What’s interesting in the news today?
Open Thread
1. Something to keep in mind as Hillary campaigns on equal pay and equal economic opportunities.
From TheGuardian “Experienced, adult political operatives who want to do grassroots work for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign currently have no choice but to work as unpaid, full-time interns, raising new questions about how the White House frontrunner runs her own labor force as she prepares to double down on young people’s role in the American economy.
The Clinton campaign is currently in the midst of what multiple Democratic sources described as a “hiring freeze” for paid organizing positions in the early campaign states where the former Secretary of State is laying the foundations of a massive national staff, with few if any paying jobs available for field operations.
Clinton’s camp has made headlines about its frugality and a hard sell on its fellowship program, which allows aspiring politicos between the ages of 18 and 24 to spend this summer as full-time campaign volunteers. The result, however, is the human-resources reality of a campaign – one scheduled to hold at least 26 fundraisers this month alone – that isn’t just taking on college students with political science degrees but expecting political veterans to gamble their careers on her without pay.
Clinton, according to her would-be employees, has left full-time organizers with little choice but to criss-cross the country and work as “free help”.”
So her campaign will spend a billion dollars on getting her elected, but it won’t be spent on the employees. How populist of her.
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2. We’re not all equal when it comes to water.
From TheWashingtonPost “Drought or no drought, Steve Yuhas resents the idea that it is somehow shameful to be a water hog. If you can pay for it, he argues, you should get your water.
People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media. “We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he added in an interview. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”
Yuhas lives in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Rancho Santa Fe, a bucolic Southern California hamlet of ranches, gated communities and country clubs that guzzles five times more water per capita than the statewide average. In April, after Gov. Jerry Brown (D) called for a 25 percent reduction in water use, consumption in Rancho Santa Fe went up by 9 percent.
But a moment of truth is at hand for Yuhas and his neighbors, and all of California will be watching: On July 1, for the first time in its 92-year history, Rancho Santa Fe will be subject to water rationing.
“It’s no longer a ‘You can only water on these days’ ” situation, said Jessica Parks, spokeswoman for the Santa Fe Irrigation District, which provides water service to Rancho Santa Fe and other parts of San Diego County. “It’s now more of a ‘This is the amount of water you get within this billing period. And if you go over that, there will be high penalties.’ ”
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3. Huh. And yet DHS is focused on right-wingers.
From FoxNews “Several Boston-area terror suspects, including the man killed by police earlier this month as he allegedly sought to behead cops and two alleged associates, have frequently attended sermons given by firebrand imam whose message to the faithful doesn’t match the conciliatory tone he struck when contacted by FoxNews.com.
Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, of the Mosque for the Praising of Allah in Roxbury, Mass., has been seen on videos of his fiery sermons exhorting worshipers to commit acts of violence in the name of Islam. In videos of Faaruuq preaching, the former Northeastern University chaplain appears to skirt the line between metaphor and incitement.
“You must grab onto the rope, grab onto the typewriter, grab onto the shovel, grab onto the gun and the sword,” he railed in one video reviewed by FoxNews.com. “Don’t be afraid to step out into this world and do your job.”
It is not known if convicted or suspected terrorists including the Boston Marathon bombers, Usaamah Rahim, who was brandishing a knife when police shot him on June 2 or two men who have since been charged in the same plot heard sermons like these, but all have attended prayers with Faaruuq. The imam has been on the radar of researchers at Americans for Peace & Tolerance (APT), a conservative group devoted to exposing Islamic extremism, since 2009. Ilya Feoktistov, director of research at the organization, says he first spotted Faaruuq at a rally in support of now-convicted terrorist, Tarek Mehanna, who was convicted for providing material support to Al Qaeda and conspiring to kill Americans.
“We knew he was a prominent Imam in the Boston Muslim community,” Feoktistov told FoxNews.com. “We were concerned as to what he might be teaching.”
Usaama Rahim, 26, who reportedly was obsessed with killing anti-Islamist activist Pamela Geller, allegedly plotted with Nicholas Rovinski, 24, of Warwick, R.I., and David Wright, 25, of Everett, Mass., to help ISIS by killing U.S. citizens. Rovinski was arrested Thursday, and appeared in court Friday on charges of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS. Wright was arrested last week on a conspiracy charge and is due in court June 19.”
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4. What’s wrong with this picture?
From TheBostonGlobe “For years, doctors warned federal immigration officials: Do not take your eyes off Santos Hernandez Carrera. He had raped a woman at knifepoint and spent roughly half his life in jail, where immigration officials hoped to keep him until they could send him home to Cuba. As far as the public knew, the strategy worked: Until last month, the public sex offender registry said Hernandez Carrera, who has been diagnosed with a mental illness, had been deported.
He never was. Instead, the Globe discovered that Hernandez Carrera is in Florida, one of hundreds of immigrants convicted of sex crimes who should have been deported but instead were released in the United States because their homelands refused to take them back.
They are convicted rapists, child molesters, and kidnappers — among “the worst of the worst,” as one law enforcement agency put it. Yet the Globe found that immigration officials have released them without making sure they register with local authorities as sex offenders.
