Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
AP’s Today in History for Today in History for March 25th
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 marchers to the state capitol in Montgomery, Ala. 146 people were killed when fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in New York. Aretha Franklin, Elton John born.
Breakfast Tune Elton John & Earl Scruggs – Country Comfort 2001
Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below
Marchers across the US united in plan for pro-gun politicians: ‘Vote them out’
Oliver Laughland, The Guardian
For four minutes and 25 seconds, 18-year-old Emma Gonzalez held a crowd of hundreds of thousands in the nation’s capital in near total silence. With tears rolling down her cheeks, intermittently closing her eyes, the teenager’s stillness told its own story.
In the moments before, she had called out the name of each of her fellow students and teachers gunned down five weeks ago. By the time she broke her silence Gonzalez had been on stage for six minutes and 20 seconds, the same time it took a gunman to claim 17 lives at her school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, in Parkland, Florida.
“No one could comprehend the devastating aftermath or how far this would reach or where this would go,” she said. “For those who still can’t comprehend because they refuse to, I’ll tell you where it went: right into the ground, six feet deep.” …
THE DCCC JUST ENDORSED A DEMOCRAT IN A TEXAS RUNOFF. HER OPPONENT IS THRILLED.
Zaid Jilani, Ryan Grim, The Intercept
RICK TREVIÑO WAS not supposed to make it this far in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Texas’s 23rd Congressional District.
A former public school teacher and a Bernie Sanders presidential delegate, he quit his job last September to campaign full-time, though few thought his race would get off the ground. In a five-candidate race, he pledged not to take any corporate PAC or lobbyist money. In fact, he didn’t take much of any money. He spent just $20,416.
Jay Hulings, a Democratic candidate backed by the Blue Dog Coalition and the Castro brothers — the prominent San Antonio Democrats who have acted as kingmakers in local political races — spent almost $400,000 and ended up with 6,584 votes. Treviño netted 7,642 votes, making it to second place and earning a spot in the May 22 runoff.
The candidate who came in first place, former Air Force intelligence officer Gina Ortiz Jones, spent a similar sum to Hulings and ended up with 18,074 votes.
That means that Treviño spent around $2.64 a vote, a tenth of what Ortiz Jones put in, at $20.75 per vote. (The hapless Hulings was shaken down by consultants at a rate of $59.83 per vote.)
The San Antonio Express-News marveled at the strength of Treviño’s grassroots campaign and the number of votes he was able to pull in based on organizing alone, calling it “one of the great underdog stories of Tuesday’s Texas primary.” …
Protests in California after police kill black man carrying only his phone
Sam Levin and agencies
Hundreds of California protesters shut down freeways and marched in the state capital after police fatally shot an unarmed black father in his grandparents’ backyard, firing 20 rounds into the 22-year-old who was only carrying a cellphone.
Sacramento demonstrators shouting “Shut it down” disrupted rush-hour traffic on Thursday night and blocked thousands of NBA fans from entering the Sacramento Kings arena to protest the killing of Stephon Clark, who was shot in his family’s home on Sunday after police wrongly assumed he was armed with a gun.
The protests erupted as body-camera and helicopter videos of officers firing bullets into Clark went viral, with his death sparking comparisons to other high-profile cases of US police killing unarmed black people, including Tamir Rice, Walter Scott and Oscar Grant. …
GEORGIA DEMOCRATIC GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE VOTED WITH GOP TO MAKE IT HARDER TO HOLD BANK EXECUTIVES ACCOUNTABLE
Lee Fang, Zaid Jilani, The Intercept
THE INCREASINGLY BITTER Democratic primary for Georgia’s closely watched gubernatorial election this year features two former state legislators, Stacey Abrams and Stacey Evans, each of whom has touted her bona fides as the most progressive, most Democratic, and most viable candidate in the race.
While much of the national attention on the race has focused largely on stylistic differences, a little-noticed vote last year serves as yet another policy break on an issue that has sharply divided the Democratic Party in primaries around the country: the role of the banking sector and the subprime lending crisis.
