Drawing Fire. America’s Best Political Cartoons.
October 31, 2019
Read About The Tarbaby Story under the Category: About the Tarbaby Blog
October 31, 2019
By Ella Torres October 10, 2019
He decided on walking around Lake Michigan for 42 days, and creating a Facebook page where he could post daily updates about the cause.
On Sunday, Snyder finished his walk with 810 miles under his belt and more than 3,500 people following his journey on Facebook.
“I’m still getting messages and phone calls from people who just want to talk and share their story,” Snyder said. “Just when I think I understand the magnitude, I learn more.”
During his walk, which he began in Manistee, Michigan, he averaged about 20 miles per day.
He planned to sleep outside each night, but was stunned by the acts of kindness that both friends and strangers offered.
“Every single day people were reaching out to support the cause whether it was a roof or a meal … I did not sleep outside once,” he said.
“I’m just glad that people have built a community together,” added Snyder, who served in Afghanistan as a corporal from October 2017 to April 2018.
Just before speaking to ABC News, Snyder said he got off the phone with a woman from Michigan who lost a loved one to suicide two days before he began his walk.
He plans to keep the Facebook page open for that exact reason: so more people can reach him.
“I feel humbled and honored to share the burden of those who are still healing from losing a loved one or feeling the pain of someone going through challenges that they’ve been facing,” he said.
October 26, 2019
The Israeli soldiers in the photo are the granddaughters of the 4 women at the front of the line at a Nazi concentration camp.
Never Again! Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
By Jason Lemon October 31, 2019
President Donald Trump leaves after joining Senate Republicans for their weekly policy luncheon at the Capitol on March 26.CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY
Attorney Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, warned on Thursday that President Donald Trump appeared to be committing “felony bribery” by giving Republican senators fundraising cash ahead of an increasingly likely impeachment trial in the Senate.
The lawyer shared an article published by Politico on Thursday morning. Titled “Trump lures GOP senators on impeachment with cold cash,” the article outlined how the president is turning to his large network of donors to raise funds for a few senators facing difficult re-election campaigns in 2020. All of those senators have also signed a resolution condemning the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry.
“This is a bribe. Any other American who offered cash to the jury before a trial would go to prison for felony bribery. But he can get away with it?” Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, wrote on Twitter. “Criminal.”
In a follow-up tweet, Painter argued that GOP lawmakers who accept the fundraising support should face criminal charges as well.
“The senators can raise their own campaign cash. Any senator who accepts cash from @realDonaldTrump before the impeachment trial is guilty of accepting a bribe and should go to the slammer,” he tweeted.
The House of Representatives on Thursday will vote on a resolution, which is expected to pass the Democrat-controlled body, to outline the formal impeachment inquiry rules. The resolution will allow for public hearings and the release of transcripts of closed-door depositions. This is not a vote to impeach the president, which is expected to come later after the public hearings. As things stand now, most lawmakers and analysts believe the president will be formally impeached by Congress’ lower chamber.
After that, the Senate will be required to take up the inquiry and carry out a trial for the president. As the upper chamber is Republican controlled, it is considered highly unlikely that Trump will be found guilty and removed from office. The president’s removal requires a two-thirds majority vote, and the Senate is made up of 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents, who caucus with the Democrats.
None of the Senate Republicans have publicly stated that Trump’s actions have amounted to impeachable behavior, but several have expressed serious misgivings and raised concerns.
“There’s lot of things that concern me,” GOP Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said Wednesday, The Hill reported.
“The question on the table is impeachment, and that’s the question we should get an answer to, and the answer so far is ‘For what would we impeach the president?'” he said. “And the answer is ‘I don’t see anything for that.'”
October 31, 2019
Wild Goat in hot water for posting a photo on Twitter of himself after killing an American trophy hunter on a remote Scottish Island.
When reached for comment, the goat explained: ‘Human population growth is causing alarming levels of planetary destruction. These kind of culls are necessary for population control and environmental harm reduction’. 😂
This season’s Houston Astros were the best Major League Baseball team in years. Facing the Washington Nationals, they were the biggest World Series betting favorites since the second Bush Presidency. The team was put together by a front office that was aggressive, forward-looking, and—even before the franchise characterized a credible report of an ugly clubhouse incident as fake news—very easy to dislike. (The team later retracted its attack on the story.) The team’s owner, Jim Crane, previously ran a company that, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “demoted women from managerial positions, maintained a hostile workplace, paid blacks, Hispanics and women less than male and white counterparts, and shredded important documents.” The company was also investigated for war profiteering, and settled the case with the Justice Department for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. (Crane was not personally implicated in the profiteering charges.)
