Tag Archives: 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

A Full-Moon Pholus on the Solstice

By Amanda Painter

As you likely already know, late tomorrow the Sun enters Capricorn for the solstice. The next day, we get a potent-looking Cancer Full Moon. So we’re about to enter a moment of (possibly) heightened emotions, layered on top of cultural holiday busy-ness, layered on top of a seasonal point of contraction and interiority, all nestled into the personal-is-political Aries Point — with a twist.

Photo by Amanda Painter

These are days to keep a finger on the pulse of how you’re feeling.

What catches your attention as a possible synchronicity or as having meaning, and what (or who) starts to trigger your reactivity? Are you going along with the crowd because it’s expected or you’ve ‘always done this’, or is a small, inner voice whispering something about needing to spend a little time differently this year?

To help you get your bearings, here’s the timing of the main astro events: on Friday, Dec. 21, the Sun enters Capricorn at 5:23 pm EST (22:22:37 UTC), immediately making a conjunction to the centaur Pholus (technically exact the next day). That’s the “twist” I mentioned, and I’ll come back to it in a moment.

At 11:28 am EST (16:27:54 UTC) on Saturday, Dec. 22, the Moon ingresses Cancer. Then, just over an hour later at 12:48 pm EST (17:48:29 UTC), the Cancer Moon and Capricorn Sun oppose each other.

With a Full Moon in the very first degree of Cancer, we’re ringing the bell of the Aries Point pretty strongly (the Aries Point is the first degree of Aries, which resonates with the first degree of all the cardinal signs: Aries, Cancer, Libra and Cap). I know many people don’t pay as much attention to the news on the weekends, though with social media interaction it still may enter your awareness. Even so, you might want to pay attention to it over the next few days.

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Democracy Now! — Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016

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Hillary Clinton emerges from her daughter’s apartment following her collapse at the Sept. 11 memorial service Sunday.

This was supposed to be the second week of classes at Long Island University’s campus in Brooklyn, but the administration barred all 400 members of the faculty union from its Brooklyn campus after their contract expired on August 31. The new proposed contract would slash pay for adjunct professors and also pay faculty lower salaries compared to those earned by colleagues at a satellite campus. As part of the lockout, LIU cut off professors’ email accounts and health insurance, and told them they would be replaced. LIU President Kimberly Cline has assured students the lockout would not affect the beginning of the school year. But since the semester began, classes have been taught by replacement teachers, and many are assigned to teach subjects for which they have no experience.

As Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says she’ll release more medical records related to her bout with pneumonia and dehydration, Congressmember Barbara Lee urges Clinton to continue releasing details about her health, but downplays speculation about whether she could be replaced. “I think that we need to move forward. Hopefully, Donald Trump will submit his medical records,” says Lee. “I’m hoping that the American people really understand that the issues that are before us today, as it relates to global peace and security, as it relates to an economy that works for all, as it relates to ensuring that the bigotry and the hatred that is being spoken throughout our country, that we come together and unify and speak up in terms of our American values.”

Chase Strangio, lawyer for imprisoned Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, speaks about the hunger strike Chelsea launched Friday to protest her prison conditions. In a statement, Manning said she would only consume water and medication until she’s provided “minimum standards of dignity, respect, and humanity.” She’s demanding a written promise from the Army that she will receive medically prescribed recommendations for her gender dysphoria. Manning is serving a 35-year sentence in the disciplinary barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. She has been subjected to long stretches of solitary confinement and denied medical treatment related to her gender identity. Strangio is a staff attorney at the ACLU who represents Chelsea Manning in a lawsuit against the Department of Defense.

The NCAA has announced it will move its seven championship events out of North Carolina in response to the state’s decision to pass the anti-LGBT law known as HB 2, or the “bathroom bill.” The law nullifies ordinances protecting LGBT people from discrimination and prohibits transgender people from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity. ACLU staff attorney Chase Strangio says it is encouraging to see sports organizations and corporations responding to the mobilization efforts of the trans community and their allies.

As many as 20 transgender women have been killed so far this year, including 28-year-old Rae’Lynn Thomas, a black transgender woman who was fatally shot by her mother’s ex-boyfriend in Columbus, Ohio, last month. Family members say the shooter, James Allen Byrd, frequently made transphobic comments to Rae’Lynn and sometimes called her “the devil.” There are now reports that another transgender woman may have been murdered over the weekend on the West Side of Chicago. The Chicago police have confirmed a body was found on Sunday, but have not released details.

Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.

Eric has completed the 2016 Midyear Reading, BALANCE. We strongly recommend you get all 12 signs. If you prefer, choose your individual signs here. Photo by European Southern Observatory.

Democracy Now! — Monday, Aug. 29, 2016

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Dilma Rousseff is due to take the stand at her impeachment trial. Image from Democracy Now! website.

Embattled Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is slated to testify today at her impeachment trial—a trial that many are calling a coup by her right-wing political rivals. Rousseff has denounced the proceedings and called for early elections to unite the country. Rousseff’s impeachment stems from accusations she tampered with government accounts to hide a budget deficit. She was suspended earlier this year and has maintained her innocence, accusing her political opponents of spearheading the proceedings to shield themselves from prosecution and undo years of progressive policies.

