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San Francisco officials take down 'Appeal to Heaven' flag from in front of City Hall

The "Appeal to Heaven" flag had flown in the city's Civic Center since 1964.

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Iowa political leaders react to Trump verdict in hush-money trial

Republicans deplorable as was expected:

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Republican​



“America saw this trial for what it was, a sham. For years, Democrats like Alvin Bragg have been trying to put President Trump in jail with complete disregard for our democracy and the will of the American people. The only verdict that matters is the one at the ballot box in November where the American people will elect President Trump again.”


Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, Republican​


“Today is a dark day in American history. Case in point why politics should have absolutely no place in prosecutions. The American people, not a court, should decide who the next leader of the free world will be. President (Trump) deserves better.”

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird speaks May 13 in New York City against the prosecution of former President Donald Trump. (Associated Press) Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird speaks May 13 in New York City against the prosecution of former President Donald Trump. (Associated Press)

U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, Republican​


“This is a disgrace and a total sham. This has been a political prosecution. from the very beginning orchestrated by Biden. President Trump will fight this. and we must all fight alongside him to right this wrong & re-elect him as President. The future of our country depends on it.”


Jeff Kaufmann, Iowa GOP chairman​


Kaufmann said the trial was orchestrated by Democrats “terrified of President Trump returning to the White House.”


“The Democrat Party is lost as we know it, to the point of no return. This decision is a disgrace to the rule of law. It's disgusting they are mobilizing the federal government for political gain. With sentencing scheduled right before the GOP Convention in Milwaukee, the corruption and malice is as prevalent as ever here. Shameful.”


U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, Republican​


“This was never about justice. It was always about politics,” Ernst posted on her official office account. “Americans see through Democrats’ weaponization of our justice system and this sham trial as a desperate attempt to persecute Trump and block his re-election.”


On her personal account on X, formerly Twitter: “These unprecedented politicized courtroom tactics prove Democrats are running scared ahead of this November. Iowans are SICK of the political persecution of Donald J. Trump.”


U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican​


The jury’s unanimous verdict is “another example of leftist activist prosecutors weaponizing the judicial system to carry out their political vendettas. I expect the case to be overturned on appeal.”


U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, Republican​


“Our justice system should not be used to target political opponents. The American people decide our elections.”


Iowa Auditor Rob Sand, Democrat​


“In seven years as an (Iowa) Assistant Attorney General, I found juries in both liberal and conservative counties took the work seriously and tried to do right. Jurors deserve our thanks and respect.”


Iowa Democratic Party​


The Iowa Democratic Party shared a statement from Michael Tyler from the Biden-Harris campaign, declaring the ruling as a confirmation that “no one is above the law.”


“Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain. But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”


The statement said Trump poses a threat to U.S. democracy, running “an increasingly unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution.”


“A second Trump term means chaos, ripping away Americans’ freedoms and fomenting political violence — and the American people will reject it this November.”


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Looks Like That "Apprentice" NDA Has Expired...

Look for more books and more details further showing what scum this "man" is...



When will Jim Jordan wrestle with himself?

In a nuanced, wrenching story published over the weekend, two of my Washington Post colleagues, Sally Jenkins and David Maraniss, dedicated thousands of words to trying to understand Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — including investigating the answer to a question that has trailed the lawmaker for years. Did Jordan know about the sexual abuse suffered by dozens of Ohio State wrestlers, at the hands of a university physician, back while he was an assistant coach there?


Eleven victims say in the story that Jordan must have known about the abuse. Eight of those said they remembered complaining about the molestation either directly to Jordan or in his range of hearing. The wrestlers described an environment in which it would have been almost impossible not to know. Richard Strauss’s assaults — which included fondling and rape, by Ohio State’s accounting were apparently an open secret to the point that even female athletes who competed in different sports were aware of them. (Strauss died in 2005.)
Jordan, who remains a MAGA all-star, even if he failed to win the House speaker’s gavel last week, told my Post colleagues what he has told others since 2018, when his awareness of the decades-old abuse was first called into question. He said he didn’t know anything. He said if he had, he would have “done something.”



