Part 1: 2020 Democratic Presidential Hopefuls: Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren and Jay Islee .

  In Part 1 of this BBC News Article you'll learn about Amy Klobuchar,  Elizabeth Warren and Jay Islee, three Democrats who have thrown their hats in the race for president in the 2020 election. 

Amy Klobuchar

In a large and growing Democratic presidential field, Amy Klobuchar is trying to lay claim to the moderate middle. But that can be a tough sell, particularly when many of her rivals are touting big-ticket progressive goals like universal healthcare, free college education and aggressive attempts to address income inequality.
"I'm being honest, and I think you want honesty," she says.
      If the goal for Democrats is to find a candidate who can win the Midwest swing states that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 - places like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - Ms Klobuchar may be an attractive choice.


Her big idea: She offered a number of proposals during her time on stage - bringing broadband to rural areas, lowering prescription drug prices and some kind of transactional tax on technology companies that sell information about their users. When I asked her to name her top idea, she opted for one she hadn't mentioned - passing a law automatically registering all citizens to vote when they turn 18.
Her biggest obstacle: Raising the massive amount of money to fund a presidential campaign was her biggest obstacle, she told me. Allegations that she has been verbally abusive towards her Senate staff have dogged the early days of her campaign, however, and threaten to become a recurring distraction. "I have high expectations for myself, I have high expectations for people who work for me, and most importantly I have high expectations for this country," she said. "I can always do better."
Reception: Moderation and practicality may eventually win support, but they didn't get people out of their chairs here.

BBC Gave 2 Stars 

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Elizabeth Warren

The Massachusetts senator arrived at the South by Southwest conference one day after announcing her plan to use the government's antitrust powers to break up big technology companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple. Say what you will about her candidacy, but that took guts.
At the beginning of her panel, moderator Anand Giridharadas of Time magazine asked current and former employees of the aforementioned companies in the audience to stand up and face the senator as she explained her proposal.

She compared the current system to a baseball league where participants could either be an umpire or team - but not both. Companies like Amazon, which are marketplace platforms but also participants that use the information they glean from transactions to sell their own products, have an unfair, innovation-stifling advantage.
Her big idea: Ms Warren's campaign sometimes seems fashioned entirely out of big ideas, with her tech-company break-up plan only being the latest. She's also proposed a universal childcare programme and a tax on the wealth of multimillionaires. Personal assets over $50m would be subject to an annual 2% assessment, she says, while those over $1bn would be hit with a 3% tax.
Her biggest obstacle: Saturday's hour-long interview was classic Warren - a mix of history lesson, economic theory and academic research. On the campaign stump it can be a bit clunky, but in a one-on-one format it shines. No one in the Democratic field can talk nuts-and-bolts of policy like her. If a campaign for president was a series of in-depth lectures on issues of importance, she might be running away with the nomination. The biggest obstacle for her is that it's not.
Reception:  Ms Warren came to Austin to bury big tech companies, not to praise them. Despite this, she had the best reception of any politician at South by Southwest not named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

BBC Gave 5 Stars 

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Jay Inslee

The Washington governor launched his presidential campaign just over a week ago and has been focused laser-like on the issue of climate change ever since. "We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change," he said, "but we are the last generation that can do something about it."
He noted that a recent Iowa poll showed that the environment was the top issue for Democratic voters, tied with healthcare. With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal helping to push the topic to centre stage, Mr Inslee could be in position to capitalise on the attention.

His big idea: Clearly environmental action is the central thrust of Mr Inslee's campaign, although he says he has no one preferred policy "silver bullet", but rather wants a multifaceted "silver buckshot" approach. One big idea he threw his weight behind in Austin was eliminating the legislative blocking tactic known as the filibuster in the US Senate.
"Anyone who says they want to do anything of any significance in the next several years has to be in favour of ending the filibuster or they're not serious," Mr Inslee told me. "So if you say you're serious about climate change and believe that it's an existential threat to the nation, but you're not categorically against the filibuster, then you're dooming the United States to failure."
His biggest challenge: Mr Inslee is starting in the race as a little-known governor from a state in the far corner of America. If he succeeds in raising his visibility by pushing the environmental issue, his biggest challenge will be using that attention to sell Democratic voters on the rest of his progressive record in Washington - on issues like marijuana legalisation, criminal justice reform, raising the minimum wage, abolishing the death penalty and expanding healthcare coverage.
Reception:  He had by far the worst time slot - a 9:30am start on the morning after clocks moved forward an hour. Talk of impending climate disaster kept those who did show up engaged in the conversation, however.

