Tag Archives: cummings

The Female Brain – Louann Brizendine, M.D.

by Myrna Posted on January 21, 2019

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The Female Brain

Louann Brizendine, M.D.

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: August 1, 2006

Publisher: Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


Since Dr. Brizendine wrote  The Female Brain  ten years ago, the response has been overwhelming. This New York Times bestseller has been translated into more than thirty languages, has sold nearly a million copies between editions, and has most recently inspired a romantic comedy starring Whitney Cummings and Sofia Vergara. And its profound scientific understanding of the nature and experience of the female brain continues to guide women as they pass through life stages, to help men better understand the girls and women in their lives, and to illuminate the delicate emotional machinery of a love relationship. Why are women more verbal than men? Why do women remember details of fights that men can’t remember at all? Why do women tend to form deeper bonds with their female friends than men do with their male counterparts? These and other questions have stumped both sexes throughout the ages. Now, pioneering neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, M.D., brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and who they love. While doing research as a medical student at Yale and then as a resident and faculty member at Harvard, Louann Brizendine discovered that almost all of the clinical data in existence on neurology, psychology, and neurobiology focused exclusively on males. In response to the overwhelming need for information on the female mind, Brizendine established the first clinic in the country to study and treat women’s brain function. In The Female Brain , Dr. Brizendine distills all her findings and the latest information from the scientific community in a highly accessible book that educates women about their unique brain/body/behavior. The result: women will come away from this book knowing that they have a lean, mean, communicating machine. Men will develop a serious case of brain envy.

Taken from: 

The Female Brain – Louann Brizendine, M.D.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Female Brain – Louann Brizendine, M.D.

The Photo That May Help Unlock the Trump-Russia Scandal

by KelleyGresswell Posted on May 23, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Monday, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) announced that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has documents indicating that Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn appears to have lied in the process of obtaining top-level security clearance to be President Donald Trump’s national security advisor. The disclosure was made in a letter to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) that urged the committee chairman to issue subpoenas for additional documents related to Flynn’s brief tenure at the White House. “We need to know what the President, the Vice President, White House Counsel, and other top officials knew about General Flynn—and when they knew it,” Cummings wrote. Flynn resigned in mid-February after it became public that he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about his communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kisylak.

Cummings’ letter focused on Flynn’s trip to Russia in December 2015 for a conference and dinner celebrating the 10th anniversary of RT, the Kremlin-backed news channel. Little noticed at the time, Vladimir Putin’s guests that night included Flynn and future Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein—an odd couple who reflected the Russian president’s efforts to court fringe figures on both the right and the left and otherwise meddle in US politics. (Also at the table were Putin’s spokesman, chief of staff, and deputy chief of staff.)

Stein said the soiree was “a great opportunity to lay out some of my foreign policy proposals and get Russian reactions to them.” Flynn, who commanded a $45,000 fee to speak at the event, said he didn’t ask to be seated next to Putin. “I found it a great learning opportunity,” he told the Washington Post.

According to Cummings’ letter, Flynn told security investigators that “I didn’t take any money from Russia” in connection with the event. Yet Cummings wrote that his committee has documents showing how the $45,000 payment was transferred from RT to Flynn’s lobbying firm, as well as an email in which an RT official states, “We will be covering the payment of General Flynn’s fee.”

Flynn downplayed his dinner with Putin during his security check, telling investigators that during his foreign trips he “had only unsubstantial contact with foreign nationals.” Cummings wrote, “It is difficult to understand how General Flynn could have believed that his dinner with Russian President Vladimir Putin was an ‘insubstantial contact.'”

The White House has refused to provide the House oversight committee with any documents related to its vetting, hiring, and firing of Flynn. Flynn has refused to comply with a subpoena from the Senate intelligence committee, citing the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination.

Read more: 

The Photo That May Help Unlock the Trump-Russia Scandal

Posted in FF, GE, Jason, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Photo That May Help Unlock the Trump-Russia Scandal

Michael Flynn Is Pleading the Fifth

by AdeleSprouse Posted on May 22, 2017

Mother Jones

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn will invoke the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination on Monday and refuse to comply with a congressional subpoena, according to the Associated Press. The Senate intelligence committee had asked Flynn for documents in his possession that might relate to the committee’s investigation into Russia’s interference with the 2016 election.

