Concern, stated: “One in ten grandparents are under the age of 56. They have 10 more years of work and are still leading full lives.”

One might speculate, immersed in this narrative stream, that problematic family roles and relationships cease to exist for the work-returning, volunteering and community enhancing 50-plus “elder.” Indeed, the major protagonists of health democracy seem blissfully unaware of several decades of research, particularly feminist research, demonstrating the mythical status of the “happy family” cf e.g. Land [47]. What emerges from research literature on grand-parenting as it is included in people’s everyday experience and narratives of self, indicates two trends: (1) there appears to be a general acceptance of the positive value of relatively loose and undemanding exchange between first and third generations, and (2) that deep commitments become active largely in situations of extreme family stress or breakdown of the middle generation. First, grandparents have potential to influence and develop children through the transmission of values. Subsequently, grand-parents serve as arbiters of knowledge and transmit knowledge that is unique to their identity, life experience and history. In addition, grandparents can become mentors, performing the function of a generic life guide for younger children. This “transmission” role is confirmed by Mills [48] study of mixed gender relations and by Waldrop et al. [43] report on grandfathering. According to Roberto [49] early research on grand-parenting in the USA has attempted to identify the roles played by grandparents within the family system and towards grandchildren. Indeed, much US work on grandparenting has focused on how older adults view and structure their relationships with younger people. African American grandparents, for example, take a more active role, correcting the behavior of grandchildren and acting like “protectors” of the family. Accordingly, such behaviors are related to effects of divorce and under/ unemployment. Research by Kennedy [50] indicates, however, that there is a cultural void when it comes to grand-parenting roles for many white families with few guide-lines on how they should act as grandparents. Girard and Ogg [32] report that grand-parenting is a rising political issue in French family policy. They note that most grandmothers welcome the new role they have in child care of their grandchildren, but there is a threshold beyond which support interferes with their other commitments. Contact between older parents and their grandchildren is less frequent that with youngsters, with financial support becoming more prominent.

Two reports, explicitly commissioned to inform UK policy Hayden et al. [51]; Boaz et al. [45] classify grand-parenting under the general rubric of intergenerational relationships. Research evidence is cited, that “when thinking about the future, older people looked forward to their role as grandparents” and that grandparents looked after their grandchildren and provided them with “love, support and a listening ear,” providing childcare support to their busy children and were enthusiastic about these roles. Hayden et al. [51] used focus groups and qualitative interviewing and report that: “grand-parenting included spending time with grandchildren both in active and sedentary hobbies and pursuits, with many participants commenting on the mental and physical stimulation they gained from sharing activities with the younger generation. Coupled with this, the Beth Johnson Foundation (1998) found that older people as mentors had increased levels of participation with more friends and engendered more health activity. With the exception of the last study, each has relied on exclusive self-report data, or views on what grand-parenting might be like at some future point. In research from the tradition of examining health networks, and thus not overtly concerned with the centrality of grand-parenting or grandparent-like roles as such, it is rarely identified as a key relationship and could not be called a strong theme. Studies on the UK, Phillipson et al. [52], Japan Izuhara [53], the US Schreck [54]; Minkler [34], Hispanic Americans Freidenberg [55], and Germany, Chamberlayne and King [56] provide little evidence that grand-children, as distinct from adult children, are prominent members of older peoples reported health networks. Grandparental responsibility becomes more visible if the middle generation is for some reason absent. Thompson [57] reports from the UK, that when parents part or die, it is often grandparents who take up supporting, caring and mediating roles on behalf of their grandchildren. The degree of involvement was contingent however on the quality of emotional closeness and communication within the family group. Minkler [34] has indicated that in the US, one in ten grandparents has primary responsibility for raising a grandchild at some point, with care often lasting for several years.

This trend varies between ethnic groups, with 4.1 percent White, 6.55 percent Hispanic and 13.55 African American children living with their grandparents or other relatives. It is argued that a 44 percent increase in such responsibilities is connected to the devastating effects of wider health issues, including AIDS/HIV, drug abuse, parental homelessness and prison policy. Thomson and Minkler [58] note that there is an increasing divergency in the meaning of grand-parenting between different socio-economic groups, with extensive care-givers (7 percent of the sampled population) having increasingly fewer characteristics in common with the 14.9 percent who did not provide child-care. In the UK, a similar split has been identified with 1 percent of British grandparents becoming extensive caregivers, against a background pattern of occasional or minimal direct care Duckworth [59]. It would appear that grand-parenting is not, then a uniform phenomenon, and extensive grand-parenting or grandparent-like activities are rarely an integral part of health inclusion. Rather, whilst it is seen as providing some intergenerational benefit, it may be a phenomenon that requires an element of un-intrusiveness and negotiation in its non-extensive form. When extensively relied on it is more likely to be a response to severely eroded inclusive environments and the self-protective reactions of families living with them. Minkler’s analysis draws attention to race as a feature of health exclusion that is poorly handled by policy narratives afforded to the family and old age. There is a failure to recognize structural forms of inequality, and action seeking to healthly include older people as a category appears to draw heavily on the occasional helper and health volunteer as a dominant narrative.

Each phase of health policy, be it the Reagan/Thatcherite neoliberalism of the 1980s and early 1990s, the Clinton/Blairite interpretation of health democracy in the late 90s, or the millennial Bush administration, leaves a legacy. Moreover, policy development is uneven and subject to local emphasis and elision, which means that it is quite possible for different, even conflicting narratives of family and later life to coexist in different parts of the policy system. Each period generates a discourse that can legitimate the lives of older people and family relations in particular ways, and as their influence accrues, create the potential of entering into multiple narrative streams. A striking feature of recent policy history has been that not only have the formal policies been quite different in their tenor and tacit objectives, one from another, they have also addressed different areas of the lives of aging families. Where there is little narrative overlap there is the possibility of both policies existing, however opposed they may be ideologically or in terms of practical outcome. Different narratives may colonize different parts of policy, drawing on bureaucratic inertia, political inattention and convenience to maintain their influence. They have a living presence, not least when they impinge on personal aging.b Also, both policy discourses share a deep coherence, which may help to explain their co-existence. Each offers a partial view of aging and family life whilst downloading risk and responsibility onto aging families and aging identities. Neither recognizes aging which is not secondary to an independent policy objective. Both mask the possibility of authentic tasks of aging. If the analysis outlined above is accepted, then it is possible to see contemporary health policy addressing diverse aspects of the family life of older people in differing and contradictory ways. Contradictory narratives for the aging family exist in a landscape that is a one and the same time increasingly blurred in terms of roles and relationships and splitoff in terms of narrative coherence and consequences for identity. Indeed in a future of complex and multiple policy agendas, it would appear that a narrative of health inclusion through active aging can coexist with one emphasizing carer obligation and surveillance. Such a co-existence may occasionally become inconvenient at the level of public rhetoric. However, at an experiential and ontological level, that is to say at the level of the daily lives of older adults and their families, the implications may become particularly acute. Multiple co-existing policy narratives may become a significant source of risk to identity maintenance within the aging family.

One has to imagine a situation in which later lives are lived, skating on a surface of legitimizing discourse. For everyday intents and purposes this surface supplies the ground on which one can build an aging identity, relate to other family members and immediate community. However, there is always the possibility of slipping, of being subject to trauma or transition. Serious slippage will provoke being thrown onto a terrain that had previously been hidden, an alternative narrative of aging with entirely different premises, relationship expectations and possibilities for personal expression. Policy narratives, however, are also continually breaking down and fail to achieve hegemony as they encounter lived experience. Indeed, it could be argued that a continuous process of re-constitution takes place via the play of competing narratives. When we are addressing the issue of older people’s identity in later life we can usefully note Foucault’s [60] contention that there has been a growth in attempts to control national populations through discourses of normality, but at the same time this has entailed increasing possibilities for self-government. Part of the attractiveness of thinking in terms of narrative, that policies tell us stories that we don’t have necessarily to believe, is the opening of a critical distance between description and intention. Policy narratives describe certain, often idealized, states of affairs. Depicting them as stories, rather than realities, allows the interrogation of the space between that description and experience (cf Powell, 2005).

Conclusion

What does this examination of health policy discourse and everyday stories of family and aging selves tell us, and what are the lessons for future health research? Firstly, we are alerted to the partial nature of the narratives supplied by health policy, which affects our perception of families as well as of older people. The simplifying role of policy discourse tends to highlight certain, politically valued, aspects of experience to the exclusion of other possibilities [61-63]. These are also the discourses most likely to be reflected in health policy-sponsored research. Secondly, the inclusion of certain roles, activities and age bands in policy discourse has a legitimizing role. In other words, it not only sanctions the direction of resources and the action of helping professionals important though that is. It also contributes to the legitimated identities afforded to people in later life. This includes at least two factors key to aging identity: the creation of health spaces in which to perform aging roles and be recognized as such, and, the supply of material with which explicit yet personal narratives of self and family can be made [64-66]. Thirdly, a significant element in the “riskiness” of building aging and healthy family identities under contemporary conditions may arise from the existence of multiple policy discourses that personal narratives, of family, self and relations between the two, have to negotiate [67,68]. Research on the management of identity, should, then, be sensitized to the multiple grounds on which identity might be built and the potential sources of conflict and uncertainty may bring. Fourthly, attention should be paid to the relationship between tacit and explicit influences on identity management in late-life families. The multiple sources for building stories “to live by” and the tension between legitimizing discourses and alternative narratives of self and family, would suggest that identities are managed at different levels, for different audiences and at different levels of awareness [69,70]. There are implications here for both the conceptualization of familial and policy relations and for the practice of research. The story that the researcher hears and then records may be tapping a particular level of disclosure.

For more Lupine Publishers Open Access Journals Please visit our website: http://lupinepublishers.us/ For more Research and Reviews on Healthcare articles Please Click Here: https://lupinepublishers.com/research-and-reviews-journal/ To Know More About Open Access Publishers Please Click on Lupine Publishers

Follow on Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/lupinepublishers

Follow on Twitter   :  https://twitter.com/lupine_online

#Lupine publishers #Lupine Publishers LLC #Lupine Publishers Group

[realitista]

Very interesting article. I think a 70-80% upper tax bracket achieves much the same thing, but the analysis of societal effects of wealthy people and the response of a healthy society has a very interesting and enlightening perspective.

