David Chang, Prabal Gurung, Dana Lorenz Challenge Us To Fight Trump's Moneybags Man Stephen Ross

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David Chang, Parbal Gurung, Dana Lorenz Challenge Us To Fight Trump's Moneybags Man Stephen Ross

David Chang’s Majordomo Los Angeles restaurant donated all of its profits last Friday to Planned Parenthood, RAICES Texas, Everytown and Sierra Club. The action came in response to Majordomo investor Stephen Ross’ splashy but controversial Southampton, Long Island fundraiser

Those same charities and the Serge Ibaka Foundation also will receive money from Chang’s Momofuku Noodle Bar, confirmed in a Monday August 12 email. . It was unclear whether other Momofuku restaurants participated and how much was donated, writes the Los Angeles Times about the Chang action in response to the investor Stephen Ross-Trump reelection controversy. Ross is the chairman of RSE Ventures, a private investment firm that is one of the backers of Chang’s restaurant group.

On a side note, Milk Bar is a chain of dessert and bakery restaurants owned by founding chef Christina Tosi and the Manhattan-based Momofuku restaurant group, also associated with Karlie Kloss’ Kookies

In an expletive-laced podcast episode from last week, in which David Chang begged Ross to call off his fundraiser, the chef put his Trump cards on the table.

“I personally am a staunch opponent to President Trump and everything he stands for,” he said on “The Dave Chang Show.” “Anyone that normalizes gun violence, white supremacy, putting kids into cages, his general lack of decency and respect for anyone else. He is destroying our democratic norms.”

Chang said he understood that the business relationship “raises a lot of questions for the people who dine at our restaurants and supported us over the years.”

The World Needs More Staircases of Knowledge Like The University of Balamand in Lebanon

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The World Needs More Staircases of Knowledge Like The University of Balamand in Lebanon

In a moment when Trump is just dumbling down America, it was so refreshing to find this images of 'The Staircase of Knowledge' located at the University of Balamand in Lebanon. Sasaki Architects explain the misson of the university and creates context around the staircase. 

The University of Balamand, established twenty years ago in the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war, occupies a spectacular site in North Lebanon on a steep hillside overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Established by the Orthodox Church, the university is committed to promoting understanding between the Christian and Muslim faiths, and to developing a secular education based on dialogue, transparency, and resistance to dogma and fundamentalism. The university plans rapid expansion over the next twenty years to an enrollment of 5,000, drawing students from throughout the Middle East. Sasaki's master plan accommodates this expansion while reflecting the university's overall goals. A dominant theme of the plan is a Path of Learning that links the secular—expressed by an ancient stone-vaulted goat house restored as a faculty center at the upper end of the campus—to the spiritual, expressed by a thousand-year-old Orthodox monastery at the lower end of the campus. 

Katherine Lo Set To Open Eaton Workshop, A DC Hotel For Progressives

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Katherine Lo is coming to Washington as the founder of Eaton Workshop, a 209 room hotel that will also include a social club, co-working space, a movie theater for independent films, a wellness center and a progressive news station. Surely, I've forgotten something.

Oh yes. The radio station will air a radical indigenous-rights show called Red Power Hour, and the rooftop will house an urban farm that will provide ingredients for the restaurant below, American Son.

The Piscataway tribe of Native Americans indigenous to the area will be recognized in decor and more directly. “We were going to put up a plaque to signify that we’re on stolen land,” Sheldon Scott, the hotel's culture director said. “But now we’re talking about contemporary programming possibilities and the prospect of them blessing the space.”

Eaton is a hospitality company that leans firmly, and unapologetically, to the left; Ms. Lo, 36, is focused on making the D.C. location as a gathering place for liberals feeling displaced by President Trump. 

Katherine Lo Set To Open Eaton Workshop, A DC Hotel For Progressives

Rethinking Federal vs State & Local Governing Thru A Democratic Lens

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Rethinking Federal vs State & Local Governing Thru A Democratic Lens

Futurist and urban planner Richard Florida moved his family to Toronto a decade ago. Stunned by Hillary's loss, the theorist pulled back his new book from his publisher to do some serious soul searching.

His meaty article in Politico taps into my own mindset, one that is a total reversal of previous thinking among progressives on the role of the federal govt vs state and city govt. The idea is conservative -- one that puts key decisions about our urban and rural areas more in the hands of state and local govt.