In today’s political context, this story, about a doctor who did terrible things, has become a story about whether a responsible man — the type of person who deserves credibility as a public servant and self-styled watchdog — could and should have stopped him.

But there’s another story here, too: about whether a responsible man should try to make sense of the terrible things he did not stop. It’s a story about something Jim Jordan, for all his apparent grit and determination, seems too scared to wrestle with.
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Some 30 and 40 years ago, when the molestations of the Ohio State athletes occurred, many people were naive in matters of sexual abuse — especially if the victims were strapping young men whose very strapping-ness defied expectations of victimhood. This seems to have been true on the Ohio State team at the time. In the Post story, former wrestlers describe how Strauss’s notorious groping was acknowledged jokingly as often as seriously. Teammates called him “Dr. Jelly Paws” — which, though not exactly a term of endearment, also sounds no more harmful than a character in a Yogi Bear cartoon. One former athlete describes an excruciating physical exam in which Strauss unnecessarily handled his penis for several minutes. A traumatizing ordeal, but when he finally emerged, his teammates were whistling at him and teasing, “Doc found his favorite new guy!”



Another described going in for treatment for a bloody nose, only to be instructed to first drop his pants and allow the doctor to fondle his genitals. When that athlete told his teammates about it, according to the story, “some of the wrestlers erupted in laughter, but Jordan just put his hands up and said, ‘I’ve got nothing to do with that.’”
Put aside Jordan for a moment. Were those laughing, whistling teammates callous, reprehensible individuals? Of course not. One imagines that they were coping as best they could in a bewildering situation in which they might be physically stronger, but their abuser was armed with a medical degree and a university appointment.
I am willing to be exceedingly charitable to the Jim Jordan of the 1980s and 1990s, who began his employ as a graduate student who was only a few years older than the young men in his charge. Is it possible that he, too, was deeply naive — to the point that he failed to comprehend what Dunyasha Yetts meant when, according to Yetts, he angrily told Jordan that he’d visited the doctor for a wounded thumb and was made to take off his pants?



Another former wrestler recalls Jordan reacting to news of the abuse at the time by saying, “If he’d have touched me like that, I’d have broke his neck like a piece of balsa wood.” Is it possible that Jordan was just a typical macho wrestling coach — one who erroneously but commonly assumed that sexual assault was something that strong people did to weak people? Something that should be solved with a half nelson rather than a formal complaint?
Sharp. Witty. Thoughtful. Sign up for the Style Memo newsletter.
Sure. Anything is possible. Including the possibility that Jordan didn’t understand what was happening to the men he coached, trained, supervised and cared for. For what it’s worth, many of the wrestlers don’t seem to blame Jordan for anything that happened, or anything he didn’t do. “None of the athletes interviewed,” Jenkins and Maraniss write, “suggest that Jordan had the power to intervene against Strauss.”
To me, the particulars of what Jordan might have known then are, by now, impossible to resolve. Decades have passed. He’s sticking to his word, and he has not been named in any lawsuits. The question that seems more valuable is not: What did Jordan know then? But rather: What does Jim Jordan understand now? How does he now view what happened to the athletes under his care? How does he now make sense of the culture he was immersed in — one in which students were forced to either laugh off or ignore a grievous violation of trust?



None of us have control over the times we’re born into or the awful prevailing notions that rule the day. But from our leaders, what you hope for is a thorough reckoning over the part they played and how they’d do it differently now. If Jim Jordan truly didn’t know what was going on, does he now wonder why that might have been the case? Does he ask himself whether, perhaps, he was so uncomfortable with the idea of same-sex molestation that he put blinders on? Has he done the math on how many more men might have been victimized while he remained in protective ignorance? Does he feel conflicted now, in hindsight, about that alleged “I’d have broke his neck like a piece of balsa wood” quote and everything it implied about whether abuse victims should simply be strong enough to halt their own abuse?
Given the benefit of nearly 30 years of hindsight, I would hope he’d want to take that one back. One would hope he would say something like: “If he’d have touched me like that, I might have frozen, or tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, or — God, I don’t know what I would have done. Are you okay?”
But, at least according to the Post story, it doesn’t seem as though Jordan has grasped that better answer. He appears reflexively uninterested in grappling with his own passive role in that terrible story. Asked whether he believed anything had happened to the wrestlers under his care, he replied: “I mean, you’d have to ask them. I don’t know any of it.”