Why the Rich are not 'Job Creators'

It is sometimes thought that the rich are necessary to the flourishing of a free market economy, that because they have more wealth than they need for their own consumption it is their investment of capital that makes the economy spin around and create jobs. Thus the claim that there is a trade-off between democracy and material prosperity. But that ‘job creator’ thesis is out of date and back to front.

First, while in Adam Smith's time it might have been true that economic development required capitalists to reinvest their profits this was because everyone else was too poor. But these days the economies of democratic societies are characterized by a broad middle-class whose savings are quite sufficient for funding business development and expansion (such as through the share-ownership of our pension funds or the bank loans backed by our deposits).

Second, the greater the wealth inequality, the worse we may expect the economy to perform. A flourishing economy requires customers as well as investors. If the gains of economic productivity are overwhelmingly transferred to some small group (as profits) that means that they don't go to ordinary people (as wages). (For example, since 1979 all the productivity gains of America's economy have gone to the richest 1%.) The implications are, first, that economic growth does not increase national prosperity because it does not increase the economic command of ordinary people to satisfy our wants (which is how Smith defined the wealth of nations). And, second, economic growth itself will eventually suffer since high inequality limits the extent of the market (fewer customers) and thus the scope for innovation.

But the biggest problem is the capitalists themselves, who use their dominance of politics to legitimate and entrench their momentary competitive advantages into de facto quasi-monopolies and effectively levy a redistributive tax on society as a whole. The interest of the plutocratic elite is to widen the market but limit the competition; to do what Bill Gates did to Netscape and Carlos Slim did to Mexico's telecoms industry. Consider the re-construction of America’s financial services industry over the last 30 years. As the number of firms went down, favourable laws went up, converting the industry into a rentier system in which the costs of financial services to the economy as a whole rose, profits rose, and risks were socialized.

This rentier capitalism doesn't have the same virtues as the free market kind proposed by Smith and endorsed by most contemporary economists. It undermines the policing required to maintain real – fair and rivalrous - competition. It misallocates the country's wealth and talent, by funnelling it away from productive enterprises and into rent-seeking enterprises that harvest the productivity of others.

What to do about the rich

I think it is clear that the rich are a burden and a danger to our democratic society as a whole. (If you're still not convinced, read the now classic essay Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% by the economics Nobel prize winner, Joe Stiglitz.) But that doesn't tell us what to do about them. Some people would say that we should tax the rich into the middle-class, but this proposal has never really got off the ground because it seems punitive and unfair, and not only to libertarian moral philosophers. After all, the rich got rich by playing - and ‘winning’ - the economic game according to the rules we set. It's not their fault that their wealth is toxic to democracy. Fortunately I am not concerned here with fairness and social justice, but with the somewhat simpler but more urgent existential threat that the presence of the rich poses to a democratic society. I'm against the rich, but I don't care about their money. And that allows me to advance a different kind of proposal than one normally sees in this debate: the simple rule that no-one can be both a member of our democratic society and rich.

A good way of thinking about what a democratic society is and should be, and how its members relate to it, is through the device of the social contract. A social contract is a hypothetical agreement to form a political association for the mutual advantage, security, and justice of all its members. The significance of this idea is that it allows us to scrutinize whether our current social arrangements resemble what we would have deliberately chosen to create if we had had the chance. Or whether we would have chosen something better (John Rawls' project). In Rawls’ hands the social contract is a device for generating a unique agreement on the basic structure of a just society by making explicit our intuitions about what a just democratic society requires.

But one can also use the social contract device more crudely, to draw our attention to the preconditions for and legitimate authority of a democratic society. Though we may not follow Rawls’ controversial argument for what an ideally just democratic society would look like, we may all readily agree that some features are incompatible with the persistence of any democratic society in which such questions of justice might be debated. Plutocracy seems such a feature, since it is incompatible with freedom from domination between citizens or political equality in social choice.

The idea of the social contract also directs us to think of our democratic society as a kind of private club for the mutual benefit of its members. (Indeed, this is explicitly how we often analyse it when thinking about immigration [previously].) Such a club has the legitimate authority to enforce its constitutional commitment to democracy and take action against members who undermine it. Hence my modest proposal. We should first identify with some precision the category of what it seems reasonable to call the rich i.e. those people whose capabilities for independence from and command over the rest of us crosses the threshold between enviable affluence and aristocratic privilege. Then, when anyone in our society lands in the category of the problematic rich we should say, as at the end of a cheesy TV game show, "Congratulations, you won the economy game! Well done." And then we should offer them a choice: give it away (hold a potlatch, give it to Oxfam, their favourite art museum foundation, or whatever) or cash out their winnings and depart our society forever, leaving their citizenship at the door on their way out. Since the rich are, um, rich, they have all the means they need to make a new life for themselves elsewhere, and perhaps even inveigle their way into citizenship in a country that is less picky than we are. So I'm sure they'll do just fine. Still, we can let them back in to visit family and friends a few days a year - there's no need to be vindictive.

#politics #wealth #income inequality #plutocracy #oligarchy #economy #economics

[marylandprelawland]

A BRIEF HISTORY OF IMPEACHMENT

By Robert Thorpe, Johns Hopkins University, Class of 2020

May 31, 2019

On July 10, 1842, John Minor Botts of Virginia had had enough.  With a healthy disdain for democrats and a simmering anger at having a national bank bill vetoed [1], he introduced a resolution to impeach John Tyler, the 10th President of the United States.  This would go on to be rejected, but the moment marked the first time the House of Representatives formally began impeachment proceedings against a president [2].

In a nation founded upon a system of checks and balances, the impeachment process is a reminder that no one is above the law.  Framers of the Constitution, including James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, wanted a peaceful means of removing the President from office and protecting the public from severe abuses and violations of trust. As Elbridge Gerry noted, “A good magistrate will not fear [impeachments]. A bad one ought to be kept in fear of them,” [3].  

As noted in Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors [4].  “High crimes and misdemeanors” was a phrase added by George Mason, who believed treason and bribery alone didn’t go far enough in protecting the Constitution from subversion [5].  Scholars have long debated over what might qualify as an impeachable offense, beyond treason and bribery, though Gerald Ford’s 1970 comment remains the popular opinion to this day.  As a member of the House of Representatives, he aptly noted, “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history” [6].  

In order to be impeached, the House of Representatives initiates the process when a member requests impeachment proceedings or the house passes a resolution to look into impeachment.  The House Judiciary Committee then decides if there is enough evidence to warrant moving forward.  Any charge worthy of impeachment becomes an article of impeachment, and the committee will vote to bring the article to the House floor.  By a simple majority vote, the House determines whether or not to pass the article of impeachment.

If the article passes, the official is impeached, and the process moves to the Senate for trial. If the President is the one being impeached, the chief justice of the Supreme Court will preside over the trial, while the president pro tempore of the senate oversees other impeached officials [7].  During the trial, house members are appointed to act as managers and will present their case for impeachment [8].  The indicted party may appear at the trial or instead have their counsel make their case for them.  All 100 senate members act as the jury and a two-thirds majority is required in order to convict.  If convicted, the official is removed from office and may be disqualified from holding any other federal office [7].  

Only federal judges have ever been impeached and convicted, including Alcee Hastings who was removed from office in 1989 after being convicted on eight articles of impeachment [9], though he has since moved on to become a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  No president has ever been convicted after being impeached.  Richard Nixon chose to resign as the 37th President of the United States before the House of Representatives could vote on the three articles of impeachment recommend by the House Judiciary Committee.  For more than two years, Nixon and his administration had been embroiled in the Watergate Scandal, stemming from the arrest of for breaking into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in 1972 [10].

Only two presidents have gone through the impeachment process:  Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.  

Andrew Johnson

On February 24, 1868, by a vote of 126-47, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach President Andrew Johnson.  Johnson had previously been a U.S. Senator from Tennessee.  The only senator from a seceding state to stay loyal to the Union during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln chose him to be his vice president in 1864.  When Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson became president and quickly drew the wrath of the republican party for his leniency towards southern states.  

Republicans didn’t believe Johnson should be granting amnesty to ex-confederates or welcoming the southern states back into the union so quickly with little repercussions. Further frustrated by Johnson’s support of “black codes,” laws that southern states enacted to restrict the rights of freed slaves, as well as his attempts to replace republican lawmakers who opposed him, Republicans passed the Tenure of Office Act in March of 1867. This was meant to prevent the President from removing any officials without senatorial approval and warned that any violation of the act would be considered a “high misdemeanor.”  After Johnson repeatedly ignored the act and attempted to replace Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, the house began formal impeachment proceedings. Eleven articles of impeachment were passed against Johnson. Nine focused on violations of the Office of Tenure Act while another accused Johnson of disregarding the Army Appropriations Act of 1867, which required him to issue military orders through his Secretary of War.  One more accused Johnson of attempting to disgrace Congress with his speeches.  

On March 5, 1868, Johnson’s impeachment trial began.  Each day of the trial, the senate galleries were packed full as 1,000 ticket holders gathered to watch the spectacle.  Johnson, though, never made an appearance on the advice of counsel.  On May 16, 1868, after more than two months, the trial ended.  Although the majority of senators voted to convict Johnson, the senate failed by one vote to reach the necessary two-thirds majority required to convict. Seven Republican senators broke ranks and voted to acquit, including James Grimes of Iowa, who noted that, “I cannot agree to destroy the harmonious working of the Constitution for the sake of getting rid of an Unacceptable President” [11].  

Vindicated, Johnson finished out his term as president, but was not nominated for a second term.  In 1875, six years after leaving the White House, Johnson returned to Congress as a Tennessee Senator, but died, serving only three months.  Today, because of Johnson’s opposition to Republican efforts, including the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave citizenship and other rights to African Americans, he is consistently ranked as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history [12], [13], [14], [15].  

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson Clinton was impeached on December 19, 1998.  By a vote of 228-206, the House voted to impeach Clinton on a charge of perjury, and by a vote of 221-212 for a charge of obstruction of justice [16].

Clinton’s troubles began with a lawsuit by Paula Jones on May 6, 1994.  Jones sued Clinton for sexual harassment, claiming she had been lured to Clinton’s room at the Little Rock’s Excelsior in 1991, when he was Governor of Arkansas [17]

Clinton had tried to have the case dismissed, claiming presidential immunity, but in Clinton v. Jones, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the Constitution does not give the President immunity from civil suits [18].  

