We learned Friday that the unemployment rate is now at its lowest rate since 1969 at 3.6%. The economy added another 263,000 jobs. This capped a week in which President Donald Trump received his highest economic approval rating in any CNN poll at 56%.
In other words, the economy is going well, and people think it’s going well.
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Yet for all that strength, Trump’s overall approval rating seems mostly stuck. Recently, he hasn’t been able to get his overall approval rating above 43% with voters. Trump’s net approval rating (approval – disapproval) hasn’t been positive in over two years.
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So why is the President struggling, despite a strong economy?
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WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 02: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a National Day of Prayer service in the Rose Garden at the White House May 02, 2019 in Washington, DC. The White House invited leaders from various faiths and religions to participate in the day of prayer, which was designated in 1952 by the United States Congress to ask people “to turn to God in prayer and meditation.” (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Patti Davis, the daughter of former President Ronald Reagan, has torn into Republicans who remain silent about President Donald Trump in a stinging open letter published in The Washington Post.
Davis noted in the blistering missive — titled “Dear Republicans: Stop using my father, Ronald Reagan, to justify your silence on Trump” — how Republicans have claimed her father’s legacy and “exalted him as an icon of conservatism and used the quotes of his that serve your purpose at any given moment.”
Regardless of whether Attorney General William Barr was ever a “respectable” political figure, plenty of powerful people seem to have held him in such regard.
If Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) was one of those people, she’s not anymore. On Wednesday, she lamented the degree to which the attorney general has allowed himself to be co-opted by President Trump. “The American people know that you are no different from Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway or any of the other people who sacrificed their once decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the Oval Office,” she told Barr during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Hirono spent most of her allotted time reviewing the extent of Barr’s “deep involvement” in covering for the president, from misrepresenting Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings to lying to Congress about Mueller’s objections to the “principal conclusions” of the investigation Barr released last month. Hirono’s monologue lasted more than five minutes. There was a lot of ground to cover. She attempted to close with a few questions for Barr, but committee chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) interrupted her, accusing her of slandering Barr. “I do not think that I’m slandering anyone,” Hirono replied. “Mr. Chairman, I am done. Thank you very much.”
Shanghai World Financial Trade Center is a mixed-use building, in which there are offices, stores, hotel, meeting rooms, observatory. three floors underground are used as the parking lot, comprising about 1100 parking spaces.
Decades of climbing on the world’s highest mountain have turned it into a very tall garbage dump, strewn with rubbish, human waste and even bodies.
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But a dedicated — and impressively fit — team of volunteers are tackling the problem by carrying out one of the world’s most ambitious clean-ups, and it’s seeing immediate results.
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Three tonnes (6,613 pounds) of garbage have been collected from the mountain in just the first two weeks of the scheme, according to AFP. That’s about the weight of two SUVs, or a large male hippo.
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The task is being carried out by a 14-member team, which has been set the task of recovering 10 tonnes within 45 days, the agency reported.
When the Bellamy Creek correctional facility’s longtime kitchen officer decided to leave in 2014, David Angel requested the position. Angel, who was nearing retirement, had worked at prisons all over Michigan, including stints at three maximum-security facilities. “I wanted a permanent position for my last few years in the department. I had a lot of respect among the prisoner and officer staff, and I thought I could do the job and keep people safe,” he said. “Um… I was wrong.”
The Bellamy Creek kitchen is typical for a Michigan prison. Sixty incarcerated men staff it, doing everything from slicing potatoes with tethered knives to working the dish tank. Angel’s job was to provide security while six or seven outside employees oversaw the operations. The employees were new hires by Aramark, a food-service company recently contracted by the state to run its prison kitchens.
“It was a constant daily struggle,” Angel recalled. At first, it was the little things: Food was spilled but never cleaned up. Meals were served late, or the kitchen would run out of food and the staff would have to swap ingredients. “I saw peanut butter substituted for a hamburger patty more times than I care to count.”
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.
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Peter Mayhew, ‘Chewbacca’
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Shanghai World Financial Center
Cute goat could not walk
Mount Everest