The Brazilian group Transparency Brazil says 60 percent of Brazilian lawmakers are currently under criminal investigation or have already been convicted of crimes ranging from corruption to election fraud. Rousseff’s opponents now need 54 votes, or two-thirds of the 81-seat Senate, to convict her of violating budget laws. Her impeachment would end 13 years of left-wing Workers’ Party rule in Brazil and bring to power interim President Michel Temer for the remaining two years of Rousseff’s term. Temer is also deeply unpopular and currently under investigation himself, accused of receiving illegal campaign contributions linked to the state oil company Petrobras.

Earlier this month, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders strongly denounced the impeachment of Brazil’s democratically elected president. In a statement posted on his Senate website, Sanders laid out his position as “calling on the United States to take a definitive stand against efforts to remove Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff from office.” He added, “To many Brazilians and observers the controversial impeachment process more closely resembles a coup d’état.” The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald joins the show from Rio. His most recent piece is headlined “Why Did the Saudi Regime and Other Gulf Tyrannies Donate Millions to the Clinton Foundation?”

Questions surrounding Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation continue to grow. On Sunday, Democratic National Committee interim chairperson Donna Brazile defended Clinton’s meetings as secretary of state with Clinton Foundation donors, saying, “When Republicans meet with their donors, with their supporters, their activists, they call it a meeting. When Democrats do that, they call it a conflict.”

Donna Brazile’s comments come in response to an Associated Press investigation revealing that while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, more than half of the private citizens she met with during the reporting period had donated to the Clinton Foundation. The AP investigation comes after a three-year battle to gain access to State Department calendars. The analysis shows that at least 85 of 154 people Hillary Clinton had scheduled phone or in-person meetings with were foundation donors.

We are honored to offer this broadcast as part of our affiliation with the Pacifica Network. Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.

Eric has completed the 2016 Midyear Reading, BALANCE. We strongly recommend you get all 12 signs. If you prefer, choose your individual signs here. Photo by European Southern Observatory.

Understanding Trump’s Use of Language

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Here is Part 2 of George Lakoff’s series on Donald Trump, posted by kind permission of the author. You may read the first article here. — Amy

by George Lakoff

Note: This is a follow-up to my previous piece, ‘Understanding Trump’. Please read that piece first.

The Responsible Reporter’s Problem

Responsible reporters in the media normally transcribe political speeches so that they can accurately report them. But Donald Trump’s discourse style has stumped a number of reporters. Dan Libit, CNBC’s excellent analyst, is one of them. Libit writes:

His unscripted speaking style, with its spasmodic, self-interrupting sentence structure, has increasingly come to overwhelm the human brains and tape recorders attempting to quote him.
Trump is, simply put, a transcriptionist’s worst nightmare: severely unintelligible, and yet, incredibly important to understand.
Given how dramatically recent polls have turned on his controversial public utterances, it is not hyperbolic to say that the very fate of the nation, indeed human civilization, appears destined to come down to one man’s application of the English language — and the public’s comprehension of it. It has turned the rote job of transcribing into a high-stakes calling.
…
Trump’s crimes against clarity are multifarious: He often speaks in long, run-on sentences, with frequent asides. He pauses after subordinate clauses. He frequently quotes people saying things that aren’t actual quotes. And he repeats words and phrases, sometimes with slight variations, in the same sentence.

Some in the media (Washington Post, Salon, Slate, Think Progress, etc.) have called Trump’s speeches “word salad.” Some commentators have even attributed his language use to “early Alzheimer’s,” citing “erratic behavior” and “little regards for social conventions.” I don’t believe it.

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Understanding Trump

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Editor’s note: I have to confess to being rather a big fan of George Lakoff. He’s done some hugely important work on deconstructing language (especially that used by the right wing). This is the first in a two-part series on Donald Trump, published with the author’s kind permission: an exciting and enlightening analysis that in my view cannot be widely enough shared or understood. — Amy

by George Lakoff

There is a lot being written and spoken about Trump by intelligent and articulate commentators whose insights I respect. But as a longtime researcher in cognitive science and linguistics, I bring a perspective from these sciences to an understanding of the Trump phenomenon. This perspective is hardly unknown. More than half a million people have read my books, and Google Scholar reports that scholars writing in scholarly journals have cited my works well over 100,000 times.

Trump speaking in Arizona. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

Yet you will probably not read what I have to say in the New York Times, nor hear it from your favorite political commentators. You will also not hear it from Democratic candidates or party strategists.

There are reasons, and we will discuss them later in this piece. I am writing it because I think it is right and it is needed, even though it comes from the cognitive and brain sciences, not from the normal political sources. I think it is imperative to bring these considerations into public political discourse. But it cannot be done in a 650-word op-ed. My apologies. It is untweetable.

