The Universe Is Full Of Life, NASA Astronaut Says

Cmdr. Leroy Chiao -- NASA
Cmdr. Leroy Chiao -- NASA



The Universe Is Full Of Life, NASA Astronaut Says

A former NASA astronaut and commander aboard the International Space Station who has logged nearly 230 days in space says it's arrogant for humans to assume there aren't aliens sharing the universe with us. Leroy Chiao has completed four missions into space and performed six spacewalks. In an article published in the Christian Science Monitor Friday,…

Hours after Twin Towers fell, Trump bragged his building was now the ‘tallest’ in lower Manhattan





Hours after Twin Towers came down, Trump bragged he now owed the 'tallest' building in lower Manhattan

Buried in a Politico story about Trump and Clinton is this nugget. Only parenthetically in the middle of the 10-minute conversation did Trump turn to a favorite topic-size. "40 Wall Street," he said, referring to his 71-story building blocks away from the now-collapsed twin towers, "actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was…

Some In The Media Got Last Nights Forum Right

New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait described the forum as the “scariest thing” he’s seen during the whole campaign“I had not taken seriously the possibility that Trump could win the presidency until I saw Lauer host … Lauer’s performance was not merely a failure, it was horrifying and shocking. The shock, for me, was the realization that most Americans inhabit a very different news environment than professional journalists. I not only consume a lot of news, since it’s my job, I also tend to focus on elite print news sources. Most voters, and all the more so undecided voters, subsist on a news diet supplied by the likes of Matt Lauer. And the reality transmitted to them from Lauer matches the reality of the polls, which is a world in which Clinton and Trump are equivalently flawed.”
Slate’s Fred Kaplan called the whole thing "a waste of time": "What an ill-focused forum, a senseless not-quite-debate, another wasted hour in an election season that’s been more wasteful and dispiriting than anyone could have imagined possible, until it gets more dispiriting still.” 



2016 Presidential debates


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The first presidential debate: This happens Monday, Sept. 26, at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, New York. The moderator will be NBC News anchor, Lester Holt.
The vice presidential debate: On Tuesday, Oct. 4, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine and Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence will debate at Longwood University, in Farmville, Virginia. The moderator will be Elaine Quijano, an anchor at CBSN and a CBS News correspondent.
Second presidential debate: On Sunday, Oct. 9, the presidential candidates debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Moderators will be Martha Raddatz, chief global affairs correspondent and co-anchor of ABC News' "This Week," and Anderson Cooper, CNN news anchor. The format will be a town hall-style event.
Third presidential debate: On Wednesday, Oct. 19, presidential candidates will debate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. The moderator will be Chris Wallace, anchor for Fox News Sunday.

Streaming: Details haven't yet been announced. During the primary debates, CNN.com and other outlets live-streamed the events.

