Tag: Pittsburgh

Scott "Howie" Dittman went viral for giving out "dad hugs" to the attendees of a Pride parade in Pittsburgh. #CNN #News

Former Vice President Joe Biden kicked off his presidential campaign for the 2020 election in Pittsburgh, telling constituents if he is going to defeat Trump, it's going to happen in Pennsylvania. This is the first campaign rally since Biden announced…

Morton "Moe" Coleman, a social worker, policy maker, professor at Pitt's Graduate Schools of Social Work and of Public and International Affairs, and founding director of Pitt's Institute of Politics, has died, according to a statement from the university. Mr. Coleman, who was born in 1932, attended Wightman School, Taylor Allderdice High School and the University of Pittsburgh. He earned a master's degree in social work in 1961 and went to work in the Hill District, where he witnessed firsthand the problems of urban renewal, according to a 1999 Post-Gazette profile of Mr. Coleman. Mr. Coleman joined the administration of Pittsburgh Mayor Joseph Barr in 1963, where he was involved in implementing a number of the era's War on Poverty programs. His career also took him to Detroit, in 1968, where he worked as personal adviser to Henry Ford II on urban issues, and Hartford, Connecticut, before he returned to Pittsburgh. Mr. Coleman was known as someone who could bring people together from different spheres, from politics, to academia, to community groups, which was part of why he developed Pitt's Institute of Politics. See Tuesday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for a full obituary.

The scene in the Pittsburgh Steelers locker room sounds like nothing I have ever heard about or witnessed in professional sports. At 3:30 pm on Tuesday, the final deadline passed and it became official that he would not be joining his teammates for the entirety of 2018. A lot of people thought he’d crack, but Bell held out, saving his body in this most brutal of sports for the possibility of a better payday. This was truly—agree or disagree with his actions—unprecedented in the sport—an act of player power in an industry that tends to treat these workers like expendable pieces of equipment. Bell held strong even after his teammates—specifically his offensive linemen—in the first week of the season blasted him for holding out (their aspersions broke a sacred NFL rule of not commenting on other players’ contracts or holdouts). Then 3:30 pm hit on Wednesday, about 24 hours after Bell walked away from this last opportunity to rejoin the team. After that, the deluge. They took his equipment and sneakers. They grabbed everything down to some CD mixes at the bottom of a stack of goods. Seeing the way the Steelers tore apart a teammate who gave them several years of all-pro production does not augur well for the future.

The word “optics” was a reference to an internal debate in white nationalist politics that has been running since their murderous march on Charlottesville led to doxxings, arrests and other real-life consequences. Gab forced offline following anti-semitic posts by alleged Pittsburgh shooter Read more One the one hand, people such as Bowers advocated for an unapologetic embrace of the black-shirt role play that unmistakably marked Charlottesville out as a neo-Nazi gathering; the extremist ideology that underpinned the movement; and also the racist violence that is the only real endpoint of fascist politics. Those who dismiss the small numbers on the far right rarely consider how small the membership of modern political parties tends to be On podcasts and social media threads, white nationalists from this latter faction argued that young white nationalists should keep a low profile, stay in school and work, and carry out their political activism within established political institutions. James Allsup, who marched in Charlottesville with white nationalist group Identity Evropa, was elected as a committeeman for a local Republican branch in eastern Washington state. The plan — which is tactically sound — is to infiltrate moribund local parties in order to turn their relatively small numbers into outsized political leverage. This brings us to recent revelations in Australia about the “alt-right” infiltration of the NSW Young Nationals. According to the ABC’s Background Briefing report that first exposed this large-scale entryism, this was part of an explicit plan that exactly resembled the kind of strategy that James Allsup and others have been arguing for in the United States. When several of the members under investigation by the National party resigned last week , they did so with a letter crammed with alt-right talking points about “mass third world immigration” and innumerate fears about white Australians “becoming a minority in their own country”. This is the same strategy that has been advocated and implemented in the US. As conservative groups think these questions over, they should know the following: the strategy of “good optics” does not mean that the people carrying it out profess a moderate version of white nationalism.

When I first heard the news that a gunman had opened fire on a synagogue in Pittsburgh during Shabbat services and a bris on Oct. 27, my heart shattered. Before we even knew the death toll or the number of people injured, I wept because this type of anti-Semitism is supposed to be a thing of the past. I was taught that America is the place we are free to practice our religion, but that we cannot be complacent if that isn’t always the case. When I saw that conversation surrounding the issue focused on political rhetoric and saw my peers posting on social media platforms to vote in the midterms in wake of this tragedy, it infuriated me and showed me that Jewish suffering is secondary to politics. In the wake of the Pittsburgh tragedy, students should take this time to look beyond politics and try to understand the history and culture of their fellow Jewish students. Hate crimes against Jewish people are still very prevalent in America. Talking to others about our different backgrounds and different experiences can bring us out of our bubbles and show us what is really important in the aftermath of a tragedy: healing and understanding. This tragedy, while it had political influences, was not about politics. As students on a campus with a large Jewish population, it is important to understand that this is an example of how Jewish people have never truly been welcomed or accepted. In the wake of this tragedy, students need to come together and help the Jewish community on campus heal and let them know that they are welcome and safe here.