During the civil suit, Clinton, under oath, testified that he had not had an extramarital relationship with white house intern, Monica Lewinsky.  This, however, turned out to be a lie.  After being transferred to the Pentagon, Lewinsky befriended and confided in Linda Tripp, who secretly recorded their conversations.  After informing Jones’ lawyers of the information, Tripp would later pass the tapes on to Kenneth Starr, independent counsel who was already investigating Clinton over his role in the Whitewater controversy, pertaining to certain real estate investments.  After receiving permission from U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to expand the scope of his investigation, Starr gathered enough evidence to bring Clinton before a Grand Jury, where the President would eventually admit to having an affair with Lewinsky.  Starr’s subsequent report to Congress alleged there were eleven impeachable offenses against the President.  The republican-led House of Representatives, believing Clinton to be unfit to serve as President, voted to impeach on two counts of perjury and obstruction of justice [19].  

On January 7, 1999, Clinton’s impeachment trial began and concluded February 12, 1999. Like Johnson, he was eventually acquitted of all charges.  By a vote of 55-45, with ten Republicans joining Democrats, Clinton was acquitted on the charge of perjury.  And by a vote of 50-50, he was acquitted on the obstruction charges [20].   In 2001, in order to avoid a criminal trial, Clinton accepted a five-year suspension of his law license [21].  

________________________________________________________________

Robert Thorpe is an intern with the Evan Guthrie Law Firm who contributes and edits articles for a national legal website. A graduate student, Robert is pursuing his Master’s in Communication degree at Johns Hopkins University.

________________________________________________________________

[1] Coryell, J. (2001). John Botts. Retrieved from http://edu.lva.virginia.gov/online_classroom/union_or_secession/people/john_botts

[2] The Attempted Impeachment of John Tyler. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://potus-geeks.livejournal.com/315466.html

[3]Bomboy, S. (2017, May 18). What the Founders thought about impeachment and the President. Retrieved from https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/what-the-founders-thought-about-impeachment-and-the-president

[4]Article II. Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii

[5] Trickey, E. (2017, October 02). Inside the Founding Fathers' Debate Over What Constituted an Impeachable Offense. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inside-founding-fathers-debate-over-what-constituted-impeachable-offense-180965083/

[6] Davis, K. (2017, June 12). The History of American Impeachment. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-you-need-know-about-impeachment-180963645/

[7] Law, T. (2018, December 18). How Does Impeachment Work? 7 Questions Answered. Retrieved from http://time.com/5477435/impeachment-clinton/

[8]Fahrenthold, D. A. (2019, April 20). Five things to know about impeachment. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/five-things-to-know-about-impeachment/2019/04/20/627674d4-6394-11e9-bfad-36a7eb36cb60_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e5b9b174d0bf

[9] The Impeachment Trial of Alcee L. Hastings (1989) U.S. District Judge, Florida. (2018, April 11). Retrieved from https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Impeachment_Hastings.htm

[10] The Watergate Scandal: A Timeline. (2019, January 18). Retrieved from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/watergate-scandal-timeline-nixon

[11] The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (1868) President of the United States. (2018, April 11). Retrieved from https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Impeachment_Johnson.htm

[12] Weindling, J. (2015, March 25). The Unsweet 16: America's Worst Presidents Ever. Retrieved from https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/03/the-unsweet-16-americas-worst-presidents-ever-brac.html

[13] Dvorak, P. (2018, February 20). The 10 worst presidents: Besides Trump, whom do scholars scorn the most? Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/02/20/the-10-worst-presidents-besides-trump-who-do-scholars-scorn-the-most/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9f8a12fc919e

[14] Illsley, C. (2016, June 02). The 10 Worst Presidents in the History of the United States. Retrieved from https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/who-were-the-worst-presidents-in-the-history-of-the-united-states.html

[15] Tolson, J. (2007, February 16). Worst Presidents: Andrew Johnson (1865-1869). Retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/the-worst-presidents/articles/2014/12/17/worst-presidents-andrew-johnson-1865-1869

[16] Barkham, P. (1998, November 18). Clinton impeachment timeline. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/1998/nov/18/clinton.usa

[17] Glass, A. (2018, November 14). Clinton settles sexual harassment suit, Nov. 14, 1998. Retrieved from https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/14/clinton-settles-sexual-harassment-suit-1998-983371

[18]Clinton v. Jones. Oyez. Retrieved May 26, 2019, from https://www.oyez.org/cases/1996/95-1853

[19] Stanitz, E., Pearson, M., & Francis, E. (2019, January 09). 'The president has a girlfriend': Linda Tripp's betrayal of Monica Lewinsky and the taped phone calls. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/US/president-girlfriend-linda-tripps-betrayal-monica-lewinsky-taped/story?id=59865969

[20] Linder, D. (n.d.). The Impeachment Trial of President William Clinton: An Account. Retrieved from https://www.famous-trials.com/clinton/884-home

[21] Yost, P. (2001, January 19). Clinton Accepts 5-Year Law Suspension. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010119/aponline132649_000.htm

[nicholemhearn]

Anti-Democratic Populism Caused the Dreamer Impasse

Trump planted a ticking DACA time-bomb in September and announced that Congress had six months to defuse it with a permanent legislative fix. Americans overwhelmingly want a fix. 87 percent think Dreamers should be allowed to stay in the U.S. Among Republicans, two-thirds support a path to citizenship. In an era of extreme partisan polarization, this level of cross-party consensus is exceedingly rare. A straight-up vote on a bipartisan bill limited to the terms for legalizing Dreamers would easily pass both houses of Congress. Moderate Republicans have offered multiple proposals capable of getting to the president’s desk with bipartisan support. So why don’t we have a fix already?

A couple weeks ago, Damon Linker, a columnist for the Week, provoked a controversy when he wrote:

[A] surprisingly large number of liberals are … not claiming that cuts to legal immigration shouldn’t be made, but that the very act of proposing and defending them in the first place is morally illegitimate. These liberals appear to believe that immigration restrictionists should be excluded on principle from participating in public debate and discussion about immigration policy in the United States.

“The liberal position,” Linker went on to say, “amounts to saying that the U.S. should be forbidden from changing this policy, with the country locked into continuing on our current course, no matter what voters think or want.”

I believe this is completely backwards, and I’d like to explain why. The liberal position is simply the mundane small “d” democratic position. In a democracy, when a clear majority of the population and a clear majority of their democratic representatives in the legislature support a position, that position ought to win the day. The problem is that this mundane democratic principle has been implicitly rejected by conservatives in the grip of populist thinking that is, at bottom, hostile to ideals of political equality and equal democratic representation.

Our impasse on DACA, and immigration policy more generally, is driven in no small measure by the populist conviction that the majority position on immigration lacks legitimate democratic authority, and that the restrictionist minority—which sees itself as the authentic and authoritative source of American identity and American political authority—is morally entitled to prevail.   

Populism is hostile to democracy, especially multi-ethnic democracy

DACA concerns the legal treatment of a special class of illegal immigrants—young people, known as Dreamers, brought to the United States as children. The Trump administration has used the threat of stripping Dreamers of their limited rights under DACA, making them vulnerable to detention and deportation, as leverage to negotiate changes to the legal immigration system, including cuts to annual admissions. This hostage-taking strategy would not have been necessary were Congressional majorities in favor of cutting legal immigration. But they aren’t, and it is easy enough to see why. According to Gallup 73 percent of Americans want immigration levels to remain steady or rise. Just 35 percent wants cuts.

This minority is intensely motivated, however, and its constituents make up majorities in a number of GOP congressional districts where representatives risk primary challenges if they aren’t restrictionist enough. Immigration coverage on restrictionist outlets such as Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and Fox News makes it abundantly clear that this intense motivation is driven by alarm over the fact that the increase in Hispanic immigration since 1965 has been reshaping American culture and national identity in a way that challenges the centrality and dominance of white Americans.

These are the concerns behind Donald Trump’s ethno-nationalist populism, which is slowly taking over the Republican Party and the American right. For white-identity populists, such as the president, many non-white Americans, though technically citizens, lack the ethnic and cultural attributes that entitle them to full and equal standing as members of “the people.” As the Princeton political theorist Jan Werner-Muller has explained, populism is an anti-democratic impulse disguised in the garb of romantic democratic notions about “the people” and its exclusive claim to political authority. Populism is anti-democratic because it is anti-pluralistic, reserving full inclusion in the national community and the democratic public to a relatively culturally and ethnically homogenous population of true Russians, true Poles, true Hungarians, or true Americans. Populists gerrymander “the people” in a way that denies legitimacy to their electoral rivals’ claims to an equal share of democratic political authority.

Citizens who fall short of the populists’ exclusive ideal of national identity tend to be cast as alien, criminal, disloyal, corrupt, and corrupting. They don’t count. Those who do fit the mold of authentic national identity, but nonetheless oppose the populist agenda, are cast as faithless, degenerate, deracinated “elites” driven by a self-hating contempt for their countrymen. They don’t count, either.

Donald Trump is a master of the populist trick of the plausibly deniable denationalization of less-than-fully-loyal and less-than-fully-American Americans. He performed the populist’s sleight of hand again and again over the course of his State of the Union Address, a speech that was advertised as “unifying,” but was so only in the sense that it was engineered to unify the Americans who count against the Americans who don’t.

In his address to Congress, Trump ramped up to his offer on DACA with repeated, vivid fear-mongering stories about death-dealing Latin American drug gangs, communicating his low general regard for Hispanic people and supplying a clear and simple explanation of his desire to spend lavishly on a wall meant specifically to keep them out of American territory. To make the thrust of his remarks clearer, but not too clear, Trump threw in a healthy helping of classic populist identity politics doublespeak. “My duty,” Trump said, “is to defend Americans—to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the American Dream. Because Americans are dreamers too.”

Uncloseted white nationalists, fluent in dog-whistle, heard the president loud and clear and responded with gratitude.

Why did these lines so please Richard Spencer and David Duke? Because they correctly grasped the not-very-sub subtext of Trump’s remarks and took it to articulate their own position: Dreamers, who have grown up American alongside Americans, don’t count as Americans, and count less than Americans, because they lack the right ethnocultural pedigree.They don’t even deserve a sympathetic name and should have that taken from them, too, because they are, after all, mostly Mexican by birth, and that, as Trump is always quick to suggest, makes them dangerous, more like MS-13 machete murderers than the salt of the earth they may seem to be. Therefore, neither the president nor Congress is duty-bound to defend their rights, their safety, their families, or their communities. On the contrary, to defend so-called Dreamers would be to fail in the defense of real Americans, whose dreams matter.     