HFA Response to Trump Saying Clinton Did Not Look Presidential

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Following comments from Donald Trump suggesting that Hillary Clinton does not look presidential, Hillary for America Deputy Communications Director Christina Reynolds has released the following:
"This isn’t the first time Donald Trump has had a problem looking at someone different from himself and actually seeing them. He questioned whether a distinguished judge could do his job because of his Mexican heritage. He looked at a mourning Gold Star mother and he made assumptions about her silence in grief. He looked at an accomplished anchor and suggested she was a “bimbo.” And he looked at a sitting president and said he wasn’t American. So it’s not surprising that Donald Trump doesn’t think Hillary Clinton looks presidential. This cycle, voters know all too well what’s not presidential: Donald Trump and his narrow views and divisive rhetoric."
TRUMP LAUNCHED A SERIES OF RACIALLY TINGED ATTACKS ON A FEDERAL JUDGE, SAYING HE COULD NOT DO HIS JOB BECAUSE HE WAS OF MEXICAN HERITAGE
Trump: “He's A Mexican. We're Building A Wall Between Here And Mexico… He Is Giving Us Very Unfair Rulings, Rulings That People Can't Even Believe.” TRUMP: Do you know that these people went to every attorney general practically in the country that they could and did you know this case was turned down by almost every attorney general from Texas to Florida, to many other states?
TAPPER: Is it not -- when Hillary Clinton says this is a racist attack, and you reject that -- if you're saying he can't do his job because of his race, is that not the definition of racism?
TRUMP: No. I don't think so at all.
TAPPER: No?
TRUMP: No. He's proud of his heritage. I respect him for that.
TAPPER: But you're saying you can't do his job because of that.
TRUMP: Look, he's proud of his heritage, OK? I'm building a wall. Now, I think I'm going to do very well with Hispanics
TAPPER: He’s a legal citizen – TRUMP: Do you know why I’m going to do well with Hispanics? Because I’m going to bring back jobs and they are going to get jobs right now. They are going to get jobs. I think I'm going to do very well with Hispanics. But we are building a wall. He's a Mexican. We're building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings, rulings that people can't even believe. This case should have ended years ago in summary judgment. The best lawyers I have spoken to so many lawyers, they said, this is not a case. This is a case that should have ended. [CNN, The Lead, 6/3/16]
A List of Each Time Trump Attacked Judge Curiel for His Mexican Heritage. Fusion outlined “every time that Trump said that Curiel could not be impartial in the case precisely because of his Mexican heritage.”
TRUMP SUGGESTED GHAZALA KHAN DID NOT SPEAK AT THE CONVENTION BECAUSE SHE WAS NOT ALLOWED TO
Trump Claimed The Mother Of A Fallen Muslim Soldier Did Not Speak At The Democratic Nation Convention Because “Maybe She Wasn’t Allowed To Have Anything To Say, You Tell Me.” “Donald J. Trump belittled the parents of a slain Muslim soldier who had strongly denounced Mr. Trump during the Democratic National Convention, saying that the soldier’s father had delivered the entire speech because his mother was not ‘allowed’ to speak…But, he added, ‘If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say, she probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say, you tell me.’” [New York Times, 7/30/16; This Week, ABC, 7/31/16]
TRUMP SUGGESTED MEGYN KELLY WAS A BIMBO AND RETWEETED A USER WHO CALLED MEGYN KELLY A “BIMBO”
Donald Trump: "I Refuse To Call Megyn Kelly A ‘Bimbo,’ Because That Would Not Be Politically Correct. Instead I Will Only Call Her A Lightweight Reporter!” [@realDonaldTrump, Twitter, 1/27/16]
Donald Trump Retweeted Several People Calling Kelly a “Bimbo:”herehere and here.