It’s not a surprising move—Flynn was not expected to turn over the documents without immunity, “because he would be waiving some of his constitutional protections by doing so,” according to the AP. Last week, Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the intelligence committee, prematurely said Flynn would not cooperate.

It’s unclear how Republicans will respond to Flynn’s decision. The intelligence committee could ask Congress to vote on whether to hold Flynn in contempt—an option that would force Flynn to face possible fines or jail time if he continued to withhold the documents. “I’m not going to go into what we might or might not do,” Burr said last week when asked what the committee would do next if Flynn refused to cooperate with the investigation. “We’ve got a full basket of things that we’re willing to test.”

Meanwhile, Democrats on the House’s oversight committee are increasing pressure on Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) to subpoena the White House for documents on how the White House vetted Flynn, which the committee asked for two months ago. “The White House is obstructing our investigation on the Oversight Committee, covering up for General Flynn, and refusing to produce a single document that Chairman Chaffetz and I asked for in a bipartisan letter two months ago,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (R-Md.), ranking member of the committee, said in a statement over the weekend. “I have prepared a subpoena that the Chairman could sign today.” Cummings says if Chaffetz doesn’t want to issue the subpoena himself, he should allow committee members to take a vote on it.

Chaffetz isn’t always so shy about using the power to subpoena—he asked for the FBI’s full investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and just last week demanded that the FBI hand over the Comey memos, which detail President Donald Trump’s attempts to curb the federal investigation into Flynn, according to an explosive report last week from the New York Times.

Update, 3:32 p.m. ET: Former Trump campaign associates Paul Manafort and Roger Stone turned in documents Monday for the Senate intelligence probe according to NBC News.

See original – 

Michael Flynn Is Pleading the Fifth

Posted in Bragg, FF, GE, Jason, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Michael Flynn Is Pleading the Fifth

Obama Orders a Review of Russian Meddling in the US Election—But How Much of It Will Be Public?

by MargaritoBarrie Posted on December 9, 2016

Mother Jones

President Barack Obama has added momentum to the call for an investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. On Friday morning, Lisa Monaco, a top White House aide on homeland security, told a group of reporters that the president has directed the national intelligence community to conduct a “full review” of Russian interference in the campaign.

Obama’s decision comes as members of Congress have upped the volume on demands that the Russian hacking of Democratic targets be probed. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House government oversight committee, has urged Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the chairman of that committee, to mount a congressional investigation of Moscow’s intervention in the election. But Chaffetz, who prior to the election vowed to fiercely investigate Hillary Clinton should she win, has not responded to Cummings’ request, according to a Cummings spokeswoman. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York have seconded Cummings’ call for a congressional investigation.

This week, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he will mount a probe of Russian cyber penetrations of US weapons systems and noted that he expects this inquiry will also cover hacking related to the election. “The problem with hacking,” McCain said, “is that if they’re able to disrupt elections, then it’s a national security issue, obviously.” And the Washington Post reported that Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Richard Burr (R-S.C.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have also expressed interest in examining the Russian hacking.

Meanwhile, a group of high-ranking House Democrats sent a letter to President Barack Obama requesting a classified briefing on Russian involvement in the election, and seven Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly pressed the Obama administration to declassify more information about Russia’s intervention in the election. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio have also urged a congressional investigation of Russian interference. “I’m going after Russia in every way you can go after Russia,” Graham told CNN. “I think they’re one of the most destabilizing influences on the world stage, I think they did interfere with our elections, and I want Putin personally to pay a price.”

Cummings has also joined with Rep. Eric Swalwell, (D-Calif.), a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, to introduce legislation to create a bipartisan commission to investigate attempts by the Russian government or persons in Russia to interfere with the election. The commission would consist of 12 members, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, and would be granted subpoena power, the ability to hold public hearings, and the task of producing a public report.

And that’s the key thing: a public report.

With the Obama administration and its intelligence services having already declared that Russia hacked Democratic targets during the election and swiped material that was ultimately released through WikiLeaks, the public certainly deserves to know more about this operation. How did it happen? How has it been investigated by US agencies? How can future cyber interventions be prevented and future US elections secured from foreign influence?

The Obama-ordered probe is due before he leaves office on January 20, and it will likely be the first of all the possible investigations to be completed. (Presumably, the CIA, the FBI, and the National Security Agency were already looking into the topic.) But there’s no telling how much of this review, if any, will be released publicly. A White House spokesman tells Mother Jones, “Hard to say right now, but we’ll certainly intend to make public as much as we can consistent with the protection of classified sources and methods and any active law enforcement investigations.”