I will begin with an updated version of an earlier piece on who is supporting Trump and why — and why policy details are irrelevant to them. I then move to a section on how Trump uses your brain against you. I finish up discussing how Democratic campaigns could do better, and why they need to do better if we are to avert a Trump presidency.

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Democracy Now! — Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2016

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Matt Taibbi’s intriguing Rolling Stone cover. Image: video still.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump invoked the Cold War as he pledged to wage war against what he described as the “ideology of radical Islam” during a speech in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday. Trump also vowed to institute “extreme vetting” of visa applicants. He also said he’d create a commission on radical Islam, keep Guantánamo Bay open and stop trying people accused of terrorism in civilian courts. The Republican presidential nominee also reversed his earlier threats to defy NATO treaties, and instead said he would work closely with the alliance to defeat ISIS.

For more, Amy Goodman spoke with Matt Taibbi, award-winning journalist with Rolling Stone magazine; Phyllis Bennis, author of “Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror;” and Linda Sarsour, director of the first Muslim online organizing platform, MPower Change, and co-founder of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York.

On Monday, while Trump was speaking, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden held a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Scranton is Biden’s hometown. During her speech, Hillary Clinton slammed Trump’s foreign policy positions on Syria and fighting ISIS. But what about her own positions? Phyllis Bennis and Linda Sarsour comment.

Finally, as the Olympics continue in Rio de Janeiro, Amy Goodman continues her conversation with sports writer Jesse Washington of the site The Undefeated and Anthony Ervin, who just became the oldest-ever individual Olympic swimming gold medalist. Ervin is also the author of the new book, “Chasing Water: Elegy of an Olympian.”

Eric has nearly completed the 2016 Midyear Reading, BALANCE. Get all 12 signs for the bargain price of just $57 while you still can. Image from the 2012 Blue Marble by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Democracy Now! — Friday, Aug. 12, 2016

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What is the relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department? Image: video still

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James Grimaldi of The Wall Street Journal, who has covered the Clinton Foundation for years, looks at the relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department during Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state, and what it would be if she became president. Newly released State Department emails include exchanges between top members of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s top State Department advisers, including Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills. The FBI reportedly wanted to investigate the Clinton Foundation earlier this year, but U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch pushed back.

As Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump claims Barack Obama and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton founded the Islamic State by creating a power vacuum when it withdrew from Iraq, journalist Scott Anderson responds with a history lesson about developments in the Middle East since President Bush invaded the country in 2003. “In fact, it was the Bush administration that negotiated the withdrawal of American troops,” Anderson says, adding that Trump himself called for the U.S. to leave Iraq as early as 2007.

Eric is busy creating the new 2016 Midyear Reading, BALANCE. Covering Jupiter in Libra and other forthcoming astrology, this exciting reading will carry you well into 2017. Get all 12 signs today for just $57. Image from the 2012 Blue Marble by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Democracy Now! — Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2016

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Former CIA chief General Michael Hayden on CNN: “If someone else had said that outside the hall, he’d be in the back of a police wagon now with the Secret Service questioning him.” Image: video still

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is being accused of inciting violence against his rival Hillary Clinton following remarks he made Tuesday during a rally in North Carolina. At the rally, Trump said, “Hillary wants to abolish—essentially, abolish—the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick—if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know.” The comments were widely seen as a call to assassinate Hillary Clinton. The comments sparked widespread outrage from lawmakers, a former CIA chief and the New York Daily News, who wrote: “This isn’t a joke any more. When Trump hinted gun-rights supporters shoot Hillary, he went from offensive to reckless. He must end his campaign.”

David Cay Johnston began covering Donald Trump in the 1980s when he was working as the Atlantic City reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Johnston’s new book, “The Making of Donald Trump,” looks at a side of Trump seldom covered in the press: his ties to the mob, drug traffickers and felons.

In Brazil, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team has pulled off a historic feat, winning the team gold medal by the widest margin of victory since 1960. The five-member gymnastics team is the most diverse the U.S. has ever sent to the Olympics. Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas are African-American. New Jersey-born Lauren Hernandez is of Puerto Rican descent. Madison Kocian and Aly Raisman are white.

But Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas and Lauren Hernandez are far from the first American Olympians of color to make history. Today the show examines a new documentary that looks at the 17 African-American athletes who, along with noted track and fielder Jesse Owens, defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to participate in the 1936 Olympics held in Nazi Germany. Since then, the story of Owens’s four gold medals has dominated the narrative of African-American achievement in the ’36 Games.

In upstate New York, the suspected suicide of 70-year-old prisoner John MacKenzie has drawn attention to how the state is refusing to release aging prisoners who have a low risk of recidivism. MacKenzie reportedly hung himself in his cell at Fishkill Correctional Facility after he was denied parole the previous week. It was his 10th denial of parole since he became eligible in 2000.

Amy Goodman spoke with Kathy Manley, a longtime lawyer and advocate for prisoner rights who represented John MacKenzie in his court case against the New York state Parole Board. And here in New York, Mujahid Farid is lead organizer with the Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP) Campaign. He founded the group after he was released from prison in 2011, after serving 33 years on a 15-to-life sentence.