TRUMP LED THE BIRTHER CONSPIRACY, AND MAINTAINED HE DIDN'T KNOW WHETHER PRESIDENT OBAMA WAS BORN IN THE US
2015: Trump Said He Didn’t Know Whether President Obama Was Actually Born In The US. “Donald Trump says he’s still not convinced President Obama was born in America, but that he’s not interested in rehashing the issue. ‘I don't know. I really don't know,’ the 2016 Republican presidential candidate told CNN when asked on Thursday. ‘I don't know why he wouldn't release his records.’” [The Hill, 7/9/15]
USA Today: Trump “Was Perhaps The Most Prominent Voice Of The ‘Birther’ Movement.” “Trump has been an outspoken critic of President Obama and was perhaps the most prominent voice of the ‘birther’ movement, which asserted, erroneously, that Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen. On Monday, he took a shot at the newest entrant to the 2016 Republican field, Jeb Bush, tweeting: ‘Do we really need another Bush in the White House — we have had enough of them.’ If there's one thing Trump brings to the 2016 campaign, it's confidence. ‘I'm the most successful person ever to run for the presidency, by far,’ he told The Des Moines Register in a recent interview.” [USA Today, 6/16/15]
TRUMP SAID CLINTON DIDN’T “LOOK PRESIDENTIAL”
In an ABC interview, Trump Said Clinton Didn’t Have a Presidential Look. "I just don't think she has a presidential look. And you need a presidential look. You have to get the job done," Trump said. [ABC, 9/5/16]
Donald Trump Reportedly Said "Does She [Clinton] Look Presidential, Fellas? Give Me A Break." "CLEVELAND -- TRUMP on Clinton: "Does she look presidential, fellas? Give me a break."" [Kevin Cirilli, Twitter, 9/5/16]
Trump: “In Effect, She’s Pledging To Abolish The Law Making Powers Of Congress And Assume The Powers Of An Imperial Leader. She’s Not An Imperial Leader, Is She? I Don’t Think So. She Doesn’t Even Look Presidential To Me.” TRUMP: “Beyond that, she’s pledged to add another executive amnesty in violation of both congressional law and the United States constitution. These actions from Hillary Clinton will trigger a crises greater than almost anything we’ve seen. This will be a constitutional crisis like we haven’t seen in our country. In effect, she’s pledging to abolish the law making powers of congress and assume the powers of an imperial leader. She’s not an imperial leader, is she? I don’t think so. She doesn’t even look Presidential to me. She certainly doesn’t.” [Roast N’ Ride, Des Moines IA, 8/27/16]
Trump: “You See Her Walk Onto The State, She Looks Presidential.’ I Don't Think So. I Think I Look Presidential To Be Honest With You. Honestly, Who Do You Think China Would Be More Concerned In A Negotiation With? Trump Or Hillary?” TRUMP: “These [people] are not like, ‘Oh gee, I think Hillary is so great. She looks so presidential. You see her walk onto the state, she looks presidential.’ I don't think so. I think I look presidential to be honest with you. Honestly, who do you think China would be more concerned in a negotiation with? Trump or Hillary?” [Trump Campaign Rally, Fort Lauderdale FL, 8/10/16]
Trump Said Hillary Clinton Did Not Look Presidential, But He Did.TRUMP: “Now you tell me she looks presidential, folks. I look presidential. You tell me, you tell me she looks Presidential. They are just watching and they're looking and boy they're salivating, they're salivating, they're saying that's what we want, oh, that's what we want. You know what she did and the lies that she told, over and over again, and her single greatest achievement, because everything she's touched has turned bad.” [Trump Campaign Rally, Windham NH, 8/6/16]
Trump: “Bad Performance By Crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading Poorly From The Telepromter! She Doesn't Even Look Presidential!” [@realDonaldTrump, Twitter, 6/2/16]