When terrible things come to light, accountability is important. But accountability doesn’t necessarily mean assigning blame to bystanders. It can also mean figuring out how to coexist with those terrible things — to figure out where we were standing in relation to them, and where we are standing now. Do we learn from them, or do we deny them? Do we examine them, or do we bury?
Do we wrestle, or do we run?
Jim Jordan has made a career of going on offense. A bulldog of a man, in sport and in politics. As I wrote this column, the strategy failed him on one front: After losing multiple floor votes, his Republican colleagues decided that he should not remain their nominee for speaker.
But as for the other area, the dark legacy of Ohio State and the more than 170 men who were abused there — it’s not too late for him to show up for his old kids. To go to the mat with their demons. Or at least yell some encouraging words from the sidelines that everyone can hear.

Biden Endorses Israeli Proposal for a Cease-Fire in Gaza

Declaring that Hamas was no longer capable of carrying out a major terrorist attack on Israel, President Biden said on Friday it was time for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and endorsed a new plan he said Israel had offered to win the release of hostages and end the fighting.

“It’s time for this war to end, for the day after to begin,” Mr. Biden said, speaking from the State Dining Room at the White House. He also gave a stark description of Hamas’s diminished capabilities after seven months of Israeli attacks: “At this point, Hamas is no longer capable of carrying out another Oct. 7.”

Mr. Biden described the plan as a “comprehensive new proposal” that amounted to a road map to an “enduring cease-fire.” But the Israeli government has not talked about the plan in public, and it was not immediately clear how it differed from past proposals — or whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has declared that Israel’s objective is the complete destruction of Hamas, would describe it in similar terms.
“This is truly a decisive moment,” Mr. Biden said. “Hamas says it wants a cease-fire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it.”
At several moments in the past few months, Mr. Netanyahu has directly contradicted Mr. Biden. And so far Hamas has never accepted a proposal, declaring that fighting must end first, before major hostage releases or any agreement with Israel.
Mr. Biden has faced growing pressure over how long he was willing to support Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and particularly its most recent attacks in Rafah. The bloodshed in Gaza, with more than 36,000 dead, has led to eruptions on college campuses and on the streets of American cities, and alienated many of Mr. Bidens own supporters.
Israel’s national security adviser said earlier this week that he expected the war to continue through at least the end of the year.
Global pressure to scale down the military operation only increased after the International Court of Justice, an arm of the United Nations, last week ruled that Israel must halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The court, however, had no means of enforcing the order.
Friday’s remarks were Mr. Biden’s first public comments about the war since an Israeli strike and subsequent fire on Sunday killed 45 people, including children, and wounded 249 in a encampment for the displaced, according to Gazan health officials. A visual analysis by The New York Times found that Israel used U.S.-made bombs in the strike, forcing the White House to face difficult questions over American responsibility for rising death toll.
In describing the Israeli proposal, Mr. Biden said it would be broken into three phases, starting with a six-week cease-fire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas of Gaza and an exchange of elderly and women hostages held by Hamas for the release of hundreds of Palestinian detainees. But Mr. Biden also said there were still details that still needed to be negotiated to move on to the next phase.
Israeli forces would then withdraw from Gaza in exchange for the release of all remaining living hostages, including male soldiers.
“As long as Hamas lives up to its commitments, a temporary cease-fire will become in the words of the Israeli proposal, a cessation of hostilities permanently,” Mr. Biden said.

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  • Poll
May 30, 2024

Was Trump's convictions a dark day or a bright day for America?

  • I lean Right - Dark Day

  • I lean Right - Bright Day

  • I lean Left - Dark Day

  • I lean Left - Bright Day

  • I claim to be in "the middle" - Dark Day

  • I claim to be in "the middle" - Bright Day


Results are only viewable after voting.