In response to the news of the Obama review, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top member of the House Intelligence Committee, declared, “The Administration should work to declassify as much of it as possible, while protecting our sources and methods, and make it available to the public.”

Yet this review may or may not yield a public accounting. And a congressional investigation might or might not include public hearings and a public report. Only the independent bipartisan commission proposed by Cummings and Swalwell would mandate the release of a public report.

While all the recent developments on this front are heartening for citizens who want to know to what degree American democracy was affected by covert Russian actions, there is so far no assurance that Americans will be presented the full truth. For Obama’s review to be released publicly, it will likely have to be scrubbed for classified information—a process that can take time. And if time runs out, the new Trump administration might not be keen on putting out a declassified version of the report. President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly refused to acknowledge Russian involvement with the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and other Democratic targets. Would he want to release a report that contradicted him or that could be seen as tainting his electoral victory?

Talking to reporters, Monaco declined to say what she expected the Obama-ordered review to unearth. “We’ll see what comes out of the report,” she said. “There will be a report to a range of stakeholders, including Congress.”

But the biggest stakeholder of all is the American voter.

UPDATE: On Friday night bombshell news reports noted that the CIA had assessed Russia intervened in the US election to help Trump win; that during the campaign senior congressional Republicans, including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, had resisted a private White House request to be part of a bipartisan effort to call out Russian hacking of Democratic and political targets; and that Moscow had penetrated the computer system of the Republican National Committee but had not publicly disseminated any of the stolen material.

View original post here: 

Obama Orders a Review of Russian Meddling in the US Election—But How Much of It Will Be Public?

Posted in Citizen, Cyber, FF, GE, Jason, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obama Orders a Review of Russian Meddling in the US Election—But How Much of It Will Be Public?

Democrats Intensify Push for Probe of Russian Meddling in 2016 Campaign

by TamiLemmon13 Posted on December 7, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Congressional Democrats are increasing the pressure for an official and public inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. On Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Eric Swalwell, (D-Calif.), a Democrat on the House intelligence committee, and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the senior Democrat on the House government oversight committee, announced they were introducing legislation to create a bipartisan commission to investigate any attempt by the Russian government or persons in Russia to interfere with the recent US election. The commission they propose is modeled on the widely praised 9/11 Commission. It would consist of 12 members, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans. The members would be appointed by the House speaker, the Senate majority leader, and the two Democratic leaders of the House and Senate. This commission would be granted subpoena power, the ability to hold public hearings, and the task of producing a public report.

Cummings previously called on Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the chair of the House government oversight committee, to launch such an investigation via his committee. But Chaffetz, who before the election vowed to probe Hillary Clinton fiercely, has not replied to Cummings’ request, according to a Cummings spokesperson. Nor has Chaffetz responded to another Cummings request for a committee examination of Donald Trump’s potential conflicts of interest. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and incoming Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) have both endorsed Cummings’ proposal for a congressional investigation of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 campaign. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) also have suggested that Congress examine Russian interference in the election.

The Democrats have not yet catapulted the issue of foreign interference fully into the media spotlight. But Swalwell and Cummings’ bill comes as more Democrats are demanding action. Last week, seven Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee publicly pressed the Obama administration to declassify more information about Russia’s intervention in the election. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who led that effort, wrote in a brief letter to the White House, “We believe there is additional information concerning the Russian Government and the US election that should be declassified and released to the public. We are conveying specifics through classified channels.”

On Tuesday, seven high-ranking House Democrats sent a letter to President Barack Obama requesting a classified briefing on Russian involvement in the election, including “Russian entities’ hacking of American political organizations; hacking and strategic release of emails from campaign officials; the WikiLeaks disclosures; fake news stories produced and distributed with the intent to mislead American voters; and any other Russian or Russian-related interference or involvement in our recent election.” The signatories were Cummings, Rep. Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip, Rep. John Conyers, the top Democrat on the judiciary committee, Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the foreign affairs committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the homeland security committee, Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the armed services committee, and Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee. They wrote:

We are deeply concerned by Russian efforts to undermine, interfere with, and even influence the outcome of our recent election. This Russian malfeasance is not confined to us, but extends to our allies, our alliances and to democratic institutions around the world.