And once US Immigration and Customs Enforcement frees them, agency officials often lose track of the criminals, despite outstanding deportation orders against them. The Globe determined that Hernandez Carrera and several other offenders had failed to register as sex offenders, a crime. By law, police are supposed to investigate if such offenders fail to update their address within days of their release. But local officials said they did not learn that ICE had released the offenders until after the Globe inquired about their cases.”
““It’s chilling,” said Thomas H. Dupree Jr., a former deputy assistant US attorney general who led a 2008 federal court battle to keep Hernandez Carrera locked up. “These are dangerous and predatory individuals who should not be prowling the streets. In fact, they should not be in the United States at all.””
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Wandering Views 
#2. Algore, and the rest of them feel the same way about global warming.
“You people need to cut carbon emissions”.
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#4. The thing wrong with it is that nobody is to blame.
“Those people need to be doing their job”. Whoever they are.
There was a time when rape was a capitol offense.
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I have an article in this week’s Washington Times entitled “Obama Secretly Backing Muslim Brotherhood”. The first paragraph reads:
“President Obama and his administration continue to support the global Islamist militant group known as the Muslim Brotherhood. A White House strategy document regards the group as a moderate alternative to more violent groups like Al Qaida and the Islamic State.”
“The policy of backing the Muslim Brotherhood is outlined in a secret directive called Presidential Study Directive –II or PSD-II. ‘The directive was produced in 2011 and outlines administrative support for political reform in the Middle East and North Africa according to officials familiar with the classified study”
The rest of this lengthy article is about the overthrow of Mr. Morsi, the Brotherhood backed president of Egypt. It then says:
“Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy extensively documented Muslim Brotherhood subversion efforts, both in the United States and abroad.”
”Mr. Gaffney said the Muslim Brotherhood is the most dangerous group promoting the totalitarian and Islamist supremacist doctrine of Sharia. Several Muslim Brotherhood supporters have been identified as key advisers to Mr. Obama, according to Mr .Gaffney”
“Egyptian press reports after the ouster of Mr. Morsi have revealed extensive cooperation between the CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood during Mr. Morsi’s presidency.”
Ihave on my Kindle, a book called The Brotherhood, America’s Next Great Enemy” It says that the Brotherhood is entrenched in the Obama Administration. They were also influential in the GW Bush administration, but not so much.
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Some Ronald Reagan lore
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/06/reagan-a-black-belt-in-badassery.php
” ….I do know from one agent I interviewed that shortly after his election in 1980, when he repaired to his ranch north of Santa Barbara for a few days and the Secret Service was installing its facilities on the ridge above his house, Reagan got up one morning, saw a coyote, and promptly reached into his closet where he kept several firearms, got out a rifle, and shot the coyote. Which sent the Secret Service into full panic mode, running down the hill with guns drawn.
” ‘I guess I should have warned you fellas I was going to do that,’ Reagan said with his usual grin. The upshot, though, was that the Secret Service told Reagan he just couldn’t go shooting on his ranch any more, and they took his guns away from him for the duration of his presidency. Or so they say. …”
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And Jake Tapper has a new Sunday show on CNN:
” … There are about a half-dozen mainstream media reporters whom conservatives and liberals alike trust, and it is long past time one lands on a Sunday morning. …”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/06/12/cnns-jake-tapper-the-breitbart-news-interview-his-sunday-show-jenner-politics-media-bias/
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Washington Post on the president, yesterday: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/06/14/a-presidency-in-free-fall/
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Up here in northern CA where we’ve been watching the drought conditions and cutting back on water for about two, maybe three years, we’re appalled at what is happening in southern CA. It’s like they’re just waking up, now?
(No offense, Donna).
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My community, btw, had an average year for rainfall this winter (in only three storms!), yet we’re still cutting back and being careful. I don’t think any lawn on my street is green.
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What? What time is it?
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I’ll have you know my lawn has been brown in the summer for a few years now. And proud of it. 🙂
I’d say half of my neighborhood now has drought-resistant landscapes — which made me wonder how those will hold up in an El Nino. Because you know that’s what always comes next, right? While this drought has lasted longer than most, it’s a familiar cycle out here.
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All I can say is that I was in California for four days and it rained every day.
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Many homes in my community have been in drought tolerant yards; the city has been paying us to take out turf for a couple years. I’d like to put in a bromeliad yard–I think they’re really interesting looking–but my husband is resistant. We’ll see.
You can see the fascinating bromeliad gardens of Santa Monica–okay, that’s in Southern California, on my Pinterest board, “A Walk in Santa Monica” https://www.pinterest.com/michelleule/a-walk-in-santa-monica-california/
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Best yard I’ve seen is just about a block away from where I live — bursting with (native) color, tall wild somethings, and not cactus-y at all. Beautiful, really, and there’s even a sign in the yard now saying it was voted by the local garden club as the best landscape in town for the year. It doesn’t look “low maintenance,” but presumably takes less water than a lawn would.
There’s been some real progress in finding & cultivating “natives” that are colorful & attractive (which, mostly, they’re often not — early looks were largely green and brown, surrounded by rocks or bark).
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Our upside down house in Downey, CA {12 miles south of the LA Civic Center} is empty of renters now. I really should put in new landscaping. But how?
I really should figure it out.
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