Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not mince words about President Donald Trump, declaring him “without question the worst president we’ve ever had” in a rare interview published Wednesday, his first since being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year.
“We’ve had some bad ones, and there’s not even a close second to him,” Reid told The New York Times Magazine’s Mark Leibovich. “He’ll lie. He’ll cheat. You can’t reason with him.”
Reid also questioned why former attorney general Jeff Sessions — his Senate colleague — and former White House chief of staff John Kelly did not leave Trump’s administration sooner.
“Why in the hell didn’t Sessions leave?” he said. “Same with Kelly,” referring to the departing chief of staff. “I’d say, ‘Go screw yourself.’ I could not look my children in the eye.”
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke out about President Donald Trump: “He’ll lie. He’ll cheat. You can’t reason with him.”
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From minimum wage hikes to stricter gun control measures and Me Too-inspired legislation, 2019 will usher in thousands of new laws in various states.
2019 will see the enactment of a slew of new laws across the country (in California alone, more than 1,000 will be added to the books). In some states, minimum wages will go up, guns will be harder to obtain, plastic straws will get the boot and hunters will get to wear pink for a change.
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New laws
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Men had another pretty poor showing in 2018, continuing their centuries-long slump. A man disastrously led the most powerful nation in the world. A man ― several men, in fact ― had the gall to mount comebacks after having been accused of sexual assault. Men inflicted their emotional inadequacies on everyday women, leaned on subway poles, sent terrible text messages, spearheaded fascist counter-revolutions in fragile democracies and just generally found diverse ways of not coming correct.
In the spirit of calling out these failures, both big and petty, we’ve rounded up a list of (a handful of) the worst men of 2018. This list is by no means exhaustive, and I’m sure we’ve forgotten hundreds of terrible males who made the year so much worse. Please feel free to make your own lists and then ritually burn them.
We hope this list might encourage men to show up in 2019 in better form. Dudes: We believe in … some of you. But for now, here are some bros who really went wrong this past year.
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Isabella Carapella/ HuffPost
Let us look back upon 365 days full of trash bag dudes.
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A woman dies at age 65 before collecting one benefit check. She and her employer paid into the system for almost 50 years and she collected NOTHING. Keep in mind all the working people that die every year who were paying into the system and got nothing.
And these governmental morons mismanaged the money and stole from the system, so that it’s now going broke. BEAUTIFUL! And they have the audacity to call today’s seniors “vultures” in an attempt to cover their ineptitude. DISGRACEFUL!
The real reason for renaming our Social Security payments is so the government can claim that all those social security recipients are receiving entitlements thus putting them in the same category as welfare, and food stamp recipients.
THIS IS WORTH THE FEW MINUTES IT TAKES TO READ AND DIGEST!
F.Y.I. By changing the name of SS contributions, it gives them a means to refute this program in the future. It’s free money for the government to spend under this guise. The Social Security check is now (or soon will be) referred to as a Federal Benefit Payment ? I’ll be part of the one percent to forward this. I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you.
Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it. The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a “Federal Benefit Payment.” This is NOT a benefit. It is OUR money , paid out of our earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too ! It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.(This should be enough for you to forward this message, If not read on.)
If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that’s close to $180,000 invested in Social Security. If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both you and your employers contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you’d have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved.
This is your personal investment. Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you’d receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.
That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration. (Google it – it’s a fact). And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you’re 98 if you retire at age 65)! I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts. Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did (or Lyndon Johnson). They took our money and used it elsewhere. They “forgot”(oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them … and they didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently they’ve told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer. (Isn’t it funny that they NEVER say this about welfare payments?) But is it our fault they misused our investments? And now, to add insult to injury, they’re calling it a benefit, as if we never worked to earn every penny of it. This is stealing! Just because they borrowed the money, doesn’t mean that our investments were for charity! Let’s take a stand. We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government. Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going for the sake of the 92% of our population who need it.
Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income . 90% of people won’t forward this. PLEASE! Will you?
Update (Dec. 27): Although Pixar’s Bao is no longer available to watch online, Weekends is now available, so you can still watch eight of the ten shorts for free.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its shortlists for several Oscar categories last week, including best documentary, best foreign language film, and best original song. The academy also revealed the 10 animated short films still in the running, and eight of them are available to watch online for free.
The overwhelming frontrunner is Disney-Pixar’s Bao, an eight-minute short that played before Incredibles II in June and is about an empty-nester who’s overjoyed when her aggressively cute dumpling magically comes to life. Written and directed by Chinese-Canadian storyboard artist Domee Shi, Bao is the first Pixar short directed by a woman in the company’s 32-year history. Pixar last won the award in 2016 with the short film Piper.
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From an animated short film
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The valley was unspeakably beautiful: honey-colored hills flanked by mountains covered in pine trees. Dark shrubs dotted the expanse, as did wandering cows, temples and clusters of 108 white Buddhist prayer flags. Relatives of the dead plant the flags — thin strips of fabric that run the length of tall poles — during the 49 days it takes to guide and protect the soul as it moves toward the next life.
Every time I’d see those flutterings of white, I thought of the effort and devotion that had gone into covering this landscape in so many acts of love.
My energy levels were close to empty when I arrived in Bhutan’s Phobjikha Valley, far enough east from the only international airport in this lush, underdeveloped Himalayan kingdom that it had taken many, many hours of driving to get to.
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From top right: A farmer and her child on the road to Punakha Dzong; prayer wheels at the ancient Jowo Temple of Kyichu in Paro; the Great Buddha Dordenma statue overlooking Thimphu; view of Tiger’s Nest Monastery.CreditJada Yuan/The New York Times
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Senior American officials were worried. Since the early months of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, had been having private, informal conversations with Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son of Saudi Arabia’s king.
Given Mr. Kushner’s political inexperience, the private exchanges could make him susceptible to Saudi manipulation, said three former senior American officials. In an effort to tighten practices at the White House, a new chief of staff tried to reimpose longstanding procedures stipulating that National Security Council staff members should participate in all calls with foreign leaders.
But even with the restrictions in place, Mr. Kushner, 37, and Prince Mohammed, 33, kept chatting, according to three former White House officials and two others briefed by the Saudi royal court. In fact, they said, the two men were on a first-name basis, calling each other Jared and Mohammed in text messages and phone calls.
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Prince Mohammed bin Salman with Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, in Riyadh last year.CreditCreditJonathan Ernst/Reuters
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Sixteen months after swastika-toting white supremacists swarmed the streets of Charlottesville, one of the demonstrators was convicted of first-degree murder Friday by a jury that found he intentionally drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one woman and injuring nearly 40 others.
James Fields Jr., 21, faces up to life in prison for the death of Heather Heyer, 32, in a case that has stirred soul-searching in a city that prides itself on being a liberal bastion. Mr. Fields, who traveled from Ohio to attend the Unite the Right rally, was also convicted of nine other charges, including aggravated malicious wounding and leaving the scene of a fatal accident.
Friday’s verdict was cheered by those fighting racial and religious hatred and provided some closure in a case that cast a national spotlight on Charlottesville, the scene chosen by racists and anti-Semites to rally for their cause, near a Confederate monument that some city leaders were trying to remove.
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James Fields Jr. drove into a crowd of counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017, killing one woman and injuring several other people.CreditCreditAlbemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, via Associated Press
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Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Explore the dynamic relationship between faith and science, where curiosity meets belief. Join us in fostering dialogue, inspiring discovery, and celebrating the profound connections that enrich our understanding of existence.
New laws
Bound woman in trunk
James' World 2 