Was it a bad day or a good day for America? Leaving votes public for accountability.

is it possible for a person to be considered a republican by other republicans if

he/she completely rejects the premise (and implementation of) roe v wade overruling
and conversely
is it possible to be considered a democrat by other democrats if he/she avers that the answer to man-woman debate is binary?

Question isn't where an individual with said views thinks they belong, it's whether their tribe accepts or rejects them. In more tolerant times, the answer i believe would have been yes (accepted). i'm not sure today.

What Happens Next?

"Trump is required to report to the New York City Department of Probation for an interview about his background, his mental health and the circumstances of his case that will be used to help compile a presentencing report."

Mental health?

This could get interesting.

Iowa estate recovery and caretakers

Was helping a friend research this. Thought perhaps someone would have knowledge here. (realize this is moreso an ask an attorney question)

1. Elderly person went to nursing home, exhausted assets.
2. Caretaker (child of said elderly person) lived with elderly in elderly person's house for years, taking care of them.
3. Caretaker, per their understanding -- through a caretaker exemption that would disallow the house to be used by state to cover expenses -- should be able to continue to live in house without state trying to recover costs.
(document https://hhs.iowa.gov/media/581/download?inline=#:~:text=Unlike many neighboring states, Iowa,secure a medical assistance debt.)
4. Lien is now placed on home, document linked above states that liens are not placed on homes to recover medical expenses. (per 2023)

  • Poll
POLL: Speaking of Auto Insurance

Who is your insurance carrier?

  • Allstate

    Votes: 5 5.9%
  • State Farm

    Votes: 17 20.0%
  • USAA

    Votes: 6 7.1%
  • Progressive

    Votes: 13 15.3%
  • GEICO

    Votes: 6 7.1%
  • Liberty Mutual

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Farmers Insurance

    Votes: 2 2.4%
  • Nationwide

    Votes: 7 8.2%
  • Travelers Insurance

    Votes: 3 3.5%
  • Other

    Votes: 26 30.6%

Who do you have? Do you like them? Have you shopped around? I'm with USAA and my next 6 month premium is $1,192. I have a Progressive quote (mirrored coverage) is $771.
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ESPN NBA Draft Analyst: Payton Sandfort has a Ready-Made Skill for the NBA. Invited to May 12-19 NBA Draft Combine

Jonathan Givony is a Draft Analyst at ESPN. He is the founder and co-owner of http://DraftExpress.com, a private scouting and analytics service utilized by NBA, NCAA and International teams.

But what does he know? ;)


Check this out & watch:

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Times are ‘a Changing. Finally, pay for play is here.

This should help Iowa basketball, and maybe football, immensely.

Should Alito Recuse Himself from 1/6 and 2020 Election Cases?

NYT: Upside-Down Flag Seen Outside Alito’s Home in Jan. 2021, a Symbol Used by Election Deniers​

May 17, 2024
hl7-Alito-flag.jpg

In other Supreme Court news, The New York Times is reporting an upside-down U.S. flag, which is a symbol used by Trump supporters and election deniers, hung outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in January 2021, just days before Biden’s inauguration. The revelations are expected to reignite calls for Alito to recuse himself from cases related to the January 6 insurrection, including Trump’s attempt to claim immunity from election subversion charges.

President Joe Biden is said to be finalizing plans for migrant limits as part of a US-Mexico border clampdown

The White House is finalizing plans for a U.S.-Mexico border clampdown that would shut off asylum requests and automatically deny entrance to migrants once the number of people encountered by American border officials exceeded a new daily threshold, with President Joe Biden expected to sign an executive order as early as Tuesday, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The president has been weighing additional executive action since the collapse of a bipartisan border bill earlier this year. The number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border has declined for months, partly because of a stepped-up effort by Mexico. Still, immigration remains a top concern heading into the U.S. presidential election in November and Republicans are eager to hammer Biden on the issue.

The Democratic administration’s effort would aim to head off any potential spike in crossings that could occur later in the year, as the fall election draws closer, when the weather cools and numbers tend to rise, two of the people. They were not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing discussions and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The move would allow Biden, whose administration has taken smaller steps in recent weeks to discourage migration and speed up asylum processing, to say he has done all he can do to control the border numbers without help from Congress.

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