The integrity of democracy must never be in question, and we are gravely concerned that Russia may have succeeded in weakening Americans’ trust in our electoral institutions through their cyber activity, which may also include sponsoring disclosures through WikiLeaks and other venues, and the production and distribution of fake news stories.

In September, Schiff joined Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, to release a statement blaming Russia for the hacks of Democratic targets during the campaign:

Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the US election. At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election—we can see no other rationale for the behavior of the Russians. We believe that orders for the Russian intelligence agencies to conduct such actions could come only from very senior levels of the Russian government.

The Obama administration has reached the same conclusion. In October, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security released a joint statement declaring, “The US Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.” A week after the election, the director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Michael Rogers, was asked about the WikiLeaks release of hacked information during the campaign, and he said, “This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.” He added, “This was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily.”

For some reason, Moscow’s effort to influence the presidential election has not been as big a story as, say, Trump’s tweets about the musical Hamilton or Alec Baldwin. That may be because Democrats, busy licking their wounds, have not aggressively sought to keep the issue front and center. (Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have not said much on this subject.) And most Republicans have shown little interest in investigating an assault on American democracy that helped their party win the White House and retain majorities in both houses of Congress. But Cummings has been trying mightily to kick-start a public investigation. (Presumably, the FBI, CIA, and NSA have been looking into Russian hacking related to the election, but their investigations are not designed to yield public information—unless they result in a criminal prosecution.)

With the legislation to establish an independent commission, Cummings and Swalwell are opening another front. In the coming days, they will be signing up co-sponsors and looking for Republican support. Their bill provides a proposal that concerned voters—including upset Democrats and activists—can rally behind. (Were this measure to pass next year, Trump, who has steadfastly refused to blame Moscow for the hacks of the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, would have to decide whether to sign it.)

In his recent letter to Chaffetz, Cummings noted, “Elections are the bedrock of our nation’s democracy. Any attempt by a foreign power to undermine them is a direct attack on our core democratic values, and it should chill every Member of Congress and American—red or blue—to the core.” So far, few Republicans, including Trump, have acknowledged feeling that chill, and there’s certainly more opportunity for the Democrats to turn up the heat.

Taken from:  

Democrats Intensify Push for Probe of Russian Meddling in 2016 Campaign

Posted in Cyber, FF, GE, Jason, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Democrats Intensify Push for Probe of Russian Meddling in 2016 Campaign

Trump Has a Serious Conflict-of-Interest Problem. Maybe Congress Will Investigate Him.

by DarbyUHAGsdltui Posted on November 14, 2016

Mother Jones

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) requested a formal congressional investigation into Donald Trump’s “financial arrangements” Monday, urging a key congressional committee to examine the president-elect’s sprawling business empire for any conflicts of interests.

“I am writing to request that the Oversight Committee immediately begin conducting a review of President-elect Donald Trump’s financial arrangements to ensure that he does not have any actual or perceived conflicts of interest, and that he and his advisors comply with all legal and regulatory ethical requirements when he assumes the presidency,” Cummings wrote in a November 14 letter to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Cummings, the top Democrat on the committee, wrote that the United States has “never had a president like Mr. Trump in terms of his vast financial entanglements and his widespread business interests around the globe.” Given Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns, Cummings added, it’s impossible to know how the real estate mogul’s many businesses will affect his future decision-making.

A spokeswoman for Chaffetz did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks also did not respond to a request for comment.

Michael Cohen, an attorney for Trump, told CNN last week that three of Trump’s children—Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric—would run the Trump Organization’s interests through what he called a “blind trust.” The next day it was announced that all three would also serve on Trump’s presidential transition committee, further muddying the ethical waters. On Sunday, Trump adviser and potential cabinet appointee Rudy Giuliani said “there would have to be a wall” between Trump’s children and their father on business and government matters, according to the Associated Press.

It’s no secret that Trump’s conflicts of interest are extensive. As Russ Choma reported in Mother Jones this summer, Trump has at least $364 million in loans through Deutsche Bank, an organization that is currently negotiating with the US Department of Justice regarding a $4 billion to $5 billion settlement for “misselling of mortgage-backed securities in the run up to the financial crisis of 2008,” according to CNBC. The New York Times reported in August that Trump has a “maze” of real estate holdings, and the companies he owns “have at least $650 million in debt,” twice the amount reported in public filings released at the start of his presidential campaign. Two companies holding some of that debt, the Times reports, are the Bank of China and Goldman Sachs.