Clinton, Kaine Release New Book, “Stronger Together”

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On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine released a new book titled Stronger Together. Hillary for America released the following description of the book. Buy the book from AmazonBarnes & NobleBooks-a-MillionWalmart, or your favorite book retailer.
Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine today released their official campaign book, “Stronger Together” today, a 256-page blueprint for America’s future. The book synthesizes more than fifty detailed policy ideas that Clinton and Kaine have advanced throughout the campaign, including specific and practical solutions to address some of the biggest challenges facing American families and our country.
“We have an old-fashioned idea about politics: People who are running to lead the United States of America should tell you what they’re going to do, why they’re going to do it, and how they’re going to get it done,” Clinton and Kaine write in the book’s preface. “That’s what this book is all about. Over the course of this campaign, we have laid out a comprehensive vision for our country: building an economy that works for everyone, not just those that the top; working with our allies and each other to keep our people safe and our country strong; and forging a strong sense of American unity to tackle the problems and seize the opportunities before us. To that end, we have released more than fifty detailed policy ideas, on everything from apprenticeships to the Zika virus.”
The detailed, specific policy solutions covered in the book stand in stark contrast to the Trump campaign’s soundbites and slogans. According to a recent Associated Press story, “Trump's campaign has posted just seven policy proposals on his website, totaling just over 9,000 words. There are 38 on Clinton's ‘issues’ page, ranging from efforts to cure Alzheimer's disease to Wall Street and criminal justice reform, and her campaign boasts that it has now released 65 policy fact sheets, totaling 112,735 words.”
The book, which includes new introductions from each candidate, is broken into four sections focused on:
  • The economy: How we can build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top, by: making the boldest investment in good-paying jobs since World War II; making college debt-free for all Americans; rewriting the rules so companies share profits with employees instead of shipping jobs and profits overseas; ensuring that Wall Street, corporations and the super-wealthy pay their fair share; and putting families first with policies that match how people work and live.
  • Foreign policy: How we can secure American leadership and keep America safe by: defeating ISIS and global terrorism; continuing to strengthen our alliances and partnerships — and stick with them; being firm but wise with our rivals; keeping our military strong and supporting our veterans and military families; shaping the global rules that will keep us safe and make us more prosperous; and staying true to the values that have always made America great.
  • Domestic policy: How we can stand together and build bridges, not walls by providing every child the opportunity to live up to his or her potential; fixing our broken immigration system and keeping families together; reforming our criminal justice system; ending the epidemic of gun violence; breaking down the barriers that stand in the way of equal rights; and protecting our environment and natural resources.
  • Getting results: How we can break through the gridlock to get results by reforming our campaign finance system, protecting voter rights and expanding access to the ballot box.
In her introduction, titled Love and Kindness—And Action, Clinton tells the story of her upbringing, the lessons she learned from her mother’s difficult childhood, and her work as an advocate for children. She writes, “To drive real progress, you have to change both hearts and laws. You need both understanding and action. It’s unusual to hear a candidate for President say we need more love and kindness in our country — but that’s exactly what we need. Each of us stumbles at one time or another. I know I’ve made my share of mistakes and missteps. But life is about how we stand back up — and how we lift each other up, too.”
In his introduction, titled Fighting for Right, Kaine describes his service in Honduras and the inspiration he drew from his father-in law, former Virginia Governor Linwood Holton, who integrated the state’s public schools. He writes, “Lin’s example helped inspire me to work as a civil rights lawyer representing people who had been turned away from housing either because of the color of their skin or because they were an American with a disability … All these years later, I am still striving to do what I did then — to fight for right.”
The book was published by Simon & Schuster and is available in paperback, digital and audio formats.

Does The Media Have Their Heads Stuck Up A Orange Orangutang's Ass



The truth is that you’d have to work incredibly hard to find a politician who has the kind of history of corruption, double-dealing, and fraud that Donald Trump has. The number of stories which could potentially deserve hundreds and hundreds of articles is absolutely staggering. Here’s a partial list:
  • Trump’s casino bankruptcies, which left investors holding the bag while he skedaddled with their money
  • Trump’s habit of refusing to pay contractors who had done work for him, many of whom are struggling small businesses
  • Trump University, which includes not only the people who got scammed and the Florida investigation, but also a similar story from Texas where the investigation into Trump U was quashed.
  • The Trump Institute, another get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed a couple of grifters to use his name to bilk people out of their money
  • The Trump Network, a multi-level marketing venture (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package of multivitamins
  • Trump Model Management, which reportedly had foreign models lie to customs officials and work in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they earned almost nothing for the work they did
  • Trump’s employment of foreign guest workers at his resorts, which involves a claim that he can’t find Americans to do the work
  • Trump’s use of hundreds of undocumented workers from Poland in the 1980s, who were paid a pittance for their illegal work
  • Trump’s history of being charged with housing discrimination
  • Trump’s connections to mafia figures involved in New York construction
  • The time Trump paid the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company
  • The fact that Trump is now being advised by Roger Ailes, who was forced out as Fox News chief when dozens of women came forward to charge him with sexual harassment. According to the allegations, Ailes’s behavior was positively monstrous; as just one indicator, his abusive and predatory actions toward women were so well-known and so loathsome that in 1968 the morally upstanding folks in the Nixon administration refused to allow him to work there despite his key role in getting Nixon elected.
And that last one is happening right now. To repeat, the point is not that these stories have never been covered, because they have. The point is that they get covered briefly, then everyone in the media moves on. If any of these kinds of stories involved Clinton, news organizations would rush to assign multiple reporters to them, those reporters would start asking questions, and we’d learn more about all of them.
That’s important, because we may have reached a point where the frames around the candidates are locked in: Trump is supposedly the crazy/bigoted one, and Clinton is supposedly the corrupt one. Once we decide that those are the appropriate lenses through which the two candidates are to be viewed, it shapes the decisions the media make every day about which stories are important to pursue.
And it means that to a great extent, for all the controversy he has caused and all the unflattering stories in the press about him, Trump is still being let off the hook.













