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What if animals sang like humans Vol.2 đ¤đ
What if animals sang like humans Vol.2…it's a classic đđ¤â ď¸Sound on team! â ď¸đđ #Springwatch
Posted by BBC Springwatch on Saturday, August 10, 2019
The Healing Power of Nature đ
Such a touching story looking at how nature and wildlife helps us.. đŚđą#Springwatch
Posted by BBC Springwatch on Saturday, August 10, 2019
By Gillian Brockell           September 20, 2019
That act of grief and love set in motion a chain of events that would make Standing Bear a civil rights hero. On Wednesday, he was honored with a statue representing the state of Nebraska in the U.S. Capitolâs National Statuary Hall.
Standing Bear was born sometime between 1829 and 1834 in the Ponca tribeâs native lands in northern Nebraska. A natural leader, he became a chief at a young age, according to the Nebraska History Museum.
By 1858, the Poncas were forced to cede most of their land except for a small area by the Niobrara River, where they became farmers rather than buffalo hunters. But they did well, growing corn and trading with white settlers often.
Ten years later, as described by Dee Alexander Brown in the classic âBury My Heart at Wounded Knee,â the remaining Ponca land was mistakenly included in a treaty between the United States and the Sioux tribes.
âAlthough the Poncas protested over and over again to Washington, officials took no action. Wild young men from the Sioux tribes came down demanding horses as tribute, threatening to drive the Poncas off the land which they now claimed as their own,â Brown wrote.
The U.S. government finally took action in 1876 but not in the way the Poncas had hoped. Congress declared that the Poncas would be moved to Indian Territory in Oklahoma in exchange for $25,000. Though the bill stated clearly this would all happen âwith the consent of said band,â when the Poncas declined the inferior land they were offered in Oklahoma, they were forced to leave anyway.
By the time they arrived in Oklahoma in 1878, it was too late in the season to plant; they also didnât get any of the farming equipment the government had promised them. More than a third of the Poncas died of starvation and disease â including Standing Bearâs sister and his beloved son.
Standing Bear and his burial party evaded capture while they traveled home but were caught and detained after visiting relatives at the Omaha reservation.
The man who caught them, Brig. Gen. George Crook, had been fighting Native Americans for decades, Brown wrote, but he was moved by Standing Bearâs reasons for leaving the Indian Territory and promised to help him.
Crook went to the media, which spread the story of the plight of Standing Bear and his fellow prisoners nationwide. Then two lawyers offered to take up their case pro bono, and asked a judge to free the Poncas immediately.
Though Crook was sympathetic to Standing Bear, since he was the official carrying out the federal governmentâs orders to detain them, the civil rights case that resulted was called Standing Bear v. Crook.
The U.S. attorney argued that Standing Bear was neither a citizen nor a person, and as such did not have standing to sue the government.
On the second day, Chief Standing Bear was called to testify, becoming the first Native American to do so. He raised his right hand and, through an interpreter, said: âMy hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be the same color as yours. The same god made us both. I am a man.â
The judge agreed, ruling for the first time in U.S. history that âthe Indian is a âpersonâ â and has all the rights and freedoms promised in the Constitution. The judge also ordered Crook to free Standing Bear and his people immediately.
Despite the landmark decision from the judge, his opinion still drips with prejudice, calling Native Americans a âweak, insignificant, unlettered, and generally despised race.â
Standing Bear returned to the land by the Niobrara River and buried his son alongside his ancestors. When he died there in 1908, he was buried alongside them, too.
A few decades later, in 1937, the state of Nebraska sent two statues to the U.S. Capitol. Each state is allowed to pick two historical figures to represent them in National Statuary Hall, and Nebraska chose politician William Jennings Bryan and Arbor Day founder Julius Sterling Morton.
(This provision is also why there are at least eight statues of Confederates in the Capitol. Neither Congress nor the Architect of the Capitol has the power to remove them; it must be done by the states that sent the statues.)