Chaffetz’s committee has been one of the leading Republican vehicles for attacking Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state, and Chaffetz has said his committee’s investigation of Clinton and her former staff would not stop after the election. In his letter, Cummings pressed Chaffetz to use his committee to dig into Trump’s dealings.

“For the past six years, you and other Republicans in Congress have launched numerous investigations against President Obama and Secretary Clinton, and some of these have been used for partisan political purposes,” Cummings wrote. “Now that Republicans control the White House and Congress, it is incumbent on you and other Republicans to conduct robust oversight over Mr. Trump—not for partisan reasons, but to ensure that our government operates effectively and efficiently and combats even the perception of corruption or abuse.”

Read the whole letter here:

DV.load(“https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3219258-2016-11-14-EEC-to-JC-003.js”,
width: 630,
height: 600,
sidebar: false,
text: false,
container: “#DV-viewer-3219258-2016-11-14-EEC-to-JC-003”
);

2016 11 14 EEC to JC (003) (PDF)

2016 11 14 EEC to JC (003) (Text)

Original post: 

Trump Has a Serious Conflict-of-Interest Problem. Maybe Congress Will Investigate Him.

Posted in FF, GE, Jason, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump Has a Serious Conflict-of-Interest Problem. Maybe Congress Will Investigate Him.

Why Won’t Republicans Release the Benghazi Committee’s Interview with Sidney Blumenthal?

by RosettaPqm Posted on October 22, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The first session of Hillary Clinton’s testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi was mostly a snoozer Thursday morning, featuring much rehashing of old, minor points about whether Clinton, as secretary of state, received requests for further security at the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, before it was attacked on September 11, 2012. But just before the panel broke for lunch, a tussle erupted between the committee’s ranking member, Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), and chairman, Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.). The subject: Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton associate who regularly emailed Clinton to pass along advice and intel he had picked up on the situation in Libya. Blumenthal, who served as a senior adviser to Bill Clinton during his presidency, has become an obsession of Republicans eager to drag Clinton through the mud. His name came up more than 40 times during the first half of the hearing.

Gowdy (R-S.C.), who had been peppering Clinton with questions about her correspondence with Blumenthal, was poised to adjourn the hearing for lunch when Cummings objected. He made a seemingly simple request: If Gowdy considered Blumenthal’s messages to Clinton so crucial to the investigation at hand, why not release the transcript of the panel’s behind-closed-doors interview with Blumenthal in June? Blumenthal’s own lawyer has requested that the full transcript be released for public consumption.

Cummings, his voice growing in anger, demanded that the committee vote on unsealing the transcript. But Gowdy disputed whether Cummings had the power to call for such a vote, before abruptly recessing the session. When the committee reconvened 45 minutes later, Gowdy had apparently learned he’d been mistaken. He quietly called for a vote on whether Blumenthal’s transcript should become public. The seven Republicans on the committee quickly voted against the measure. (Kansas Rep. Tom Pompeo, momentarily confused, voted yes before switching his to a no vote), overruling the five Democrats who voted in favor. With that matter resolved, Gowdy returned to his questioning of Clinton and turned once again to the subject of…Blumenthal.

Source:  

Why Won’t Republicans Release the Benghazi Committee’s Interview with Sidney Blumenthal?

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Won’t Republicans Release the Benghazi Committee’s Interview with Sidney Blumenthal?

"The Good Wife" Is Back. We Have to Talk About It Right Now. Stop What You Are Doing.

by BerthaDigiovann Posted on October 5, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The best show on network television finally returned last night, but is this Good Wife still the Good Wife we all know and love? Kalinda and Finn have joined Will in that great big green room in the sky and last night’s episode felt…different.

Let’s talk about it.

Alicia’s life sucks at the moment. She has no law firm. She has no male love interest. She has no friends. And where are her dumb kids anyway? She’s a pariah! “I’m a pariah,” she does not say as the episode begins, but she might as well have. She’s whiling away her days in Shooter McGavin’s bond court, fighting for pick-up cases with beleaguered unclean lawyers who probably went to a joke Ivy like Cornell unlike Alicia who went to Georgetown, which never pretended to be an Ivy in the first place. Poor good wife.