But the Astros’ players, it’s worth noting, were—one opportunistically acquired relief pitcher aside—equally easy to like. José Altuve, the team’s tiny thumb of a second baseman, has turned himself into a near-impossible out. Alex Bregman, the young star third baseman, was so excited about a home run that he hit in Game Six of the World Series, on Tuesday, that he toted his bat past first base. (He later apologized.) But my favorite member of the team was the pitcher Zack Greinke, who started Game Seven, on Wednesday night. Greinke may make the Hall of Fame someday, but he was a somewhat forgotten figure in the series, obscured by the brilliance of his teammates Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander, and the Nationals’ pair of aces, Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer. Greinke is thirty-six, a sixteen-year veteran of the majors; at the beginning of his career, he had such crippling social-anxiety disorder that he briefly quit baseball. (He credits his return, and his relative comfort, to Zoloft.) He’s also smart, funny, and weird—when I was covering baseball for the Los Angeles Times, I always looked forward to talking to him.
On Wednesday night, Greinke couldn’t have pitched better through six innings. In the seventh, he made one very forgivable mistake, giving up a home run to Anthony Rendon. Then he walked Juan Soto. The Astros still led, 2–1, but Houston’s manager, A. J. Hinch, pulled Greinke, who’d thrown just eighty pitches, and brought in Will Harris to face the next batter, Howie Kendrick.
Kendrick, like Greinke, is thirty-six. He grew up in a double-wide trailer in the tiny town of Callahan, Florida, near the knob where the state meets Georgia. He learned to play baseball by swinging a broomstick at spiky sweetgum balls that fell from the trees. He played at St. Johns River State, a junior college in Palatka, where a single major-league scout came to see him. That scout told the Los Angeles Angels to draft him, and Kendrick became a big-league hitter—consistent, professional, a guy who put the ball in play. He had one outstanding season but has usually been closer to solid. By the time he arrived at the Nationals’ spring-training facility, this year, the team thought he had nothing left.
We are smack in the middle of baseball’s second analytics boom: teams track the number of times a fastball revolves on its way to the plate and confidently project players’ final stat lines. We’re better at prediction than ever, and—thank goodness—we still know next to nothing. When Kendrick came to the plate in the seventh, he swung at a curveball and missed. Then Harris threw a great cutter, low and away. Kendrick stuck his bat out—and sent the ball off the foul pole in Houston’s short right field: home run, Nationals in the lead. They never lost it; the final score was 6–2. After the game, Harris said, “It’s baseball: you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Fifty games into the regular season, the Nationals had nineteen wins and thirty-one losses. They were five and a half games back of the Mets. (The Mets!) They had two great arms, Strasburg and Scherzer, and a few stud bats, and then just some guys. But they started winning, and made the playoffs, and then kept threatening to bow out: the team faced five elimination games in the post-season, and trailed at some point in all five. Among the pitchers they faced in those games were Verlander, Greinke, Clayton Kershaw, and Josh Hader—hurlers, all. But, when it counted most, the Nationals never lost.
No team from Washington, D.C., had won the World Series since 1924, when the Senators did it. D.C. was also the setting for the series’ intersection with non-baseball history, when Nationals fans lustily booed President Donald Trump, who attended Game Five, and chanted “Lock him up!” It was one of those moments that fixes baseball in time, and insures that a set of games will be remembered even after many more have been played. But the series had more than enough drama on the field. Scherzer, who started Game Seven, was supposed to go in Game Five, on Sunday, but couldn’t get out of bed. His neck was spasming so badly that his wife had to dress him. When he announced his scratched start, he looked as if he might cry. Suddenly, on Tuesday, the pain was gone. He lasted only five innings, but they were enough.
Throughout the playoffs, Juan Soto, the Nationals’ budding superstar, danced and preened and licked his chops in the batter’s box between pitches—and then hit baseballs to the moon. He turned twenty-one last week, just in time for the champagne celebration. “He had his first beer tonight, which is kind of nice,” his manager, Dave Martinez, said after the game. Cheers.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — TC Energy’s Keystone pipeline leaked an estimated 383,000 gallons (1.4 million liters) of oil in northeastern North Dakota, state regulators said Thursday.
Crews on Tuesday shut down the pipeline that carries tar sands oil from Canada through seven states after the leak was discovered, said Karl Rockeman, North Dakota’s water quality division director. It remained closed Thursday.
The Calgary, Alberta-based company formerly known as TransCanada said in a statement the leak affected about 22,500 square feet (2090.3 sq. meters) of land near Edinburg, in Walsh County.
The company and regulators said the cause was being investigated.
“Our emergency response team contained the impacted area and oil has not migrated beyond the immediately affected area,” the company said in a statement.
North Dakota regulators were notified late Tuesday night of the leak. Rockeman said some wetlands were affected, but not any sources of drinking water.
