New polling by Quinnipiac University shows former Vice President Joe Biden still holds a commanding 19-point lead among Democratic presidential contenders.
Biden garnered 34 percent support from respondents with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) a distant second at 15 percent.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) comes in third with 12 percent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) moved down to 4th position with 11 percent, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg is in single digits with 6 percent.
The polling also showed Biden gets a thumbs-up from 53 percent of black Democrats, with 8 percent for Sanders, 7 percent for Harris and 4 percent for Warren.
(stock photo of two dads and son via Depositphotos)
After two dads in Russia took one of their adopted children to a Moscow hospital for treatment, doctors notified Russian authorities and the children have now been taken from the couple.
Gay Star News reports that the men took the child to the emergency room on June 19 for a suspected case of appendicitis.
But when hospital staff realized the boy had two dads, they were reported to the Investigative Committee of Russia.
Adoption by gay couples isn’t allowed in Russia. One of the men legally adopted the two boys, now aged 12 and 14, back in 2010 as a single parent.
The committee ruled the adoption violated the country’s 2013 ‘gay propaganda’ law which prohibits any positive portrayal of LGBTQ people in the media. The government says the law is necessary to protect children from ‘unconventional’ identities.
“A man has been raising two young adopted boys since 2010 in living conditions with another man,” read the committee’s report. “At the same time, he promotes unconventional relations, forming distorted ideas about family values in children, harming their health, moral, and spiritual development.”
In making its determination, the committee ordered authorities to remove the children from their home of nine years.
After multiple attempts to search the family’s home, investigators broke down the doors of the men’s apartment. One of the fathers was interrogated for more than three hours.
The committee also sued the social workers who approved the adoption charging them with negligence.
The social workers were accused of not taking “appropriate measures to protect minors from information harmful to their health and development.”
But, according to the men’s lawyers, the adoption agency had made regular visits over the years to check on the boys’ welfare. The reports filed following visits indicated the children were well and under excellent care.
Gay Star News quotes an LGBTQ activist named Polina who shared that a psychologist who assessed the family found no evidence of abuse, reporting “a healthy and close emotional connection between parents and children.”
Polina notes that this is the first time the ‘gay propaganda’ law has been used to remove children from a family home.
Billboard announced Monday that “Old Town Road” — the country/rap smash hit single by openly gay 20-year-old Lil Nas X — has officially broken the record for most week’s at number one – 17 – on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
In doing so, “Old Town Road” bumps the two songs that had previously held the record: Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day,” from 1995, and “Despacito,” the Latin-pop juggernaut by Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber.
The rapper kept his momentum going the past several weeks by releasing new remixes of the song. The remixes helped garner streams online as Billboard counts streams, along with downloads and radio play, in tabulating the singles chart.
Last week, Lil Nas X dropped a “Seoul Town Road” version featuring popular K-pop group, BTS.
During his run, he’s fended off challenges for the top spot from music stars like Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Shawn Mendes and Ed Sheeran.
The rapper made a social media splash when he came out via Twitter during Pride Month in June.
The music video for the song has garnered over 239 million views.
Joe Jervis at JoeMyGod points up this super-creative cover of the song by Walk off the Earth. This YouTube video alone has over 6 million views.
At a signing ceremony to permanently authorize the 9/11 victims compensation fund, Donald Trump once again claimed he somehow ‘helped’ at the World Trade Center site in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
“I was down there also. I don’t consider myself a first responder, but I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
The Washington Post has already debunked this myth: “While Trump did visit the site a couple of days after the attack and did some interviews, there is no evidence that he got down to help clear rubble, which people would certainly have remembered.”
Trump was not “down there” during 9/11 with first responders, and the only role he played was bragging on TV that he now had the biggest building in NY once the towers fell. Oh and lying about how American Muslims reacted to 9/11. https://t.co/5ZMyudJG4l
This has long been proven false. What’s more, everything we know about Trump is that his cowardliness would prevent him going toward danger to help anyone. Trump DID, however, take money from the 9/11 business fund and claimed he saw Muslims celebrating the attacks.
“I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder,” Trump told 9/11 responders at WH today.
Fact check: Trump was near Ground Zero in days after 9/11, claiming he had “100s of men” working to clear rubble, a claim 9/11 responders called dubious
I was in NYC on 9/11. He was calling in to TV shows, bragging that now he had the tallest building in downtown Manhattan. I’ll never forget it. https://t.co/AEwQyftRYW
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro is making good on campaign promises to allow increased deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest, according to the New York Times.
