Tag: people

Former President George H.W. USA TODAY's Susan Page takes us back through key moments. USA TODAY At a White House news conference in January 1990, then-President George H.W. That's because he kept calling me "Ann," an error of no importance. He was the president. He showed steel in his determination to repel Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, patiently building an international coalition against Iraq. He called criticism of his son "grossly unfair" and added emotionally, his eyes welling with tears, "That's a father caring about his son and his president." The 2016 campaign was the 10th presidential race I've covered, first for Newsday, then for USA TODAY. George Bush was the first presidential hopeful I ever interviewed, in January 1980 on a commercial flight from Chicago to Philadelphia, sitting three across in coach. When he was vice president, I interviewed him in his office in the Old Executive Office Building, across from the White House.

Is there enough support in the Commons for a second referendum? Not at the moment, but should Theresa May lose the Commons vote over her Brexit deal and the Labour party try and fail to secure an election, it has been said that a second referendum is one of the options on the table. Should it be Remain vs Theresa May’s deal, No Deal vs Remain, or No Deal vs May’s deal? Campaigners for a people’s vote say only those options that are on offer should be on the ballot paper – so any deal that has no backing in Brussels should be dismissed. A row will also rage about the franchise, with those in support of a second referendum also keen to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to cast a vote this time round. Won’t most newspapers back leaving again? The “saboteurs” it has in its sights are no longer Remainers but the hard Brexiters – though it is currently backing May’s deal, rather than Remain. What has changed since the last vote? Prominent Leave campaigners have been discredited by controversies over campaign financing and breaches in electoral law. It seems certain that the result would be close – and there is no guarantee Remain would win.

Labour will not allow a representative of the People’s Vote campaign to take part in any televised Brexit debate involving Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, with the party instead pushing for a format that would allow the opposition leader to criticise the prime minister’s domestic policies. It also led to calls from parties that support a second EU referendum – including the Scottish National party, the Green party and the Liberal Democrats – to have a representative on the panel. One Downing Street source said formal talks with broadcasters had yet to begin, with questions around scheduling still to be decided. Discussion about the format of leaders’ debates has become a cornerstone of British politics over the past decade, with months spent trying to agree a debate format during the 2015 general election. Time pressure means political parties have a matter of days to come to an arrangement this time. The Daily Telegraph has been briefed that the prime minister favours holding a “primetime, Sunday night televised debate” with Corbyn, with a “Question Time-style session with a televised audience hosted by David Dimbleby” lined up if terms cannot be agreed with the Labour leader. However, Downing Street’s desire for a peak slot may come against the brutal reality of TV schedules. The prime minister’s team want the largest possible audience for such a debate, but the only logistically possible Sunday night that could work is 9 December, which could bring its own problems if they wish to appear on one of the biggest terrestrial channels. Meanwhile, ITV will be showing the final of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here. During a Facebook Q&A last year, she justified skipping the head-to-head contest with her Labour rival: “What I think is more important is actually that I and he take questions directly from the voters”

The Henderson High senior is among a wave of young people mobilizing for the midterm elections — whether to turn out voters or register themselves — and energized specifically by the issue of gun violence. Students in Philadelphia, the suburbs, and Pittsburgh are part of organizing efforts to push stricter gun laws; promote local, state, and federal candidates who support those laws; and register voters. Between 10,000 and 17,000 people attended the March for Our Lives in Philadelphia, said chairwoman Serita Lewis. The Philadelphia March for Our Lives chapter has worked on "cross-cultural, cross-community" conversation, and students have also helped their parents and relatives decide to vote, Lewis said. "There have been kids being shot in Philadelphia forever. … What I loved was Parkland did not forget about those kids," said Parkinson. Turner threw herself into organizing her school's walkout against gun violence, attended the Washington march with Parkinson, and decided to talk at some local events about Ramsay and the shooting. "I realized that I didn't want her death to just become another piece of data in a statistic about mass shootings in schools," Turner said. "[It's] a whole generation, the active shooter generation, of kids who … are sort of thinking about politics for the very first time. And they're doing it through the lens of gun violence and school shootings," said Peter Ambler, director of Giffords' group.

He couldn’t help himself. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!” John Berman, an anchor on CNN, responded: “Let me tell you what the mainstream media has been doing this morning: We’ve been reporting on a bomb ... sent to either kill, threaten, or scare.” How Trump targeted his biggest critics before they were sent pipe bombs Read more After all, like all autocrats, Trump loves scapegoats and summoning the threat of “the other”. The hate part is manifest when he calls the media “fake news”, “absolute scum”, “disgusting” and “very dishonest”. Last week he praised a member of Congress who had criminally assaulted the Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs. Most infamously, the president has called the press “the enemy of the people”. The reality is that the mainstream media’s primary role has been holding the president to account for his lies. They have, if anything, been escalating in recent days as the midterm elections draw near. Fox News has been whipping up hysteria about the immigrant caravan for days. And Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs pushed a conspiracy theory about the mail bombs on Thursday. “Fake bombs,” Dobbs tweeted.