TC Energy reported an oil spill in the rural Edinburg area, about 30 miles northwest of Grafton, N.D. on Wednesday, Oct. 30. Submitted photo
Regulators have been at the site since Wednesday afternoon monitoring the spill and cleanup, he said.
Crude began flowing through the $5.2 billion pipeline in 2011. It’s designed to carry crude oil across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri on the way to refineries in Patoka, Illinois and Cushing, Oklahoma.
It can handle about 23 million gallons daily.
The pipeline spill and shutdown comes as the company seeks to build the $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline that would carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Texas. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline has drawn opposition from people who fear it will harm the environment.
President Donald Trump issued a federal permit for the expansion project in 2017, after it had been rejected by the Obama administration.
Together, the massive Keystone and Keystone XL network would be about five times the length of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
The original Keystone has experienced problems with spills in the past, including one in 2011 of more than 14,000 gallons (53,000 liters) of oil in southeastern North Dakota, near the South Dakota border. That leak was blamed on valve failure at a pumping station.
Another leak in 2016 prompted a week-long shutdown of the pipeline. The company estimated that just under 17,000 gallons (64,350 liters) of oil spilled onto private land during that leak. Federal regulators said an “anomaly” on a weld on the pipeline was to blame. No waterways or aquifers were affected.
In 2017, the pipeline leaked an estimated 407,000 gallons (1.5 million liters) of oil onto farmland in northeastern South Dakota, in a rural area near the North Dakota border. The company had originally put the spill at about 210,000 gallons (795,000 liters).
Federal regulators said at the time the Keystone leak was the seventh-largest onshore oil or petroleum product spill since 2010. Federal investigators said the pipeline was likely damaged during installation during 2008 and may have occurred when a vehicle drove over the pipe, causing it to weaken over time.
North Dakota’s biggest spill , and one of the largest onshore spills in U.S. history, came in 2013, when 840,000 gallons (3.1 million liters) spilled from a Tesoro pipeline in the northwestern part of the state. The company spent five years and nearly $100 million cleaning it up.
The Sierra Club said the latest spill was an example of why the Keystone XL should not be built.
“We don’t yet know the extent of the damage from this latest tar sands spill, but what we do know is that this is not the first time this pipeline has spilled toxic tar sands, and it won’t be the last.”
Ellen Ioanes October 25, 2019
Jose Segovia-Benitez, a US Marine Corps veteran who served two tours in Iraq, was unexpectedly deported to El Salvador Wednesday, his attorney told the Phoenix New Times.
Segovia-Benitez, 38, came to the US as a toddler and grew up in California. He joined the Marines right out of high school, NBC News reports. He was honorably discharged in 2004, a year after he suffered a brain injury that left him with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD.)
“He is a soldier who put his life on the line to defend his country,” his mother, Martha Garcia, told NBC News. “But when he returned from the war, he came back with problems.”
Segovia-Benitez wasn’t diagnosed with PTSD until 2011, accoding to Brandee Dudzic, the executive director of Repatriate our Patriots. In the interim, his family said, he turned to alcohol and committed a series of crimes including injuring a spouse, for which he served an eight-year jail sentence, and narcotics possession.
Segovia-Benitez was initially scheduled for deportation on October 16, The Phoenix New Times reported. Segovia-Benitez had boarded a plane bound for El Salvador, but was pulled off and sent to Arizona’s Florence Correctional Center to await a potential pardon from California Governor Gavin Newsom.
But when Segovia-Benitez’s attorney Roy Petty arrived at the facility on Wednesday for a scheduled visit to fill out paperwork so he could re-open his deportation case, his client was gone.
“Certainly, this is a surprise,” Petty told the Phoenix New Times. “ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] kept his deportation a secret. They kept it a secret from him, me, his other attorney, and they kept it a secret from his mother,” he said.
While it’s not illegal for ICE to proceed with the deportation, “It’s not common practice. Generally, what ICE will do is they will notify the person so the person can make arrangements. They woke him up and put him on a plane,” Petty said.
After serving his jail sentence, Segovia-Benitez was held in an ICE detention facility for nearly two years. He and 14 others filed a lawsuit in August alleging they were subjected to horrific and “inhumane” conditions during their detention, NBC News reports.
Segovia-Benitez is currently in a jail in El Salvador as part of his deportation proceedings. In El Salvador, a notoriously violent country, Segovia-Benitez’s attorney worries that his veteran status might make him a target for gangs.
“Gangs target former U.S. military,” Petty told the Phoenix New Times. “They’ll kidnap a person, they may hold a person for ransom, they may torture an individual.”
Segovia-Benitez, who previously had legal status, filed an appeal of his deportation and two stays after a judge ordered that he should be deported in October 2018, all of which were denied, a spokesperson for ICE told The Hill.