Source Washington Post

Crowd walks out on Trump




When a crowd decides that they would rather beat the traffic than stick around to watch the Republican presidential nominee finish his speech, things are not going well for the campaign.
It appears that even Republicans are getting bored with Trump’s schtick. One wonders if the decision to chain Trump to a teleprompter has sucked the energy out of both the crowd and the nominee.
Trump’s own supporters are bailing on his speeches before he is done.
Donald Trump can talk about the huge crowds that he is drawing, but crowd size doesn’t matter if they leave without hearing everything that the nominee has to say.
The fleeing crowds could be the first early indicator that Republicans themselves are beginning to understand that Donald Trump is a loser who looks like he is heading for defeat in November.

Trump was accused of destroying email evidence in lawsuit 10 years ago



In 2006, when a judge ordered Donald Trump's casino operation to hand over several years' worth of emails, the answer surprised him: The Trump Organization routinely erased emails and had no records from 1996 to 2001. The defendants in a case that Trump brought said this amounted to destruction of evidence, a charge never resolved.
At that time, a Trump IT director testified that until 2001, executives in Trump Tower relied on personal email accounts using dial-up Internet services, despite the fact that Trump had launched a high-speed Internet provider in 1998 and announced he would wire his whole building with it. Another said Trump had no routine process for preserving emails before 2005.
Judge Jeffrey Streitfeld was stunned. “He has a house up in Palm Beach Countylisted for $125 million, but he doesn’t keep emails. That’s a tough one,” he said, according to transcripts obtained by USA TODAY. “If somebody starts to put forth as a fact something that doesn’t make any sense to me and causes me to have a concern about their credibility in the discovery process, that's not a good direction to go, and I am really having a hard time with this.”
Now, a decade later, Trump regularly hammers Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, for using her own email server while she was secretary of State and deleting emails from that server that she deemed to be private. In a war of tweets with Clinton a week ago, Trump wrote, “And where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?” On the CBS News program Face the Nationearlier this month, Trump said, "What she did is a criminal situation. She wasn't supposed to do that with the server and the emails."
A USA TODAY Network analysis found that Trump has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades. In this case, while Trump was not accused of doing anything illegal at the time and he clearly was not a public official, there are, nonetheless, fascinating parallels between the events of 2006 and the current campaign.
The Trump campaign and his lawyers have not responded to requests for comment on this story.
The preservation of email was a central point of contention in the suit filed in 2004 by Trump's publicly traded casino company, called Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, against a former employee, Richard Fields. The gist of the Trump company's suit in aBroward County, Fla., court was that while he was working with Trump, Fields had developed the idea of working with the Seminole Tribe in Florida to build a casino, then told Trump the idea wasn’t going to fly. Fields then left Trump’s employ at the end of the 1990s and struck the same deal with other partners.
Trump sued Fields and the companies he had ended up working with on a Seminole casino, arguing that Trump Hotels should be entitled to all profits the casinos produced, which were expected at the time to be more than $1 billion over 10 years.
The companies Trump sued argued that if it was true that Trump Hotels had been pursuing a similar deal with the tribe, there would be emails and other records documenting their discussions. The judge agreed and ordered Trump Hotels to hand over emails, financial documents, executive meeting calendars and so forth.
In a March 2006 hearing, the Trump company's lawyer, Robert Borrello, said Trump didn’t use email himself and his company didn’t retain emails. “My understanding from speaking to my client is that there are no emails,” Borrello said, according to a transcript obtained by USA TODAY. “They don’t keep emails from the time period from ’96 until within the last couple of years, when the organization instituted retention procedures for keeping emails electronically.”
Streitfeld, who has since retired, told USA TODAY he remembers the case. “I was a bit incredulous that an organization of that significance doesn’t do email,” Streitfeld said. “I had heard a number of things in 24 years on the bench, but that stuck in my mind.”


From USAToday.com