Governor Bad Husband promised his good wife last year that he wouldn’t run for president if she didn’t want him to and she didn’t want him to so he isn’t running for president. OK? Fine, Good. Whatever. But then the good wife changes her mind, because Peter running for president is going to be the plot line for this season—paralleling the plot line in America these days—so she needed to get with it. Peter’s chief of staff, the Russian computer hacker from GoldenEye, is very pleased with this development and he celebrates by wooing Margo Martindale, a top-flight campaign consultant, the meth-making matriarch from the second season of Justified.

But Margo Martindale doesn’t want to be just another campaign strategist. She wants to be the campaign manager and for reasons not entirely clear, Peter goes along with this and fires Alan Cummings. The good wife’s bad husband is also a bad boss.

Meanwhile the attractive young man who used to be Alicia’s rival before becoming her law partner before becoming superfluous to the main plot of the show is unhappy at the big fancy law firm that bears his name. Cary’s few scenes in this episode are dedicated to him trying to be popular with the first year associates who think he’s a stodgy old fart because he spends all of his time with his stodgy old fart partners in their stodgy old fart ivory tower.

Speaking of Cary’s aged old partners: Diane and the lawyer who makes the divorces happen are facing off against Alicia in probate court over some meaningless bullshit about a painting that is worth a lot of money. Who will get the deceased’s paining? No one cares. But this does provide a nice forum for the show to do what it does best: wink at the audience and acknowledge that the show isn’t really about the cases. The Good Wife, more than any other legal drama, doesn’t want you to care about the cases. The cases are just a thing for the characters to do. The marathon of random specialists testifying about post-it notes in this probate case are a great example of that. Not even the judge cares about what the post-it scientists have to say.

Anyway, Alicia covers for one of the bond court lawyers—because bond court lawyers stick together— and then the bond court lawyer covers for Alicia in the probate hearing for which she’s totally unprepared. Diane and Divorce Attorney are going to school her so hard but then—shocker!—the bond court lawyer is good at law and wins the case. Bond court lawyer is apparently supposed to be Alicia’s new friend.

Then Alicia hires Alan Cummings to be her chief of staff because the good wife is also a good friend. Alan Cummings tells Margo Martindale that he is going to destroy her.

Oh also Michael J Fox wants Alicia to work with him. And I think she sort of said yes at the end. (Or did she?) It wasn’t entirely clear.

What is this show about now? It used to be about Alicia finding the courage, through crosses and losses, to become the person she wanted to be. Is it still about that? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

See the article here:  

"The Good Wife" Is Back. We Have to Talk About It Right Now. Stop What You Are Doing.

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on "The Good Wife" Is Back. We Have to Talk About It Right Now. Stop What You Are Doing.

Elizabeth Warren Demands An Investigation Of Mortgage Companies

by HildegaVigil Posted on October 21, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on the Government Accountability Office to investigate non-bank companies that service Americans’ mortgages, noting in a letter co-signed by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) that an increasing number of lawsuits has been filed in recent years against these firms—which are not regulated as strictly as banks.

Mortgage servicers, whether they are owned by banks or not, handle mortgages after they’ve been sold to a customer. That means they take care of administrative business including collecting mortgage payments and dealing with delinquent borrowers. What Warren and Cummings are worried about is that the share of non-banks servicing mortgages has grown astronomically—300 percent between 2011 and 2013—and it appears that the increased workload has led to shoddier service.

The rise of the industry, which typically services lower-income borrowers, “has been accompanied by consumer complaints, lawsuits, and other regulatory actions as the servicers’ workload outstrips their processing capacity,” according to a recent report by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Last December, for instance, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—the agency Warren helped create—entered a $2 billion settlement with the nation’s largest non-bank servicer over mortgage mismanagement. Financial industry watchdogs and consumer advocates have charged that the non-bank home loan servicing companies are often unwilling to work with troubled borrowers to modify mortgages and prevent foreclosures.

In their letter, Warren and Cummings also urge the Government Accountability Office to investigate how consumers might be harmed in the event that a large non-bank servicer collapses during a economic downturn. Non-bank mortgage companies are not subject to the regulations governing banks that perform the same functions, such as the requirement that they hold onto a certain amount of emergency funds in case of a financial collapse.

View article:  

Elizabeth Warren Demands An Investigation Of Mortgage Companies

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Elizabeth Warren Demands An Investigation Of Mortgage Companies