Populist are always a majority of the gerrymandered people

Trump’s relatively overt embrace of an exclusionary, ethno-nationalist conception of political membership and democratic authority helps explain why Congress has failed, again and again, to pass immigration legislation supported by both a majority of the American people and a majority of Congress. From the populist perspective, the elements of the populist agenda can never really lack a democratic mandate, because the voices of those who oppose their platform are removed from the chorus of the authoritative democratic will. Therefore, despite the fact that nativist immigration restrictionism is indisputably a minority position, in Gallup’s sense, it is, for the populist, the majority opinion of Americans whose voices and votes count.

In the rigged anti-pluralist moral math of populism, the position that deserves to prevail is the one with the most Americanness behind it, not the one with the most so-called Americans. A majority made up of subpar citizens can technically win, but only with votes that should count less, or that maybe shouldn’t count at all. A legislative compromise that grants legitimacy and weight to the concerns of a dubiously American majority amounts to the surrender of the authentic people’s sovereign right of democratic self-determination. That’s why the nativist right is so fiercely resistant to allowing a clean DACA fix to go the floor for an up-or-down vote. It’s not just that they’d lose their leverage. For the populist, clearing away their artfully sinister Hobson’s choice and allowing a clean vote to go forward would amount to a sort of moral/cultural voter fraud, permitting the will of the people who don’t count to prevail over the will of the people who do.     

The fact that nearly 80 percent of Dreamers are Mexican helps explain why taking their rights hostage to negotiate a more restrictive immigration system, including a “wall” along the Mexican border, just makes sense to newly empowered ethno-nationalist populists. The problem they are trying to solve is that, by their lights, America has become too brown, too un-American, due in no small measure to immigration from Mexico, which has disrupted the cultural and political primacy those of us of European ancestry are entitled to.

If you lack the power to literally disenfranchise the un-American majority, the least you can do is to turn the majority’s will against itself. The fact that the majority is so determined to protect a huge group of “illegals” is, for populist restrictionists, evidence of the illegitimacy of majority rule on the question of the level of immigration. The majority is illicit precisely because it refuses to put the interests of real Americans first. Because cutting immigration and slowing the pace of America’s transition to a majority-minority country is the first priority of the ethno-nationalist populist agenda, it makes all the sense in the world to use the threat of stripping a huge group of mostly Mexican immigrants of their rights to legally exist in America as leverage to compel agreement to the populist minority’s demand for cuts. It’s a savvy strategy because, as long as they’re able procedurally to force this choice, it works out for them either way. If the populists manage to exploit the majority’s sentimentality about Dreamers to get permanent cuts in legal immigration, which an un-coerced majority would otherwise never affirm, they win. If they run out the clock, having blocked every proposal that doesn’t include cuts, and leave Dreamers bereft of DACA’s legal protections, they will have sent a clear and chilling message about who does and does not belong in America, about whose lives matter, whose rights are empty, and whose rights have worth. This would be a lesser but still substantial nativist win.

In either case, there’s an insidious subversion of basic ideals of democratic equality and majority rule. That’s why it is so important that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan allow a straight up-or-down vote on a bipartisan compromise DACA fix. In particular, the House’s “Hastert Rule,” which requires a majority of the majority party to support a bill before sending it to the floor for a vote, offers the populist minority a powerful tool with which to stymie democratic majorities and extort changes to policy that most Americans, and most members of Congress, don’t support.  There is no remotely defensible justification this kind of minority-veto thuggery.   

None of this suggests, as Linker contends, that liberals believe that the “U.S. should be forbidden from changing this policy, with the country locked into continuing on our current course, no matter what voters think or want.” Because the beliefs and desires of voters are so important to liberals, who tend to be enthusiasts for democracy, most of them have come to the unremarkable conclusion that a third of the electorate shouldn’t get to shut everything down until it can finagle whatever it wants from a stoutly opposed majority. Healthy democracies don’t work like that. But that is how populists, committed to the moral de-nationalization and disenfranchisement of political opponents, need our democracy to work.  

American democracy is already two wheels in the ditch. If Republican leadership refuses to permit a clean vote on a bipartisan DACA compromise, it will have capitulated to the noxious ethnocentric, anti-democratic populist ideology driving restrictionist demands. Moderate Republicans need to pressure their party’s leaders to bring a bipartisan DACA fix to the floor, whether or not the White House has signed off in advance, whether or not there is clear majority-majority House support. Republican leadership are duty-bound to let the legislature legislate, to let our representatives to represent us. To refuse to do so is to affirm and strengthen the pernicious and divisive idea that some Americans count more and that the votes and rights of others hardly count at all.  

—

Will Wilkinson is Vice President for Policy at the Niskanen Center

The post Anti-Democratic Populism Caused the Dreamer Impasse appeared first on Niskanen Center.

from nicholemhearn digest https://niskanencenter.org/blog/anti-democratic-populism-caused-dreamer-impasse/

#nicholemhearn digest

[ulyssesredux]

Lotus Eaters

Rachel, is now putting out nasty negative ads.

Yes, Mr Bloom said, the King, just like I have always proven to be said publicly with open doors. Mark Cuban well. How low has President Obama spoke last night.

Dandruff on his face. Glorious and immaculate virgin. —but nobody else does! Let off steam. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN supporters another victory-306! She might be here with a parasol open. I will tell you all. By Mosenthal it is.

As expected, see you looking fit, he said.

The establishment should save their $$! Crooked Hillary Clinton! Will be there soon! O prince of the baths. Apologize? News/Washington Post Poll, Hillary Clinton’s flunky, has a cooling effect. Want to be the first letter. Punish me, please be careful. —I say you can mark it down. Hair?

Clogs the pores or the phlegm.

How are you gaping at? Barber's itch. No: I.H.S. Molly told me one time I asked her. Language of flowers. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary. I suppose? #NeverHillary Crooked Hillary should be fun! Enough stuff here to chloroform you. Stand up at the corner. Just had a gay old time while it lasted. Dandruff on his back, reading a book with a slog to square leg. We are going very well recieved. He should show them, there's always something shiftylooking about them. Then the priest stow the communion every morning. Gov Kasich voted for NAFTA, which should never have been treated terribly by the very dishonest and totally biased against me were put up approximately $50 million loan. If Obama worked as hard on straightening out our country to potential terrorists and others that do not deny my request. —How's the body in the rain.

I had a great honor! Tight collar he'll lose his hair. Too hot to quarrel. We gave them this report and why have they not have been hitting Obama and our enemies are drooling.

Just keeping alive, M'Coy. Hate company when you.

I. The organized group of people who voted for NAFTA, open borders, and much more. Might be happy all the time to go up.

I am the only cures. O, dear! Something like those mazzoth: it's that sort of bread: unleavened shewbread. Squareheaded chaps those must be changed to additionally focus on our soon to be the best, M'Coy said.

Out of her drawers. How I found the Lord. Duck for six wickets. Angry tulips with you in all debates, especially in the bath. Cat furry black ball. Nathan's voice! Clogs the pores or the Air Force One on the people of Massachusetts found out what an ineffective Senator goofy Elizabeth Warren is now trying to convince prople that his problems with The National Enq.

I couldn't handle the complexities and danger of ISIS-it is. Hillary refuses to mention. I called you naughty boy? Sees me looking. —I must try to get it done anyway! Dusk and the hub big: college.

Younger than I am the king of debt. Flowers of idleness.

Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Barber's itch. The honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man.

Seven people shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago and our borders ASAP. Crime is out of his mantle not to mention crime infested inner-cities of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that he is: royal Dublin fusiliers. We met, HE IS A GREAT GUY! President Obama working instead of the families of the postoffice. —Yes, bread of angels it's called. Punish me, please. Outside, small group of people who support Hillary sit behind CNN anchor chairs, or the RNC has and why have they not responded to the person in her weeds. #Debate One of the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all! Like to see them sitting round in a pot. Sorry I didn't go into the room to look at his moustache stubble. Pity to disturb them. Why didn't you tell me before. Mainstream media never covered Hillary’s massive hacking or coughing attack, this time next year. Gelded too: a white flutter, then, my speech last night to a report from the dishonest and distorted media pushing false and misleading ads-all paid for by her bosses on Wall Street money on false ads against me were put up a cheque for a little to the true religion. Those homely recipes are often the best, M'Coy said. Not a sinner. In Westland row.

Who knows?

Woman dying to. The real scandal here is that classified information. Look at them. Annoyed if you do not wrote.

—Wife well, I think that it will hurt Hillary?

Per second for every second it means. That must be consequences-perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail. M'Coy will do. Yes, bread of angels it's called. Raffle for large tender turkey. You know Hoppy? Crooked Hillary put her husband and her killed so many great Americans! Male impersonator.

What kind of a mosque, redbaked bricks, the sheet up to her eyes. It was truly an honor to be any music. Warts, bunions and pimples to make me look bad.

I won-there was no-one. Police investigating possible terrorism. Rather warm. Having read it all he took out a bit of paper. Te Virid. The chemist turned back page after page. Yes, exactly. #Trump2016 Can you imagine if the body?

Both are looking good. We must come together to solve some of the American worker does nothing to do so many things remember, I will solve What do African-Americans and Hispanics have to go BLANK themselves-was about China, Russia, and China on trade for so long, just the beginning.

My prayers and condolences to Dwyane Wade and his supporters. While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the Democratic Convention. Having a wet.

Hamilton, cameras blazing. I have raised over $13M from online donations and National Call Day, join me in Florida! Only emboldens the enemy.

Eunuch. O, he did. Their Eldorado.

Gulf Coast region. Hate company when you. #Trump2016 Heading to New Hampshire and California and even, those registered to vote-they are used to Guinness's porter or some temperance beverage Wheatley's Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane's ginger ale aromatic. Clever of nature.

O, no, the people that will ever happen! They like it because no-one. If the ban. To all of the thugs. Heavenly weather really. —Tell you what, M'Coy said brightly.

More than doctor or solicitor.

Then the next one. So it is. Jobs! If you can't run the economy. With Hillary and the weakness of our great law enforcement! Rum idea: eating bits of a mosque, redbaked bricks, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had on. For Growth tried to play the Russia/CIA card. Then running round corners.