While campaigning for president last year, Mr. Bolsonaro declared that Brazil’s vast protected lands were an obstacle to economic growth and promised to open them up to commercial exploitation.
Seven months into his term, that is already happening.
Brazil’s part of the Amazon has lost more than 1,330 square miles of forest cover since Mr. Bolsonaro took office in January, a 39 percent increase over the same period last year, according to the government agency that tracks deforestation.
In June alone, when the cooler, drier season began and cutting trees became easier, the deforestation rate rose drastically, with roughly 80 percent more forest cover lost than in June of last year.
The deforestation of the Amazon is spiking as Mr. Bolsonaro’s government pulls back on enforcement measures like fines, warnings and the seizure or destruction of illegal equipment in protected areas.
The Amazon Rainforest makes up so much of South America that, if it were its own country by mass, it would rank 7th in the world.
The Amazon Rainforest has been called the lungs of the planet helping to create a huge portion of the oxygen needed to sustain the world population. So, imagine losing that much oxygen-producing plantlife.
Plus, when deforestation happens in the Rainforest, it’s not just cutting down tree. The process often uses techniques like torching vast areas of vegetation, which also destroys valuable nutrients and shortens the lifespan of the land.
Baltimore Mayor Bernard “Jack” Young (D) responded to Donald Trump’s ugly tweets about his city and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Saturday, calling the president a “disappointment to the people of Baltimore” and the world.
“It’s completely unacceptable for the political leader of our country to denigrate a vibrant American City like Baltimore, and to viciously attack U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings a patriot and a hero,” Young said in a statement shared via Twitter.
“Mr. Trump’s rhetoric is hurtful and dangerous to the people he’s sworn to represent,” he continued. “As the Mayor of Baltimore, I won’t stand for anyone, not even the alleged Leader of the Free World, attacking our great City or our representative to Congress.”
“Mr. Trump, you are a disappointment to the people of Baltimore, our country, and to the world,” he concluded.
It’s completely unacceptable for the political leader of our country to denigrate a vibrant American City like Baltimore, and to viciously attack U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings a patriot and a hero. pic.twitter.com/TJdbST6Md9
— Mayor Bernard C. Jack Young (@mayorbcyoung) July 27, 2019
And, by the way, if Trump’s concern is for the people of Baltimore, why doesn’t HE do something?
As we all know, there’s always a tweet:
President Obama, you have a big job to do. Go to Baltimore and bring both sides together. With proper leadership, it can be done! Do it.
After Donald Trump criticized the city of Baltimore in an attack on Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), the editorial board of the Baltimore Sun penned a blistering essay taking the Donald to task for his anti-American attack.
In case anyone missed it, the president of the United States had some choice words to describe Maryland’s 7th congressional district on Saturday morning. Here are the key phrases: “no human being would want to live there,” it is a “very dangerous & filthy place,” “Worst in the USA” and, our personal favorite: It is a “rat and rodent-infested mess.”
[snip]
It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream. President Trump bad-mouthed Baltimore in order to make a point that the border camps are “clean, efficient & well run,” which, of course, they are not — unless you are fine with all the overcrowding, squalor, cages and deprivation to be found in what the Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector general recently called “a ticking time bomb.”
[snip]
Finally, while we would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner — or ruefully point out that he failed to spell the congressman’s name correctly (it’s Cummings, not Cumming) — we would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post. Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity.
Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.
Taking questions from voters in Ankeny, Iowa, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was asked how unemployment would play out during the presidential election:
“Yeah, the president’s going to say unemployment is low, & it is. Of course, under the Obama admin, we went from like 12 to 5, and then he sees it go from 5 to 4, and he’s like the rooster, thinks he made sun come up.”
The mayor was also asked “Wine, or beer, or fireball?,” which got some applause from the crowd.
Pausing for second, Buttituge said, “Well in six months we might be into fireball territory, but right now, just beer, just beer for now.”
Britain’s Metroreports that Bishop Neophytos Masouras of the Church of Cyprus recently told followers that gay people happen when a pregnant mother has enjoyable anal sex.
In a video translated by Metro.co.uk translators, he said: “It happens during the parent’s intercourse or pregnancy. It follows an abnormal sexual act between the parents. To be more clear, anal sex. Saint Porfyrios says that when the woman likes that, a desire is born, and then the desire is passed on to the child.”
I guess that means, back in the 1960s, my parents were really ‘freaks in the sheets.’