In a vote last year over a bill called HB 192, which changed the liability standard for bank executives, Abrams sided with Georgia Republicans and the banking lobby, while Evans led the opposition.
Georgia has a particularly ugly history with predatory lending. The state was one of the hardest hit areas of the foreclosure crisis, with a record-breaking number of banks that failed in part because they targeted subprime customers with deceptive promises and hidden fees. …
FBI TRACKED AN ACTIVIST INVOLVED WITH BLACK LIVES MATTER AS THEY TRAVELLED ACROSS THE U.S., DOCUMENTS SHOW
George Joseph, Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept
AT THE HEIGHT of 2014’s Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri, FBI agents tracked the movements of an activist flying in from New York, and appear to have surveilled the homes and cars of individuals somehow tied to the protests, according to recently released documents provided to The Intercept.
The documents, which include FBI emails and intelligence reports from November 2014, suggest that federal surveillance of Black Lives Matter protests went far beyond the online intelligence-gathering first reported on by The Intercept in 2015. That intelligence-gathering by the federal government had employed open-source information, such as social media, to profile and keep track of activists. The newly released documents suggest the FBI put resources toward running informants, as well as physical surveillance of antiracist activists.
The heavily redacted records were obtained by two civil rights groups, Color of Change and the Center for Constitutional Rights, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and are being published here for the first time. Internal communications from Department of Homeland Security officials, released through this lawsuit, also revealed the existence of a document described by DHS officials as the “Race Paper,” which was the subject of a filing by the civil rights groups on Monday. …
- Democrats Should Run on Impeachment
TED RALL
- Then They Came for the Globalists
CJ HOPKINS
- The Democrats Can’t Save Us
NICK PEMBERTON
Something to think about over coffee prozac
‘Most interesting man’ judges contest; ‘mountain man’ wins
WILSON RING,Associated Press
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — The man made famous by being “the most interesting man in the world” while pitching Dos Equis beer loaned his expertise with his perfectly groomed facial hair by helping to judge a contest looking for the best beard in Vermont.
Jonathan Goldsmith, whose close-cropped beard was a key part of the image of the cigar-smoking sophisticate, judged the Best Beardies competition Saturday. It was sponsored by the Vermont chapter of the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
This year’s competition raised $45,000 for Make-a-Wish Vermont, topping the nearly $30,000 it brought in last year.
The contest’s 2018 Top Beardie was Chip Fortune, of Colchester, whose mountain man-style beard won over the judges.
The other winners were: Troy Headrick, of Burlington, urban beard; Louie Coli, of Westford, freestyle beard; Dillon Mears, of Plainfield, people’s choice; and Steve Jalbert, of Barre, top fundraiser.
The winners were among this year’s 20 competitors who made it to Saturday’s finals. They each won a plaque, a gift card for beard care products and bragging rights.
Goldsmith said before the competition that a beard reveals the personality of the man who sports it.
“If it’s wild looking, unkempt — that has some statement. If it’s immaculately trimmed, it might mean that he keeps a clean desk,” said Goldsmith, a Vermont resident who now promotes tequila. “If it’s really long, I would say that it’s somebody who is his own man and doesn’t really care about convention.”
Jalbert, 33, has a long beard that covers his bald pate. He said friends, family and admirers of his beard, which he’s been working on for about a year, urged him to enter.
“The biggest thing is you have to have patience. It doesn’t grow fast,” Jalbert said.
There’s a science to ensuring that his beard remains kempt, he said. He washes it several times a week and he uses oils to keep it tame and looking good.
“Most people have a good thing to say about a guy with a good beard,” said Jalbert, who raised $2,070 in contributions.
Also judging those goods beards was Bryan Sturge, last year’s winner. He still has the beard he grew to honor his daughter who died of cancer in 2013.
Organizers have also drawn the Montana Make-a-Wish organization into the best-beard fray.
Montana, which is holding its finals March 29, is betting bison steaks it can find a better beard in Big Sky Country than the Green Mountain State. Vermont is countering that bet with of maple syrup.
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