In recent years, Nebraska lawmakers voted to replace both statues. Bryan was replaced by Chief Standing Bear; soon, Morton will be replaced by a statue of author Willa Cather.
At the dedication ceremony Wednesday, which included Ponca tribal leaders and members of the House and Senate, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts said it was an honor to recognize âone of the most important civil rights leaders in our country that almost nobody knows about.
âAnd we hope to be able to correct that today and tell his story,â Ricketts said.
President Donald Trumpâs betrayal of the Kurds stung deeply. âThey trusted us and we broke that trust. Itâs a stain on the American conscience.â These, according to The New York Times, are the searing words of an Army officer who has worked alongside the Kurds in northern Syria.
Kurdish forces played a central role in aiding the United States in fighting the Islamic State. But in a phone call a week ago Sunday, Trump gave the green light to Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄan to invade northern Syriaâand, in the process, to engage in what even one of Trumpâs most loyal supporters, Senator Lindsey Graham, describes as the âethnic cleansingâ of the Kurds.
According to Jennifer Griffin and Melissa Leon of Fox News, Trump was supposed to tell Erdogan to stay north of the border, but instead âwent off script.â By Wednesday, the Turkish offensive began, with Erdogan’s aim to push back the Syrian Kurds from the border region. The results have been swift and brutal: the displacement of more than 100,000 people, executions and war crimes, the escape of hundreds of Islamic State prisoners. (If Islamic State fighters escape, theyâll âbe escaping to Europe,â Trump said last weekâas if Europeâs problems donât affect the United States.) For the Kurds, the consequences of Americaâs policy change will only get worse. âI donât know how many people will die. A lot of people will die,â a senior military source told Fox News. Yesterday the Trump administration tried frantically to make Turkey stand down, but enormous damage has already been done.
Betrayal is a leitmotif for this presidentâs entire life. Think of how he cheated on his wives. Think of the infant child of a nephew who had crucial medical benefits withdrawn by Trump because of Trump’s retaliation against his nephew over an inheritance dispute. Think of those who enrolled at Trump University and were defrauded. Think about the contractors whom Trump has stiffed. Think of Jeff Sessions, the first prominent Republican to endorse Trump, whom Trump viciously turned against because Sessions had properly recused himself from overseeing the investigation into whether Russia had intervened in the 2016 election. Think about those who served in Trumpâs administrationâRex Tillerson, John Bolton, Don McGahn, Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn, James Mattis, and many moreâwho were unceremoniously dumped and, in some cases, mocked on their way out the door.
Also think of how Trump has disparaged his own country while making excuses for strongmen. When MSNBCâs Joe Scarborough said Vladimir Putin âkills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries,â Trump replied that âat least heâs a leader.â Besides, Trump asserted, âI think our country does plenty of killing also.â And when asked whether ErdoÄan was exploiting the coup attempt to purge his political enemies, Trump did not call for the Turkish leader to observe the rule of law, or Western standards of justice. âWhen the world sees how bad the United States is and we start talking about civil liberties, I donât think we are a very good messenger,â he said.
As McKay Coppins put it in The Atlantic shortly after the president was sworn in, âTrump built his success on his willingness to toss aside mentors, friends, and family members during moments of frustration and chaos.â Serial betrayal is a central trait of Trumpâs character, and his critics warned from the start against elevating such a person to the nationâs highest position of public trust. When the consequences are the serial humiliation of Cabinet secretaries and White House aides, they are easier for Trumpâs political supporters to rationalize or overlook. But as the professor Robert King once declared, âBetrayal is a garment without seams.â The danger is far plainer when the victims of Trumpâs betrayal are longtime American allies facing deadly force.
The Kurds were a mere afterthought to Donald Trump. Turkeyâs ErdoÄan is the type of authoritarian leader who can easily manipulate the president. ErdoÄan wanted something done, and Trump was willing to do it.