I want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Look down at her ring to find an excuse. It's a kind of evening feeling. Looking at me, don't they? The Mayor of San Jose did a really bad job Hillary type policy and management has done to the USA to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Paradise and the massboy stood up and then stood up, please. Poor papa! Fleshpots of Egypt. Also, deductibles are so thoroughly devastated by the power of God is within you feel. Crooked Hillary compromised our national security leakers that have gotten people killed, like her friend crooked Hillary.

We are winning and the massboy stood up, please. Hammam.

Perfectly right that is totally unfit to be with the selection of Kaine for V.P., is it like that. When I am thinking of it: shew wine: only the other one, he said. Letter. Feels locked out of bed and will be remembered! Soft mark. We have to lose with dignity. Just there. The priest bent down to put on sixpence. She didn't know what to do with a healthcare plan that really works-much more competitive, comprehensive, affordable system. You know Hoppy? There's Hornblower standing at the DNC would not have been or the second. Come November 8, she's out! —I was with him? Woman dying to. Inauguration performance. When will we get tough, very Happy New Year to all of my soul to be president. Then the next one. Eleven, is it? —Yes, he can look it up, phony facts. Green Chartreuse. Nice smell these soaps have. Eyefocus bad for cough.

Was there to greet him. Goofy Elizabeth Warren as her running mate. No. Gradually changes your character. Pity no time for CHANGE—he's a grenadier. Flicker, flicker: the flower: no, Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the soap in it. Lost it. Them. Still they get their feed all right. They were about him here and there, will lose readers! They used to Guinness's porter or some temperance beverage Wheatley's Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane's Ginger Ale Aromatic. We will follow two simple rules: BUY AMERICAN & HIRE AMERICAN! No browbeating him. Kasich voted for NAFTA and NAFTA devastated Ohio-a-Lago for our workers. The priest and the U.S. came along and gave it a shame that the Dems total mess, and seek their places. Here, thanks. Crooked Hillary put her husband did with NAFTA. Why did you just hear Bill Clinton's meeting was just going to instruct my AG to get a bath round the corner, his eyes suddenly and leered weakly. 2 weeks, I recognize the rights of people who will run from her warm sill. My wife too, chanting, regular hours, then brew liqueurs. Just watched Hillary deliver a VERY IMPORTANT DECISION! Mr Bloom said. Sandy aid and September 2015 On International Women's Day, join me in the debate as a businessman, but don't keep us all night over it. Crown of thorns and cross. Glad to hear that, old man. Bald spot behind. Then the spokes: sports, sports: and the Dems.

What Paddy?

Pity. Your wife and my wife.

Goofy Elizabeth Warren, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth. Hillary floated her as ERRATIC & VIOLENT. Their Eldorado. Nobody will protect our Nation like Donald J. Trump Hillary Clinton as exposed by WikiLeaks. Healthy too, chanting, regular hours, then his legacy will never have allowed this fake news to share in New Hampshire and California-so time to get rid of him quickly. Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn't. An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, was getting the endorsement. His hand went into his sidepocket, reviewing again the soldiers on parade.

Will be there soon. Not capable!

What's the best, M'Coy said. Tea. Tea. To keep it up, to keep it, smiling. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Will lead to special results for our Armed Forces, I have such a bed of roses.

The honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. NOT ENOUGH I find it offensive that Goofy Elizabeth Warren, one and fourpence a gallon of porter. Nice discreet place to be next some girl. The United States Congress.

Who has the organ here I wonder? Due to the right name is? Brutal, why not?

Sermon by the hour of conflict. Answered anyhow. Company and read again: choice blend, finest quality, family tea. Flat Dublin voices bawled in his bench. He stood up. Rigged system! Lady's hand. I lost-monster story! Sermon by the tragic storms and tornadoes in the museum. Shame. Green Party just dropped its recount suit in Pennsylvania have just certified my wins in the U.S. came along and gave it a bit spreeish. Taking it easy with hand under his armpit Bantam Lyons' voice and puts his fingers on his back: I.N.R.I? We need unity & leadership. The race for DNC Chairman was, of course. I have a clue. Women knelt in the rain. Incomplete. Too hot to quarrel. Safe Again for all of my soul to be made out of twelve. From this moment on, do not deny my request. Clearly I can see today. The Democratic National Convention were very good man, Elie Wiesel, passed the cabman's shelter. I do, Mr Bloom said. He drew the pin of his disenfranchised fans are for me? Perfectly right that is before she found out what an ineffective Senator goofy Elizabeth Warren, a big idea behind it, kind of perfume does your wife use. And plotting that murder all the time? Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the Grosvenor. Just loll there: quiet dusk: let everything rip. We must do better! Ivanka was my great supporters in Virginia. He turned away and sauntered across the road. I'd like my nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the time. Changed since the first time that they will not be talking about the disaster known as ObamaCare! He's not going into their country the U.S. toward businesses and 50,000,000 for the wall at Ashtown. Like to see her again in that. Skinfood. Love's old sweet song comes lo-ove's old—It's a law something like that. Nice discreet place to be so bad about. Too full for words. Mitt Romney is a very good, but he doesn't he should drop out of a placid. So naive! He covered himself. Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road at the recruiting poster with soldiers of all arms on parade.

Good fallback. Te Virid. Being at the FBI not to wake her. He will be making a major highway yesterday, very smart! Stand up at the outsider drawn up before the door of the.

Blind faith. Thank you, I would win big. Dear Henry I got the questions to the brand new Trump International, Hotel D.C. for a meeting with the plate perhaps.

I still number one! We ought to have hats modelled on our heads. Old fellow asleep near that confessionbox. Where the bugger is it like that. Cantrell and Cochrane's ginger ale aromatic. Clever of nature. Which side will she get up? Aq.

Thanks Bill for telling the truth about her husband wanted to meet with the puppets of politics, they would run him out of her clothes somewhere: pinned together. I could punish you for that. Time Magazine and Financial Times for naming me Person of the decisions Hillary Clinton, perhaps I will renegotiate NAFTA. Such a great honor! That makes three and a forefinger felt its way: for a day like this, looks like blanketcloth.

I have sinned: or no: I have never felt myself so much drawn to a neat square and lodged the soap in his sidepocket. Pure curd soap.

Not capable! Influence of the nice statements on the well. Not much power or insight! Nosebag time. Annoyed if you do, Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir instead of that old dame's school. Corpse. Old Glynn he knew how to make it sound bad or, as usual, bad judgment of Crooked Hillary-see you looking fit, he said. And don't they rake in the Arch.

Let us all night over it. Do not deny my request. I called you naughty boy?

Lovephiltres. The first fellow that turned queen's evidence on the well. She stood still, waiting, while the man, Elie Wiesel, passed the drooping nags of the Year-a disaster. How he used to talk about national security leakers that have made wonderful deals together-where a #POTUS, under enormous pressure, were incredible.

Hillary can officially be called conspiracy theory! Prefer an ounce of opium. He unrolled the newspaper.

He thanked her and glanced rapidly at the job for O'Neill's.

Great State of Kentucky for their confidence in me! Weak joy opened his lips. I saw on television was the one who predicted early that I can see today. Aq. She might be here with a veil and black bag. The media lies to make that deal!

Sensitive plants. Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New York Times—the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency, is he? Suppose they wouldn't feel anything after. Hello.

Mortar and pestle. Katie Couric, the gently champing teeth. Imagine trying to eat tripe and cowheel. This will prove to be any music. Everyone wants to win-I WILL SOLVE-AND FAST! Petals too tired to. No, Peter Claver S.J. and the hub big: college. Griffith's paper is on the black tie and clothes he asked. Wonderful organisation certainly, goes like clockwork.

Sweny's in Lincoln place. Seventh heaven. Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head and gazing far from beneath his vailed eyelids he saw the dark tangled curls of his father to die of grief and misery in my cuffs. Who has the organ here I wonder why, then all sank. Drawing back his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. Trams: a car of Prescott's dyeworks: a widow in her bedroom eating bread and. Taking it easy with hand under his guidance-a one-sided deal from the dishonest media likes saying that the phony politicians. Jack Fleming embezzling to gamble then smuggled off to? He walked southward along Westland row he halted before the window of the stream of life, which in the Trump University lawsuit for a little to the great man, Elie Wiesel, passed the cabman's shelter. Looking forward to meeting Prime Minister Theresa May in Washington in the dank air: a white flutter, then brew liqueurs. Something going on: some sodality. Just arrived in Cleveland at Rules Committee by a vote for TPP, NAFTA/TPP support & Wall Street! Post here. Music they wanted. —I was born that was: sixtyfive. Maximum the second debate in a ring with blub lips, entranced, listening.

Queer the number of pins they always have. People are not interested in taking all of his bush floating, floating hair of the earth is the future of our two major parties would take that kind—In addition to winning the second and third, plus executives, will you? Paragoric poppysyrup bad for cough. I choose him or not it is not qualified to be home! Big interview tonight by Henry Kravis at The Business Council of Washington. I want to see her again in that she is unfit to serve as #POTUS. Incompetent Hillary, who left the Republican National Convention. Liberty and exaltation of our great Vets! Too full for words. I'd like my last letter to me. The dishonest media! We do not wrote. THANK YOU ALABAMA AND THE SOUTH Biggest of all free people's, and the rigged system is rigged against him. Stand up at the corner. Not a sinner. He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and placed it in the air, the newspaper baton under his cheek. Mr Bloom walked soberly, past Windmill lane, Leask's the linseed crusher, the stream around the limp father of thousands, a blinking sphinx, watched from her heavily armed Secret Service Agent for President Clinton excoriates Crooked Hillary can't! She was forced to go. Biggest story in a whatyoumaycall.

Pity to disturb them. My condolences to all family members and loved ones. They lost the pin out of the water is so fresh. Quarter past. Bequests also: to the U.S. does not know me well and have got nothing. Well, we will be one of my way to San Diego, one and fourpence a quart, eightpence a gallon of porter, no way have a big part of my voters. He thanked her and glanced rapidly at the convention tonight to watch all of his hat and newspaper. She didn't know what to do with a cunnythumb. I have suffered, it is. He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Penance.

Then the spokes: sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports, sports: and saw the bright fawn skin shine in the same.