BBC Gave 2 Stars

SOURCE: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47504477

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It's Franklin's Milestone 15th Birthday!

The eldest of our Menagerie is Franklin. Franklin turns 15 today, March 18. He was born in South Carolina in 2004. He was adopted by Tom, when Tom lived there, and then moved pretty soon after to Maryland. 

  In December 2005, Franklin met Dolly, a Weimaraner who was 6 months younger than Franklin (when Tom met Rob). Franklin and Dolly bonded quickly and they became brother and sister. 
 Franklin's favorite thing in the world is Food. Any food, any time. He's got a strong personality - basically a stubborn Dachshund personality. 
  He wants what he wants, when he wants it! He's quite the independent pup, and always has been. He loves to make us think that he doesn't hear us when we ask him to go for a walk, or come in from the backyard. If he's in the backyard and we call his name, he'll look at us, and then most of the time, he will walk away! 
   He does like going for a ride, though, and he enjoys a lot of sniffing once we get him out the door for a walk. 
   In September 2016, he had emergency back surgery. He spent months doing rehab at home with Daddy Rob, and learning how to walk and even how to pee again. Since then, he doesn't walk one foot in front of the other, he hops with 2 feet at a time. He was just never able to go up and down stairs by himself, but enjoys being carried.  
  In 2018, he finally started to follow Dolly and Tyler each night when Daddy Rob had them practice agility after dinner (yes, in the living room), going around chairs, through tunnels, etc. .. because he learned there were treats involved!  For the 3 or 4 years before that, he resisted doing agility at home and walked in the room whenever Dolly and Tyler got treats for their performances. Franklin's pretty smart!

   Now, in his old age, he's moving a little slower and he growls when Daddy Rob tries to hug him, but he's the same, lovable Franklin!

In March 2006, Dolly celebrated Franklin's 2nd Birthday!

  

Idiots in the News: Alabama Publisher Urges KKK to "Ride Again"

There is no shortage of idiots and today's blog will tell you about two of them who stand for hatred and intolerance of those unlike them (white, conservative christian, straight, male).  One is a publisher who wants the Ku Klux Klan to "ride again" and spread hatred, intolerance and violence against anyone who isn't a white, straight, right-wing christian. The other is the high schooler who donned a MAGA hat and was disrespectful to a Native American man in a Wash, DC festival. He claims he's been defamed and filed a lawsuit.

What the kid doesn't understand:  Wearing a MAGA hat is the same as wearing a KKK hood. It represents hatred and intolerance. 

    Here are the stories from the News:

 

 Editor of an Alabama newspaper is calling for the return of the Ku Klux Klan's infamous night rides

 Source: alabama-newspaper-klan-trnd

Democrat-Reporter newspaper ran a Feb. 14 editorial"

Alabama elected officials and journalism organizations condemned as hateful on Tuesday a small town newspaper's editorial calling for the Ku Klux Klan to "ride again," as pressure mounted on Goodloe Sutton, the publisher who wrote it, to resign.

(CNN)An editorial written in support of the Ku Klux Klan. That's something you might expect to see in 1919. Believe it or not, you can see it in 2019, too. The editor and publisher of a small-town newspaper in Alabama wrote one just last week.

The editorial, with the shock headline "The Klan Needs to Ride Again," appeared in the February 14 edition of The Democrat-Reporter in Linden, Alabama. "Time for the Ku Klux Klan to night ride again," begins the editorial, written by Goodloe Sutton. "Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama."

He told the Montgomery Advertiser he urged the white supremacist group to "clean out D.C." via lynchings. "We'll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them," Sutton told the newspaper. He stressed that he wasn't calling for the hangings of all Americans, just the "socialist-communists.""Seem like the Klan would be welcome to raid the gated communities up there," Sutton wrote in the editorial.

Beginning in the late 19th century, Klan members used night rides to terrorize blacks and their white allies with violence, including lynchings and firebombings.

 

The University of Southern Mississippi's School of Communication said Tuesday it has removed Sutton, an alumnus, from its Mass Communication and Journalism Hall of Fame "in light of Mr. Sutton's recent and continued history of racist remarks."The school added that it "strongly condemns Mr. Sutton's remarks as they are antithetical to all that we value as scholars of journalism, the media, and human communication."