A year ago, President Trump was praising the Kurds as âgreatâ allies, vowing to protect them. âThey fought with us. They died with us,â Trump said. âWe have not forgotten.â But just a few days ago, he dismissed the Kurds this way: âThey didnât help us in the Second World War. They didnât help us with Normandy, as an example.â
President Trump doesnât interpret his abandonment of Americaâs faithful and intrepid Kurdish ally as betrayal because he canât even understand why betrayal is a vice. Itâs like trying to explain color to a person born with no eyesight. He doesnât appear to comprehend that a relationship without trust is not a true relationship; itâs merely an exchange of needsâand President Trump will betray anyone who no longer serves his needs.
âWe should expect our current president to betray anyone or any principle or any norm or any ally whenever he has the impulse to do so,â a friend of mine who is a psychologist told me via email. (To make sense of the Trump years, an understanding of psychology is at least as helpful as an understanding of politics.) âThis should scare us all, and thereâs no evidence he is capable of deferring to someone else when his relationship indifference could (again) cost lives.â
My friend, who asked not to be named because she wanted to avoid being part of the political controversy, went on to say, âExpect betrayal, because [Trump] does not know what that even means.â
The betrayal wonât stop with the Kurds. Every individual, every institution, every government agency, and every American ally could meet a similar fate. Donald Trumpâs loyalty runs exactly as deep to his fellow citizens, the rule of law, the Constitution, Americaâs best traditions, and traditional codes of honor and decency as it does to his previous wives, to his former aides, and to those he has done business with. âA stain on the American conscienceâ isnât just a characterization of what Trump did to the Kurds in northern Syria. It may also prove to be a fitting epitaph for the Trump presidency as a whole.
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The crimes for which impeachment is the prescribed punishment are notoriously undefined. And thatâs for a reason: Presidential powers are vast, and itâs impossible to design laws to cover every possible abuse of the officeâs authority. House Democrats have calculated that an impeachment focused narrowly on the Ukraine scandal will make the strongest legal case against President Trump. But thatâs not Trumpâs only impeachable offense. A full accounting would include a wide array of dangerous and authoritarian acts â 82, to be precise. His violations fall into seven broad categories of potentially impeachable misconduct that should be weighed, if not by the House, then at least by history.
Explanation: The single most dangerous threat to any democratic system is that the ruling party will use its governing powers to entrench itself illegitimately.
Evidence: (1) The Ukraine scandal is fundamentally about the president abusing his authority by wielding his power over foreign policy as a cudgel against his domestic opponents. The president is both implicitly and explicitly trading the U.S. governmentâs favor for investigations intended to create adverse publicity for Americans whom Trump wishes to discredit. (2) During his campaign, he threatened to impose policies harmful to Amazon in retribution for critical coverage in the Washington Post. (âIf I become president, oh do they have problems.â) He has since pushed the postmaster general to double rates on Amazon, and the Defense Department held up a $10 billion contract with Amazon, almost certainly at his behest. (3) He has ordered his officials to block the AT&T – Time Warner merger as punishment for CNNâs coverage of him. (4) He encouraged the NFL to blacklist Colin Kaepernick.
Explanation:Â As he does with many other laws, the president enjoys broad immunity from regulations on the proper handling of classified information, allowing him to take action that would result in felony convictions for other federal employees. President Trumpâs mishandling of classified information is not merely careless but a danger to national security.
Evidence: (5) Trump has habitually communicated on a smartphone highly vulnerable to foreign espionage. (6â30) He has reversed 25 security-clearance denials (including for his son-in-law, who has conducted potentially compromising business with foreign interests). (31) He has turned Mar-a-Lago into an unsecured second White House and even once handled news of North Korea’s missile launch in public view. (32) He gave Russian officials sensitive Israeli intelligence that blew âthe most valuable source of information on external plotting by [the] Islamic State,â the Wall Street Journal reported. (33) He tweeted a high-resolution satellite image of an Iranian launch site for the sake of boasting.
Explanation:Â President Trump has abused his authority either by distorting the intent of laws passed by Congress or by flouting them. He has directly ordered subordinates to violate the law and has promised pardons in advance, enabling him and his staff to operate with impunity. In these actions, he has undermined Congressâs constitutional authority to make laws.