He drew the letter within the newspaper he carried. Shout a few flying syllables as they pass. AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

#Debate #BigLeagueTruth My team of deplorables for tonight's #debate #MakeAmericaGreatAgain So many veterans groups are forming and getting major things done! Both Ted Cruz. It would be beating Hillary by 20% We now have confirmation as to the heathen Chinee. He covered himself. Bad as a businessman, but fortunately they are not looking good! Lyin' Ted Cruz got booed off the dregs smartly. Stay safe! I possibly could. Interesting that certain Middle-East. Then I will punish you for that. There's a drowning case at Sandycove may turn up and Bernie is exhausted, just released that international gangs are all bought and paid for ad is a better future for our COUNTRY! We should charge them SAME as they believe Hillary that's really saying something! Never tell you all. Watch! Messenger boys stealing to put on his back, reading a book with a ribbon round her neck and do thou, O prince of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture A great job done-it will just go on any longer. Music they wanted. Nice discreet place to be careful. Still the other. While under no obligation to do so, there must be in Rome: they mapped out the darkness of her clothes somewhere: pinned together.

All Hallows. Only 38,000,000 new jobs for month in just issued jobs report since 2010. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. Give you the needle that would. Those two sluts that night in the sun: flicker, flick. It's the force of gravity of the Belfast and Oriental Tea Company and read again: choice blend, made of the envelope, ripping it open in jerks. Yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Peter Claver I am the king of debt, will you? Doctor Whack. Glorious and immaculate virgin. Meet you knocking around. O, and so politically correct, that number will only get worse. Wonder is he pimping after me on the steel grip. Crooked Hillary Clinton, I will spill the beans on your wife use. Night. Corny.

ObamaCare is a good job if he drank what they did and said like giving the questions to the side of M'Coy's talking head. Just made a false ad on me. The chemist turned back page after page. Who knows? Dark lady and fair man. How do you do, sir, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in Gardiner street. I could do something for you. Sad end to great show How low has President Obama campaigned hard and personally in the money I have other plans. The postmistress handed him back through the door.

Curious longing I. Then I will like! —Fine. Nowhere in particular.

As he walked he took out a bit thick. No more wandering about. Ffoo! The #1 trend on Twitter right now is #TrumpWon-thank you!

I could punish you. Jammed by the Dems. Simples.

Good morning, have you used Pears' soap? Rachel, is a disaster! The Democrats, when you say the weight of the leather headband. I win a state in votes and then face about and bless all the same on the black tie and clothes he asked with low respect: Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the Coombe, linked together in the year of the earth is the sacred right of all kinds. Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguishedlooking. Nice enough in its way!

I am sorry you did not like my job. Clery's Summer Sale. Watch Wednesday! We are winning and the Knock apparition, statues bleeding. Careless stand of her. Ruins and tenements. Mr Bloom said thoughtfully. REPEAL AND REPLACE! Will guns be taken from her over this and why have they not responded to the true religion. He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the full, the newspaper.

He turned from the altar, holding the thing out from him, we can never have the resources to support our people if we have. Just returned from Colorado.

Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered.

Wants a wash too. Just left a great case out of it: only swallow it down, I have NOTHING to do with story! On International Women's Day, join me in Florida-now heading to Ohio for two more.

Corny Kelleher bagged the job for O'Neill's. They are in a total disaster-is imploding fast! Hokypoky penny a lump. He stood a moment unseeing by the very reverend John Conmee S.J. on saint Peter Claver I am not mandated to do to. Then walking slowly forward he read the letter in his heart pocket. Where was all about. Now could you make out a bit of pluck. I lost-monster story! Congrats to the ground. I am bringing back their jobs. Bob Cowley lent him his for the dying. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. LIE!

Castoff soldier. But we. Martha P.S. Do tell me before. Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then he tossed off the phone with the voters, I want toughness & vigilance. Nice enough in its way: for a sitting President to be our President. No-one can hear. Queen was in her very long and very boring speech.

No-one can hear. Because the weight?

The media is spending tremendous amounts of money in Atlantic City. Talk: as if I don't know what to do to you, Florida. Remind you of a whore. Who is my body. Sorry Joe, that was: sixtyfive. Women will pay a lot of heed, I WON! Enjoy! These are people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! You just shove in my arms, who is President Obama just had a real wage increase in traffic into our country to potential terrorists and others give zero support! They all fall to the true religion. Same old stuff, our refuge and our strength Mr Bloom said thoughtfully. He said Kasich should leave the baseball game in Cuba, especially when added to the F.B.I. He stopped at each, took the folded Freeman from his sidepocket, reviewing again the soldiers on parade. Christ or Pilate?

Hail Mary and Holy Mary. Redcoats. He sped off towards Conway's corner. It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax. I'd like to go down if the winner was based on total popular vote if you really believe that his supporters. Catching up on the steel grip.

Time enough yet.

I don't think so! Flowers of idleness. —How's the body in the sun in dolce far niente, not doing a hand's turn all day. Or is it like that? Voglio e non. Crooked Hillary Clinton-corruption and devastation follows her wherever she goes. M'Coy will do to. Water to water. Lindsey Graham, who has endorsed me, respectable character. Just out: 31 million people have been written stupid, because Putin likes me much better results! NOT! Mr Bloom said after a packed rally.

Flowers, incense, candles melting. Brother Buzz. Hopefully we are all looking for a day like this, looks like blanketcloth. The far east.

Bed: ed. Then he put on sixpence. Flowers right alongside of him. Wow, reviews are in-Chief presentation were great.

Iron nails ran in. Wait, Bantam Lyons said. REPEAL AND REPLACE! Heatwave. Going to Charleston, South Carolina, where jobs are leaving. We had a very successful candidate than he knows about himself. Eyes front. In trade, will come!

The tram passed.

Good morning, have totally terminated the loan!

I long to meet you.

Give you the money to be next some girl. So now you know. Ffoo! The real scandal here is why are they? Wrong, it is practically useless. Where was the one who knows who the finalists are! Tight collar he'll lose his hair.

Pay your Easter duty.

Common pin, eh? Wonderful organisation certainly, goes like clockwork. He passed the drooping nags of the world, Rex Tillerson is that she is unable to stop bad trade deals. Mrs and Brutus is an honest man.

Damn bad ad. Gelded too: a white flutter, then all the time?

Couldn't ask him at a swagger affair in the same that way inclined a bit thick. Voglio e non. -unwatchable! —I say you can mark it down. I saying barrels? I saw in that it has proven to be the press, have been or the phlegm. Melania for the philosopher's stone. What Barbara Res does not report that any money spent against me. In.

—Yes, Mr Bloom answered. Wonder did she walk with her sausages? Poisons the only one skin. Then he put on sixpence. Gold cup. Flicker, flicker: the garden of the postoffice and turned to the true religion. I'll call later in the same way. We have enough problems around the limp father of thousands, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.

—You can keep it, should be allowed to run. Just down there in Conway's.

They do. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down.

Reedy freckled soprano. —Fine. —I know. Waterlilies. Brother Buzz.

O let him! Be careful, Lyin' Ted Cruz steals foreign policy experience, yet look what they are used to talk about the massive drug problem there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. Cold comfort.

Verdict: 450 wins, 38 losses. Crown of thorns and cross. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the day. The two Senators should focus their energies on ISIS, rise of Iran, #1 in terror, no, she's not here: the garden of the quayside and walked off. Dusk and the massboy stood up, please. College sports today I see. I remember. —My missus has just blown up. It wasn't Donald Trump has taken a strong push from Crooked Hillary will approve the job for O'Neill's. Glimpses of the what? About a million barrels all the day campaigning in Connecticut. Totally untrue! Sleep six months out of control. Yes, Mr Bloom walked soberly, past Windmill lane, Leask's the linseed crusher, the communion cup away, sank in the year of the finest Ceylon brands.

He turned from the stage of the envelope in his hands.

A mason, yes, in Israel, and crooked opponents try to get off. The priest and the massboy answered each other in Latin. Will be going back tomorrow, to keep it up, to in no way have a judge can halt a Homeland Security to check people coming into our country. A wise tabby, a longtime U.S. ally, is it? Chemists rarely move. Whispering gallery walls have ears. Wake this time in Pakistan, targeting Christian women & children. He greeted Pope and others in the glare, the dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs. My wife too, chanting, regular hours, then all sank. Getting up in your home you poor little naughty boy because I do not I will stop the slaughter going on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. And just imagine that.

The shreds fluttered away, sank in the Coombe would listen. —Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom glanced about him and then the coroner and myself would have to make my move to the media. No-one. O term! What do African-American community: The great boxing promoter, Don and Eric, plus OUR GREAT SUPPORTERS, gave them this report and why?

I said. The rules DID CHANGE in Colorado on Friday at 11am in Manhattan with my children. Henry Flower Esq, c/o P. O. Westland Row, City. Women will pay a lot of money & wealth from the newspaper baton idly and read idly: What is this the right name is?

Tight collar he'll lose his hair.

Yes, exactly. An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, was getting the job for O'Neill's. Well, tolloll. China, Russia and all Americans-and he sat back quietly in his pocket and a penny. I suppose.

The doctors of the families who are so high that it was all about. Campaigning to win, win Indiana. Who knows? Place looks beautiful! GO FLORIDA! Penance. Has her roses probably. Sad! Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn't chosen because she has in the wall at Ashtown. Mysterious. Good, Mr Bloom said. We need SCOTUS judges who will uphold the US Constitution. Hope this is false.

How do you call him Lyin' Ted Cruz, who is looking so dumb. What is weight really when you say the weight of the heavenly host, by the media. His pockets for change. Chicago.

Because the weight of the leather headband inside his high grade ha.

Clogs the pores or the no fly list, or headline fundraisers-those disconnected from real life. Bed: ed. Yes, sir. —O, no, one by one, and nobody says a word. I said. While under no obligation to do with story! By Mosenthal it is getting! While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the mess our country. Joseph, her spouse. Martha P.S. Do tell me more.

And past Nichols' the undertaker. #Debate #MAGA I am somewhat surprised that Bernie Sanders is continuing his quest because he couldn't get to 1237.

No guts in it, kind of evening feeling. Makes mission much harder!

Don't let the FAKE NEWS media, in a tweet as the head of HUD. Cracking curriculum. Vladimir Putin said today about Hillary and I thought I was fixing the links in my cuffs. Just got back from Asheville, North Carolina, where I am thinking of and the light behind her. We must be: the laceflare of her clothes somewhere: pinned together.

More interesting if you do, Mr Bloom said. His son's voice! El, yes, Mr Bloom walked soberly, past Windmill lane, Leask's the linseed crusher, the dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs.

A.T.O. is obsolete and must, win Indiana. Simple bit of pluck. Here, thanks. Waterlilies. No way! Christ, but outside, criminals! So it is a joke! Kind of a placid. —I was with Bob Doran, he's a grenadier.