Here are some of the biggest stories you might have missed (and some links if you’d like to read further). _____________________ In tragedy’s aftermath, President Trump returned to campaign mode. [Read the story] It appeared that Mr. Trump, frustrated with an inability to control the news cycle, had begun throwing out new ideas to see what might stick, regardless of the political or legal reality. [Read the story] Additional Reading • News Analysis: For Trump, Dutiful Words of Grief, Then Off to the Next Fight • Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Shape Trump’s Pittsburgh Response • Inside What Even an Ally Calls Trump’s ‘Reality Distortion Field’ Days before the midterms, Mr. Trump embraced a familiar refrain: Fear immigrants. Mr. Trump pushed a dark anti-immigration message in the last full week before the midterm elections, hoping it would encourage voters to reject Democrats. [Read the story] House Republicans are preparing for a Democratic takeover. In the final days of the campaign, vulnerable Senate Democrats are focusing on health care in their closing arguments — in particular, saving the Affordable Care Act’s safeguards for people with pre-existing conditions. [Read the story] Republican candidates have begun saying that they will protect people with pre-existing conditions, but an analysis from The Upshot finds that their records suggest otherwise. [Read the story] As a result of the Trump administration’s policy changes and auctioning off of millions of dollars in drilling rights, fracking is booming on public lands, according to a New York Times analysis of Interior Department data. [Read the story] Additional Reading • A Guide to the Ryan Zinke Investigations • Where Americans (Mostly) Agree on Climate Change Policies, in Five Maps • Five Midterm Votes That Could Have an Outsize Impact on Climate Change _____________________ Today’s On Politics briefing was compiled by Emily Cochrane in Washington.

But it’s unlikely this mailer would have gotten any national attention if not for a president doing this best to inflame ethnic hatreds in the country; if not for a lone wolf turning Trump’s race baiting into action; and if all this were not the context for a bush-league politician willing to say anything to get attention in his quest to represent people living in Middletown, Connecticut. As it is, Ed Charamut’s mailer got attention from the Washington Post, CNN and other national media. As it is, Charamut’s campaign denies interpretations of the mailer as having anything to do with anti-Semitism. As it is, the state Republican Party appears tone-deaf, as if anti-Semitism were so normal to the state GOP as to be unremarkable. That’s more information than voters would have had otherwise. Prior to Tuesday, all politics was local for Matt Lesser. Since then, all politics is national. Connecticut Republicans are doing little distance themselves from Charamut. But that must be squared with the fact that voter registration applications are at historic levels. According to the state Secretary of State’s office, 103,436 new voters registered as Democrats, 53,371 registered as Republicans, and 168,090 registered as unaffiliated.

Approaching a crucial midterm election, 79 percent of Americans said they are concerned or very concerned that the negative tone of national politics will prompt violence. That concern was prominent across the political spectrum, with 92 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of Republicans and 79 percent of those who identify as independent all in agreement. A plurality of Americans — 40 percent — point to President Donald Trump, and another 29 percent blame the media. (In July 2009, after Barack Obama’s election, 35 percent of respondents said civility had gotten worse, according to Marist’s polling data.) When asked by reporters whether he would adopt a more civil tone, Trump said he thought he had been toned down, and “could really tone it up because as you know, the media’s been extremely unfair to me and the Republican Party.” In the poll, when U.S. adults were asked what factors primarily drive these acts of violence, more than a third — 37 percent — said they blame the way Trump conducts himself, and 21 percent pointed to the way the media reports news. An additional 12 percent of Americans said bickering between Democrats and Republicans motivated these violent acts, and another 23 percent of adults said none of these factors were to blame. That sentiment was particularly strong among Republicans (73 percent) and more than half of people who identified as politically independent (53 percent), while more than a quarter of Democrats (28 percent) agreed. Voters are significantly more energized going into this midterm election than they were in 2010, the first major election after Obama took office. A majority of Democrats and Republicans share that enthusiasm going into this election cycle, while politically independent registered voters are slightly less so. At the same time, public disapproval of Trump’s job performance while in office remains steady, with 51 percent of U.S. adults saying they don’t like what he’s doing in the White House.

The white nationalist Iowa Republican took issue with being asked about the similarities between his ideology and that of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter. » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc About: MSNBC is the premier destination for in-depth analysis of daily headlines,…