Evidence: (34) Having failed to secure funding authority for a border wall, President Trump unilaterally ordered funds to be moved from other budget accounts. (35) He has undermined regulations on health insurance under the Affordable Care Act preventing insurers from charging higher rates to customers with more expensive risk profiles. (36) He has abused emergency powers to impose tariffs, intended to protect the supply chain in case of war, to seize from Congress its authority to negotiate international trade agreements. (37â38) He has ordered border agents to illegally block asylum seekers from entering the country and has ordered other aides to violate eminent-domain laws and contracting procedures in building the border wall, (39â40) both times promising immunity from lawbreaking through presidential pardons.
Explanation:Â The executive branch and Congress are co-equal, each intended to guard against usurpation of authority by the other. Trump has refused to acknowledge any legitimate oversight function of Congress, insisting that because Congress has political motivations, it is disqualified from it. His actions and rationale strike at the Constitutionâs design of using the political ambitions of the elected branches to check one another.
Evidence: (41) Trump has refused to abide by a congressional demand to release his tax returns, despite an unambiguous law granting the House this authority. His lawyers have flouted the law on the spurious grounds that subpoenas for his tax returns âwere issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses and the private information of the president and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage.â Trumpâs lawyers have argued that Congress cannot investigate potentially illegal behavior by the president because the authority to do so belongs to prosecutors. In other litigation, those lawyers have argued that prosecutors cannot investigate the president. These contradictory positions support an underlying stance that no authority can investigate his misconduct. (42) He has defended his refusal to accept oversight on the grounds that members of Congress âarenât, like, impartial people. The Democrats are trying to win 2020.â (43) The president has also declared that impeachment is illegal and should be stopped in the courts (though, unlike with his other obstructive acts, he has not yet taken any legal action toward this end).
Explanation:Â By virtue of his control over the federal governmentâs investigative apparatus, the president (along with the attorney general) is uniquely well positioned to cover up his own misconduct. Impeachment is the sole available remedy for a president who uses his powers of office to hold himself immune from legal accountability. In particular, the pardon power gives the president almost unlimited authority to obstruct investigations by providing him with a means to induce the silence of co-conspirators.
Evidence: (44â53) The Mueller Report contains ten instances of President Trump engaging in obstructive acts. While none of those succeeded in stopping the probe, Trump dangled pardons and induced his co-conspirators to lie or withhold evidence from investigators. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testified to Congress that Trump had directed him to lie to it about his negotiations with the Russian government during the campaign to secure a lucrative building contract in Moscow. And when Cohen stated his willingness to lie, Robert Costello, an attorney who had worked with Rudy Giuliani, emailed Cohen assuring him he could âsleep well tonightâ because he had âfriends in high places.â Trump has publicly praised witnesses in the Russia investigation for refusing to cooperate, and he sent a private message to former national-security adviser Michael Flynn urging him to âstay strong.â He has reinforced this signal by repeatedly denouncing witnesses who cooperate with investigators as âflippers.â (54â61) He has exercised his pardon power for a series of Republican loyalists, sending a message that at least some of his co-conspirators have received. The presidentâs pardon of conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza âhas to be a signal to Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort and even Robert S. Mueller III: Indict people for crimes that donât pertain to Russian collusion and this is what could happen,â Roger Stone told the Washington Post. âThe special counsel has awesome powers, as you know, but the president has even more awesome powers.â
Explanation:Â Federal employees must follow strict rules to prevent them from being influenced by any financial conflict. Conflict-of-interest rules are less clear for a sitting president because all presidential misconduct will be resolved by either reelection or impeachment. If Trump held any position in the federal government below the presidency, he would have been fired for his obvious conflicts. His violations are so gross and blatant they merit impeachment.
Evidence: (62) He has maintained a private business while holding office, (63) made decisions that influence that business, (64) and accepted payments from parties both domestic and foreign who have an interest in his policies. (65) He has openly signaled that these parties can gain his favor by doing so. (66) He has refused even to disclose his interests, which would at least make public which parties are paying him.