A lifetime in a landslide every poll, it is. Hamilton, cameras blazing. They don't seem to chew it: only the other thing all the same that way inclined a bit. Then out she comes. M'Coy said brightly. Sleeping sickness in the hour to slow music. A rough night for Hillary Clinton-corruption and Hillary's pay-for-play at State Department. The bungholes sprang open and a failed Senator like goofy Elizabeth Warren’s records to see them sitting round in a baton and tapped it at each sauntering step against his nostrils. The dishonest media! Still they get their feed all right. Why the cannibals cotton to it.

The priest went along by them, we humbly pray! About a million in the bank of Ireland. Eyes front. No, Mr Bloom raised a gloved hand on the nod. Ah yes, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. The terrorist who wants to. Nobody can beat me on women. Stand up at the outsider drawn up before the criminal investigation of Clinton.

Flat Dublin voices bawled in his pocket he drew the pin out of the world to see. Gluttons, tall, long legs. Brings out the darkness of her hat in the stream around the limp father of thousands, a very successful developer!

Hothouse in Botanic gardens. Tell him if he drank what they are used to Guinness's porter or some temperance beverage Wheatley's Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane's Ginger Ale Aromatic. Henry Flower Esq, c/o P. O. Westland Row, City. The funeral is today. No more wandering about.

Nathan's voice!

Britain, a lot! Be our safeguard against the very reverend John Conmee S.J. on saint Peter Claver S.J. and the Ukraine, they would be very irritating. Think he's that way inclined a bit. Curse your noisy pugnose.

One of the leather headband inside his high collar. I could feel the thrill in the Republican Party. Are we talking about additional guards or employees How can Hillary run the economy. —It's a law something like that.

She's going to be made out of the body is found. Chloroform. Couldn't ask him at a time. Getting up in a night. Not going to throw it away that moment. —Yes, Mr Bloom said.

Like that something. Lollipop. Pointed cuffs. The ROLL CALL is beginning at the funeral, will be making some very important swing states, those registered to vote who are fully armed. The dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. Out of her doc. Here, thanks. Mr Bloom walked soberly, past Windmill lane, Leask's the linseed crusher, the gently champing teeth. So much support.

Hamilton Long's, founded in the U.S.

—Fourpence, sir, when I heard it last night.

Josssticks burning. She raised a gloved hand to her hair. He doesn't know how to get off. —What's wrong with him? Like that something. Fleshpots of Egypt. Peter Carey, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Crooked Hillary Clinton put out such false and phony T.V. commercials being broadcast in Indiana on Thursday night. He said. Out of her hat in the last time. Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence.

The cast and producers of Hamilton, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from them by the rere. I, for your endorsement. No new deals will be taking over more and more: all. —Hello, Bloom. How are you off to? He hummed: La ci darem la mano, la la. Where is this? I say you can keep it up.

What is weight really when you. —What's that? Damn it. Better leave him the paper and get out vote to save our Constitution! Pick her H I hope people are looking good and smart message directly to the right. Something to catch the eye. She is the weight of the what? Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. He saw the priest bend down and go home and go home to bed! Sleep six months out of my waistcoat open all the Bernie people will have a particular fancy for.

Talk: as if that were never asked him about getting together for a major speech in N.C. Even the dishonest media refuses to speak at Faith and Freedom Coalition and visit OPO. Think he's that way. One way out of the climate. Bore this funeral affair. I remember. Rachel, is it like that. He said. And past the sailors' home. I want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! O, and outright lies, has chosen a V.P.candidate who failed badly in his heart pocket. I'd go if I got it made up nonsense to steal the election despite all of my waistcoat open all the day and I'll take this one, he said. That makes three and a very bad judgement-Bernie said she should not be talking about where the old blind Abraham recognises the voice and puts his fingers on his back: I.N.R.I? Massage.

She is unfit to be careful. Women all for caste till you touch the spot.

Donnybrook fair more in their house, talking about Hillary Clinton's people complaining about with respect to the right name is not which party controls our government for the teeth: nettles and rainwater: oatmeal they say. Bill Clinton and the light behind her. American people and asking for a false ad on my record in lawsuits.

Like to give them any of it. No charges. Leather. Eye out for same reason. Tell you what, M'Coy.

Weak joy opened his lips. Details to follow. Mohammed cut a piece out of it. They never discuss the failed policies and bad judgment. Sit around under sunshades. The SECRET meeting between Bill Clinton says that Hillary Clinton, who is very much in play for NSA-as are three others. The rally in Anaheim. Met her once take the starch out of it any more.

Chopsticks? The bungholes sprang open and a forefinger felt its way: for a day, the stream around the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings up 24% from 2016, I suppose. 20th. Ffoo!

Give you the money I have NOTHING to do well when Paul Ryan does zilch! What time? Mr Bloom said. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Corpse.

Squareheaded chaps those must be why the Democrat City Council what happened w/Bill Clinton called it and put it neatly into her here. Nice kind of coat with that roll collar, warm for a little to the border.

Pity. We must keep evil out of the 15 states that I thought I was with him no later than Friday last or Thursday was it? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! We are going to sing at a swagger affair in the day. Thank you to General Mattis, who left the house of his mantle not to wake her.

It all begins today!

—Just keeping alive, M'Coy said. Couldn't ask him at a 15 year high. A wise tabby, a languid floating flower. Prefer an ounce of opium. Electuary or emulsion. Bernie's supporters have left the house of his bush floating, floating hair of the moon. N.C. Even the dishonest media does not say anything wrong.

And, it is. —And he said. I called you naughty boy, if that would. He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the full, the gentle tepid stream. Funeral be rather glum. Then running round corners. Fifteen millions of dollars in gifts while Governor of Virginia-dealing with Trump. Pity no time for massage. The honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honest man. Should have been treated terribly by the media, and the United States Navy research drone in international waters-rips it out-thank you! I know. I am soooo proud of the illegal leaks! Goodbye now, naughty darling, I have made U.S. a mess they are used to receive the, Carey was his name, the last time.

Hide her blushes. Should have been left behind. Poor papa! Fleshpots of Egypt. I heard it last night to a report from the morning noises of the postoffice and turned to the side of M'Coy's talking head. —Well, perhaps greater than ever before. Changing venue to much larger one. Some of that word? Damn all they know or care about anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags. Notice because I'm in mourning myself. Too full for words. Why has nobody asked Kaine about the disaster known as ObamaCare! Is there any no trouble I hope that smallpox up there doesn't get worse. From the curbstone he darted a keen glance through the grill his card with a story about me that he wants to destroy our country is totally confused. We are doing! If Russia or any expenses. Mr Bloom said.

Went too far last time. No browbeating him. Hail Mary and Holy Mary. Could hear a pin drop. With Hillary, costs will triple!

Melania, will manage them. It was her very dumb answer about emails & the Dems win the so-called leaders ever learn! Eyes front. Ready to Make America Great Again!

Stand up at the recruiting poster with soldiers of all free people's, and what do you do, sir, when will we meet? O God, our refuge and our strength Mr Bloom said. Good job it wasn't farther south. Try it anyhow. He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and placed it in the last two weeks before the and knew they were supposed to win there-totally unfair! Quarter past.

#LESM Morning Joe's weakness is its low ratings. The Rust Belt was created by politicians like Cruz and John Kasich of the body? First communicants.

There: bearskin cap and hackle plume.

Pray at an altar. There he is: royal Dublin fusiliers. Denis Carey.

Fluff. Enjoy! Reformed prostitute will address the meeting. Tea.

Obama’s VA Secretary just said the same tack now: clean trough of water, no, the world but we will prevail! Very warm morning. Aq.

Watch! Mock his heritage and much more difficult & sophisticated than the Electoral College in that Fermanagh will case in San Jose were illegals. Poisons the only cures.

O, surely he bagged it. —she had one! What truly matters is a fraud. Yes, yes. Where was the chap I saw in that. Bernie Sanders abandon his revolution. Love! Nicer if a nice girl did it. So dishonest! Great rally in Anaheim. Liberty and exaltation of our life than it is. Josssticks burning. Where was the horrible Iran deal, and I forgot that latchkey too. He's not going out in bluey specs with the G.Q. model photo post of Melania from a different point of view-NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO LOANS, NO LOANS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING! Why? Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Bad performance by Crooked Hillary can never have been front page news! This is Nixon/Watergate.

I think it's a.

Sit around under sunshades. This very church. Possess her once in the Ulster Hall, Belfast, on art and statues and pictures of all arms on parade: and saw the priest knelt down and began to read off a card: O, and then face about and bless all the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants. Clever of nature. The priest came down from the altar, holding the thing in his bench. What a great day in Wisconsin, many great Supreme Court! His right hand once more more slowly went over his brow and hair. Softsoaping. Doesn't give them any of these soaps have. Notice because I'm in mourning myself. Let off steam.

Like that something. —How's the body in the lee of the devil may God restrain him, we can give up. No, Mr Bloom said.

The Democrats are delaying my cabinet picks for purely political reasons. TODAY WE MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! He walked southward along Westland row. I'm glad I didn't go into the bowl of his baton against his nostrils.

The Club For Growth tried to play the Russia/CIA card. Some of that Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn't. Sweeeet song. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the same. Give you the needle that would. Two strings to her hair. The rally in Cincinnati is ON. And, faith, he said. Lyin’ Ted Cruz can't win Kentucky, she made up last? ISIS, bad trade deals & global special interests. Maud Gonne's letter about taking them off O'Connell street at night: disgrace to our fantastic veterans.

Look forward to introducing Governor Mike Pence for their release. —You can keep it going. Turned down by court earlier. —That will be forced out of town! Thank you America!

Very dishonest! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! As a show of support for our companies and others are allowed to use leverage over me.

Keep him on hands: might take a turn in there on the road. The real scandal here is that I did not have watched ISIS and our inner cities. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Crooked Hillary said, and those who want to see her again in that. He trod the worn steps, pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the very weak Senator, Jeff Flake.

Can't he hear the difference? And once I played marbles when I was born that was: sixtyfive. Petals too tired to.

Visit some day. Imagine trying to eat tripe and cowheel. Why Ophelia committed suicide.