“I worked in a Republican administration and I worked in a Democratic administration, and I talk about entertaining and I talk about cooking, and I think the more we cook and entertain, the more we stay connected with our friends no matter what their politics are,” the “Barefoot Contessa” host told the Huffington Post in an interview released Monday. “So, no, I don’t talk about politics. That’s how I feel about politics.” While Garten, 70, was reluctant to delve too deeply into her own political beliefs, she did profess her admiration for former first lady Michelle Obama. “I admire that becoming the first lady was a surprise to her — it wasn’t something that she chose,” Garten said. “She grew into it and she was an extraordinary example for women everywhere. “In the ’70s, when I looked at the organizations that I was in, I would think to myself, ‘Could I ? or did I want to ? be the head of this organization?’ And the answer was always no,” Garten said. So when I turned 30, I decided I need to set up my own organization where it was only my wits that determined if I would succeed or not … It was a chance I was willing to take and it paid off. Businesses. “She’s very smart and very interesting and she loves her friends. I loved that he loved to go to a foreign place and eat whatever they were eating, and that he would go into people’s kitchens and see what Mom was making at home or what Grandma or Dad was cooking at home.

The images and soundbites around the past week’s Senate hearings have laid bare what may be the most universal and rawest nerve in our society - and I don’t just mean the exploitation of women. From Dr. Ford, we heard: “They were laughing with each other. I didn’t matter.” From a woman shouting at Sen. Flake, we heard: “Your vote for Mr. Kavanaugh tells me I don’t matter, that women like me don’t matter.” We hear news commentators describing this battle as tearing the nation apart - referring to the obvious partisan divide that’s been intensifying for years. But, isn’t it a similar “our lives don’t matter” feeling that frustrates our many minorities? And wasn’t it a similar “we don’t matter” sentiment among working-class and other ignored Americans that put Mr. Trump in the White House? What a different outlook our nation would have today if we could all step back and see this unifying picture! And, even better, what if we could all see that the true role of a democratic government is to provide the counter-balance on each of these power scales - to ensure that “we all matter.” This means that government must necessarily put its thumb on the scale - limiting the scope of the more powerful and expanding the scope of the less powerful - acting in the public interest, not in the interest of the powerful - on every scale. All voices should be heard. We - The People - all matter, and our political representatives should be seeking the balance, not promoting the interests of the powerful. Peter M. Emmel of Pittsford is an optical engineer.

Legendary journalist Bob Woodward says a presidency is measured by what actually is done on the issues that affect people. Woodward goes on 'The Daily Briefing' to talk about his new book 'Fear' detailing life inside the Trump White House.…

Despite decades of psychology research that shows fostering contact between "us" and "them" is a powerful way to reduce prejudice, scientists are starting to find that you can't just shove people together — online or in person — and expect the interaction to have miraculous effects. That became crystal clear to Christopher Bail, a sociologist who heads the Duke University Polarization Lab, after he designed an experiment to disrupt people's echo chambers on Twitter. After a month, Republicans exposed to the Democratic account became much more conservative, while Democrats exposed to Republican tweets reported slightly more liberal views. He said can't be sure how the tweets had their effect in his study, but he pointed to a recent, counterintuitive body of research chronicling backfire effects. In a second try, one group of people got to see how others answered the question, on average. It’s that communication in a highly polarized context increases polarization," Centola said. "The contact hypothesis," Paluck found, "isn't supported with as much evidence as you thought." But the strength of the effect could depend on the kind of bias — contact was very effective at reducing prejudice against disabled people, for example. Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, recently conducted an experiment in which he surveyed people waiting on commuter rail platforms at rush hour about their views on immigration. “If you think about the situation of American politics, right now,” Enos said, “it’s the exact opposite.” Read more:

Foreground --- White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan --- Opaque Semi-Opaque Background --- White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan --- Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window --- White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan --- Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Default Monospace Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Sans-Serif Casual Script Small Caps Defaults Done For many obsessed with politics, the upcoming midterm elections are perceived as a fight between good and evil that will determine the fate of the nation. Just 27 percent strongly disapprove of the president and believe things would have been better if Hillary Clinton had been elected. On the other side, 19 percent strongly approve of the president and believe things would be worse if Hillary Clinton were living in the White House today. Rather than see the 2016 election as a watershed event that changed the direction of the country, 26 percent of registered voters don't believe life in America would have been all that different if Clinton had won. With Election Day just a couple of months away, most of these voters aren't committed to voting for either side. Perhaps their ambivalence about who is president simply reflects confidence in the belief that culture and technology lead while politicians lag behind. Only about 11 percent of them trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time. These voters aren't fans of the president's; just 29 percent approve of the job he's doing, and only 19 percent believe he is a good role model. Whatever their top concern is, however, 53 percent don't have confidence in one major party or the other to address it. Much of the discord in the political process today stems from the inability of the politically obsessed to understand the majority of Americans who don't fit the dominant political narrative.