Presently in America, rural Americans in red states are running the country. While it's great that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Democrats' lawsuit about gerrymandering state districts, the decision could go against Dems. The electoral college is stacked against progressives, urban areas and Democrats generally.

The solution? It could only work if we pack up our money, the disproportionate amount of tax dollars blue states send to the federal govt.

Biden-Backed, Ex Goldman Banker Democrat Phil Murphy Headed To November New Jersey Governor Win

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Biden-Backed, Ex Goldman Banker Democrat Phil Murphy Headed To November New Jersey Governor Win

Vice President Joe Biden called the upcoming NJ governor's race “the single most important” election of the next three years.

Biden-backed Phil Murphy won the Democratic primary on Tuesday, delivering a Hillary Clinton populist message grounded in his career as a Goldman Sachs banker. Bernie Sanders did not endorse Murphy, although his son did campaign for the candidate.

As Sanders progressives rip into NJ Sen. Corey Booker's ethical credentials in any future presidential race -- having accepted money from big pharma companies in his state -- the Murphy win shows that at a state level, the Sanders wing of the Democratic party is not running the show in New Jersey.

The Murphy primary win -- and expected future win as NJ governor -- also demonstrates that Democrats can run on a platform that shares 95% of Sanders' priorities -- as the 2016 Presidential campaign platform did -- without throwing every person with ties to wealth and big business out of the party as the Sanders camp is demanding.

Watching 'The Crown' With the QE2 Falling Apart In Dubai & John Boehner's Tears Long Gone From Trumpworld

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Watching 'The Crown' With the QE2 Falling Apart In Dubai & John Boehner's Tears Long Gone From Trumpworld

Could we agree that any woman trying to lead the free world, who cried in prime time, would be run out of Dodge? I finally tuned into the Netflix series 'The Crown', and I assure you that the young queen Elizabeth will be steely and duty-driven -- keeping it together when her father dies. And that is exactly how the second episode ends, with Elizabeth burying her adoring love and grief for her dead father deep in her heart, now masked by royal obligations to her public and the entire British Empire.

Watching 'The Crown' knowing that the electoral college voted on Monday for Donald Trump as America's next president, I can't help thinking about Republican John Boehner's arrival as Speaker of the House.  He wept through his 2010 60 Minutes interview, a reality that did not amuse me in the least, given the Republican agenda for America. In fact, those tears are typically called a charade when a damsel in distress turns on the floodgates.

Indeed when I wrote about Boehner's intentions to lead the charge against abortion and contraception rights in America, it was after after watching a chilling meeting with his chief of staff Mick Krieger accepting one of those tiny plastic babies in perfect form meant to represent a six-week old embryo. In reality, those cells and molecules are a blob about the size of a pomegranate seed, and I don't mean to be disrespectful in any way. But it's another example of post-factual information suggesting that these perfectly formed cereal box creatures (I am not making this up. Republicans put them in cereal and candy boxes at state fairs) are in any way representative of the actual pregnancy process.  To me the meeting signalled the hell that poor women in America would go through as Republicans ripped away not only abortion rights but also access to contraception and general health care for women living all over America in impoverished communities. There is no satisfaction in saying that my instincts were correct.

Gender Gap Volume Rises As Bernie Bros Tell Progressive Women How To Vote

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Throughout the summer, Sanders and Clinton supporters engaged in a soft glove battle of the sexes with Bernie Sanders'  primarily white male supporters sparring with Hillary supporters of every skin color and white women. The so-called Bernie Bros are focused on Clinton supporters like myself, the so-called spoiled, bourgeoise, white woman. 
We's Not Shouting, But We ARE Digging In
No self-respecting feminist will go to the wall over Bernie's comment about shouting -- although given his role as the shouter-in-chief, his commentary about others is downright amusing. Surely he didn't mean to minimize his opponent in any way. 
That is not the case with the white progressive men Peter Daou and Tom Watson write about over at Hillary Men. The genie is out of the bottle in political gender relations in the Democratic party, with a strong dose of misogyny running wild -- not among Southern Democrats, who barely exist anymore -- but among white male progressives.  
Feminists of a certain age are well aware that many leftist men were frequently sexist as hell. Among Latinos, African Americans, American Indians -- really any group of people except middle-class white women -- a desire for self-determination is embraced by white male progressives as legitimate. Among white women not on welfare or living among the working poor -- women who are typically able to speak and write or run for political office -- a desire for fairness and equity in political representation is considered to be bourgeoise and without a strong political foundation.