Auburn University's Journalism Advisory Council also stripped Sutton of its 2009 distinguished community journalism award following a Tuesday vote.

Alabama Secretary of State John H. Merrill said, "This type behavior is not acceptable and whenever it is introduced, it should be identified and rejected."

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  AND THERE'S ANOTHER...

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Kentucky Student files lawsuit against the Washington Post

A high school student from Covington, Kentucky, sued the Washington Post for defamation on Tuesday, claiming the newspaper falsely accused him of racist acts and instigating a confrontation with a Native American activist in a January videotaped incident at the Lincoln Memorial. 

New York (CNN Business)Attorneys for a Kentucky high school student who was at the center of a viral video controversy are suing the Washington Post, seeking $250 million in damages.

The law firm Hemmer DeFrank Wessels on Tuesday wrote a post on its website that said attorneys Lin Wood and Todd McMurtry have filed the lawsuit on behalf of Nicholas Sandmann against the newspaper for "compensatory and punitive damages." "This is only the beginning," the law firm said. 

Sandmann, a student at Covington Catholic High School, was in Washington on January 18 for the annual March for Life rally wearing a red Make American Great Again hat. In a video that gained national attention, he was in an encounter with Omaha tribe elder Nathan Phillips, who was playing a drum and chanting at the Indigenous Peoples March at the Lincoln Memorial on the same day.

Found!! Mary Queen of Scots documents found at Museum of Edinburgh

Portrait by François Clouet, c. 1558–1560

Since Tom is an amateur historian on the Tudor period of England (Henry VIII's rule, and the Elizabethan era), a new discovery was especially fascinating to him (and me, since we visited many Tudor-era places in England on 2 vacations).
Here's a story from BBC News about a big discovery!


Mary Queen of Scots documents found at Museum of Edinburgh 

A group of documents believed to have been signed by Mary Queen of Scots have come to light at the Museum of Edinburgh after decades spent unseen.

Files showed they were gifted in 1920 but they had been lost in storage until recent inventory work by curators. The handwritten documents are said to provide a "fascinating insight" into commercial life in Edinburgh in the 16th Century.
They can be viewed online and will hopefully go on display in future.

For the time being, the documents will remain in safe storage at the Museum of Edinburgh because of their fragile state.

Future plans are to have them assessed by a conservator and for further research to be done on them by experts on Mary's reign, after which the hope is to exhibit them for residents and visitors to enjoy.
Meanwhile, the new discovery can be viewed online.

Museums and Galleries Edinburgh

Image caption The documents were "lost in storage" until a recent inventory

 

 

Who is Mary, Queen of Scots?

Mary is one of the most fascinating figures in Scottish history.
She was born at Linlithgow Palace in 1542 and became queen when her father died soon after her birth.  However, Mary was taken to France in 1548 and Scotland was ruled by regents.
She returned in 1561 to begin her reign as Queen of Scots but was forced to abdicate at the age of 24 after six tumultuous years.

After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, Mary fled to England seeking the protection of her cousin .

Mary had once claimed Elizabeth's throne as her own and was considered the legitimate sovereign by many English Catholics.

The Scots queen was held in captivity for 18 years before she was executed at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587, at the age of 44. Her son James became king of Scotland and England.

Too fragile

Donald Wilson, culture and communities convener at City of Edinburgh Council, said: "Museum and Galleries Edinburgh hold thousands of historic treasures on behalf of the city and its visitors, many of which are on display in our venues.
"However, some items, such as these documents, are too fragile to be on long-term display, so putting them online is a great way to showcase them and tell their stories."The museum's history curator Vicky Garrington said the documents provided an "amazing bridge to the past".

Photo showing a replica of Mary Queen of Scot's tombstone in Westminster abbey at the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

"It's incredible to think of Mary Queen of Scots reading through these documents before carefully applying her signature," she said.

"We all know the story of Scotland's Queen, her eventful life and eventual execution, but in these documents, we see a different side to Mary."Here, she can be seen carefully managing the everyday affairs of Edinburgh and Scotland. These documents help us to better understand her reign."

Frank Little of Museums and Galleries Edinburgh said they hoped the ongoing inventory work would continue to turn up "new treasures".