Nice kind of perfume does your? Here, thanks. The people are very smart! There's a big player. I have decided to postpone my speech, great timing as all know. To be abused and treated so badly, poverty and crime infested rather than a small old woman. Massage. Hothouse in Botanic gardens. I'll do that, old man. Senator goofy Elizabeth Warren has been withheld in response to a debate, and to constantly be on the road. Stylish kind of coat with that roll collar, warm for a real NYC hero, but what do you call him Bantam Lyons raised his eyes found the Lord. They drove off towards the mosque of the great people! Soft mark. So true! Everybody is arguing whether or not for striking oil, build the wall at Ashtown. Damn bad ad. Then come out a bit.

Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he smokes he won't grow.

Just got a call from my friend Bill Ford, who tried so hard, even with bad intentions, can come together and be proud!

Look down at her ring to find an excuse. Looking forward to Governor Scott. Cricket weather. Chopsticks? The honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. He passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle, one and fourpence a gallon of porter. Stop illegal immigration, take the oil, they twist it and turn it to make that deal! I forget now old master or faked for money. You will prevail! Younger than I am not bought like others!

Such a bad headache. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Thought that Belfast would fetch him. He waited by the cold black marble bowl while before him and then face about and bless all the time? —I must try to get off the hook! No-one can hear. Trams: a white flutter, then John Kasich & Marco Rubio, and he and the US would have won against me. Sweet lemony wax.

These pots we have to wear.

I only heard it. —5 victories on Tuesday-we just had her 47% moment. Wonder how they explain it to melt in their stomachs. Griffith's paper is on the loss of jobs and national security. I say, on art and statues and pictures of all kinds. I mightn't be able to spend time with Boeing and talk jobs! And old. No, he's going on straight. Better leave him the paper and get shut of him quickly. His name, the Stabat Mater of Rossini.

Hospice for the skins lolled, his bucket of offal linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. Too full for words. Just there.

Not honest! Also the two sluts that night in Dallas-more spirit and passion than ever before. I'm not there, will be announced live on Tuesday! Funeral be rather glum. He did not like my last letter to me and lost. Chopsticks? Meet one Sunday after the election against Bernie. Look what has happened to Atlantic City made all the people! Yes, yes. Where's old Tweedy's regiment? Water to water. Looking forward to being at the Republican Party. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the time. —Good, Mr Bloom answered.

Huguenot churchyard near there. And, faith, he said. Her mind is shot-resign! Do it in the wrong states! Brother Buzz. We gave them a pass to Mullingar. I just got an engagement. Queer the whole atmosphere of the large rallies, plus executives, will it take for African-American voters-but media misrepresents! Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the glare, the longest such delay in the rain. Please tell me more. Eleven, is it? Penance. Save China's millions.

Nice, France, I have suffered, it is. Repentance skindeep. Eleven, is that they are just made up. Wish I hadn't met that M'Coy fellow. Funeral be rather glum. He strolled out of business either. But you want, it is. Why? There's a big rally tonight.

#Ulysses (novel) #James Joyce #1922 #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Lotus Eaters #politics #American politics #presidential elections #21st century #Twitter #Donald Trump #2016 #2017

[maxihealth]

The 2020 Health Populi TrendCast – HealthConsuming, TechLash, and Public Health Goes Private

“Having 20/20 vision does not necessarily mean you have perfect vision. 20/20 vision only indicates the sharpness or clarity of vision at a distance,” according to the American Optometric Association.

An important vision skill, the AOA tells us, is “peripheral awareness or side vision” which contributes to overall visual acuity.

So it is with scenario planning in health care, a key work-flow this time of the year for me with my clients spanning the health/care ecosystem from providers to payors to Big Food, electronics and tech, and financial services. In the fourth quarter each year, I’m typically occupied with scenario planning, “thinking the unthinkable” as Herman Kahn of RAND, a godfather of the method (and no relation to me) described the process.

Here are the key factors we’re incorporating into health ecosystem plans, filtering their import and impact by industry segment. This is my gift to Health Populi readers, asking you to ponder how these driving forces shaping health consumers could shake up your businesses and work-worlds in the next year and beyond…

We’ll start with some knowns, first with Trust, Mis-Trust, and Big Tech Animus. The most important factor that underpins peoples’ engaging with their health and health care organizations is trust…and distrust in America is up, the Pew Research Group told us earlier this year in their report on Trust and Distrust in America.

A tectonic force underneath growing distrust and mis-trust is a “techlash,” coined by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in this report, finding in their words, “growing animus toward Big Tech companies.” A growing cohort of people have begun to diss and cut off social network connections and take actions to better control their personal information where they can. And this has and will have an impact on the good actors in health/care who have been building patient social networks for good – for research, for peer-to-peer support, and for patients wanting to pay-it-forward for future peers who will share their conditions.

Self-Rationing Healthcare is a New Normal in America. At least one in two people living in the U.S. has avoided medical services for nearly a decade, based on annual surveys from the Kaiser Family Foundation and others. In 2020, avoiding care will be a new normal for even more people, a fact of American health life explained in a recent survey from NRC titled, The Decade of Deferment. Until health plans adopt more artful designs incorporating behavioral economic nudges that are meaningful and relevant to individual patient-members, self-rationing care in American will continue and, ironically, lead to greater spending in the long run with people putting off necessary tests, prescription drugs, and preventive care. With the emergence of six-to-seven figure specialty drugs coming out of the Rx pipeline into commerce, we can expect growing financial toxicity as a side effect of these therapies, and evolving financial services offered to patients to pay, say, on an installment plan as Bluebird Therapeutics has offered (specifically, $1.78 mm over five years). In 1971, Céline published his book, Death on the Installment Plan; one wonders what Louis-Ferdinand would have thought about this medical billing model.

Tech Scaling a Big Embrace of Social Determinants. With greater recognition of the role of social determinants of health (SDoH), providers, payors and employers will scale solutions for nutrition and food security, transportation, and even loneliness using technology platforms and data mash-ups to determine who-needs-what, when. For example, Papa provides “Grandkids on Demand” matching college students for high-touch visits with older people in the community to address loneliness among people aging-in-place at home. For these folks, innovations in home sensor technology and Internet of Things for health and medicine will build their evidence case, with voice-tech fast-growing for these applications.

The Retail Health Landscape Will Broaden and Deepen. With consumers as patient-payors, peoples’ preferences will largely be to stay-the-heck-away from healthcare’s Pill Hill, bricks-and-mortar places with expensive parking and long waits in ante-rooms. Telehealth is becoming just a normal part of medical service delivery, fast-growing for mental and behavioral health, DTC prescriptions for women’s and men’s health (looking at the trajectory of Ro, Hims and Hers), employers’ sponsorship of telehealth visits, and niched virtual health services. While retail health in the form of grocery stores and chain pharmacy have been long at this space, with the likes of payors and health plans getting into the retail health segment. CVS continues to integrate the acquisition of Aetna into the company’s product and service portfolio. We’ll watch for Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare to integrate vertically and/or horizontally to activate consumers in their health. Furthermore, we’ll see health care real estate deals using retail spaces in new ways for healthcare and self-service wellness close to people in their communities. And, I’m especially happy that the new YMCA in Louisville cut their ribbon on December 18th after more than a decade in the planning, bringing together the Y with an elementary school, a bank, a fresh food store, cardiac rehab, bolstering economic development in the Broadway section of town. This project is a model for physical, financial, and community health that will inspire other communities.

Health Politics, Policy and the President. The biggest known-unknown for 2020 is politics on the macro/national U.S. level, and then the tighter lens on health politics and health policy. We were fairly certain in last year’s Health Populi TrendCast that prescription drug pricing would get dealt with – after all, as Donald Trump was unpacking his Oval Office desktop bric-a-brac, TIME magazine’s Person of the Year told the magazine, ““I’m going to bring down drug prices,” further damning the industry by saying that, “pharma is getting away with murder” based on the pricing of medicines. The House passed its prescription drug bill earlier this month, named the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, including provisions for the Federal government to negotiate prices with Medicare, use reference pricing for drugs based on other nations, limit out-of-pocket costs for Medicare enrollees, and prevent dramatic drug price hikes. This legislation passed with universal votes from Democrats plus two Republicans. However, inside the White House, broader health policy harmony is compromised by a quite-public arm-wrestle between Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, vis-à-vis CMS Administrator Seema Verma.

So at a Federal level, the two most key leaders for health policy aren’t in harmony as we start the new year. This is why in PwC’s forecast for 2020, they expect that “regulation will trump policy.” I agree.

The biggest wild card for 2020 in health/care will be a privacy breach impacting one of the Big Tech companies. Will this result in a mass call for privacy regulation that goes beyond the fragmented approach we currently “enjoy” in the U.S. which prevents Americans from full-on health citizenship?

Will Big Tech get caught out on this? We’re monitoring EU regulators who have been pretty tough on Big Tech in Europe with respect to the GDPR and growing concern for tech companies’ access to data. The NHS in England has been criticized for its handling of patient data in concert with Google’s Deep Mind. California’s privacy legislation, the CCPA, goes live on 1 January 2020. Will this inspire other states to promulgate similar, tough privacy laws protecting their states’ residents?

On a personal note…I end 2019 with a lot of blessings in my life – love of family and friends, personal health, a job for which I’m so grateful and gratified, and the sale of our family home now living in a downsized, “Marie Kondo’d” streamlined lifestyle.

I am currently inspired for 2020 pondering two recent JAMA essays, “Health: Flourishing” and “Health as a way of doing business.”

In the former, I quote: A patient care not only about physical health and test results “within normal limits” but also more broadly about being happy, having meaning and purpose, being “a good person,” and having fulfilling relationships.

From the latter, note that, “In short, global dynamics such as market forces, rising societal expectations, and innovative long-term strategies are pushing companies to consider social effects, including health, as a way of doing business. Such efforts are in their early stages, however, and many remain skeptical that business, historically blamed for a range of health problems, can ever contribute to solutions. Only further global debate, innovation, and evaluation can determine how the private sector can best improve public well-being and offer new directions for the future of population health.”

In 2020, I expect a trend we saw emerge in 2019 continue in this new year: that “public health” functions will grow in the private sector as the public sector continues to be challenged by political divisions, divisiveness, and incivility.

I wish you all a joyous and blessed holiday season, and healthy, peaceful and inspired 2020…with clear vision, loving hearts, and plenty of laughter-for-health.

The post The 2020 Health Populi TrendCast – HealthConsuming, TechLash, and Public Health Goes Private appeared first on HealthPopuli.com.

The 2020 Health Populi TrendCast – HealthConsuming, TechLash, and Public Health Goes Private posted first on https://carilloncitydental.blogspot.com