Explanation:Â One of the unspoken roles of the president is to serve as a symbolic head of state. Presidents have very wide latitude for their political rhetoric, but Trump has violated its bounds, exceeding in his viciousness the rhetoric of Andrew Johnson (who was impeached in part for the same offense).
Evidence: (67) Trump called for locking up his 2016 opponent after the election. (68â71) He has clamored for the deportation of four women of color who are congressional representatives of the opposite party. (72) He has described a wide array of domestic political opponents as treasonous, including the news media. (73â80) On at least eight occasions, he has encouraged his supporters â including members of the armed forces â to attack his political opponents. (âI have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump â I have the tough people, but they donât play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.â) (81) He has threatened journalists with violence if they fail to produce positive coverage. (âIf the media would write correctly and write accurately and write fairly, youâd have a lot less violence in the country.â) (82) There have been 36 criminal cases nationwide in which the defendant invoked Trumpâs name in connection with violence; 29 of these cited him as the inspiration for an attack.
On Friday, Attorney General William Barr spoke at Notre Dameâs law school and raised a few eyebrows by condemning societal ills on conspiring American secularists. As far as the nationâs chief law enforcement official was concerned, non-religious Americans â roughly a fifth of the population â are helping advance âsocial pathologyâ and âmoral upheaval.â Barr added that these sinister secularists are responsible for âan unremitting assaultâ on âtraditional values.â
One day later, Donald Trump spoke at a religious right gathering, where he told social conservative activists, âForever and always, Americans will believe in the cause of freedom, the power of prayer, and the eternal glory of God.â Soon after, the president called into Fox News and insisted that thereâs a Christian revival underway because âeverybodyâ knows that âthe Russian witch hunt was a faux, phony fraud. And we got rid of that. And then they came up with this Ukrainian story that was made up by Adam Schiff.â
And then, of course, thereâs Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. USA Today reported late yesterday:
A recent speech about âBeing a Christian Leaderâ by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was promoted on the State Departmentâs homepage Monday, and has been met with criticism that it potentially violates the principle of separation of church and state enshrined in the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.
The speech was delivered at the America Association of Christian Counselors on Friday in Nashville, Tennessee. Pompeo touts Christianity throughout the remarks, describing how he applies his faith to his government work, referencing God and the Bible during the entirety of the speech.
If you visited the U.S. State Departmentâs website yesterday, its homepage featured a picture of Pompeo alongside text that read, âBeing a Christian Leader.â (That text has since been replaced with content about Turkish sanctions.)
Taken together, Team Trumpâs theological push isnât exactly subtle. In a country thatâs supposed to honor the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, it isnât exactly healthy, either.
The New York Timesâ Paul Krugman argued in his new column, âPardon my cynicism, but I seriously doubt that Barr, whose boss must be the least godly man ever to occupy the White House, has suddenly realized to his horror that America is becoming more secular. No, this outburst of God-talk is surely a response to the way the walls are closing in on Trump, the high likelihood that he will be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.â
With Trump, Barr, and Pompeo each touting related theological messages over the course of a few days, as each of these men get caught up in an impeachment scandal, itâs hardly unreasonable to think thereâs a larger strategy unfolding. And given the importance of evangelical Christians in the presidentâs base, the effort may even have the intended effect.
But I continue to marvel at Trumpâs secularism and the inherent disconnect at the heart of the campaign. The president â a thrice-married former casino owner â claimed to go to a New York church that rarely saw him. Asked if heâs ever asked God for forgiveness, he said, âI donât think so.â Asked whether heâs drawn more to the New or Old Testaments, Trump replied, âBoth.â
And, of course, there was the whole â Two Corinthiansâ incident.
The Republican has proceeded to lie repeatedly to leaders of the faith community about repealing the Johnson Amendment, which remains fully intact.
The irony of positioning Trump and his scandal-plagued team as heroes to the faithful is extraordinary.
